The Road to 100 Fit Tip #73 Getting Centered

June 17, 2011 By: Victor Brick

Recently Lynne and I were in The Bahamas, at Paradise Island, attending the Planet Fitness National Convention. Each morning before we rushed off to attend sessions we would practice Qi Gong on the beach. Qi is Chinese for ‘energy’ and Gong means ‘power’. Qi Gong is managing your personal energy.

In Qi Gong, activities are divided into two types, ‘yang’ activities, which are ‘warmer’, active, high-energy activities and ‘yin’ activities which are ‘cooler’, lower energy activities. Examples of yang activities are running, weight training and most types of work. Examples of yin activities are yoga, meditation, walking and reading.

For optimum energy, we should have a balance in our lives of yin activities and yang activities. But for most of us we have way too much yang in our life; raising kids, fast food, driving in traffic, stress at work. These are all yang activities.

One of the best ways to get more yin in your life is to do what we did in The Bahamas; do some form of yin activity first thing in the morning:
Get up a little earlier on a regular basis.
Meditate, pray and/or reflect on your day for a few minutes.
Get out of bed on your right side because you heart is slightly on your left side and it will not have to work quite as hard to pump blood to your body as you rise.
If you don’t have time to do a complete Qi Gong, yoga or Tai Chi routine at least do five deep breaths.
Then go about your day.

With your deep breaths, perform them as follows, in a nice, slow, flowing motion:
Stand tall with your fee shoulder width apart.
Start with your arms by your sides, palms facing your body.
Bring your arms up on your sides like two big wings. Your palms should be facing up like you are gathering the air, or energy, to you.
Bring your hands together at your face, palms facing down.
Push your hands down to about your navel. Do not push to far down or you will push your ‘Qi” right out of you.
Breathe deeply through the nose, in on the up motion of the hands and out on the down motion of the hands.
Repeat five times.

Check out the accompanying video to get a better visual of how to perform this exercise.

This week’s corny joke:  Did you hear about the dolphin that lost his best friend? Seems he no longer had any porpoise in life!