Functional Polarity of the Autonomic Nervous System

Every aspect of life is maintained from the opposite forces, yin and yang, or polarity. Functional polarity of the autonomic nervous system is the oscillation between sympathetic and parasympathetic branches of autonomic nervous system.

Modern life imposes continuous stress and prolonged sympathetic branch excitation on people, by depleting the body’s energetic reserves, while suppressing the parasympathetic nervous system and its restorative functions. This breaks the balance.

Standing mediation (Zhan Zhuang) promotes the balance of the two branches of the autonomic nervous system. The practice of Zhan Zhuang simultaneously inhibits the chronically activated sympathetic nervous system and stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system.

This simple standing exercise fulfills one hundred criteria for enabling the regenerative functions of the body. First the posture is such a one that relieves all physical neural pathways. Keeping the upright spine and tucking a little bit the chin downwards relieves the vagus nerve from atlas-axis joint compression. Second the tendons' legs are stretched (if the posture is maintained correctly) in such a way that they produce bio-electricity due to the piezoelectric property of these connective tissues (explained in the ebook). 

Third, the mobilizing muscles should be relaxed and the posture will be kept with the stabilizing ones. The mobilizing muscles are sympathetic nervous-oriented. For instance, in the beginning you will keep your shoulders shrunken which is a sympathetic-oriented position (fear-driven position). By bringing your awareness to your shoulder you should drop and relax them. Further at first your legs will tremble a lot because you are using mobilizers more than stabilizers. 

Persistent practice will shift your nervous system from sympathetic to parasympathetic one.

GrandMaster Sam Tam

Making the Involuntary Voluntary

It is theorized that anxiety disorder is the result of flight-or-flight responses triggered without the presence of any danger. While in martial arts combats the flight-or-flight and freezing reflexes are considered a vulnerability that can be exploited by the opponent. Thus, a secret method have been discovered to control the involuntary flight-or-flight and freezing reflexes. The standing and moving meditation (Zhan Zhuang) is exactly the training fundamental exercise from internal martial arts used to control and deactivate these involuntary flight-or-flight and freezing reflexes and make them voluntarily. 

More specifically, training in internal martial arts has two objectives: 1) to eliminate all involuntary reflexes, hard-wired by evolution, through superior awareness, and to learn to induce these reflexes in the opponents. 

In essence, the internal martial arts cultivate awareness and control over reflexes and promote relaxation and integration at a fundamental level.

The standing meditation and the flight-or-flight and freezing responses (anxiety disorder) have deep commonalities in structure and function. They both activates the energies of the body. The difference is that the anxiety disorder activates the energies through sympathetic nervous stimulation and standing mediation, on the contrary, through parasympathetic nervous promotion. 

In simply word, standing meditation transforms you from a prey to a predator.

Flight-Fight Reflexes

There are the flight (yin) and fight (yang) reflexes. Each of these is itself a cascade of neural autonomic responses that prepares the body to deal with the highest threat level – one that risks the continued survival of the organism. Moreover, purely reflexive flight-fight instincts are heavily overlaid and supplemented by learned behaviors, or fixed action patterns, allowing for great variations in their expression in individuals. In the context of these yin-yang crisis reflexes, “making the involuntary voluntary” means nothing less for the internal martial artist than seeking to eliminate this entire range of involuntary crisis behaviors. Standing meditation (Zhan Zhuang) cultivates awareness which transforms these polarities into the offensive and defensive skills that define the internal martial arts.

These reflexes are hard-wired by evolution in the human brain and central nervous system. But, when we are startled (reflex) or when we tense, when we are provoked to fight-or-flight alert, these reflexes limit our response to challenges and create vulnerabilities that can be exploited by an opponent in martial arts combats. The stillness meditations (Zhan Zhuang) of the internal martial arts are designed to de-activate these involuntary responses and make them voluntary. 

Reverse Breathing

Reverse breathing is a kind of forced expiration in which the abdominal wall is pulled in, or deflated, during the inhalation and is actively pushed out, or inflated, to expand in the exhalation. It is called the practice “reverse breathing” because during the inhalation the abdomen is pulled in (as opposed to pushing out in natural breathing) and during the exhalation it is pushed out to power movement and effort (as opposed to pulling in on the exhale in natural breathing). 

Doing this reverse breathing during the Zhan Zhuang practice will relieve the pressure that the hiatus can place on the vagus nerve. When you inhale the chest will be expanded and the stomach will go up and diaphragm down. Then in exhalation the diaphragm will go up and and the stomach down by pushing your abs. This opposite direction movements will massage and relieve the vagus nerve.  

