Chinese Healing Exercises (3 page)

4. Enhance Taiji, Qigong, and Other Healing Arts/Martial Arts Practices

In the taiji classics, it is said that the power of taiji is “rooted in the feet, issued by the legs, governed by the waist, and expressed in the fingers (hands).” This is equally true of many qigongs and most internal martial arts, and speaks to the interconnectedness of the whole body, especially while practicing taiji in this case. But in order for the body to be well connected, each individual part must be functionally “alive”—healthy and consciously accessible. Many beginning and intermediate taiji players have difficulty establishing the very foundation of the practice, that is, keeping their form “rooted in the feet.” For those people, practicing the foot self-care exercises, especially those that focus on the Bubbling Well point (which promotes grounding, an energetic connection between the earth and the person) and the ankles, which must be stable yet freely movable to allow for the opening and closing of the ankle joint, will be of great help and speed the student's progress. The feet must be supple, springy, and pliable in order to transfer the qi through them, so it may be issued by the legs.

Governance by the waist is another important foundational consideration. The Chinese word that is translated as “waist” is
yao
. Yao has a slightly different meaning than the Western word “waist,” focusing more on the low back, the small of the back, in the region of the lumbar spine. Many people come to taiji later in life, when they may already be suffering from low back injury, chronic stiffness, and pain. While it is considered ideal to alleviate the low back distress through the qigong and taiji principles of release and let go, it can take someone many years of practice to accomplish just that. This is another instance where Chinese self-care exercises may be beneficially applied to a taiji practice, using the low back, pelvis, and hip exercises to relieve a bound up low back. The sooner the back is released, the sooner the waist can be used to effectively govern the qi within the taiji form.

Self-care exercises can also be used as part of the treatment for any injury sustained in a sparring accident, and by increasing the suppleness and functionality of each body part, can reduce the likelihood of injury in the first place.

While these few examples have focused on taiji, they provide a window into how practitioners of qigong, other martial arts, and conventional Western sports and exercise can similarly benefit from Chinese self-care exercises.

5. Care for Health Care Providers: Treating Oneself, Instructing Patients

Health care providers are exposed to more illness, emotional upset, and injury than most people. Working closely with suffering people on a daily basis can take its toll, and a health care provider can pick up some of the energetic and emotional pathologies of clients and patients as well as the more conventional germ-based pathologies. In addition, healers who use bodyworking modalities may physically stress or traumatize their own body while striving to help others.

Chinese self-care exercises can prevent most pathologies from taking hold. Paidagongs are particularly useful for breaking up and dispersing externally acquired pathogenic qi, especially when addressed in its earliest stages. Follow Your Breath Meditation can smooth and release distressing emotional qi, and help to further disperse other types of pathogenic qi. Self-care practices that support the lungs and immune system can prevent or resolve many germ-based pathologies, as well as their corresponding patterns of disharmony from a Chinese medical perspective, such as Wind-Heat or Wind-Cold Invading the Lungs, two common sources of cold and flu symptoms. Any trauma to the health care provider's fingers, hands, wrists, arms, or back caused by a bodywork practice can be addressed by exercises directed toward those stressed or injured body parts as well as by practices addressing the health of muscles, tendons, and ligaments in general.

For patients and clients who want to take a more active role in their own health care, these exercises can be easily taught to them. The Exercise Prescription guidelines in the
Appendix
may be used exclusively, or they may be used as a template that the health care professional can modify as they become more familiar with each exercise and its range of benefits.

Change Your Perspective
to Create the Healthiest Lifestyle

There are no guaranteed safeguards against any injury or disease, but there are many things we can do to greatly reduce the likelihood of such things. To take those steps, most people will need to have a shift in consciousness, change some aspects of their belief system, in order to better understand, accept, and implement the most effective and supportive approaches to preventive health care.

