Wuji could be translated as No limits. Or something like an uncarved block. Or even something prior to Yin and Yang. It is the basic posture of standing meditation. It is sometimes called the Bear posture.
I recommend everyone who works with me do at least 30 minutes of Wuji a day as a beginner as the base for all of our practice. So all of the practice happens on top of that 30 minutes. It is the homework, and it gives the rest of the work depth and relevancy. If people don’t do that, they often can’t get the subtleties of the work and lose interest. But if one persists, one stumbles upon a very interesting process unfolding.
Not everyone will get super interested in standing still for long periods of time. It may be a special person who finds all of this fascinating. It may take a person who is bumping into life in such a way that they need to find a way for their cells to merge with their experience. A person who in some way feels life is there guiding them to open up to it, but they need the physical space and time to allow this to happen. Or it may be someone obsessed with being powerful, which is generally about their own deep feelings of inadequacy. But whatever the outward story they are telling themselves, it takes someone willing to put in the time to do this work. I may never reach huge numbers. But this work is very precious, and needs to be presented in its purity.
Why do we stand in Wuji, the first posture of Zhan Zhuang, for long periods of time? It maybe seems like the beginner posture, the one you do before the real work gets going in the other postures. Or the warm-up/cool down posture. But that is not how I teach it or understand it.
Spending time in Wuji, we see that there is something more interesting happening if I give it the chance. Something like more subtle gears of unfurling, gears we are unaware of in our life of reaching out and making life happen. Our systems begin to learn to find their way back to harmony, their way back to connecting with all of life. The body begins to fill with energy through the lower Dantien (Tanden in Japanese). The Qi builds, the meridians begin to open up naturally, the body begins to self organize in space. With time and dedication, practitioners have a chance to use this simple practice to discover universal truths. In this way, this simple practice allows one to deeply investigate everything by just standing in place.
To sit or stand, one gradually gets a sense that there is a harmonizing, healing type of autopilot in the system of the body. This autopilot is there all of the time, but we are unaware of it, and therefore do not take advantage of it. When we stumble upon and see that this natural harmonizing is trying to happen, it begins to dramatically shift a person in many ways. It is like our bodies are filling up all of the time, expanding. This expansion extends through the limbs from the tanden, as well as to the world around us.
Paraphrasing Fong Ha, a student of Cai Song Fang:
We gain something like “experiential knowledge", meaning not a concept but knowledge of our entire being .
As we go deeper, we see that it is trying to happen. “The body seeks equilibrium"
It is “self adjusting, self-correcting”
“The mind and body become integrated. Integrated means the awareness comes from the center and extends to every extremity in the body. Then you have integration.”
“Integration can also be talked about as evenly distributed tension, or as density, as in matter. So the body through the practice of qi opens all of the meridians and you become more and more integrated”
He said: By putting yourself in a standing position, such as wuji "you are activating your own automatic maintenance system, so it doesn’t matter if you have bad posture. Every single cell in your body will want to maintain itself so that you can stand up straight."
"Therefore it is self correcting, at all times, regardless of your state of health, regardless of the state of destruction going on in your body. Your body is already self adjusting, self-maintaining."
"By simply doing wuji stance, you are doing it already. There is nothing else you have to do. In my theory, you don’t have to be able to stand in any special way. Just stand up and the work is already done."
“Cai said now when he practices he becomes more empty. He reaches a state where he feels his body doesn’t exist. There is a feeling of lightness and from the lightness comes the emptiness. The mind becomes more clear.”
**Cai Song Fang recommended two hours of Wuji a day.
But at first, we are unaware of what is happening, and so are like a leaky balloon, missing it, pulled in many directions, scattered... But gradually, through hours of paying attention, we get in touch with this process, ever present, like an unknown gear within us. This is the work of long hours of stillness. The internal work which cannot be faked.
Unexpected gifts come from this, including feeling into and understanding another person's state of mind, healing, integrating communication through touch, intuition, people spontaneously going into samadhi around us, etc... It feels like the volume is turned up, as ki flourishes. Discovering, and allowing that ki to flourish is a creative, uncharted process, but is the process of this type of integration.
Being with people, this Qi (ki) process, allows this expansiveness, this fullness and taut essence, to be used in all communication and relating with others. The most impressive people I have ever met in interacting with people have used this Qi, this tanden work, to interact with others in an astonishingly skillful way. Feeling the ki means one feels a whole world of subtlety, and that largely hidden subtlety of interacting is actually the main conversation of our interactions. People often ask me, why is the Qi/ki important? It is interesting maybe, but what use does it really have in the big picture? It allows us to interact with and feel the big picture. It is the very taming of the ox.
I think the main thing to do in our practice is to be sincere and do the blue collar work. Be curious and honest, and have courage. If we can be vulnerable and sincere, our heart energy will begin to soften, our bodies will integrate, and we will begin to deepen our experience of the value and texture of reality.
Points to be aware of in Wuji:
There is a plumb line, a pure vertical we can organize around, and these points are on that pure vertical.
Bahui- a point on the top of the head, straight above the ears. Imagine a string is gently pulling your head up, lifting you up to the heavens in the upper body.
Huiyin- the perineum, pelvic floor. This is quite misunderstood, but should be gently engaged, without force. (AKA, more is not more here! Don’t walk around clenching your asshole tightly all day.) One might feel the engagement of the Huiyin also in the arches of the feet.
Bubbling well- Behind the pad of the foot, like a portal, where tree roots grow into the ground, developing the root.
The lower Dantian, or Tanden (Japanese)- Two or three centimeters below the belly button, in the middle of the belly. Not on the skin of the belly, not on the skin of the lower back, but a point or field in between. It may be a sense of heat or a flutter at first. The tanden will develop and grow and change, and so don’t pin the tanden in any way in the body or as a certain way of feeling. This is very important. Hold it lightly.
Kua- Where the thighs meet the pelvis, there is a crease, and we must learn to sink through and open through here.
Some simple notes:
It is there all of the time
What is there prior to creating something
to find a person who becomes fascinated by this process.
Heaven and earth
Our body is lifted by the heavens and magnetized to the center of the earth
finding the body within those two forces
Allow mysterious surprises to come through the system, do not have an idea of how it must open
What is real?
What is the line?
From the tanden, energy spreads out to appendages
Unifies, life is sealed
Fills up until there is no open space
Find the unteachable path to discover in this momentum
If we get to body focused, allow the room to penetrate us. Marry the fabric of the room
One can share this energy, this integration with others.
The Qi is a way to integrate, one can help others to integrate through touch, through doing it ones self
No need to have perfect posture, more important is to discover how to spark this fullness to expand. Know how to turn on the switch, every day, like waking a dragon, the body will begin to feel like expansion. Like the volume is turned up. Learn this skill as it changes and everything will change. The process will self correct as the body unifies
This expansiveness will help others
Our thoughts come from the body, so opening the body will free up our mind. We must allow our mind to be freed in this process
No need for fancy movements, let the body become natural. In that naturalness imbued with this Qi, the sublime will manifest.
*Quotes taken from Wuji: Harvesting Inner Resources, by Marvin Smalheiser
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Summer days here! Lots of love!