Ending Procedure After Zhan Zhuang Practice

Cover the navel with both hands while you are in the Zhan Zhuang position. Men should put their left hands over their right hands and women should put their right hands over their left hands, palms facing and touching the navel (two inches below the navel). As you have covered your navel with both hands now imagine that some lights travels from your top of your head and goes through your arms and finally enter your navel. Keep this virtualization for some time. This will connect the two polarities brain (yang) and navel (yin).
Then imagine that you are going to sit down on a high stool by shifting your attention to your legs. Or you can use a real high stool to sit down a little bit and feeling your legs being filled with chi.

Dizziness and Vertigo in Anxiety Disorder

The malfunction of the Atlas/Axis joint will cause dizziness and vertigo. In anxiety disorder suboccipital muscles may become stiff and will  cause the misalignment of Atlas/Axis joint. This is well explained in this book by Merryn Fergusson. Zhan Zhuang persistent practice will heal this in the long run.

Body Capacitance and Anxiety Disorder Symptom of Electric Shock

One of the anxiety disorder is that body accumulate charges and it discharge by getting the electric shock in hands when touching other objects.

Body capacitance is the physical property of the human body that has it act as a capacitor. Like any other electrically-conductive object, a human body can store electric charge. If the electric channels within the body are not working so good the body can be easily charged. It can not maintain neutrality.

In qigong literature the upper body is considered Yang (positive) where the center is the brain and the lower body is considered Yin (negative) where the center is the navel (neural network of intestine).
The right-brain vagus nerve connects to the stomach. Therefore, a pinched vagus nerve will not maintain the circuit connection Brain-Stomach and consequently a electric charge ca be created more easily.

The Critical Turning Point of Thirty to Thirty-five Years Old

The age of thirty to thirty-five seems to be the turning point regarding the balance between the outer destructive energy and inward healing energy of the body. The healing energies are strong during the youth and therefore many ignore their health. Up to this period of thirty to thirty-five, one's life-axis period has a sine wave-like trend, in which sometimes the health going up, sometimes going down. During the twenty-five to thirty-five age period, one's health does not go uphill or downhill, but changes like a sine wave. Therefore, these years the health is stable, and staying in a relatively stable and balanced.

If one practices qigong during this period and after thirty five, they will prolong their life. Because after the age of thirty-five one's life-axis amplitude of health starts being reduced. The internal qigong practice maintains a higher amplitude of health. Therefore, if you keep practicing internal qigong for 5 years you will slow down the aging and in very rare cases reverse it.

The Real Internal Qigong Method

There are thousands qigong methods. But a qigong principle that can be traced back from ten thousand qigong methods. And this is a fundamental principle of qigong. False teaching requires volumes but real teaching requires just one sentence. Real teaching is personal teaching through your own experience.

Keep a simple posture of Zhan Zhuang. Enter a state where you are watching, but not really watching; you are listening but not really listening. Be natural and relax and don't force anything. This method is very simple. When you are watching, but not really watching and you are listening but not really listening, your consciousness turns back by circling. Your brain nervous energy do not goes outside but turns within. You turn your energy back. Energy of the body is one but it can go out through different outlets. Sexual energy is outlet. Brain thinking energy is another outlet etc.

In the qigong state our brain tunes into the low frequencies of a child. Intenal qigong state requires the recollection of the mental state of a child.

In the qigong state, by decreasing energy consumption of thinking brain, energy storage is increased.  When energy is accumulated up to a certain point, quantitative changes turn into qualitative changes.

When you are sick your body goes within to store as much energy as possible. You go into bed. You cannot think clearly. You cannot eat (stomach spends a lot of energy to digest) etc. All of these are strategies of the body to retain and store the energy needed to heal. The same principle is applied on the internal qigong state when you store the mental energy or consciousness which turns upon itself.

We have to help the body to accumulate energy then the body know perfectly how to use it for healing. Even when we sleep we do not store much nervous energy because we may dream, that is, our brain is in activity. While in Internal Qigong state we can enter an empty mental state (thinking processes disappear).

Mobilizers And Stabilizers

For the sake of simplified explanation we can divide the muscles into two kinds: 1) the mobilizing muscles which are those that are involved in movement and 2) stabilizing muscles which are those that stabilize the body. The first can be called mobilizers and the second stabilizes or postural muscles.

The mobilizers are those that enable us to move and can the fast-twitch. They can contract and relax in a short interval but they get exhausted quickly. The stabilizers enables us to maintain the posture and can slow-twitch. They do not get exhausted easily but are quite slow. They are located deeper in the body than the mobilizers.

We have high conscious control of mobilizers which we can put easily in use with our intent. The stabilizers, on the other hand, are used unconsciously. But stabilizers have two properties that are very useful. First, they can make the body structure really strong. Second, most of them are designed to stabilize and balance our body against outside force (especially the force of gravity).

