Hello and welcome to your Qigong practice.
Just finding a place where your feet can feel rooted on the earth.
About shoulder width distance apart,
And the toes pointing slightly out.
Knees are bent and buoyant.
And you feel this sense of support from the earth,
From your legs,
All the way up through your hips and your spine,
Going up all the way to the top of your head,
Feeling your shoulders relax.
And just starting to tune in here,
You might feel the need to just sway back and forth in the knees,
Whatever your body is asking of you,
Just responding to that and gifting your body.
That gift of awareness and movement if it's needed,
Or stillness if that's desired.
And just a little reminder why we do this Qigong related to our voices.
So many ways,
So many reasons,
But really the essence is that we're connecting to our bodies,
We're connecting to our breath.
We're actually moving and stretching out very important muscle groups related to singing.
And we're also connecting into this sense of ourselves as a conduit for earth energy,
For celestial sky,
Heavenly energy,
For the environmental energy around us.
And tuning into how we get to connect with that,
Our perception of this world outside of this body and how we relate to it and how we can express that and feel that.
And finally,
It also helps us connect in with our emotional state and to move through that energy through movement and also through sound,
Which is a lot of what we're doing when we're singing.
So it's.
.
.
Has more benefits and connections,
But I'll leave it there for now and we can start our practice.
You might notice that I have a bunch of cedar and nettle behind me here,
Nettle just about going to seed here,
And I chose this spot because I'd like to ground in here and send it to you in the future.
So you have this spring tonic.
Shake-up rejuvenator practice to return to and it doesn't only need to be done in the spring but anytime you're needing that sense of relief from anger or frustration and wanting to really ground into kindness and happiness and fortitude as well both of these plants have a lot of mars and heat qualities to them.
Yeah,
We're gonna draw upon the energy of the nettle and the cedar here to support us in our practice.
So just returning to awareness of your feet.
And you may wish to close the eyes or just leave them subtly open.
The difference between closing them and opening is a more internal awareness when they're closed,
A feeling,
Sense,
And opening of your hearing sense and your smell sense,
Other touch senses other than your eyes,
Which can be beneficial.
And keeping them open is this exploration of your environment and how you're bringing that into your practice.
Depending on where you're at today.
One may suit you better and you can also I like to sometimes just go from one to the other keeping my eyes closed and then just opening them slowly and looking around,
Taking in what feels like enough,
Good amount of stimulus,
And then closing down again.
We're going to start today with some shaking.
So just bouncing on the heels so the toes stay on the ground.
Bouncing heels and you may have a bounce that's Similarly to me,
Just quite quick and little,
Or you might bounce a bit slower and higher up and down and really get your arms moving.
Again,
Just really tuning into what your body.
Is asking of you right now,
Starting to build that connection.
Starting to deepen into your breath.
Letting it fill the cavity of your rib cage,
Making space for your heart.
And bringing in this intention of clearing as you're shaking.
Like you're dusting off your cells.
You're seeing all this.
Unwanted,
Unnecessary energy just escaping out of them.
Bubbling up and through your energetic field out to wherever you are.
And again,
I'm grounding into this space here.
I'm connected to the Earth.
And I'm offering that to you in this practice,
Too,
To use this space in the earth to let it go if you're unable to have your feet connected to the earth right now.
I need like that.
So just continuing to shake out.
Maybe inviting some.
Soft sighs like that into your practice.
Inhaling through the nose and out the mouth into a sigh,
Audible sigh.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa And if.
.
.
Comfortable and helpful for you.
You can even start to shake out the head a little bit.
Just looking to rest one.
I rest my ear to one side and shake out and then moving up and down and around.
All the while keeping this intention of clearing,
Clearing your mind's eye.
Maybe bringing a bit more intensity to your hands.
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH And then bringing that to a stop,
I'm going to get you to bend your knees and lift your heels high off the ground and get really tense in your whole body.
Maybe even looking up.
And then release it all with a big sigh.
May fall backwards if it was a powerful release,
And then we're going to go back to shaking.
Bouncing on this earth.
Checking in again to see,
Oh,
How does my body want to be moved right now?
How do I want to bounce right now in this body?
Mmmmmmmmmm And the final moments of shaking are upon us.
And then reaching those heels up,
Tensing the body again.
Feeling it through your toes and your fingers,
Reaching the shoulders back.
And then releasing with a big sigh.
Do that once more.
Tensing up,
Reaching high on the tippy toes,
Stretching the arms back like you're a diving eagle.
And then we're releasing now.
Feeling your weight in your feet and noticing if you can just tilt front to back toes to heels all the way back and forward again.
Seeing where your spectrum of balance falls.
And then finding a point that feels like neutral,
Like center.
And staying there.
And then what we're going to do is we're going to start to draw down the heavens.
So palms facing down,
Inhale,
Up to the shoulders,
Drawing up from the earth.
Flip the palms.
And then draw in from the sky,
From the heavens.
And then exhale.
Pull that through your body.
Central channel,
Spine.