Most of us have been conditioned to give very little thought to adequate health maintenance, except for periodic checkups with our physician, until a health problem arises. Then a doctor may prescribe drugs, or, depending on the severity of the problem, more heroic measures may be required. It's only before those problems arise that we can effectively apply the maxim “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” As a case in point, consider this cautionary example. The prospect of cancer is both terrifying and tragic, and as with all disease, there is no health system that can absolutely prevent its occurrence. When Kim Allison, MD, the director of Breast Pathology at the University of Washington Medical Center in Seattle, was herself diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer at age 33, she first opted for a radical mastectomy, the Western treatment of choice offering the greatest possibility of survival. In her book
Red Sunshine: A Story of Strength and Inspiration from a Doctor Who Survived Stage 3 Breast Cancer
she recounts her struggle to recover and heal. At that point, after her surgery, she elected to enlist the aid of various alternative healers, including a personal trainer who encouraged her to do yoga among other things, a nutritionist for dietary counseling, a naturopath who advised her on nutritional supplements, an acupuncturist for stress and pain management, and a shaman as a spiritual adviser. She also regularly conducted healing rituals in her back yard, with supportive family and friends. The inclusion of such healers and practices required a major shift in perspective, attitude, and lifestyle choice, especially for an MD thoroughly indoctrinated in the Western medical system.

To most Westerners, alternative practices are considered an option of last resort, when all else—that is, conventional Western medicine—fails. What makes this especially unfortunate is that while many alternative therapies are very effective in treating existing illnesses, perhaps their greatest strength lies in their ability to prevent or reduce the occurrence and severity of any illness. The end stages of any disease are harder to cure, and sometimes impossible to cure, regardless of the health system used.

There is no way to know for sure if the alternative therapies and lifestyle modifications Dr. Allison made during her recovery may have prevented the onset of her cancer had they been adopted preventively. It is revealing that she did make those choices to facilitate her recovery, and that she is healthy now, more than four years after her diagnosis. Those were not the most convenient nor easy choices, but necessary ones. Her mindset and perspective had to shift before she could make the choices to implement the strategies she credits in part to her full recovery. This gives some indication of how far we've allowed ourselves to be misled about health—the Western medical system does not provide all the answers, nor the only viable ones—and how far we've strayed from a truly health-supporting lifestyle and mindset.

The Chinese self-care exercises contained here might not be enough on their own to fully prevent the onset of any cancer, but they are powerful adjuncts to be added to any cancer-preventing (or recovery) regimen, and part of a lifestyle that improves health in many ways. They are useful in preventing the onset of many other diseases, as well as being effective in their treatment should they occur. The prescriptive exercises in the appendix will supply guidance in selecting the exercises that may best suit your needs and concerns. Remember, you do need to make them a healthy habit—a part of your daily life—in order to enjoy the many benefits they confer.

Do not doubt the effectiveness of these exercises just because of their simplicity. Try them consistently for a month and see what happens!

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One

Foot, Seated: Series One

There are many individual benefits to all the exercises that follow in this chapter, described as each exercise is presented. Two Chinese proverbs apply to all of them, though, which you may want to consider even if you have no apparent foot problems. The first is, “Death begins in the feet.” While there are a few ways to interpret that proverb, the simplest is that the feet are the foundations for our entire body. We stand on them for most of our waking day, they support us, transport us from place to place, allowing us to work, play, and accomplish most of the necessary activities of daily life. Yet most of us take them entirely for granted. Just as the foundation of a house must be stable and secure in order for it to support everything else that is built upon it, so must our feet be stable and healthy to ensure the stability and healthy functionality of our legs, knees, back, neck, and literally every other part of our body. If your feet are troubled, it's only a matter of time before you will develop aches and pains in other parts of your body. If you doubt that, just ask anyone whose work requires them to stand on their feet all day, or anyone with gout or arthritis. Even the pain of a stubbed toe or an ingrown toenail can make a person feel less functional and devitalized. It is that decreased functionality and reduced vitality that sets the stage for declining health overall.

