A Secret Doorway?

OK…something that might be of interest to the right person.

While various forms of breathing exercise are probably the best starting place for meditation, I like “Anahata” meditation even more: slistening to/feeling your heartbeat. You have to get very relax, and keep the posture correct to reel it. But as you learn to do this, your consciousness can travel around your body, and find your pulse in your feet, hands, throat, etc, just by focusing there mentally. When you can feel it in your scalp, things get “tingly.”

The Chi Gung exercises I’ve been practicing start with the venerable “rub your hands together then hold the palms facing each other. Relax until you can feel the ball of warm air between them.” Yes, you are feeling the warmth, but you have to relax to do that. And relaxation increases capillary flow, so relaxing INCREASES the warmth in the relaxed hand as well as increasing its sensitivity to the warmth from the opposite palm. Positive feedback loop. And a “tingling” sensation.

Eventually, you’ll notice that the “tingling” that increases if you seek your heartbeat also increases the warmth. Relaxing the palms increases circulation and sensitivity. Not surprisingly, that same relaxation in Push Hands increases skill. Use this kinesthetic key with both Tai Chi and Yoga (or, say, Chi Gung exercises, or any simplified Tai Chi practice, and Sun Salutations) and you are looking at two different paths up the same mountain, from different cultures, using different terminologies and representations…but seeking the same thing.