Welcome everyone to Chiang Practice with Eileen Ruby and friends. We're here at the Greenfield Community Television Station, our second week. I'm doing the practice that I do at home. I consider myself a practice leader, not a
Chiang expert in any way. I hope you'll enjoy following along and doing this practice at home. In Chiang, we we bring our attention to something called the three treasures. And I'm holding this
singing bowl gong that I'll ring three times to bring our attention to those three treasures, which are our bodies, our breath, and our minds.
And there are many other interpretations of the three treasures. body grounded in earth, breath interfacing with the atmosphere, and mind
able to set intention and focus. So, thinking of those three things, I'll ring the gong three times and then we'll do some backwards walking, which you can do wherever you can fit it in your life.
First treasure awareness of our body on the floor on the earth. Second treasure awareness of breath. Third treasure,
awareness of mind. Mindful intention for a good practice that will feel good. Let's do some backwards walking. So, we walk backwards
because we can. We walk backwards because it's different. We walk backwards to let go of that push
push push of modern life. Backwards walking gives us some different movement in our leg muscles. and lower back. And here's a fun fact.
A lot of people walk backwards regularly in other parts of the world. And I have used a 20inut backwards walking practice to
ease a really uncomfortable lower back. So there's something here in backwards walking that's of value. If you have a big space, a garage, you can
use that. And if you're like me and have a side street and don't worry about what your neighbors think, you can use that. Your backwards walking doesn't have to be in the house. Be anywhere you're
comfortable. Let's do one more lap. Any speed. It's fine. Come back to the center. A couple of notes about the rest of our practice today. When we're doing Chiang, we're always
doing gentle movements that are accessible to everyone. You definitely can do chiong in a chair. Uh today all the demonstration will be standing but for those of you who are seated
there are adapt adaptations for seated. Um not for every movement but you can always just meditate if the movement doesn't work in a chair. We'll be doing some loosening of the joints
and then we'll be doing some more of the more poetic action of chiong. I'd like you to always modify the practice for what works for you and
even stop and start again if you get tired or something doesn't feel right. Work at your own pace. We're going to start with some hip circles. So, simply put your hands on your hips.
You can have your thumbs in the back. You can have your fingers in the back. This is fingers in the front. This is fingers in the back. And just gently rotate your hips in loose circles as wide as is
comfortable for you. If you're doing this at home, you might make a list. Hip circles 21 times to the right and then another 21 times to the left
or however much feels good for that moment. Let's go the other way. We call this loosening the joints and also loosening the s the sineus.
The senus is uh the fascia. Chiang is Chinese yoga and Indian yoga does many of the same things for our bodies. It's simply a matter of which
practice feels good. which is the practice we'll always come back to and which is the practice we'll be able to do without even watching a video or without going to a class.
That's what we really want. The practice we can do on the top of a mountain, in a park, alone or with friends. And let's just take a moment still that hip circling movement
and feel that first treasure. Feel the body. What does it feel like now? Anytime. Stop and notice. Bring your mind to the body. Bring your
mind to the breath. Next movement, knee circles. So, you can place your hands on your knees or on your thighs. And you can have your feet right close together or a little apart. It's up to you. And I'm going to do
these a little faster. And you'll hear me count. Six. 7. 11. 17. Who likes prime numbers? 21. Just that the other direction
5 slower if it's good for you. 12 21. Shake that out a little bit. Ankles. Some of us will definitely want something to hold on to for movements
where we stand on one foot. I'm going to bring over a chair. My fellow classmates might bring their chairs closer. Um, I just want us all to be safe and comfortable. And if this is the first time you're
doing ankle circles, having that something to grab onto your counter, uh, I think is probably beneficial. So we stand on one leg, lift the other leg and start circling our toe
around our ankle. 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 14 Isn't it interesting how our breath changes
when we change to something like ankles? I noticed my breath was different there. Other foot. Seven. 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15. That's it. 21. Shake that out. I'm going
to skip to another movement that we'll use the chair for and then we can push the chair off to the side again. A little complex though. I call it fancy knees. We're going to lift the knee, swing the whole leg back, and then kick.
So, it's a point the knee forward, swing it back, and kick. Up, back, kick. Up, back, kick. Easy, you know, very small movement or bigger movement,
doesn't matter. You'll feel that in your hip and in your knee. Everything's getting a little bit of a a energizing. We're energizing the leg. And now, if you're brave and interested,
we're going to draw a figure eight with our knee in the air. Healthy aging. A huge part of healthy aging is balance
so we prevent falling. And any movements that you practice on one foot, shake that out, reminding we're going to lift the knee, then let the whole leg float back, and then kick.