The second proverb is, “A wise person breathes through their feet.” This one may be a little more difficult for a Westerner, or for anyone without sufficient training in Asian health practices such as qigong or taiji, to fully understand and appreciate. Keeping things as simple and relatable as possible, we can define breathing in this case to be taking in qi, or vital life energy, from the ground, the earth, drawing it up through our feet. Whether you are already adept at qigong, or follow the simplified Western practice called “earthing” (standing barefoot on the ground to absorb some of the earth's ionic energy—similar to “grounding,” making energetic contact with and being stabilized by the earth) as is taught in chapter
Eleven
, your feet and legs must be open in order to absorb whatever amount of qi you are able to gather. Each of the following exercises assists in removing any physical restriction that may be present in your feet and ankles, opens them energetically to permit an unimpeded flow of qi, and stimulates qi to move freely through those body parts.

1. Toe Pinch, Stretch, and Twist

Purpose

Physical:
This is a preparatory practice, to gently open the toes before proceeding to the next series of exercises for the toes and feet.

Energetic:
It stimulates the Jing Well points of the acupuncture meridians that end at the toes, including the Liver, Gall Bladder, Spleen, Stomach, and Urinary Bladder. The Jing Well points have an invigorating effect on the mind, and so this practice may help to improve your focus throughout the course of your practice session, into the rest of the day.

Techniques Used

Acupressure (to the Jing Well points); mobilization of the toe joints; gentle stretch of the ligaments.

Method

Sitting comfortably in a chair or on the floor, cross your right leg over your left. Grab the tip of your right big toe with your left thumb and index finger, close to the bottom of the toenail. Apply firm pressure with your fingers. Gently pull your toe straight out from your foot, so that the joints of the toe are straightened without strain, and feel comfortably open. Keeping that traction on your toe, twist it one way to the point at which you feel some resistance
(
Fig 1.1
)
, and then twist it in the other direction to the point of resistance. Twist your toe back and forth in this way at least ten times. Then repeat this procedure on each of your four other toes. Then do the same thing on your left foot. Alternatively, you can do all of the seated foot exercises on one foot, and then do the same on the other foot.

Additional Considerations

You may feel slight pain or discomfort from your finger pressure on some of your toes, which indicates an obstruction of Qi, Blood, or both. Gout (uric acid crystal deposits) indicates another type of obstruction, and may produce a more sharp pain. Some toes may not feel any such sensation. The sensation of discomfort is nothing to be alarmed by, although the underlying cause is something you want to address. In this exercise, simply work the uncomfortable toes just a little longer than the ones that are fine.

If you have arthritis in your toes, you may feel an ache from this practice. Do not overdo something even as simple and gentle as this exercise, but neither should you avoid it altogether because of that ache. The traction on the toes opens the joint space, so you will be doing no harm to yourself by twisting your toes with the joints opened in that way, and in fact your toes will feel much better at the end of your practice session. Additionally, the Ying Spring acupuncture points that are present near where the toes join the foot, some of those being at the web between the toes, are useful in clearing heat. One of the Western correlations to clearing heat means reducing inflammation, so your toes will benefit from that energetic effect. The Ying Spring points are addressed more strongly in some of the exercises that follow, but this is a good place to start that process.

These considerations are applicable to the rest of the toe exercises that follow.

2. Toe Stretch, Forward and Backward

Purpose

Physical:
Stretch the muscles, tendons, and ligaments in each toe; open the joint spaces between the small bones of the toes. Most people have their feet in shoes all day, which tend to compress the toes, allowing the muscles, tendons, and ligaments to tighten and shorten. Our feet are the foundations for our entire body, so keeping them open and supple will provide better support for and comfort throughout our body.

