Cool Head and Hot Soles

Somatization disorder is the disorder of the body bio-electricity. The bio-electricity is not flowing freely or the body can not become neutral due to blocked of electrical channels.

A symptom of anxiety is the cold feet, or the discomfort and hotness in different parts of the body. This is due to some parts of the body being excessively charged positively or negatively.

What we call somatization is the process of shifting these electrical charges from one part to another without being able to be neutralized.

Hot head and cold feet is the upside down of what should be with the bio-field. Wuji standing corrects exactly this bio-electricity in such a way that the electrically charged parts of the body (yang) are grounded to the feet (yin). Cool head and warm feet is the secret to health.

Wuji Standing Versus Zhan Zhuang

Wuji Standing is easier to keep correctly when comparing to Zhan Zhuang. For the beginners the Wuji is more powerful in energy boosting and healing because the relaxation is achieved easier.
The effect of lowering energy consumption is higher than Zhan Zhuang. The body consumes less energy then energy storage will increase immediately.

The correct posture in wuji can be maintained just by bending the knees very little and keeping the three points in line: the bahui point, huiyin and the point between bubbling well at the bottom of each foot.

Zhan Zhuang needs a little more time and proficiency to lock the arms' muscles and to achieve relaxation since the hands uses a lot of energy in the beginning by affecting the energy storage. Holding the arms up uses a lot of energy compared to Wuji Standing where hands are at the sides. Wuji posture is the basic of all Zhan Zhuang postures.

Combing both Wuji and Zhan Zhuang is best but doing only Wuji can also achieve extraordinary results. The Wuji posture is more adapt for the weak people to achieve faster results.

Zhan Zhuang and the Unconscious

By doing the Zhan Zhuang exercise for a relatively long time, the body will be transformed energetically (electromagnetic bio-field). Your configuration of energetic-system will become similar to that of ancient masters. Martial arts skills and techniques will be gained through your subconscious.

Moreover, you will gain even the basic instincts of fighting of human developed during evolution but lost due to modern life. This is because Zhan Zhuang ready-to-attack positional state of ancient predator species. So, all these instincts and knowledge come subconsciously and naturally because we tune to our primitive evolutionary biological configuration.

The success of Yiquan is that all new learned techniques are in accordance to our basic fighting instincts. And what is more interesting they are improvement of our basic fighting instinctive techniques which are embedded deeply into our unconsciousness. Because any technique going against our deep instincts is futile.

Self-Awareness is the Source of Freewill

The more the technology is being developed the more medical community is shifting in terminology, from past-referred as mental disorders to the now-labeled organic disorders. There is always a physical (organic) cause to the mental problem rather than being a purely psychic, which mean that it has no relation to the brain-body system.

The old question arise: Does the human have freewill?
To have freewill means to have to possibility to choose. To have no freewill means to be just a random causality of complicated firing chains of neurons in our brain and chemistry of our body.

The secret to freewill is simply the self-awareness. The Self-awareness is a closed loop of consciousness turning upon itself. It may be called Buddha awareness being cultivated through meditation.

Whenever you are anxious and angry try to become self-aware if the your anxiety or anger is rationale or irrational. If you are the type that always find yourself quarreling with others, being always at a bad emotional state, than enter in standing meditation and see how you feel after 30min of meditation. This way you will become aware that regulating your physiology of brain-body system will change your mental state.

In other words, before standing meditation you were unconsciously a pure causality of your physiology without choice. And after the meditation you will be still a causality (cause-effect) of your physiology but with the difference that it was your self-awareness  that changed your mental state from angry to a healthy blissful one.

Conscious Awareness is the CEO of the Brain

Our brain is the most complicated thing in the world about which we know very little. Our brain is a giant computing system subdivided in rivals subsystems. The brain works for us to navigate in the outer reality. It also controls and coordinates the inner workings of our body. The way it works is fascinating and still a mystery. But as complicates as it seems it left an open door for us. The evolution could not let this complicated system without a commander to orient it in the jungle. And it is exactly the conscious awareness which is the CEO of the brain. The Conscious awareness not only can command the brain in the outer everyday world but can be used to task the nervous system toward an inner state.

Here it comes the secret of Internal Qigong (Zhan Zhuang) which is used to command the brain and the body toward an healthy state. During the internal qigong exercise you naturally induce and aim to maintain a relaxed state (healthy state) which should be impressed upon subconsciousness.

There is a beautiful statement in Yiquan: Practice consciously and succeed subconsciously. This is true for both martial arts achievement and health. Practicing consciously is to use the conscious awareness to give the instruction to the brain. Then, the brain is a large industry which works toward the goal that you ordered. The intention through conscious awareness is the key to the evolution of species. Animals have awareness too, but humans have something more which is self-awareness which is God-like quality.

