The Rising Sun is the first of the true breathing exercises I teach to students. It is the first and most important of the ancient ‘5 Breaths of Tao’ Qigong set.
The Rising Sun exercise can be done in many different ways. Each method trains something different inside you. The physical movement of each is almost identical. What changes is the way the breath is performed and most important of all, the mental focus.
Any of the following and more can be trained and achieved with the Rising Sun:
- Opening the body to the breath – this is by far the most important thing for most people
- Develop your expansion/contraction power
- Connect to and strengthen your main energy field
- Work on opening specific energy pathways through the body
- Develop yin and yang in your body and learn to express power by moving from one state to the other
I have made this post free because the Rising Sun breath is so important. The basic movement and breath will be taught here and how to gain the first benefit above. The rest are more advanced and will be in later posts.
Before you begin the Rising Sun make sure you understand nose breathing and using your diaphragm first.
Don’t be deceived by the apparent simplicity of the exercise. There is way, way more going on here than you will at first understand.
Notes on the practice
- Begin by learning to coordinate the breath and the movement. Begin breathing in slightly before you start raising your arms and begin breathing out slightly before you start lowering them.
- Focus on the 4 qualities of breath and movement
- Now focus on opening your body to the breath. Breathe in until you are comfortably full, don’t force air in. Then breathe out as completely as you can. Really pushing that air out will gradually enable you to let go of more and more deep-seated tension.
- Gentle expand your chest. Open your belly and breathe as deep down as you can. Once you can do that expand out to the sides.
- Gradually open more and more of your body to your breath. It’s only your tensions stopping you doing this. Eventually you will feel like your torso is hollow and fully open to your breath.
- The rising and expansion of your arms opens your chest and releases tensions there. The chest is one of the most dangerous places to hold tension.
Find out more about breathing skills, posture, focus, balance etc through the tai chi classes I run or sign up to our site to learn the wealth of material we have here.