Energetic:
Every practice that stretches a muscle benefits the Spleen, since the Spleen dominates (has a special affinity for) the muscles. Every practice that mobilizes tendons and ligaments benefits the Liver, which dominates the sinews (tendons and ligaments). The Liver and Spleen acupuncture meridians begin at the big toe, so there is an additional benefit provided when engaging that toe. The Jing Well and Ying Spring points introduced in Exercise 1 are further stimulated in this exercise.

Techniques Used

Mobilization of the toe joints; gentle stretch of the tendons, ligaments, and muscles.

Method

Sitting comfortably in a chair or on the floor, cross your right leg over your left. If your legs and hips are flexible enough, place your right outer ankle on your left thigh anywhere that's comfortable between your knee and hip, with the sole of your foot facing left and slightly upward. This allows the easiest access to your toes. Grasp your big toe firmly with your left hand, and the next toe with your right. With a slightly stronger traction than in the first exercise, pull your toes straight out from your foot so that the joint spaces feel open and the toes are lengthened. This also opens the metatarsal bones, the small bones in your feet closest to your toes, and stretches their associated tendons and ligaments. Maintaining that traction, move your big toe backward, toward the top of your foot, and the next toe forward, toward the sole of your foot, until you meet resistance in both directions
(
Fig 1.2
)
.
Then
reverse directions and repeat, moving your toes forward and back at least ten times. Then
grasp the toe next to your big toe with your left hand, and the middle toe with your right. Repeat the entire procedure with those toes. Continue through the rest of the toes in the same way. The middle three toes will get twice the workout as the big and little toes, so you can end this practice by grasping the big toe with the left hand and the little toe with the right, apply the traction to each and move them forward and backward another ten times.

3. T
o
e Stretch, Side to Side

Purpose and Techniques

These are the same as for Exercise 2.

Method

Sitting comfortably in a chair or on the floor, cross your right leg over your left as in Exercise 2. Grasp your big toe firmly with your left hand, and the next toe with your right. With a slightly stronger traction than in the first exercise, pull your toes straight out from your foot so that the joint spaces feel open and the toes are lengthened. Maintaining that traction, spread your toes sideways as far apart as is comfortable, until you meet resistance
(
Fig 1.3
)
.
Then bring them back together, touching briefly. Spread and return to touching at least ten times. Then grasp your second toe with your left hand and your middle toe with your right. Repeat the entire procedure with those toes. Continue through the rest of the toes in the same way.

4. Rotational T
o
e Stretch

Purpose

Physical:
More strongly stretches the muscles, tendons, and ligaments in each toe where they join the foot; open the joint spaces between the toes and the metatarsal bones at the end of the foot. Mobilizes the metatarsal bones and opens the associated joint spaces.

Energetic:
Strongly stimulates most of the Ying Spring points of the foot, and moderately stimulates the Shu Stream points. Benefits the Liver and Spleen through their association with tendons, ligaments, and muscles. The Kidneys are also benefited both from the more vigorous joint mobilization, as the Kidneys dominate the bones, and from the Laogong acupuncture point at the center of the palm gently stimulating the Bubbling Well (Yongquan) point, the first point on the Kidney meridian near the ball of the foot. This is a partial Daoyin technique.
Daoyin
means “guide and induce,” referring to
qi
flow. Without some training of the mind, the “guiding” aspect may not be accomplished here, but the “induction” occurs almost automatically, from the contact between Laogong and Yongquan with the associated physical tissue manipulation.

Techniques Used

Mobilization of the toe-to-foot joints; gentle stretch of the tendons, ligaments, and muscles; daoyin.

Method

Sitting comfortably in a chair or on the floor, cross your right leg over your left as in Exercises 2 and 3. With your right hand, grasp your foot so that your thumb is perpendicular to the sole of your foot, about two inches below the ball of your foot. Your index finger should cross perpendicular to the top of your foot, with your little finger near where your foot joins the front of your leg. Bring the palm of your left hand to the sole of your right foot, and interlock your left fingers between your right toes
(
Fig 1.4
)
.
Ideally, the web of your fingers should touch the web of your toes.