The purpose of Zhan Zhuang is to become aware of the stabilizers and then gain some conscious control over them. As we said they are controlled unconsciously. The beginners of zhan zhuang in the beginning of practicing use the mobilizers to keep the upright posture and that is why they get exhausted very easily. The secret to long standing is to relax all mobilizers and use only stabilizers to keep the upright posture and feel as if a magic force is keeping us in the upright posture. Since we are unaware of stabilizers we feel as if our body is standing itself. In the beginning of practice it is a good point to distract our conscious mind to something outside like watching television in order to use at minimum mobilizers because as these are all the muscles we can be aware of.

For long standing we have to train ourselves to hold the posture without the mobilizers but only with stabilizers. That's why we suffer in agony in long standing practices where finally we made the breakthrough into a relaxed stance in which the mobilizers are relaxed and the weight is putted on stabilizers. Also that's why it is said in zhan zhuang practice to not use any muscles but relax all of them.

Why zhan zhuang is good for health? Because from an early age will start misusing mobilizers to take on the task of stabilizing the body. The mobilizers, finally, at some certain age, will deform the natural skeletal structure resulting in bad posture. Through zhan zhuang practice we re-educate the body to use stabilizers which in the long run will correct the posture and muscolo-skeletal problems.

Anxiety Disorder is caused by musculo-skeletal problems which seem to be caused by the misuse of mobilizers that are taking the role of stabilizers. The musculo-skeletal problems makes the nerves to be pinched (vagus nerve and others).

Zhan Zhuang Is a Gift from Evolution of Ancient Hunting Human

Standing Meditation (Zhan Zhuang) is developed during evolution of human hunting in the field for the preys. It is not a chance that Zhan Zhuang is the core of internal martial arts like Yiquan. Zhan Zhuang develops the attacking instincts and the internal energy needed for the ultimate attack against a prey. Lets explain the mechanism. The ancient hunting human (like predators) needed to keep an attacking position in which the relaxation and readiness-to-attack were the required conditions for a successful predator. So the evolution equipped us with a mechanism to generate energy in this standing position in order to be successful as predator. The generated energy in this standing positions is easily shaped by the intent of the ancient human (or predator) and therefore can be easily charged  for the ultimate, fast attack toward the prey. The intent is just the catching the pray.
The intent is the key in this energy discharge. But, additionally, the ancient Taoist masters noticed that this energy not only can be used for fighting but also can be used for healing.

So the standing position increases relaxation in such a way that you as predator will not frighten the the prey. It also increase the fluid internal energy which is available to be used instantly to hit the and catch the prey.

In every hunting position the legs are bent the same as Standing meditation.

This practice increases the efficiency of nervous system for coordination of a successful attack against the prey. Therefore for long standings it strengthens the body's Nervous System and develop the coordination required for effective attack which then was discovered and used by martial artists.

How Much Time Is Needed

When achieving 20 min of standing the healing starts to be noticed. The time needed depends on and is specific to each person. The first three months your condition may improve 10-30%. The second three months it may be improved 30-60% and so on. Standing two times a day 20 min each is better than one standing. Be aware that if intestine symptoms have been caused then the time needed to recover is a little longer. It may be up to 2 years.

From interview of Master Wang Xiang Zhai 

Zhan Zhuang

For a long time, Zhan Zhuang Chi Kung has been a well kept secret. The Zhan Zhuang system is based on a unique fusion of relaxation and exertion (opposites) which stimulates, cleanses and massages the whole body.

Over 2000 years ago in “Yellow Emperor Internal Classic” it was said: “ "In ancient times great masters stood on earth, supporting heaven, controlling yin and yang, breathing with essence of qi, standing alone, guarding spirit, with body being a one. This way they achieved longevity".

In order to achieve the healing secrets from Zhan Zhuang these conditions must be fulfilled:

1) Your spirit goes inside body where you feel as if you are not your physical body. In this state your spirit is being guarded from physical layer of body.

2) Your body feels as unified or one. It feels like your body is a solid structure. But when someone exerts a force on some part of your body, the whole body acts just like a elastic balloon by being deformed from the original posture as a whole unit or unity.

It is important to state that all of these come by itself, you don't need to worry but just to stand as explained in this link  

The Most Important Key Point to the Correct Posture of Zhan Zhuang Exercise

The hips should be rolled slightly forward to straighten your lower back. Roll your hips slightly forward as if you were sitting at the edge of a high stool. This makes it possible to relax the lower back muscles and the chi to flow freely. This also guarantees the optimal stretching of legs which are given the task to produce bio-electricity. It is important to place your tongue gently on your palate. It is also very important that knees should not go beyond the toes. Look carefully at the green line where the weight should be in the middle of the foots. The shoulders should be dropped and hands can be kept a little higher like here in this post.

The second picture is the correct one!