Shibashi: breathing and meditation
We’ll start by analyzing the breath and, from the breath, we’ll connect with movement and the meditative state.
Breathing is the structure that helps movement to work better, once we have better functioning and better relaxation in our posture and movement, then the mind can become much more relaxed too because releasing tension in the body helps to release tension in the mind, and it’s easier to release the tensions in the body first rather than trying to figure out which part of the brain is holding the tension, so by releasing physical tension, the mind becomes much softer.
Once the mind and body are smoother, they start to communicate better and this is where qi comes into play, and it really starts to build up because qi is the transmitter that, connects the body and the brain and makes everything work better and gives us a sense of expansiveness within the body and then the ability to connect with the outside world, so when looking at breathing as our first step, there are a few principles that we follow.
First we inhale through the nose and exhale gently through the mouth, leaving the lips slightly open, the exhalation is as gentle as if we were exhaling through the nose but it’s only through the mouth, this helps to allow the mind to become quieter, we will take three gentle breaths, inhaling gently through the nose and then a gentle exhalation through the mouth.
Notice how just this gentle breathing helps the mind to relax and become much quieter, generally speaking, breathing in and out through the nose will have a more invigorating approach, breathing in through the nose and out more strongly through the mouth will be more dispersing, and this type of breathing in and out that we’ve just talked about with the very gentle exhalation has a more harmonizing effect.
It’s neither too invigorating nor too dispersing, it’s more in the middle to allow us to be calmer and feel a little more connected, it allows us to release excess when the tension is a little strong, we need to let it out, it’s not just through the nose, we’re really invigorating when we feel we’ve released something.
So we have this harmonious balance that comes with breathing, Breathing in this way gives us the rhythm that we are going to make with the movement.
Initially, my students often have quite shallow breathing, allowing the breathing to become softer, slower and deeper will help us to slow down our movements, as we go deeper, it allows us to really slow down to three to four breaths per minute.
When people start to enter this state, a slightly deeper state of relaxation, all movement becomes very slow, smooth and deep, and generally, it’s “difficult” to move faster than that, we reach this place of relaxation and stillness, and the body wants itIt craves it, so it forces you to go really slowly for a while and then once you’re in that state for long enough, a change happens and then the flexibility comes back and you’re able to be as calm and relaxed as if you were breathing two or three times a minute.
Generally speaking, the breaths and movements combine into three different possibilities, the inhalation will be with the elevation and the exhalation with the descent, this is a bit of the main central line, the vertical line from where, as we inhale, the chi and blood go up and as we exhale, they come back down, if we look at it purely in the function of the lungs when the diaphragm descends, it creates pressure in the lower abdomen and creates a vacuum around the chest, so this pressure squeezes the blood a little which, because there is a vacuum above, helps it return towards the heart the same happens with all the fluids, they are brought back to the lungs so that the exchange of gases can take place, and then, once the chest doesn’t collapse, but becomes pressurized and the diaphragm comes back up, the vacuum starts to appear more towards the organs, which helps the blood return towards the organs at the same time.
We also have the primary respiratory movements which are the craniosacral rhythm where, as we breathe, our spine becomes a little straighter, the physical movement that allows the breath to expand helps this movement through the spine and then the cranial bone begins to open according to this a bit of a wavelike motion that also creates a bit of a vacuum around the brain, pulling the cerebral spinal fluid and lymph upwards in towards the brain and then on exhalation bring them back down towards the organs to be cleansed, so we have a global rise when we inhale and a global sink when we exhale.
We also have a left and right component, so when we inhale, the movement when there is a left-right component will go to the left and then when we exhale it will go to the right so the overall movement starting to the left is also related to the blood entering more to the right in the heart before exiting to the left through the body, the yin yang aspect of the right side being yang and the left side being yin we see it this way with the blood flow, also in the digestive tract particularly with the large intestine which goes up the right side, crosses the left side and then exits.
