Hello,
Sorry this is long, but I've doing Zhan Zhuang alone for while and am reaching out with my experiences to see if they are normal. My name is Michael and I'm from Australia. I've gotten some handy inspiration and leads from reading this forum, so I also want to say thanks and hi.
About two years ago I did some internal martial arts training for few months, until my work schedule changed and I couldn't make the classes at all. That was fine, I thought I would just do other styles of excersise. Time passed and gradually, I couldn't stop thinking about the brief Zhan Zhuang we did at the start of each class. They never went into much detail, other than saying it was important and to relax my shoulders more. Anyway I started doing it again, working up to half an hour. It left me feeling, on the whole, so good. Like a free massage, though sometimes my knees would ache a little.
I stoped for a bit when things got hectic at work, but now I've started up again and things feel much more intense.
My spine sometimes fills up with a feeling of pure pleasure that somehow feels golden in colour and radiates into the rest of my body. At other times, the solar plexus glows with a pleasure that fills my rib cages. Sometimes the area just under my belly button seems to hum softly with a feeling of ease. At other times my rib cage seems to suddenly relax and I spontaneously start breathing so deeply and freely and it just feels so good. Sometime when I breath out, my arms want to push out, and when I breath in they feel sucked in. There are so many bizzare things like this, the list could go on.
When the pleasure arrives, I feel like I've been carrying around a burden for years and I've finally put it down.
Of course at other times I do it and my mind does not settle and not much happens other than feeling a bit relaxed. Often it is just 30 mins of my brain saying 'Just put your arms down and stop,' or 'I think your timer is broken, you better stop and check or you could end up standing here all day'
Each morning i feel like I'm heading off on an adventure, not sure what I'm going to see or feel, even though I'm just standing there 'holding the ball'.
My questions are: are those pleasure experiences 'qi'? Is it wierd that sometimes they come and sometimes they don't? Am I meant to be doing anything other than relaxing while holding the posture, quietening the mind and seeing what happens?
I've read that qi is felt as warmth, and sometimes my head, arms and hands feel warm, but those other experiences don't involve warmth really.
Thanks for making it to the bottom of my post I'd appreciate your thoughts if you're willing.
Michael.
