fun full lotus moves: finger toe spacers, and slapping palms to bubbling wells

 

(more detail to follow another day)

Both of these moves done starting from full lotus sit.

if you can't do full lotus, this also works from an easy partial  half lotus kind of position, so long as you have good access to your feet with your hands.

1. finger toe spacers: interlace your fingers with your toes.

For most people, this will have the effect of toe spacers 

left hand 5 finger to 5 toes of right foot.

right hand 5 fingers to 5 toes of left foot.

If anything hurts, it shows poor circulation of blood, qi, etc.

Doing this move acts as accupressure and will help dissolve blockages, pain, and discomfort over time.

1b. rotate feet and hands about ankles and wrists

with your interlaced hands and feet still attached to each other, you can make circular motions

2. slapping palms to bubbling wells, HARD.

the centers of your palms on the hands, and the equivalent spots on your feet (bubbling wells),

are major centers of energy. 

Slapping hands to feet very hard, helps to dissolve blockages.

How do you know it's working?  Over days and weeks, You may feel itchiness, on other parts of your arms and legs, or dark spots on your skin forming from lymph fluid carrying away particles that were stuck in your lymphatic system. 

When qi is flowing better in not just your hands, feet, but whole body, you will be able to tell the difference if you pay attention.

How many times should you slap yourself? 

I always go with the buffet sampler approach. I do 48 reps and then my body tells me if I need to do more. 

It's just like 4 jhāna progression. If your body feels pain, it's part of the process of your body transforming from stiff and blocked into soft and smooth energy flow. When it's getting soft, body gives you large physical sukha as inducement to tell you not to stop yet.

When transformation is complete, just like fourth jhana you get neutral sensations.

I literally slapped the shit out of myself this morning doing move #2 slapping my feet with palms

 

I slapped my feet about 48 times, and then I had to go excrete feces. After doing move #2, I had to go to use the bathroom #2. 

Remember the PV=nRT formula from chemistry and science class?

Jhanic force and the physical hand slap go where the "P" is in the formula.

I've also had to excrete feces after soaking my hands or feet a few minutes in hot water.

Science and jhanic force. It's real, it works, it's universal. 

What is the PV nRT law?

In such a case, all gases obey an equation of state known as the ideal gas law: PV = nRT, where n is the number of moles of the gas and R is the universal (or perfect) gas constant, 8.31446261815324 joules per kelvin per mole.

split squats for sitting meditators with tight hips

 

I discovered a great exercise to stretch all the muscles in upper leg and hip.

(and even the lower legs, calf muscles on both legs depending on careful foot placement)

split squats, but doing many reps to emphasize stretches rather than trying to dip low (knees almost to ground) to burn your thigh muscles for muscle growth.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EswpoF3TxkU

Like Jade Wushu champ doing at beginning of video.

Body builders doing split squats to get bigger leg muscles squat lower and slower.

Jade is mostly flexing to dynamically stretch and work towards doing full splits as in Chinese wushu training.

I find the best for deep hip and upper leg stretch (for sitting meditators looking to gain pliability) is somewhere between those two extremes.

The entire video of Jade above, 10min, is really good to stretch all around the leg.

I do something similar with my crab side shuffle stretch.

Ps: gorilla warfare

There's an important lesson here on guerrilla warfare (meditators looking to add to their bag of tricks to improve pliability and flexibility).

Split squats have been around forever.

I dismissed the exercise, thinking it's just for muscle heads trying to get big muscular legs and toned butt.

And I dismissed the wushu martial artists version in Jade's video, because that crowd, like gymnasts and contortionists, practice extreme and dangerous methods to gain super flexibility.

But all these years I missed out the fact, had I not experimented with it sooner is if you tune the exercise just right, it's great for stretching many parts of the leg and thigh quickly, in one exercise (whereas normally you need 4 or 5 exercises to stretch all parts of the leg).

So the lesson as always, it's NWBH.

It's not what you do, but how you do it that determines if something is useful, safe, or dangerous.

DWTD🐕: taiji and internal arts body movement

 Ideally should move with the whole body.

What happens in practice, beginners learn by looking at what the hands and arms are doing, 

and imitate that first,  

and then dragging the rest of the body along with the hands.

Tail wagging the Dog.

It takes years, even decades for energy channels to open up, 

for one's whole body sensitivity to reach the point where one can directly can clearly see 

what body parts is leading what, and whether the whole body moves together in perfect unison.

For beginner and intermediates, if you're going to err better for the hands and arms to lag the torso and legs (tail moved by dog, lags the dog).