We have these big movements inside the body if we want to be a bit more technical in biology, all our proteins rotate to the Left everything rotates to the left inside the body so it’s just the way things are and interestingly, the way we orient the earth also rotates to the left, so there’s a global movement in that direction which seems to be related to life in general.
We start to the left with the Inhalation, exhale to the right and then we have movements where we bring them into the body as we inhale and then as we exhale, we move them away from the body.
These global principles through the breath and how it coordinates with the body makes the whole movement much easier to follow, which interestingly also makes sense because the right brain mainly controls the left side and vice versa so we have this crossover and also the kidneys in the body are reversed the right kidney is the yang kidney and the left kidney is the yin kidney but the kidney is the only organ that connects directly on the same side of the hemisphere and doesn’t cross over so basically the right brain which is the creative brain is the yang brain, which makes sense, while the logical brain is the yin brain,
At first, we have to learn the choreography so our movements are a bit disconnected but we soon start to feel the breath more.
When we move to create the movements, the breath will begin to propagate to the arms, legs and head, as we have a general pump in the body, this creates a wave that goes to the extremities and gradually returns, with this, we have this coordination that comes from the breath that helps to coordinate the lower body and the upper body so that our movement becomes a single movement.
Initially, when we learn the movement, our mind is a bit busy learning, then, once we’ve repeated the movement enough, the mind starts to go quiet and almost gets bored of doing the same thing again and that’s when the magic really begins because that means we’ve done the movement enough that we don’t need to think about it, the muscle memory is there, so we can play, now we can take our attention deeper into the body a bit more and say, what’s happening, what am I feeling, where are my tensions?
First of all we can use images, a kind of visualization just to keep the mind occupied so that it doesn’t jump from one idea to the next, using an image becomes a bit like a marker to say, okay, I’m not sure exactly what I’m going to do with my mind yet, but now I’m on top of a mountain, I’m looking far out to the horizon, it’s a beautiful day and I already feel a bit more relaxed because I’ve created that image in my head.
Images can also help us a little with the sensation of qi to enter, because we’re not busy thinking, and we’re a little more present, using an image that connects us with movement.
But once we’re a bit more used to the movements, we can remove the image and just observe what’s happening inside our body as the sensation of qi becomes stronger, we can observe and say: what am I feeling while I’m doing this, where’s the wave coming through, where’s the intensity am I feeling tension, am I relaxed, if there’s a bit of tension in an area, we can release it Ah that feels much smoother my lower back has just opened up a bit more my posture has improved too, what’s next?
I can feel the tensions in my shoulder a bit more, by moving my arms I can observe what’s happening in my body and then start to grow my attention a bit more, and as we become more deeply relaxed within the body, a movement starts to emerge on its ownThe body starts to move and it can be a gentle movement, a movement of the wrist because we are so relaxed that all that is needed to create that movement is just attention to the breath and the sensation of the body.
So all we’re doing in the 18 movements (shibashi) is creating a container for the breath, creating a platform for the movement, so that the qi can start working through us and so through the initial qigong training to feel the body, get a little bit into the awareness of the breath and then grow that, to really feel the movement within the body and then finally to just be present and observe what’s happening within the body, that creates a meditative state which then supports health in general and, of course, for overall therapy, for all sorts of different applications, but it all starts with the breath, it all starts with the awareness of the breath and then it all unfolds from there.
As the sensation develops through the movement there’s an interest, the mind is like “oh, what’s next, what am I going to feel next”, and then there’s a pleasurable sensation that starts to develop in the body, and that’s when it really becomes like “oh, this is really good, let me just stay here a bit longer because I like it”, and then if the mind gets distracted like “oh, the good feeling’s gone, let me go back”, let’s go back to it, it was much better than thinking about this stressful thing that I might have to do later, it’s not as useful.
So playing with it is a good way of calming the mind, staying in it, and it’s a process, I mean meditation is “meditare” it comes from Latin and it means to train, we’re training the mind to be present, that’s the aim of meditation, it’s to train the mind, it’s not to be in that perfect state instantly, otherwise it wouldn’t be so much fun, we get to that, it’s a process.