Zhan Zhuang is a health posture where the nervous energy flow is released, blood flow is increased etc. This is the posture for most people but the right posture is that which gives you the relaxed state. You can keep the wuji standing with just very little knee bending if that gives the relaxation state. During the posture the increased of energy and blood flow will give you a fragment of health which you have to impress upon subconscious mind. The relaxed state and putting the conscious awareness upon the parts we need to heal is enough to give the brain the task to find the solution for maintaining this health state. Anyway putting the conscious awareness upon the dantian is the same as putting it globally on the body.

A good method also would be the recollection of a inner state during your past childhood when you were healthy. This state of health is stored in the subconscious brain.


90% of diseases have the origin in the nervous system. Thus, Zhan Zhuang and wuji standing may help.

Zhan Zhuang Versus other Sports and Physical Exercises

Zhan Zhuang or an Internal Qigong practice is different from physical Exercises in that both mind and body are trained simultaneously as an integrated wholeness.
Training of the body by internal qigong is different from ordinary physical exercise because it is based on the training of mind while body is trained in an relaxed state. This relaxed state of the body is very important for entering an subconscious realm of mind.

Internal Qigong (including internal martial arts) is different from non-qigong exercises (including external martial arts) in that all common physical methods require you to be fully conscious, while in internal qigong you enter a state between consciousness and unconsciousness. In internal martial arts you train consciously while you are in touch with the subconscious and then you succeed unconsciously. During standing and moving mediation you imprint on your subconsciousness the fighting techniques. In fact, this subconscious is not exactly the psychological subconsciousness but includes body consciousness.

In such a relaxed state, also the healing qi (bio-electricity) runs freely inside the body, self regulates the physiological functions of the body.

Zhan Zhuang is ideal because it lowers energy consumption including oxygen consumption, blood consumption and calorie burning, etc. Thus, the body is in a state which is highly energy conserving and this accumulated energy can be used to heal many physical problems.
By doing Zhan Zhuang we use the body as much as it is needed without running out of energy. The living things have an intrinsic biological mechanism which evolves by using and degenerates by not using.

The training of the body through Zhan Zhuang has the effect of lowering energy consumption and while the body consumes less energy then energy storage will automatically increase. 

It is a perfect state where we produce more energy than we consume. On contrary, other physical exercises consume more energy than our body could produce and therefore you get exhausted soon.

The stored energy after during standing internal qigong can be called potential energy. By decreasing energy consumption, energy storage is increased. This energy can be transformed into kinetic energy such as Fali (power release in yiquan system) in internal martial arts or it is used for healing by body itself.

Note: In the beginning, you will get exhausted by Zhan Zhuang until you learn to use the stabilizers and relax mobilizers. The relaxation in zhan zhuang is a must for taking the benefits of internal qigong practice.

Medical Students Syndrome and Anxiety

Ignorance is bliss when it comes to deal with anxiety disorder. As you might know, many medical students develop somatization symptoms. The knowledge that they acquire about diseases produces pain and symptoms in a certain spots as they put a lot of concentration and attention upon that region which causes any sensation. The mere knowledge of the location of the appendix transforms the most harmless sensations in that region into symptoms of serious perceived symptoms.

Why this happen? It is easy to explain..When a medical student thinks he has a disease in a certain location in the abdominal area he/she transfers the the brain energy (yang energy or positive electricity) through the vagus nerve to the neural intestine network. As we have explained the whole connective tissue of the body is a semiconductor which is able to conduct the electric energy through the electric channels. So the yang energy coming from the learned awareness on the abdominal area will be counterbalanced as soon as possible with the yin energy or negative electricity. This is only the case of a person without congenital blockages in which the student will suffer only a very short time (one month lets say) from somatization disorder. It is clear that as soon as the student removes the awareness from the area where it thinks he has acquired the disease the somatization disappears. A temporary problem might be with students who makes the increased transfer of yang energy from a conscious process to unconscious process by entering into a vicious circle of anxiety. The mind is like a monkey which the more you fight or resist it the more it persist. All of these cases are not for concern because the somatization period will be very short.

For instance, a student that puts the mind into the heart location will disturb the electric activity of the heart resulting in palpitation. After some time the heart will ignore this mind interference and the heart palpitation will disappear despite the conscious brain yang energy.
The problematic case will be only a student who have congenital blockages. He will suffer the somatization for a long period. He/she has to follow two solutions: To contact a Cognitive Behavioural therapist (CBT) to learn to forget the body and to distract he mind from the abdominal area. Or to try to open the congenital blockages through qigong practices.

Qigong practices will open the channels where the energy can flow freely without resistance. When the energy flows with resistance zero the body feels empty. 

I believe that body have a tremendous wisdom to self-regulate to circulate the energy. The exercise Zhan Zhuang is just a tool to help the body accelerate the self-regulation of energy flow.