breathe like a volleyball in your belly that expands uniformly in all directions

 

 👐JASI ("Jazzy") hands (not to be confused with 'Jazz hands')

So why would I deliberately label this technique with something that can be so easily confused? 

Because in the oral tradition, memory of important concepts is fundamental to learning.

Thinking and mentally visualizing 'jazz hands', a common and well known dance technique, makes this powerful training technique very memorable. 

What are  'Jazz hands'? 

Jazz hands in performance dance is the extension of a performer's hands with palms toward the audience and fingers splayed. This position is also referred to as webbing. It is commonly associated with especially exuberant types of performance such as musicals, cheerleading, show choir, revue, and especially jazz dance shows.

What is the JASI ("Jazzy") effect? 

 J.A.S.I. ('Jazzy'): ”Jhānic Automatic Spinal Inflation”

Short explanation: Specifically, this can happen with jhāna meditators when they sit or stand and relax, and they feel their spine automatically expand and lengthen on its own. 

More generally, other body parts, and eventually the whole body feels like a balloon expanding whenever one abides in partial or full jhāna in all 4 postures. 

Also see: jhāna force, and equation‍: quantitative analysis of jhānic force.

What are 👐JASI ("Jazzy") hands'? 

The extremities of the body, especially the hands, feet, skin (outer surface of the body), as we age tend to bear the brunt of the damage caused by aging, because jhānic force that circulates PIE energy throughout the body decreases as we age, and the extremities get starved of nutrients first. 

If the meditator is persistent and committed in jhāna practice and gets sufficient jhāna practice in all 4 postures without too much sitting that damages the extremities and other parts of the body, then the J.A.S.I. ('Jazzy') effect not only inflates the spine, but all parts of the body. With a powerful jhāna meditator or taiji quan master, they can inflate their hands at will whenever they instantly turn on partial or full jhāna. The hands get red and puffy, like it's stung by bees it can be so visibly enlarged. 

I learned about this important and deep training method from taiji quan, not Buddhism. Unfortunately, I learned about it much later in my practice and not at the beginning of my meditation journey decades ago, where it would have made a huge difference in the power of my jhāna if I had the compounded interest effect from daily practice of this for decades. 

I'm not alone. You see a lot of Buddhist monks and nuns who do too much sitting meditation, and not enough jhāna in other postures, resulting in health problems, and suboptimal jhānic force later in life. 

Examples of instinctive qigong that everyone does

* every night - you're tired. so you sleep. you wake up, energy replenished body rejuvenated. 

* you have a flu - you're achy, tired, so you sleep.  You're body gets a fever, you sweat, you sleep more than usual, you wake up feeling less ill and eventually recovered after some number of sleeping sessions. 

* you want to pick up an object with your hand, it requires specific configurations of your fingers to be able to do it without breaking the object, without dropping it, etc. Your mind issues sankhāra intentions of what you want to do, the body does it, and qigong is what's going on between your intention and the body moving. 

Jhāna is just sati and qigong done with singular focus and undistractible lucidity

In the first example, everyone needing to sleep every night, here's an interesting link between the 4 jhānas and sleep. 

Those skilled in at least second jhāna, you should be able infer how the jhāna battery stores PIE (precious internal energy), by carefully observing your sleep process every chance you get.

Doing 4 jhānas and sleeping both share part of the same highway. When you go to sleep, sleep doesn't happen until the jhāna battery gets charged first. So you can be totally, physically exhausted, where you normally would just lose consciousness within 20 seconds after lying down, but often you'll find that you'll suddenly be jolted awake with the sukha (physical euphoric sensations linked to endorphines) of the first 3 jhānas. This lasts as long as it takes for your jhāna battery to charge up (for me, between 1min and 20min), and then you immediately fall asleep. 

Unless the jhāna meditator is truly exhausted, then they can just lose consciousness and not notice the jhāna battery getting charged. 

The non-jhāna meditator, must go through the same process when they sleep, except if they get jolted awake, it can lead to insomnia for them because they don't understand what's happening. Also, whereas the competent jhāna meditator would feel sukha (pleasure) while the battery is charging up, the non jhāna meditator who has depleted too much PIE (precious internal energy) will instead feel neutral, uncomfortable, or even painful vibrations in the body proportional to how much PIE they've exhausted from worldly labor and indulging in sensual pleasures (lust, anger, worry drain battery quickly). 

How to do 👐JASI ("Jazzy") hands (and feet)

Just like the video clip shows, the end game is your 👐JASI ("Jazzy") Jhānic inflation force is so full,  it automatically and effortlessly permeates every cell in your body, especially the extremities of the hands, fingers, head, ears, skin, like a shiny new baby that's warm, soft, bright and luminous with PIE energy. 

But before you clear all your jhāna constipation, before the blockages are clear and the force is strong and automatically inflates the hands,  then you have to exert some intentional physical force to maintain a structure, a frame, a skeleton, a scaffolding to keep the pathways clear for energy and jhānic force to push it through to your hands and feet with higher efficiency day by day.  

1. So you want to physically shape your hands and feet in a relaxed way, with minimum muscular force, approximating the shape of the fully inflated JASI hand. 

- if you use too much physical force, it hinders the JASI automatic jhānic force (tension is inversely proportional to pacification/paddsaddhi which causes jhāna force)

- if you use too little physical force so that you lose the frame, the shape of the inflated hand,  it decreases the amount of PIE current, the energy current that runs through the hands and feet. So just enough force to maintain an approximate shape of the inflated hand in the video clip.

2. Test out and convince yourself this works. Try sitting meditation and standing meditation with your hands making and maintaining the inflated JASI hands (and when you get good at this, both hands and/or feet). You should be able to feel a stronger force and current of energy (heat, vibrations, electrical, sukha, etc.)  running through the hands, compared to if you just let your hands and feet completely go dead. 

- when you're walking and standing, also engage your arms slightly along with your hands, without using your shoulder to lift your hand. Imagine if your hand was a ball on string of a pendulum, and you push the ball just a millimeter. Similarly, your arm is like the string attached to the ball that swings a millimeter. This minimal physical movement is just to send a strong inflationary jhānic force and current through your arms, so not just your hands inflate from JASI, but you should feel your entire arm getting more inflation versus if you did not do the pendulum movement.  

3. This is the profound part: If you do this every chance you get,  whenever you're idle standing, walking, hiking in the woods, inflating the hands and feet, you're going to protect your body's jhāna battery infrastructure, and even improve it, for the years and decades. Just as if you did daily stretching, a little cardiovascular exercise, a little bit of calisthenics everyday, versus if you didn't do that, you're going to see a big difference over the years and decades.

4. The advanced part: the more you practice kāyagatā sati or ānāpānā (breath meditation or body and body sensation meditation), the more you understand how qigong works. You can feel the distinction between your mind's intent to move a body part, the body actually moving, and the qigong that relayed the message between the two. Qigong and neigong (more refined internal qigong) is just learning to control that energy directly with your mind, without having to make physical motions. So eventually, you can send energy by just using the mind to shape your hand into the JASI shape, without having to physically make that hand shape. And then you can also learn to control how much jhānic force and current to send to various body parts without any physical motion to trigger it. The mind can send more or less force and energy, heat, etc., on demand. 

5. Also do this whenever you are casually standing or walking 

breathe like a volleyball in your belly that expands uniformly in all directions

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