Wuji progression

Wuji zhanzhuang (無極站樁) Progression

The wuji zhanzhuang progression is an effective way to learn to connection your hands to your dantian and then to used the your dantian to drive movement throughout your body.

I. Wuji Zhanzhuang

Start with you feet slightly less than shoulder width apart.  (Use the length of you foot as a guide).  The middle fingers of your hands should hang next to the outside seams of your pants.  (Do not hunch the shoulders forward or bow them backwards).  The top of your head (baihui 百會) should feel as if it's being pulled gently upwards (as if attached to a bungee cord).

1) Feel body hanging down from the bungee at the top of your head. If it were cut, you shouldn't fall to any side just collapse straight down.  Alternatively, you can think of your body as a stack of bricks - no parts should be protruding to cause the entire thing to topple

2) Breathe into the mingmen.  Feel the mingmen, then fill the mingmen.  The mingmen should spread "open".

3) Pull with the mingmen.  Think of the dantian as a ball with the mingmen as a point on the back of the sphere.  As you inhale, rotate the point on the ball downwards. Simultaneously compress the ball.

II. Pengdan zhuang

1) Lift the hands as if supporting a ball in front of the dantian.   As the dantian compresses and rotates, connect to the laogong point in the palms of your hands and scoop them forward.

2) On the inhale, rotate and compress the dantian to feel the supporting force in the hands.  Feel the pull against the baihui bungee as well as an upward pull on your yongquan points in your feet.  On the exhale, "relax" to neutral position.  The bungee at the baihui should pull you back to neutral.

III. Fudan zhuang

1) On the inhale, raise your hands up and turn them over.  On the exhale, press your palms downwards.  

2) When exhaling, press your palms downwards as if holding down a beachball under water.  Your palms should be at the level of the lower dantian.  On the inhale, "relax" to neutral, palms still facing downwards.

IV. Baoshu zhuang

1) On the inhale, raise you hands to the tree hugging posture (palms inwards, at the level of the middle dantian).  

2) Pay attention to your posture.  The body should feel the same as in the wuji posture, but with your arms hugging a big ball.  The hands should be held as if holding a smaller ball, fingers extended, thumbs slightly curled in.

3) Feel the mingmen, fill the mingmen, pull with the mingmen.  Feel the pull from your fingertips to your laogong points to your mingmen.  Feel the pull of your "suit" against your "frame" on the inhale.  Relax to "neutral" on the exhale.

4) Use the pull from the mingmen to pull your arms apart on the inhale.  Relax to "neutral" on the exhale.  Alternatively (or additionally) you can think of inhaling to fill the "qi ball" you're hugging on the inhale, and letting the natural surface tension of the balloon ball deflate the ball on the exhale as you return to "neutral".

5) On the exhale, actively squeeze the ball.  The nozzle to the ball is at your lower dantian; sqeezing the ball pushes the qi into the lower dantian (and from there, down towards the yongquan  and up towards the baihui).  At this stage, you have a "powered" inhale and a "powered" exhale.

6) On the exhale, push you palms down to cover the front of your dantian and bring your feet together.