Lift, back, kick. How's that going today? Lift. How's that going today? Lift back kick. Okay. Lift. Back. Kick. I think I do eight of
these when I'm practicing at home. Do as many as you like. Some movements are just going to become your favorites and you'll do more of them. And the ultimate, draw that infinity sign, a
sideways figure eight in the air with your knee if you can. And if you can't, maybe just draw some figure eights with your hands conducting and doing my knee at the same
time. Always modify. That was some harder work. Shake that out. Let's move our chairs off screen. Now, we're moving up to the arms. We're going to be clearing and loosening
the wrists. So, wrist circles just like we did with the ankles, except we're on two feet now. Five. Six. Slow or fast. Seven. Small or big, your choice.
About 21 of these. Feel that breath. Let it go. Reverse direction. One 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
13. Finishing up on wrist circles. Did we go both ways? You will sometimes forget. That's your mind losing focus. And now we're going to do a rotation
with our hands. So, it's like we're drawing an oval on the side of the body, but we call it elbow circles because it's the elbows that are going backwards here. So, elbow circles
on both arms at the same time. You can go faster or slower as you wish. And now take a minute. We'll do an official
positioning opening. So, bring your feet close together. Going a little bit more as if we're about to do some of the more formal poetic practices. You're going to lean to the left and raise your foot and come out into a
wider stance. I'll show that again. Standing close together, hands at your waist. Lean to one side, open to the other, and then balance in the middle. Find your
center. Sink. Lift your head. Tuck your chin a little bit if that's right for you. Okay, clearing the lungs.
I want you to think that we're going to move multiple levels with our arms. So, see what I'm I'm going higher and higher and then we'll come lower and lower. And the movement is simply as you open your arms, breathe in. And as you close your
arms, breathe out. So, adjust your stance to what's comfortable. Clearing the lungs. squeezing out the bottom of the lungs. You could squeeze out. You can make a bigger breath noise if you need to. That one's going to
sound funny. Up at the level of the shoulders, around your eyes, squeezing in and out. In and out. pushing stale air out,
bringing new air in. That's our breath attention, shaking and or spontaneous ch. So, is this bouncing? Is this shaking?
Is this flouncing? Is this releasing? It's all of those things. It's great for the lymphs. And it's really hard to be tense while you shake. So, if tension is your
problem, shake it out. All right. Any noises are welcome. sigh moans groans shoulders. Shoulder circles
opposite shoulders to the back about nine times. And then we'll go forward. Eyes open or closed. If your eyes are open, you can work with what we call inclusive
awareness, which comes from other traditions as well. Inclusive awareness. Awareness of what's in front of me. Awareness. Awareness of what's on my periphery. Awareness of my body in space. Feel the
floor sink. and check in. That was loosening the joints. How do I feel now? You feel any more alive?
Is your blood pumping anymore? Not like aerobic pumping, but just alive in the body. That's what we're feel feeling for. That's what we're trying to do. turn on
that healing energy within. So, we're now going to do some of what are called the eight brocades. Starting with my very favorite of all movements, lifting the sky. So, you're going to be reaching down to the ground, picking up
in energy and pushing it all the way up over your head. And then your arms are going to come down. We're going to probably bend your knees when you do this. And you can use a wider stance if that's comfortable for you. Lifting the sky. It's really similar to other reaching up
and stretching outward movements, other gathering movements that you'll see me use in other parts of the program. But this is lifting the sky as taught by one cute kit in a Chiang book I bought on Guam in 19
92. So that's how long this movement has been a friend. It's like the movement is a friend of your body. If you can imagine such a thing. It's a movement that you know
always feels good. You can do it anytime anywhere. And you don't have to do all the chiong at once. and break it up into parts. Last one.
Drawing the bow. We're going to to turn the left foot to the left 90°. So forward, left 90°. We're going to point the left arm. Reach out almost like a yoga.
Take the second hand, put it at your elbow, grasp that string, and pull the bow here with the intention of aiming for something important. And release.
And the other side. Point to that side. Bring your arm into your elbow. Second arm into the elbow. Pull the string of the bow and aim your focus. You can add all kinds of flow to that.
You know, you can put this in between and make it beautiful or you can just draw the bow. If you're working on your healing, your forward head posture as many of us are, you may find the head
position not to be as comfortable to look at the arm. So adjust. Don't look all the way at the arm yet. Wait till the next week when you can look at the arm on a pure horizontal. One more to the other side.
