Question on Practice and Eating Food

While you are asking a question about pacing which will be different for each of us and different each day, I have another take.

If chi kung is about cultivating energy and not relegated to the forms of movement what better place to pay attention than at the kitchen table?

There are so many ways to bring this awareness to food from the growing, buying, cutting, cooking…

But the most practical way I have found is chewing.

Try for short periods to chew each mouthful 50 times. See what effects this has. Barry

I asked Michael this same question; his response was that it’s best to practice on an empty stomach, but that he had been practicing long enough that it didn’t matter for him. Michael’s response seems to suggest that once you have sufficiently established strong chi flow you do not have to wait to practice when there’s food in the belly.

I prefer practicing on an empty stomach, I’m more aware of the flow of energy, but have eaten lightly before practice when I’m too hungry. Mild to stronger hunger usually dissipates for me during qigong practice (physical movement).

Standard phrase: If the belly’s full, there’s no room for chi.

Yeah farting and belching just part of the fun. No eating!! Nah, accept our food. Take it in and make it apart of your wonderful process. You can go with out food, sex, or music but whats the fun in that. Unless your ready for the mountain, but the life force will test you to see if your doing it for the right reasons. There are allot of times you might miss meals and not care because you ate from the source(in practice). But this is different then making your self not eat.

Hi Steven.

I find there are some things you can do while ‘waiting to practice’ after a meal – although in a sense, they constitue practice anyway.

SITTING

After eating, while sitting, you can massage any accupoints you want. Some of best for after (and before) a meal are

zu san li = stomach 36
about 3 fingers below the top of the shin bone. the point is on the muscle just on the outside of the shinbone

san yin jiao (‘3 yin meeting’ kidney, liver and spleen meeting point) = sp 6
about 3 fingers above the inner ankle bone on the inside of the leg

if you use 3 fingers to massage, you can’t miss ’em

STANDING

Master Wang (link below) taught me this one.

After eating, standing (outside if possible) with fingers facing to the earth (earth=spleen/digestion). Make circles with both arms.
The arms move slightly behind and away from the body, then come back in toward the body in a circular motion.
Imagine that the earth qi is comming in through the finger tips and to the stomach for digestion when you do this.
After a few minutes, this can feel really nice and quite powerful.

WALKING

Relaxed walking is good for the digestive organs at any time, including after a meal.
When walking, you can do the circle movement described above.
Master Wang actually says it is done best while walking.

Another thing he said is that when eating, imagine that the meal is THE NICESET TASTING meal you have ever had.

best, mat

http://www.professorwang.com.au/

My practice is all about awareness, so every moment is ripe.

My physical practice really consists of getting, and coming into balanced with, a Feldenkrais Functional Integration once a week. I’ve been doing that for two years and it has taken away sinus infections, incipient tmj, serious pronation (I could destroy a pair of shoes in a few weeks), and almost fixed leg problems stemming from many many sports injuries. It changes my body like nothing else, to the point that I feel like I have been reborn, and am living a new life! The downside is that, like a newborn (see below), I sometimes can’t make sense of my body or the world and it is all a bit wild.