90 Minutes of Standing Practice a Day
Doing the Real Homework and Discovering a Whole Process
Those of you with the time and interest, I recommend 90 minutes of standing a day. By standing I mean Wuji, Zhan Zhuang, and Non-Directed Body Movement. That 90 minutes can be broken up. Not everyone will do this. Not everyone needs to do this. But there will be real benefits for the right person.
If you want to stay where you are with practice, maybe 30 minutes a day is okay. Not everyone wants or needs to love this stuff! But if you are trying to go deeper, I suggest putting more time in. For some of us, this was not really a choice, but our very survival. For some of you, the challenge it presents will be very exciting.
Question: Corey, how is it when you do around that (90 minutes) in the day, how do you spread it throughout the day? Or do you do it longer once in the day and then try to keep it going? Or how was it when you began doing really longer deeper standing .
Well, in my background, I was already sitting a minimum of 5 hours a day and then doing at least 90 minutes of standing a day on top of that. This was a very unique and structured environment where I did not have to make money or cook except on certain days, so my whole days were able to be dedicated to this. So I had the luxury of time.
For those of us without that kind of luxury, it is a different story. But, if it is a priority, 90 minutes is not that hard to make happen.
I would also say that there is a more is more aspect to this work. This will upset some of the non-dual types who want to claim that it is not important to sit or to practice because we are already it. In truth, we all could be practicing more and it is cumulatively helpful. We could all be practicing 8 hours a day and it would be beneficial. Actually, the monastery I trained at, we sat more than other dojos, and I saw clearly that more is more in this work.
Only at a certain more advanced point can people do it without doing some specific real set aside time for practice.
And then of course, aside from the set aside time, we need to spend all day creatively trying to bring it into our normal lives.
There are many ways to stand for 90 minutes a day.
You could do three sessions of 30 minutes a day. This is doable and powerful. This gives the benefit of checking in and connection three times in a day. This will keep things going.
You could practice for 45 minutes, twice a day. This is also a good option as we need to check in twice to the connection. And the added time of standing a bit longer will cook us in a way which is beneficial.
Standing for 1 hour and then for 30 minutes at another time in the day. This is also a good option. There is something that happens when a person stands for more than 45 minutes. It is like the cup overflows, and things surface which do not have enough juice to bubble up without that time to stew in the process. Personally I recommend standing for an hour at least sometimes. And then doing at least another 30 minutes later in the day.
I think it’s about finding out what works for you, and that might have to be discovered in real time. Maybe one day we’re too busy to fit in an hour in one pop.
I would also find the times when you have good focus. Maybe you are more on at 5 or 6am before the duties of the day are on you. Or before dinner, or in the evening, we’re all a bit different.
When I was in Japan in my twenties, I would come back after lunch, sit and lean myself against a wall and sleep for a few minutes, and then go out and stand for an hour. This was a time of exploration. A time of dismantling thought structures. A time of incredible creativity. This is where my practice finally became my own. It was a time of trying to survive and be in this body being overtaken by Qi, overtaken by reality. A time of dying into a process. My life was overthrown by a bigger process in those days standing in the dirt, finally some alone time, feeling the garden, listening to the birds, crying, laughing, becoming transparent to a bigger life.
There is something very important about having a chunk of time that we are not just fitting in to a busy schedule. A time where we feel we have space to explore. If we are fitting in a 20 minute stand here or there, chances are we can’t let go in the same way as having an hour to deeply relax into.
The energy will gradually begin to fill the body, and that filling will begin a process which will transform us. This is not an idea. It is not metaphor. Gradually, after some years, it will always be there. Over time, the tanden will develop. Learning to surrender to that will become the process, the samadhi, eventually leading to an authentic breakthrough.
Why is doing more time important? Because this is an energetic process which takes a long time and there is no shortcut. There is no way around this internal alchemy if we are truly going to realize it and be able to share it with others. People think it is a concept but it is much more of a cellular process.
Honestly, no one knows about this. I look around at spiritual traditions and I see the form but not the essence. It’s very sad that this crucial internal aspect is being lost in practice, in monasteries, etc. The essential wisdom and transmission of this aspect may never really make it to the West. So I’m here waving my hand and saying, “Hey, what about this part?”
Don’t fit practice in
More is more
The cup overflows.
Find the secrets lying dormant
I would just kind of repeat to the universe, “Dozo: Please Go ahead”
Am I being honest?
Am I being authentic with the moment? If not, then reality will not open up
Discover something buoying up
The time of the real homework which will gradually ripen
Discover a Grace there all of the time
Feel the universe guiding you
What is it?
Discover the health of true vitality
See a way in which my experience is directing me to it always
Discover a never ending river
Your breathing may dramatically begin to change, don’t be afraid. It may feel like you are learning to breathe underwater. This is normal. Allow the system to seal. Let it take over. Then try to move and see your system not be able to handle it, not be able to breathe. Slowly it will become natural to move through the world in this sealed tanden. This is an essential part of the process. This is the tanden sealing the system and the energy circulating internally. For those of you who don’t know what I mean, you will. More about this later in another post.
Thanks for reading. Please like and share this so that others will benefit from it. Hugs to you all! You can do it!
I’ve always intuited the “more is more” idea and notice the difference in my practice when I’m putting in the hours. More energy, more subtlety, more curiosity, more momentum. Definitely not the popular thing to say though…so thanks for voicing it!
It's fascinating how almost biologically determinant it is what happens in the standing. I've been working with my students the last while on developing a good approach to standing - how they approach the tension and learning to permit the body to change as it wants and observing it with the mind instead of interfering. Once they've got that I encourage them to go longer and see what happens. For me the uninterrupted longer zhang zhuang sessions (>35 minutes), have consistently been powerful trips for me. Before that there are a few stages I notice: 5 - 10 minutes a settling and release of superficial tension, 15 - 20 the body starting to heat up. And I've become really familiar and comfortable with those depths/periods. Only in the last year, have I been working more towards longer single zhang zhuan poses and the experience is profoundly different - a maddening loss on perception of time, depending on the shape of the pose, a feeling of boiling/intense heat in specific spots of my body, trauma release style tremors... I don't feel familiar enough with them to say that it will always feel like this; I suspect no.