And always take what your body needs. Separating heaven and earth or flapping the wings. I'm going to call this flapping the wings today. So, we're going to go and woo. You can make the noise or not. One arm and then the other
arm. Winging and swinging and just releasing arm energy. And then one arm up and one down. Up, down,
up, down. That's more separating heaven and earth. Up and down. You can see that hand. Up and down. Two more. Up and down. Up and down. And come back to center.
Feel the floor and check in. How do I feel? How's my alignment? Do I need to realign? Preliminary posture. Exactly. Um gazing behind.
Take your left hand, look at it, and then watch it go to your side and behind you. gazing behind. Now bring that hand back.
Shake the other hand. Gaze at it. And then follow that hand with your eyes, your head, your torso behind. Other hand. We're getting a really nice gentle
rotation in our rib cage. Two more. Last one. Forward bend. So, with this forward bend, we're going to take our hands, put them on our kidneys, and go down go
down the meridians on the sides of the legs and off the feet, off the pinky toes. So, there's one long swoop like this. Down the back, down the sides, off the feet, and then fling it off the pinkies of pinky toes. So, forward bend
with the meridian sweep. You can bend your knees like you're going into a squat or you can stay more vertical. And any stretch you like, any stretch you feel like at this moment you haven't
done that you wish to do. A leg stretch, a hamstring stretch, uh an arm stretch, any stretch you like. It isn't a stretching class, but we're so used to stretching from other classes. It's nice to just throw in a
moment to stretch as you wish. And speaking of that, we're gonna do a little foot thing today with point your toe, flex your toe, point your toe, flex your toe, point.
You feel like a Hansel and Gretle. Point, flex. And the other foot point, flex. You can do this when you do your ankle circles with the chair. Point flex.
Point flex. Okay. Moving into healer within Chiang. Again, tuning in. Preliminary posture. Sink. Be mindful of your breath.
Be mindful of what you're being mindful of the mind in your focus. We'll do flowing motion. Very simple. Feet square, arms at your sides,
moving forward with your arms and coming back. Moving forward and sinking back. Forward. You'll have to find your own rhythm. And back. Forward. You'll notice we all have our own pace with this.
Forward. Last week I said you can go up on your heels. That might not be comfortable for some of us. Ah, I'm not steady on my toes today. Forward and back. Yeah, probably 20 motions each is good for
these. We're turning. We're continuing to turn on those healing chemicals within. The body creates its own healing energy and balance. If we work at it, all
right, right and left bending of the spine. So, I like to show three variations. Variation one, no arms. Your arm stays on your leg and you just lean over. That's just for people who want to make
sure that they they're really careful with their spine. They take it really easy. It's a nice opening. Now, let that arm come up to your shoulder. The opposite arm of the bend.
Let that arm come up. Consider, can you put the arm on your head? or all the way over. Just a reminder that any movement that we can do
but don't usually do is available and we might even have a little longing to do it. and coming back to center. Forward and back bending of the spine. You might feel like we've already done
this, but this one is very much like the clearing the lungs. We're just gonna we're gonna squeeze in first and then we're going to lift up and
stretch back. Keep your knees down. Keep your knees bent. Lean forward and squeeze in. Breathing out. Lean backward. Lift your hands up a big above your head and look back if it's comfortable.
Forward. The spine is curving forward, back. The spine is curving backward, forward and back. Bending of the spine,
forward, back. Taking care of yourself, modifying the movement for what works for you or even what you remember from another class. Make chiong your practice.
This is my practice. All right. And reaching up and outward. So, starting with our hands at our waists, settling. Reach up. Twist your hands around so
they're facing up. Push up. And then float down. It's almost identical to lifting the sky, but it's just from the waist up. You can go up on the toes.
Thank you, Eric. Hands at the waist. Turning them over. Raising them up. Floating down. Let's do three more. Every breath in
brings new fresh energy. Every breath out we let go of stale old energy. And last time floating down. That's our healer with healer within
four basic mo motions. Flowing motion, right and left bending. If you just want to remember one thing, forward and back bending of the spine, and then reaching up and out. Five minutes. Those four movements,
you'll feel good. I promise. All right. Ring the temple gong. So the gong, there's two of them in this exercise because there's one kind of like over here and there's one over here. And your hands are in fists and
you're going to swing to ring the gong. So it's I have to swing. We're going to swing to one side and then back to center and then swing to the other side and then back to center. It's a lot like flapping the arms, but imagining that you're hitting a gong, making a sound. I
think the gong is up here. Where is this gong? You can make a sound with this like boom boom. The voice is included in chiong. Boom.
