If you live in the Northern Hemisphere, the Spring Equinox is upon us. This means right now is the perfect time to cultivate resilience and boost your imaginative potential.
In Chinese Medicine and Qi Gong, each of the seasons embodies its own unique qualities. When it comes to spring, the energies of creativity and resilience are everywhere in the natural world. By using specific Qi Gong exercises, you can channel these seasonal gifts and experience their benefits throughout your mind and body.
In this blog, you’ll discover why spring presents you with a precious opportunity to harness resilience and creativity. You’ll also learn two simple Qi Gong exercises that can help you cultivate these important qualities within yourself.
If you look around in nature during springtime, you see life flourishing. After the cold of winter, flowers bloom, hillsides turn green, and young animals take their first steps. Without resilience, life couldn’t withstand the challenges of winter and re-emerge during spring. Without the energy of creativity, nature wouldn’t be able to express itself in such vibrant and beautiful ways.
Since humans are part of nature, it only makes sense that springtime energy flows through you also. If you’re open to it, you can harness the season’s energy to experience your own authentic expression of resilience and creativity.
When you channel these important qualities, your imagination expands, and you’re able to overcome limitations. This is one reason why spring is such a great time to make important life changes or pursue the dreams that call to you. Spring can help give you the courage to create a renewed vision for the future.
There are a few powerful Qi Gong exercises that can help you harness spring’s potent energy. Below, you’ll find two of these exercises called Swimming Dragon and Tree Sways in the Wind. Together, these exercises embody the season’s gifts of resilience and creativity.
Before you begin, read through these practice instructions so you can focus on the movements once you start practicing.
Start by standing upright with your feet a little wider than shoulder-width apart. Bring the palms of your hands together in a prayer position in front of your heart. Take a few deep breaths and try to relax your mind and body.
After about a minute of breathing, bring your weight over to your right leg as your hands move right. Try to keep your palms together in a prayer position with your fingers perpendicular to the ground. As you move your weight and hands to the right, rotate your head to the left so you’re looking to the left. This should create a gentle stretch in your neck.
Next, move your weight over to your left leg and do the same movement in reverse. As you move your weight to the left, bring your palms to the left and turn your head so you’re looking to the right. This time, you should feel a gentle stretch throughout the other side of your neck.
Do this movement back and forth for a couple of minutes. Move your weight over to your right leg as you bring your hands to the right and look left. Then, move your weight to your left leg as you bring your palms to the left and look to the right.
Try to move slowly and fluidly in order to feel a sense of flow and relaxation. After a couple of minutes doing this exercise, bring your weight back to the middle of your body and let your hands fall gently by your sides.
Stand with your feet about shoulder-width apart and bring your arms in front of you in a rounded position like you’re embracing a tree. Bend your knees slightly and try to relax. Take one or two deep breaths.
Once you’re centered, rotate from your hips to the left and bring your hands up slowly until they’re above your head. Inhale as you bring your hands upward. Once your hands are above your head and your breath is at the top of your inhale, rotate from your hips back to the center so you’re facing forward and exhale your breath as you bring your hands downward in front of your body.
Next, do the same thing to the right. Rotate from your hips so you’re facing the right, and bring your hands up slowly until they’re above your head. Inhale as you do this movement. Then, rotate back to the center as you lower your hands and exhale your breath.
Continue doing this movement for a few minutes, alternating between right and left. As you rotate to one side, bring your hands up above your head as you inhale. Then, rotate back to your center as you bring your hands down and exhale.
With each round of raising your hands on your inhale and lowering them on your exhale, try to relax a little deeper. When you feel ready, bring your feet together, place your hands over your lower abdomen, and take a few deep breaths to center. Take that feeling with you into the rest of your day.
If you enjoyed these exercises and want to learn more Qi Gong practices to cultivate resilience and creativity, be sure to check out our on-demand Qi Gong for Spring Workshop.
In our on-demand Qi Gong for Spring Workshop, you’ll learn more Swimming Dragon Qi Gong exercises designed to cultivate your own inner potential for resilience, creativity, and transformation. When you learn how to tap into the season’s energy that is all around you, these qualities flow through you naturally and effortlessly.
Because this is an on-demand workshop, you can enjoy Lee’s teaching whenever you want and from the comfort of your own home. Click on the banner below to learn more and welcome the season’s gifts.
