standing meditaiton tips, standing in general outside of meditation

 

8.1.0 – fundamental principles of correct standing

These fundamentals should be done whenever you stand, not just when you’re intentionally doing a meditation in the ‘standing’ posture.

8.1.0.1 – wrong ways of standing

* knees, ankles, hips locked – often you see people standing with legs straight, like stilts or crutches.

Why is this ‘wrong’ or bad? Because parts of your leg are totally tense to lock everything out into a stilt, and other muscle and tissue that isn’t getting used starts to atrophy. The tension from tightened tissue blocks circulation of qi, blood, and energy leading to further decline of both tense and relaxed parts of the leg.

You may not realize how wrong this is when you’re young, but when you get old you’ll definitely know the effects of wrong standing with the pain and injuries you accumulate.

Why do people stand wrong in this way? Maybe because they’re tired, and this allows some parts of their leg to feel more relaxed.

* full body weight not evenly distributed on entire foot.

If your foot is not evenly supporting all of your body weight, it means you’re biased leaning forward, or backward with most of your body weight on your heels, or favoring the outsides or insdes of your feet.

Why is this ‘wrong’ or bad? Because you want to share the load equally whenever you can. Putting extra pressure on one part diminishes circulation of energy.

* spine is crooked, leaning forward, leaning backward, or sideways

* wearing uncomfortable shoes because they’re fashionable – this damages not just your feet, but causes a chain reaction of other body parts along your spine getting damaged to compensate for foot pain and discomfort. You have to decide whether fashion is more important to you, or health. If you’re really powerful and successful, you can flex and flaunt your power by wearing comfortable shoes and clothing that promotes good health, and thereby change the culture by trickling down and influence everyone else to abandon fickle fashion.

* don’t tense up following good standing meditation advice: There’s plenty of good advice out there on good standing practice, but sometimes Taiji and qigong instructions are too many, too detailed, and as a result the student becomes very tense trying to do all those details. I’m not saying don’t listen to your teachers, but your first priority is don’t block jhāna by being tense and nervous trying to follow details. Maintain passaddhi/pacification of body and mind, deeply relax, THEN gradually try to incorporate the details of whatever qigong system you’re doing. 

8.1.0.2 – correct way of standing

* Your hips, knees, ankles, all have at least a tiny bit of bend in them.

* If you have damaged nerves, numb parts in your calves, lower leg, entire leg, hips, butt, etc., from too much sitting meditation, really make sure to bend your knees and ankles at least a tiny bit, and get your calves and foot muscles to engage and feel like they’re working, supporting the whole body weight. It took me many years to regenerate nerves and sensation in all parts of my feet and lower leg, before I could do standing meditation properly in this aspect.

* Your body weight is centered on your feet, meaning that, imagining your foot is completely flat for simplicity, the weight is evenly distributed across the entire flat surface, not biased to the front, back, or sides.

* spine is straight, not leaning forward, leaning backward, or sideways

Ones you have jhāna, you’ll get the J.A.S.I. ('Jazzy') effect, the ideal way to effortlessly maintain straight spine.

In short, correct standing entails

Engage your entire legs, entire body, every cell of your body. If you’ve got jhāna, you should feel like you’re boneless, no skeleton, nothing that feels rough, heavy, stiff, tense in your body. Your body feels like soft liquid, or light as air, empty as space. Or like a single contiguous blob of magnetic gooey force, no arms, no legs. If you flex your elbows, knees, ankles, you don’t feel any bones. You feel light, weightless, like you could levitate if you meditate for a couple of weeks without doing anything else.

Every cell in your leg, every cell in your body feels like it’s effortlessly sharing the load it takes to stand. This is advanced higher level. At lower levels, it should feel like the work load is distributed evenly among all your foot and leg cells, there are no body parts taking undue extra pressure, and no slacker cells idling and wasting away.