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markern

Doing only some of the eight brocades/some part of a form

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I have a back injury that is taking a lot of time to heal and that prevents me from doing a lot of movements. Before the injury I was doing the eight brocades but after it there are two or three movements that I can't do and I am wondering if it is ok to just do the movements I can do and not the whole form. I feel reluctant to do only some of the movements because I fear it might create imbalances.  I notice that one movement really work the lung energy and another really works the kidneys etc. and I'm afraid that taking some of the moves out may lead to the building up of imbalances if I practice like that for enough time. I would think the set is supposed to be a whole where everything works together and taking out pieces may be bad. On the other hand each movement on its own does me good both physically and energetically. And these are very basic exercises with very simple energetic effects. It's not like this is a complex and dangerous alchemical practice. 

For a couple of reasons it is hard for me to find other alternative forms where I can do the whole form/sequence. I have struggled with severe Chi deviation issues for many years and have gone years without practicing any form of qigong, yoga or meditation because it just made things worse. Instead I did lots of stuff to get grounded and balanced such as physical exercise, lots of walking in the forest, therapy, practical work, bodywork etc. After years of this my chi deviation issues had reduced enough that if I did one set of the eight brocades a day (takes about 15 min) I would not activate my issues but if I did any more than that I would get worse. As long as I stayed within that amount of practice I would instead get more and more grounded and balanced over time and it felt like the issues would eventually be sorted out and the brocades did this work way, way faster than all the other stuff I did. When I tried to find other forms to do as a replacement they all either also gave me back issues or triggered my knee pains or they triggered my chi deviation issues. It seems like there are very subtle differences between froms that seem quite similar that decide if my energy imbalances get activated or not. And the brocades has been the best so far at not triggering them and making them better.

 

I also struggle with the effort required to keep looking for replacement forms because I also have severe chronic fatigue that makes just the effort to look through YouTube for forms and trying them out difficult for me on top of managing basic daily tasks and exercising. So, I'd rather initially just do the brocades as they helped both helped very quickly with both the chi deviation and the fatigue.

 

I also welcome suggestions for alternatives to the brocades. Simple short forms that have some gentle stretching, are quite grounding and pretty basic in terms of energetic effects and not too challenging for the spine. Super slow is not good because that tends to trigger my deviation issues. The type of tempo the brocades is usually done in is good. 

 

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