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This is mostly for Steven but also for our Iron Shirt 1 practitioners out there. I’m curious how long do you practice at a time, and do you focus on one stance or several poses? I recently got deeper into my IS1 practice earlier this year (thanks Steven) and it was my primary focus for about 4 or 5 months. During that time, I built up to 15 minutes of “embracing the tree” standing, but only that pose. Now it is still a pretty regular part of my practice, I usually only spend about 5-10 minutes, before doing other forms. It is definitely a very intense practice that requires endurance which builds over time. I just wanted to see what is recommended or what others are doing. Thanks!
What a person needs is highly variable, depending on who they are, how ungrounded they are, their personality, how much stress they have in life, whether they tend to be a “thinker”, etc. There is no set answer as to you should practice X amount. It also changes if you do a lot of alchemy, which is very UNgrounding through its acceleration of change . . . then the amount of grounding practice you do needs to increase in concert with the volume of these practices. Realistically it just takes a lot of practice with grounding practices to know what it feels like when you are grounded, so you then can have a better feel for what you need.
That said, I’ll talk through some estimates . . .
As you’ve suspected, if you are only doing one posture of IS1–say Embracing the Tree–then a person should spend a reasonable amount of time in it to get results. If Embracing the Tree is but one of several postures that you do, or is but part of a lot of other grounding practices you might be doing, then 10 mins may be enough.
Although I don’t suspect you are doing that anyway, I don’t recommend more than 30 mins in one posture, e.g. Embracing the Tree. After that point (even if you need more grounding), you’ve kind of overdone it with the single posture and you start building rigidity into your body. If you really wanted to spend a lot of time in Embracing the Tree (say more than 30 mins), it would be better to break it up into 2 or 3 different sessions of shorter time throughout the day. I feel 3 10-min sessions to be more beneficial than a 30-min session, for example.
In any case, your 5-10 mins for Embracing the Tree might be OK. I wouldn’t go less than that, because it takes awhile to “get into the posture deeply” and get your vibration to slow down . . .
S
If you think it needs “endurance” then you are doing it wrong.
You should be relaxed, calm, grounding, deepening.
If you go into soldier mode, stop. Because you are training the wrong thing, you train your insensitivity and endure.
And this is totally the wrong direction.
Also, if you have been doing it for several months and are doing 5-10 minutes then that is surprising … it should naturally extend and be effortless.
But, if you are doing it like a soldier … then you will get tired and the times will be short.
So … do it softly, slowly, sensitively, with some humour.
Thanks for the info Steven. I’m considering adding some of the other postures, so would a few minutes in each posture be effective enough? Or is 5-10 minutes in each one recommended? A few years ago when I first learned them from the book, I used to do a few minutes in each posture.
If Embracing the Tree is your bread-and-butter posture, then a few minutes in each of the others you might do is sufficient. In particular, you are likely not going to be able to do more than a couple of minutes in some of them anyway (e.g. Turtle family of postures).
S
I mainly do embracing the tree. I also do iron shirt II from that posture too. I didn’t find back bend or iron bridge very grounding, but they are definately good for posture.
The stretch in the Iron shirt 1 book with the towel/pillow behind your shoulders and bending back is especially fantastic for posture. I sit a lot at work and it makes sitting up straight easy.
I just do 10 minutes embracing the tree a few days a week with 6 compressions when i get breaks by myself during the day at work. More would probably be better but i can stick to this regularly. More than 10 minutes and bosses might start wondering where i am 😛 It definately makes a big difference though and i notice when i stop doing it.
Standing there is good but i don’t get much chance to do it.
When i was meditating lots i got up to 15 compressions, but i think 12 was probably enough.
Stretching is good too for grounding. Especially inside / ouside of the legs along gallbladder and liver meridians. Also the triceps along triple warmer meridian. Try hold for 2 minutes then relax after, it grounds me quiet quickly.
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