Boom. Or not. Be very quiet. A very quiet gong. All right, shake it out. Settle. Ground, if that's your word, think.
What we're going to do now is we're going to find our hands, rub them together, and feel the chi. Really start to think about, well, we just woke ourselves up in about 20 different directions. Where where is this mysterious
stuff they call chi? It's everywhere. Separate your hands a little bit. Bring them back together. Maybe do tiny. Do you feel the warmth from one hand passing to the other? Spread it. Does that honey or molasses
warmth come with you? Come with the hands. Spread it. Form a ball with it. It's really the very beginning of Tai Chi is forming the ball. Chiang is very
connected to Taichi. Form that ball. Turn the ball over. Are you still feeling it? Feeling the energy. Play with that energy. What is this energy? The accordion of energy.
Let's do sorting tiles. So now we're around the waist level and we're just moving the chi around. We moved around our body. Now we're moving more in the sphere of our influence inside the sphere of our aura.
Dora cleaning out our aura, shifting tiles as if you have a big workspace covered with tiles that you have to organize or you're getting ready to play bananagrams
or Scrabble, but the tiles are giant. shifting the tiles and we already did flapping the wings. So here is a poetic story known as the old man searching for the
pearl. So the very short version of the story is there was an old man who was responsible for the fishing for his family and things were rough. he wasn't getting the
fish and he had to go out day and night. So, he started to fish late at night and his fishing involved swishing around with his nets on the ground and he was swishing around and we're going to do his do what he did.
So, follow me. I'm fishing. I'm swishing. I'm fishing. I'm looking I'm looking in my nets. My nets have nothing. I finally get tired. I lift up.
Nothing. I look back. I fish again. I see something. I see something big and white. Oh my goodness. It's a precious, amazing pearl. I feel so glad. I lift up
and I praise the heavens and say, "Ah." And as I bring my arms down and I look down, I see the reflection of the moon in the water and I say, "Oh, it was the moon."
Fishing, fishing, wishing, wishing, wanting to provide for the family, looking for that ultimate source. I see the white. I am amazed. I raise up. I go, ah,
thankful, grateful. As I come back down, I see the reflection of the moon. Oh, guess I'm going to have to fish some more. Fishing, fishing, fishing, fishing for
the source and nurturance for my family. See that beautiful white reflection. Three Azos. Oh. Oh. Old man searching for the pearl. Okay. We're going to do a couple more
movements from healer within Chiang from the nine phases. Gathering earth and heaven. So this is like lifting the sky, but you do a double. Gather from the earth, bring it into your center, then gather again from the
sky and bring it back in. Gathering from the earth. This is going to become part of multiple flows that we use this movement. Gathering from the earth,
gathering from the sky. I'm feeling the chi. I don't know why this one brings it more. Some serious clearing. If we haven't cleared it all out, we're going to clear
out, then we're going to clear up. Oops, sorry. We're going to clear out, then up, then forward, and finally down. So, shake it out.
Remind yourself of preliminary posture. Sink. Align. Lift. Tuck. Deep breath in. Deep breath out.
Really work the breath in this movement. Clearing out. Three times on each. Out. Clear. Clearing out the upward direction. Clearing out everything in front of us
we don't need. And now watching clouds pass. Hands pass like clouds. We're going to have your right hand left. Let your left hand be idle.
Bring your right hand across your body. Start raising it to your eye level and then go across your eye level and let your torso and left hand follow you. Let me do that again. We're starting with nothing.
Left hand idle. Right hand draws a circle to your left and then comes across your view. The rest of your body follows. The lower hand follows. The lower hand comes up.
The top hand comes down. The cloud goes the other way. Watching clouds pass. Top hand down. Lower hand up. Soft palms. Soft fingers.
