Opening the wind channels

[DEADLI.]

Hi all,
Just looking for some feedback from all you practioners out there. What are the best exercises you do, breathing or movement based, for opening up the wind (energy) channels?

[joeblast]

What exactly do you mean by 'wind channels?'

[John the Monkey mind]

I think he is referring to Tibetan Yogic practices. Think main governing vessels.

[DEADLI.]

Wind channels, is just an alternative way of saying Qi channel or Meridians or energy channels.

[joeblast]

Ah, okay - well the way to discover things that are subtle is to "focus your awareness," but that can mean many different things. What you want to do is ostensibly increase the signal to noise ratio of that which is subtle - so anything that is outside the realm of this subtlety is considered 'noise' in this context. That includes bodily processes - so of course in dr yang's curriculum the fundamental aspect is that of the breath. Make the breath quiet and then you can hear other things more clearly (=decreasing noise.) Energize the breath and that will increase the "signal" you want to focus on. By doing embryonic breathing, the physical components involved (front of abdomen, perineum, quadratus lumborum aka 'kidneys') generate vector quantities (energy that has direction) that you can focus to increase the scalar quantity (LTT, stored charge) that is the main source that feeds the primary channels.

One of the biggest keys to quieting (natural ab) breath I've found is to begin the inhale at the junction of the diaphragm and psoas and you conceptually "let the LTT/psoas sink" (that's where the old sink the dantien on the inhale comes from) as the inhale is gently propagated forward and upwards along the diaphragm - if you're starting the breath with tension about the xiphoid process then the middle of the diaphragm will need to 'catch up' with the top and bottom - which produces either a herky jerky breath, or diminished energetic effect on the breath since you will need to utilize a measure of energy to stabilize the motion of the diaphragm.

Once you have the abdominal motion down very smoothly, then work on completely relaxing your air passageways. Its like a garden hose, the more pressure you have running through, the more solid the walls are going to be - for the air passageways this has a couple effects, one is that by utilizing the air passageways to facilitate breath you are no longer "pulling from the very bottom" so the net effect is that there winds up being discontinuity in the flow of air, which indirectly contributes toward preventing total overall breath-smoothness (you may not be aware of it until you bring the processes to a sufficiently low level) and another is turbulence - cyclical currents of air that form when the air is moving too fast and at corners, junctions, these currents form and the mini vortices that form suck energy from the breath and reduce its efficiency. Also, the part of the "walls having to be more solid" to counteract the pressure of the air moving through will also require energy - so when you're running, huffing and puffing - there will be more energy put into "keeping the structure intact" of the air passageways than if you are sitting still...so take it one step further and eliminate all energy input (drain) to the structure (nose, sinuses, trachea, bronchi...)

There's many ways this can be done but imho the most immediately obvious way is through the breath. "Focusing awareness" is also the protracted process of making these parts more smooth, the downstream result is less energy required for simple action (i.e. breath here) and then a further result is that you have a higher amount of energy, focused properly winds up meaning that the vector quantities of qi generated will have a greater net effect on the scalar quantity that you are building, and when that spills over into the main channels the result will be greater - and in this process, you have increased the signal to noise ratio of energy vs overall awareness, via the breath.