How do you get your Chi flowing?

The basic instruction for you to influence your Chi from within is to use your mind to move the Chi.

You’ve heard it many times in the Tai Chi Classics, “Move your Chi with your mind.”

What does that really mean, though? 

It really means two things.

First, you must make use of your awareness – your will and the intent.  Here, your mind has a specific outcome of what you want to happen. Gently focus your will and intent like a laser to accomplish your goal, and do so without tension. 

Begin by simply having the will to do something.

Second, use your heart-mind to move your Chi. The Chinese believe that the heart-mind is the center of consciousness in your body. It is in the center of your chest, just right next to your physical heart. The emotions of the heart and your rational, intellectual thoughts are working together here to give you wisdom. 

You are not just your emotions and you are not just a computer in your brain. The heart-mind is always there guiding you by bringing your heart and your brain together, even before your will to do something arises. Therefore, it is not goal-oriented. 

The heart mind gives your will the conviction to function well. The heart-mind provides balance and a broad vision, while your intent enables you to achieve your focused goals. The heart-mind allows you to see the forest, whereas the intent and your will is there to make you zone in on a single tree or a group of trees. 

The heart-mind provides you with inner peace, emotional balance, and intuition affirming that you’re headed in the right direction. While intent can make you relax your physical muscles, you need the heart-mind to relax and release deeper, emotional, or spiritual tensions found further below the surface.

How exactly do you move your Chi?

It starts with your central nervous system. 

You already know to put your awareness into your muscles. Then, you learn to put your awareness into your nerves, to relax and release your nerves. This enables you to recognize the constant tension that runs through your entire nervous system.

You’re usually not aware of this tension because it has become so normal in your daily life.

The tension hardens into your body. Now your awareness is going to focus on ways to soften the tension inside you. Together with your heart-mind, the intent is there to progressively help you to release and relax the tension in your body from your nerves. 

The more you feel relaxed, you then work to release blocked Chi inside all your body’s tissues. One by one, you want to release the tension in your joints, in the blood flow, and in the spinal system. Most importantly, you want to release tension from your internal organs. 

Free yourself from being overwhelmed all the time, because when you feel that way you become overloaded, causing you to be numb inside. This numbness turns into blocked Chi or blocked energy.

With each stage of releasing, you make your body more aware and it becomes fully alive. 

It’s important for your body to recognize that you need to start releasing any stagnant Chi within your body. If you feel tired, or you feel angry because something is festering and you just can’t move on, it’s time to move the energy and get beyond that feeling. This involves the dissolving, releasing, and resolving of the blockages of the physical, emotional, and spiritual sides of yourself. Doing that is an essential component of the Tai Chi practice, and healing occurs through our energy flow. 

Let’s keep this moving and do some Tai Chi. Follow along with my video to see the movements.

1. The first step of developing your Chi is to get your awareness to stay stabilized in your lower dantien. When this happens, your will and intent are focused on the center, the core of your body inside your belly. When you do this, you start to get a special feeling. Maybe it’s a sense of heat in the area. Maybe you start to feel some electrical rumblings that are happening or a tingling sensation happening in the area. 

2. The second step is to feel your Chi rise up the spine to the top of your head. Relax, exhale, and drop. The energy rises up the spine to the top of your head through the elongated spine. Now the Chi is moving up and out. 

Send your Chi to rise above and beyond your physical body, drawing your spine and head further upward.

This makes you feel that you are being suspended from the crown of your head. The elongated spine connects Heaven and Earth and gives you comfortable space to move your energy. 

3. Then drop your Chi into your lower dantien. You will feel the sinking down of Chi into your center, into your core. As you continue to do these Tai Chi movements, your flow becomes stronger. You feel the rising and falling of Chi up and down your body, activating every point in your body along the way. 

4. As your Chi becomes stronger, and you’re feeling it more and more, you’ll feel the points all along the body. As you move up the spine, and then down into the center front channel of your body, you’ll become aware of more subtle layers in your body. You will notice that there’s Chi flowing on the left channel, on the left side of your body. There’s Chi flowing on the right side, the right channel of your body. There’s Chi flowing in the center as you relax straight back down. 

What if you can clear the stagnant energy from your body simply by moving the Chi through areas of pain, through areas where things don’t just feel right? 

What are the central, left, and right channels of the body that we’ve just talked about? 

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