All the way down back to the earth.
Inhaling the arms draw energy up from the earth,
Flipping the palms in from the sky.
And then drawing that energy down through the top of the head,
Through the spine and the central channel of your body.
And releasing down to the earth.
Inhaling up from the earth.
Flipping the palms in from the sky.
And down through the central channel of the body.
And do that a couple more times on your own.
Feeling that connection to your environment.
To this sense of your body as an electrical being conducting.
Heat and connection,
Electricity.
From the earth and the sky.
And let this move through you and feel it inside of you.
How your environment is a part of who you are.
And how you can be a collaborative part of your environment.
When you tap into this creative power inside of you.
Taking the last one,
Drawing up from the earth.
And in from the sky.
And then instead of coming down like a channel tube,
You're actually going to take your hands like this in a sword mudra.
So the first two fingers come together and the other two fingers are held by the thumb behind.
So the sword mudra comes up and actually crosses over the body.
Bringing this sense of protection.
And starting to build this field of awareness of your protective space,
Your boundary.
And if that's your first time doing it,
Let's just do it again with a feeling,
With intention.
So up from the earth.
In from the sky and then bring your hands into the sword mudra And crossing over the body,
Building that awareness of your protective space.
And for good measure,
Let's just do it one more time so we're in the honor of the three.
The three,
Five,
Nine,
The odd numbers.
And now we're starting to breathe in and out through the nose.
Moving on to our.
.
.
Connection to our liver and our spleen.
So I've chosen these two organ element systems to set.
Us today in our awareness.
So just bringing the hands out in front of you at your lower dentions.
Beginning to Notice if you can feel this sense of pressure or.
.
.
Sensation against your fingers,
Touching the energy field around you.
Because we've really started to build this connection.
Now I can really feel it because I'm.
.
.
On the earth,
It makes a huge difference for me in how much I'm able to actually sense the electromagnetic force But another great part about Qigong is that it builds our imagination.
And our connection over time to the practice allows.
Our imagination to grow,
Which is so important with singing because so much of what we're doing is imagining what's going on in this.
Infrastructure that we can't physically see.
So if you can't feel it so much,
I'd like you to just imagine it,
Somehow imagining a color or a force between your hands that you can actually sense this energy.
We're going to start today with the liver.
So the liver is on the right side of the body.
So I'm not mirroring you here.
And it's this huge organ that's involved with.
.
.
So much digestion,
Assimilation,
Processing,
Understanding our outside world And so bringing your feet in a little bit closer and parallel with your hips so toes are facing straight.
So the liver holds the axis of anger and kindness.
And so we're going to be releasing anger and drawing in kindness with this movement.
Frustration also you can hold and so there's so much to focus on here there's the physical movement there's the emotional component and then there's also some sounding that we're going to be doing so there's the breath component and if this is your first time even if you've been doing this a lot actually just like choosing to focus on one to begin with and then expanding your capacity from there,
Expanding your range of awareness from there.
So the movement first is gonna be looking like this.
So go slowly.
So the palm is facing up when it's further into the body,
And it faces down when it's further away.
And you're really.
.
.
There's like a staccato movement.
You're really pushing the hand forward as it moves forward and the arm goes straight and the arm comes back in.
Really close to the liver on this side and the spleen on the other when it comes in.
Just switching one side to the other first getting the hang of this movement.
And then tuning into any frustration or anger that you're feeling.
In your body.
In your emotional field.
It might be in your liver.
You might feel it elsewhere.
It doesn't matter where it is.
Just connecting to it.
Oh,
This.
Bee?
Wasp?
It's a wasp.
Has something to say.
And now it's gone.
They say that wasps can really sense your fear and they can probably sense your anger too.
So obviously I was tapping into something potent there.
All right,
So you're also just like letting the hips sway with the extended hand.
So the extended hand,
That hip pulls forward as well.
And if you can start to.
.
.
Picture that frustration being released as you Poke your hand out into the space.
And that the other hand is drawing in kindness.
And you don't have to do it this fast.
You can go slowly like anger out,
Kindness in.
Anger out,
Kindness in.
Again,
Tuning into this.
Opportunity for movement to help flow your emotions through.
And cultivate the type of body field,
Energy field that you'd like to be.
In.
And you can also start to imagine the color green.
Green is the color of the liver.
And then finally we'll add the sound which is a sound.
So the whole system will look like this.
Just joining in as you feel ready.
Just a sharp inhale.
And then making that shh sound on the exhale.
And that's also quite forceful.
It's helping you to transmute that and release that anger,
That frustration.
Doing just a couple more.
And then relaxing.
Letting the hands drop to the sides.
And bringing the feet back out hip width distance and finding that center point quickly and just noticing.
How you feel.
Is there tingling or warmth?
Some noticeable change in your emotional space.
Maybe you feel like you could have done that longer.
Maybe it was too much.
Just noting that for next time you do this practice.
And then I've decided,
Given the fertility of this spring energy,
To bring in the squeen as well to this practice.
