One of the fundamental postures for women's health
is the frog pose.
This posture is extremely beneficial to the overall health of a woman's endocrine system and reproductive organs. It has also been the universal posture of food gatherers squatting to dig for food since stone age times. With the invention of chairs, our Achilles tendon became shortened and could no longer stretch, resulting in various forms of backache.
In Wild Goose Qigong, the Squatting posture is called 'roosting' and its purpose is to store Qi in the belly region of the lower Dantien, the Elixir Field.
The cultivation of Qigong and health for a woman's body and mind is very uniquely different from the traditional masculine Shaolin Qigong based mostly on the teaching of monks and male lineage. The softness and the less muscular build of a woman should be taken into account. Too often a male teacher will not understand the unique characteristics of the feminine structure and superimpose his own pattern onto his woman students. One can only assess how easy it is to make the difference when a woman starts to study a traditional feminine form like Taiyin Qigong. Again and again, our female students express the experience like the feeling of going home.
It is sad that so many women practice Taiji Quan and other forms of Qigong without questioning the fundamental bias of the form. Simply looking at the basic Roosting posture in our Taiyin Qigong, one can readily see that such postures are different from those conventionally taught in Qigong.
The traditional training of
standing in a low Horse stance is extremely uncomfortable and not
appropriate to the feminine morphology.
Of course there are always
the few hardened women who reject such feminine practices as
Taiyin Qigong as sexist!! They want to be as tough as any
man, ha.
Taiyin Qigong is not
exclusively for women. It is a feminine practice but men
can definitely benefit from such a softening practice. I
remember a plastic surgeon who trained in needle point in
order to develope his skill to do surgery. Knowing and
practicing Taiyin Qigong greatly enhances my ability as a man to
reach out to my women students by being keenly sensitive to their
unique physical, mental and energetic patterns.
Caution: The above posture should only be done with a proper instructor and instruction. This essay can in no way serve as a self-instruction do-it-at-home guide.
return to homepage
corrected
by Donald White
email to dantao school