Qigong for Strong Legs and Better Balance

This guided Horse Stance practice helps build leg strength, improve balance, and develop greater stability in both body and mind. By connecting the breath with steady movement and posture, you’ll cultivate grounding, endurance, and calm focus throughout the practice.

Transcript

I want to introduce you to a practice that I think is a really powerful. Yet very simple and effective practice for strengthening legs and really getting in touch with this feeling of sinking our weight to improve our balance because we really want to learn. Haru. Bring our. Body weight. Into the lower body. Instead of this feeling of uptightness where we feel our center in the upper chest and up here and we're locking our knees, Really learning how to sink the weight into the ground, Which you'll notice will help you a lot when you're walking, Especially if you're walking down a hillside, Walking down steps. We really want to be able to, As they say, Sink your energy, Really bring the body weight down through the feet into the legs. So we're going to work on that now. And I'm going to tell you a few things to focus on here. Another great thing about this is we really learned to link the movement with the breath. Okay, So there's like a few benefits of this and it's amazing because it's you almost feel like you're barely moving And in the west we're so used to thinking anything That's good for us has to have like a lot of moving parts has to be kind of complicated This is a very simple practice yet. It's very traditional has been used for hundreds if not thousands of years in the east for to be honest advanced martial arts has been used in uh meditation practices so I really recommend practice out. You might start out only doing it a minute at a time and then what I recommend is trying to get up to doing it for like four or five minutes. So what you're going to be doing is you're going to be sinking down bending the knees. Now remember you don't want the knees to come in front of the toes. So while you bend the knees you also want this feeling as if You're coming and sitting on a bar stool or a high chair. Okay, So exhale, You sink down. You still want to feel the balls of the feet and toes, But you also feel like you're sinking into the heels. Then come up. Inhale. Rise. Feel yourself coming a little bit more on the heel, On the balls of the feet and toes. Exhale, Sink. Now, You notice the deeper you come, The more you're going to feel that in the legs, The more you're strengthening. Essentially, You're moving into a squat. Now, I'm just going to demonstrate not going that deep because I know it's going to be difficult for people. As time goes on, Get comfortable with coming down deeper. You don't need to go past the 90 degree angle. But come down to where it feels comfortable, But what I'm mostly interested in you working with. Is feeling. The difference, These subtle differences of the weight in the feet. So as you sink down. You sink down and you feel the balls of the feet, You feel the heels, You feel the legs engaged. You might feel a slight burning. Pushing off the balls of the feet. As I was saying, You're coming up like you're powering through the legs. Rise, Exhale. Sink. Your arms, You could make the motion with your arms. A lot of people like that. You keep the arms static. That's up to you. I like to use the arms here, So I let the arms kind of move with the body. Inhale. And I exhale. Link the movement with breath, So the breath's slow, Deep, And smooth. Feel the pressure in the feet change. As you come down, You feel a little bit more maybe in the heels. As you come up, You feel a little more in the balls of the feet and toes. But what we want to really get comfortable with is this feeling of sinking. Sinking our power, Sinking our energy, Sinking our weight. Into the feet and into the legs. So let's just do five of these together. Once again, Connect to that 70%. Come down. Deep enough that you feel the benefits, But not so much that you feel pain. Rise and sink. Let's do one more of these. And coming back up. And relax. Once again, It's a practice you can do anytime you want during your day. One minute, Two minutes, Try to get up to about four or five minutes. You'll notice that you're going to feel some strengthening happening in the legs. You're also going to start getting more connected to the feeling of the feet and to the ground and that nice little weight distribution and linking that movement with breath. So a very simple, Very powerful and effective practice.