There's an option for your gaze. Gaze at the hand until you lower it and then actually look out further into the room, changing your gaze. Gaze at the hand,
then gaze far. Gaze at the hand, the cloud, then gaze out. That's an eye exercise. Changing your gaze. Get both.
the twofer. This watching clouds pass and gather that we just did are two of the five movements of what's called Tai Chi easy which I'll be bringing. Taichi easy is five taichi movements
that research says gives us the benefit that taichi chiang yoga and mindfulness meditation bring. All four of those things are research
proven activities for improving your health and wellness. Okay, coming to center. Bathing the bone marrow. Your hands come up
and you come down across your body. It's a little bit like karate kid. Wipe on, wipe off, right? You could do alternate bone marrow bathing. One hand and then the other or both hands together. All I am doing is bringing my
open relaxed hand across the front of my torso. Check your standing. Check your breathing. Check your energy and your focus. and come to center
with both hands holding a little bit bigger chi ball and see if you can float and wait
and not know what's next. Just for a minute in the not knowing. Now, here we are. And I might say
this is perhaps the hardest thing you might ask of yourself today is to stand and wait in the now
with no plan. Follow your breath. Let everything go. Two more breaths. And just bring those hands in to your center somewhere that's comfortable. Heart and belly.
Belly. The dantenne. The energy center and rest. And feel the chi. Feel the energy that changed
your own energy. And that is the chiong practice. And here comes the fourth B basket of practice, the self applied massage. So shake out anything that needs to shake out, wiggle, jiggle, rub your hands together. If you're wearing glasses, this would be the time to take them off.
As well as if you want some water, this is a great time to take a sip of water. We always want to hydrate no matter what. So for self-applied massage, we start
with a little shampoo, just a little finger massage on our scalps. It's a wonderful feeling. I feel like it's like an eraser for your thinking to massage your head.
And then we'll go with our open palm across our forehead back and forth. One, two. Wipe that energy of worry off your forehead. Now tracing your eyebrows
up and out from the center to the outside. I'm doing each movement eight times or so. Now, um, massage your eye sockets, any way that's comfortable for you. And then we're going to do a special
movement around our temples of taking our two fingers going backwards towards our hair upwards towards the sky forwards. Little wipes or pressures
towards the eyes and then downward toward the cheekbones. Sculpt your cheekbones with your fingers. This is facial massage. This is acupressure. This is chiong. This is singing. We do this in singing
all the time. Facial massage. Take two fingers. One in the corner of your nose and the other underneath your cheekbone. And do a little D shake. Shake shake there. Clear those meridians. Not sorry, those points.
And then under your nose and your mustache point. A little bouncy bouncy bouncy bouncy bouncy bouncy bouncy on the mustache point. And then your lips. So we're just It's like we're wiping off our mouth.
Okay. Pulling off the mouth. Uh the neck we're going to do across the body. So, left side of the neck with the right hand and right side of the neck with the left hand. Just smoothing. Think of it as smoothing more
than massaging. Smoothing down. What we're doing with the self-applied massage at the end of a practice is we're taking all that wonderful chi that we built up in our hands and we're we're pressing it in to the
body. Um, chi work. Yeah. Chiong means chi work. So, we're working with that chi and then down very gently with your fingertips down the front of the neck. We're going to go to the back of the
neck. Take your thumbs, go up under your hairline, and do nice pressure into that occiput into Yeah, Michael still pick me up. Into that atlas occiput area.
And then if it's comfortable for you, we're going to do two fingers bouncing against the same spot I was just massaging. So, another ringing of a temple of a
different temple gong. Flick, flick, flick, flick, flick. Okay. And then we're going to do some tapping down our arm meridians, down the inside,
up the outside with a loose fist, down to your thumb, up the back of your arm to your shoulder. Other side, down to your thumb, up to the back of your shoulder. We're going to keep doing arms a few times. And
now we're going to go around the belly. Gentle taps with a loose fist around the belly. Circling the abs. You can go both directions. Gorgeous one. And then we go down the insides of the
legs and up the back of the legs and end on the kidneys. And then reverse. So down the insides onto the foot, up the outsides, and then onto the kidneys gently. That's
the just your lower back, back down the sides, back down the middle, up the back. Two or three times on any of these is great. You can change to open hand.
And then the last thing we want to do is massage anything that you know is your thing. Like if you work out, you know, if you if you use computer a lot and you have wrists, this is the time. Take all that energy. If you have a knee thing,
give some love to your knee. If you have a hip thing, give some extra love to that hip. I have a hip thing. you have a thumb thing, give some extra love because you are you are enlivened, you know, so you're going to give that
extra love to where you need it. And then we will close by one more time bathing the marrow. Bring the foot in.
Settle and drift for a minute. And I say thank you for doing Chigon with me. Thank you to Bella and thank you to Eric and everyone watching. Thank you so much.
Chong and practice with Eileen Ruby and friends at GCTV. See you soon. >> Yay.