So the spleen is located on the opposite side of the body,
On the left side.
Again,
I'm not mirroring you here.
And the spleen is connected also to the pancreas in this five element Qigong meridian.
So maybe just bringing your hand here just to feel the energy of the space,
Noticing how it's different.
Than what we've just been working on with the liver.
And this practice asks us to do this.
Triangle mudra with our hands,
So bringing the first finger,
The pointer finger and the thumbs to touch and then the rest of the fingers.
Also pointing up supporting that first finger and just find that.
Triangle shape.
And the spleen is this portal where all the blood is being cleansed and flowing through all through the body similarly to the liver.
So we build this triangle portal to actually look through with our eyes.
So you have to keep your eyes open for this one.
You can obviously close them.
It's your body.
You get to decide.
But I encourage you to start just keeping your eyes open and you're only going to look through the triangle.
So just starting to familiarize yourself with that.
Because obviously you can see all around it.
But just focusing your intention,
Focusing your attention.
On this place.
Scene.
If you bring your elbows bent,
What that looks like and then.
Stretching your elbows straight.
Moving up and down and all around.
Seeing your environment through this particular perspective,
This particular portal.
And the spleen supports the axis of.
.
.
Peace.
Understanding.
And it helps us to release anxiety and worry.
Sense of focusing,
Intention.
Focusing the attention.
Letting us soften into what we're capable of taking in.
Reducing the aperture a bit so that we can come into this state of peace and acceptance and understanding in any moment.
You're seeing where your breath is at and if you'd like to deepen it a bit into your belly,
Into the side ribs as you do this practice.
And I'll bring in the color.
The color is yellow.
You can also imagine yourself.
Streaming in the beautiful yellow light from the sun through the eyes and down into your spleen.
And the sound is very quiet and almost an inaudible,
Really low O sound.
So you can picture the letters OOO.
And just deeply sound.
Oh.
I like to imagine wind.
Flowing through a tunnel,
Like the sound that might make.
The sound of my blood flowing through this portal,
This vein in my body.
That deep thumping bass sound.
It's so nurturing and makes us feel connected to the earth.
Taking about another minute or so here in this.
Posture for the screen.
Oh.
You Breathing in,
Understanding and peace.
Exhaling your anxieties.
Exhaling the worries.
Inhaling peace.
Yellow light.
Two more breath cycles.
You And relaxing the hands down at the sides.
And tuning in to.
.
.
Your energy field and the energy in your body and how you feel now.
So to close,
We're going to harmonize all this good chi that we've been cultivating around us.
And what I'm going to get you to do is draw the energy.
Up and down around the torso.
So the movement of the hands will look like this.
As you inhale,
They'll curl up and the palms will face you,
Drawing the energy up.
And as you exhale,
The palms will curl around and the arms will lower.
Just practicing that once more.
Drawing the palms up,
Facing you.
And at the top,
Curling them around and bringing them back down.
And you don't have to even move as much as me there.
You could really just.
.
.
Circle the hands or even just hold some at your lower dentsia if you're feeling very calm and you don't even want to move at all.
But I like to feel the energy move with my fingertips.
I feel it's a more powerful practice that way.
So what we're going to do is on the inhale,
We're going to feel the energy draw up from the earth.
Through our spine.
All the way through our cervical spine and to the top of our head.
And then when we flip the palms to face outwards,
Drawing the energy down the top of the face.
Relaxing all the facial muscles and throat and the chest and the belly.
Surrendering the energy back down to the earth.
Inhale.
Drawing the energy up the back.
Lifting the spine all the way up to the shoulders,
Through the back of the head,
The top of the head.
And then surrendering down the front of the body,
Relaxing the eyes and the cheeks and the throat,
The chest and the belly,
And releasing the energy back down to the earth.
Just doing this in your own breath cycle now a few more times.
I invite you to imagine an iridescence to this energy.
Unless you're already working with another color.
Rainbow-like energy lifting up from the crystals of the earth.
Feeling you and then letting it curl down the front body.
Allowing you to relax and surrender.
Imagining the weight of this energy as it flows up.
Around the back and down.
Waterfall of energy.
Orbiting you.
In tune with the breath that you're breathing from your environment.
And filling in All of the places that we left open for good chi to enter when we started this clearing practice.
And just taking one more cycle of breath here.
You And then placing your right palm on your low belly and your left over your right,
Creating this.
Little bit of a diamond shape here.
To your lower dentsion.
And then circling nine times clockwise,
Digesting this chi.
And nine times the other direction counterclockwise deepening it into all of your cells and all of your being.
And just taking a moment to squish.
Pack in all this good energy.
All over your head and your arms and your chest and your legs.
And then placing your left hand over your heart and your right hand over your belly.
Take an inhale.
Hum it out.
Just take a moment of gratitude for wherever you've done this practice.
Thanking the support of the nettle and the cedars.
Thanking yourself for showing up.
And whether this is the end of your vocal practice or you're continuing on with some sounding.
Blessings to you.
Take care.
