5 Keys to Balancing Your Energy

Keys to Balancing Your Energy –
The Taoist Way

By Sarina Stone,
Certified Medical Chi Kung educator
www.SarinaStone.com

Tao Master Mantak Chia has five simple tricks for attaining and maintaining a healthy level of energy throughout the day. Some tricks are easy and can be done at work while others require healthy changes in lifestyle or an hour of personal time a few times a week. Try any of these and let us know what worked for you!

#1 The MicroCosmic Orbit

The MicroCosmic Orbit is an ancient meditation that uses pure mind power (meditation) to connect two internal lines of connective tissue (meridians) to form one circular pathway in the body. With proper training, chi can be guided through this channel. By moving Qi (energy) through the MicroCosmic Orbit, you will prevent stuck Qi, clean your Qi and learn to store your Qi.  Many of Master Chia’s students experience more balanced energy throughout the day when they make the MicroCosmic Orbit meditation a regular part of their daily routine.

#2 Taoist Yoga – Tao Yin

The benefits of Yoga have been documented for thousands of years. In the Tao way, we focus on squeezing and releasing connective tissue repeatedly, until all areas of the body experience malleable muscle that blood and oxygen may flow freely through.  Tao Yin yoga also helps us to create health muscle tissue so we have energy and strength whenever we need it.

#3 Breathing

Master Chia will tell you that QiGong means breath work – the breath of life, in fact. On a purely physical level, oxygen is one of the few things we cannot live without. Diaphragm breathing that fills the stomach before the lungs will provide oxygen to muscle tissue and all of the organs. This will help raise energy and will help the body maintain that energy throughout the day. Next time you feel stressed or fatigued, take a couple of minutes and just breath.  Most people find this simple exercise gives them an energy boost and a calming effect at the same time!

#4 Movement – Tai Chi

 Tai Chi helps balance energy through a combination of movement, breath and mindful meditation.  Here, physical structure is key for harmonizing and allowing the chi to flow through muscle, tendon, organs and bone.
In Tai Chi, we learn to feel the difference between a Yin and Yang movement and incorporate breath with this movement. We learn to align, or stack, the bones for structure. Once this is accomplished, we add mindfulness to strengthen the inner structure of the body and grow deeper awareness of the self and our environment.  This free flow of energy opens channels throughout the body and prevents “stuck chi” – the cause of all illness, physical and emotional.

#5 Food – Five Element Food

In Chinese culture food is considered part of a proper daily regimen for good health and balanced energy. Chinese Five Element Cooking and its relationship to the Five Agents of Nature is ancient as the culture itself and is still practiced by thousands today.  Understanding which foods work better for the body in certain seasons and how to cook them (or not) keeps harmony and balance in the body throughout the year.  At the very least, understand that chemicals and processed foods are toxic and cause the body to inflame with water, thus slowing all functions for a period and absolutely has a negative effect every time we indulge.  If balanced energy is what you are looking for, simply eat real, unprocessed food and pat attention when you eat something that makes you bloated or sleepy; then don’t eat that when you need to think or move.