Activate Your ‘Microcosmic Orbit’
A simple and elegant foundation practice for cultivating your energy. In this fast start introduction you will …
- Discover the ancient warrior secret to boundless energy.
- Learn how to connect directly with your energy through your body.
- Stimulate and cultivate your sense of centredness.
Setting the scene in straightforward terms.
Your body is a flowing sea of energy, a complex system of fluids, bones, muscles, tissues … You are never completely at rest, you are always beating and breathing whilst life flows.
The Microcosmic Orbit is an ancient ‘qigong’ practice and a foundation to Kung Fu, Tai Chi, and numerous martial and healing disciplines.
I am regularly thanked for introducing this exercise to Kung Fu students, qigong students, and generally as a way to relax and reenergise for my coaching clients. It’s without doubt one of the simplest high return exercises I know of.
Try these 3 steps to begin this subtle yet powerful exercise.
- Pay attention to your breath
- Focus on your centre
- Circulate your energy
The exercise begins by bringing your attention down into a restful centre in your belly. In Chinese this is known as your ‘lower dantien’, it is also your body’s centre of gravity, and often considered the bodies intelligence centre. Phrases like, ‘gut feeling’ or ‘gutsy’ highlight this idea. Recent discoveries in science show that the intestines has it’s own nervous system, the ‘enteric nervous system’.
Step 1 – Pay attention to your breath
Pay attention to your breath, just notice it, notice the speed, duration, depth, location, how does it feel, there’s no need to ‘do’ anything, other than notice the breath coming into and out of the body.
Spend as much time as you want doing just this exercise. It is, in of itself, a powerful practice.
Step 2 – Focus on your centre
For the next step, focus your attention just below your belly button and in towards your back a little. Placing your hands just below your belly button can help.
Continuing, noticing the breath, inhaling and exhaling, as you bring your focus to your belly.
As you become more accustomed to this, you may notice your breathing moves down deeper into your belly as your lungs expand downward. You may notice your breathing becomes slower, smoother and generally more expansive.
This is also called abdominal breathing. Where your belly rises as you breath in, and falls as you breath out. This is a very natural breath, and happens as you relax. Have you ever watched a baby or young child breathing?
As people busy themselves with thoughts and feelings of daily life, it can sometimes distract from sensing the body’s natural rhythms.
Focusing on your centre, as you allow your breathing to flow in and out, reconnects your awareness with your natural rhythms.
Did you give it a go? Go on, do it now!
Step 3 – Circulate Your Energy
Take this next step once you are comfortable holding your attention at your centre.
If this kind of practice is new to you, it is better to develop your ability to maintain focused attention.
Practicing steps 1 and 2 for a few weeks will make the next step far more effective.
The following 2 steps work with your focus and attention.
Stand with your feet shoulder width apart and your feet pointing forward, soften your knees. Track your breathing and settle your attention so that your mind settles to your belly.
Allow your breathing to come in through the nose and imagine your breath travelling down the front of the body, and collecting in your centre.
If you can, place the tip of your tongue just behind your front teeth on the roof of your mouth. This acts to connect the ‘circuit’ of the microcsomic orbit, and guides the breath in and out through the nose.
Take at least 8 full breaths into the belly and imagine the breath cultivating energy at your centre.
As the energy collects use a feeling, or visual sense of movement, to release the energy and let it continue to travel down the front of your pelvis and around your perineum (the base of your body), then up the back of your body all the way up to your head and back out through your nose – see diagram. Continue the flow of the circuit as you breath in and out.
Tips for practice
Visualising.
Imagine breathing in a pure bright energy coming from above and allow it to enter your nose and pass around your microcosmic circuit and out. You could think of this as a healing, or powerful, or relaxing energy. Your intentions will guide results.
Grounding and Centering.
At the beginning of your practice make sure your centre – is activated and steady. Only move on after you have a sense of this.
Finishing.
Spend at least 8 breaths bringing your attention back to centre, this ensures your energy is back in ‘present moment awareness’ and in your gross body’s centre. Begin with this habit. It is the key to progression.
Here’s a quick taste, read this guide for a spell, and allow it to settle in.
“Now, as you Settle your thoughts and feelings, allowing your attention to move down to focus and collect at your centre, you may become freely aware of the energy that moves around and around your body, circulating and pulsing to your beating rhythm. Whilst placing your hands on your belly just below your belly button, you can begin, to notice the sensations at your fingertips. The more you bring your awareness to your belly the easier your breath will flow as it collects into a reservoir of energy. As you continue to progress at the rate and speed that is right for you, allowing this reservoir of energy to continuously expand, you may begin to feel it move down to your base and up your back, around your head and back down the front of your body. As you appreciate your energy flowing you can continue to expand your sense of how your energy circulates around your body, bring to mind that which serves you best to inform your energy with an intention of mind. Guiding your awareness with the thoughts, feelings and sensations that brings you into your fuller expression.”
To find out more about this practice and additional exercises to develop specific results for you in your life, email me here tony@gongfu.ie.
Or take a look at the foundation section of ‘learn kung fu’ here.