The Stomach, Spleen, and Earth Elements Exercise

Okay, put your feet the width of your shoulders and now start to take your mind into your body. Just scan your body so you are relaxing your head, relaxing your shoulders, dropping the shoulders a bit, feeling the upper body, feeling the stomach, so that the stomach area is open, maybe receptive, a bit softer. The hips: you can put the hands on the hips. Feel that the hips are also relaxed and that you have a good connection with the surface – whether it’s a floor, a mat, or just nature, the mother earth. You can start to take your hands with open palms and we will tap. This is one of the ways we’re tapping, stimulating the tissues of the stomach area. Here we are following an energetic circular direction of the large intestine and just connecting the mind, the hands, and also the breathing in the lungs – and at the same time letting the breath reach into this area. You can also do the other direction. Some areas, some points, might feel more tender and some less. Okay. After that, find your navel. Beside the navel, about three centimeters on each side. Let your fingertips bounce into those points on both sides of your navel. Let the shoulders drop. Your knees are slightly bent. If you keep your mind there, can you relax and at the same time bounce into the points, finding a balance between the bouncing and the fingertips? Not too hard, but enough so that you feel something. This is a point that connects directly to your digestive function and to the large intestine, to the bowels. If you’re constipated, for example, this is a very good point. Okay, we do one more point. Find your knees, and just under the knees on the big muscle, slightly outward on the front of your legs, bounce with a loose fist. Now you have a loose fist and you are bouncing on the front of that muscle. You can bounce here a bit harder, like a stimulating bounce. This is Stomach 36 – a very good point for anything that has to do with your stomach, especially if you feel low in energy. So, with the energy, directly look at: how is my stomach? How is my assimilation of food? Is everything going where it should? Is the stomach strong enough to take care of the food? Am I eating food that the stomach is okay with? And can it also separate, allowing what I don’t need anymore to go out? Alright, good. Coming up. Put your mind on your middle toe, the third toe, and stretch out the front of the body. The meridian lines of the stomach open all the way from the middle toe, through the thighs, through the stomach, over the breasts, and all the way up to your mouth. So really opening up – opening up. When you open, you can focus on the index finger and the thumb, bringing the index finger and thumb together, opening the whole front. Lift the heels slightly so you can maximize that stretch along the front of the body, naturally. Breathing in, opening. A few times. Let the breath go to your shoulders. Relax your shoulders. Relax your mouth. Okay, last one. Good. Nice. Take a wider stance. Now the toes can point slightly diagonally outward. Now you’ll work with stability, with the strength of your legs, and with size. Use your hands to connect down as if you’re holding a ball here. Hold it quite firmly, not sloppy – we want to open all the muscle tissues, even in the hands. Feel that you have a good, strong position here, holding a ball, reaching down and scanning the earth. The energy from the earth is brought up, keeping the strength of the legs, following the body up, and now scanning – like painting the sky, feeling the subtleness of the sky, the air – and bringing it back down. Your legs are sitting again, so you are working in your legs. Relax your shoulders if you can, dropping them. It’s okay if you feel your legs shaking a bit – that’s okay. We’re just stimulating the muscles to build good energy. Your stomach likes harmony, also between yin and yang – connecting downward to the yin and taking the good energy up, bringing it upward. Yin has a tendency to be sluggish and a bit like damp. In Chinese medicine we say we are helping the yin to be more awake, to take the good energy up enough, and also to connect with the young, the more subtle, refined energy as we take the best part of that up. Now let your mind scan your body – not only the hands between the hands, but as if you are scanning with your legs as well. Feel stable feet, strong legs working: the muscles of the legs, hips, inside of the spine, up through the throat and head. Reaching up, like taking the best of a young energy, then dropping the shoulders, letting the mind sink through the head, throat, chest, tummy. Work your legs again. Feel your stable, good, strong, stable legs, rooting downward. One more. Keeping the legs strong. Keep the hands receptive, fingers open. Stay with the hands in front of your tummy. Just a few seconds. Feel that stillness. Now you’re centered with the hands. Keep your mind not only between the hands but also inward. Let your mind be there and explore just the middle of that area behind the navel, slightly below the navel. A few centimeters under your navel. This big ball can be represented by a smaller ball there. The area is like you are connecting to the ball. So, to do this practice, take your hands in and feel the navel from inside. You’re not up in the chest, but around the navel, just slightly underneath it. “Can I be with my mind in there? About three centimeters in?” You might not feel that there is anything, but keep your mind there. Under the navel, let yourself breathe in, expanding in all directions from the center – like a small sun, expanding in all directions. Your lower back is slightly moving backward, your hands are slightly open at the front and back. So breathing in, expanding like a ball, breathing out gently. The ball could be smaller and more centered in your tummy area. Just play with it; it doesn’t need to be perfect. Feel how it feels to expand and then come back. See if you can keep your legs still strong. The stability of the yin – the more material, substantial side of the body – and the energy, which is more subtle and not always visible but can be felt. Okay, once more, take your feet in. So you are with shoulder width between your feet. You will now start to work a little bit more with one hand up and the other hand down. You can keep the palms open as if you have a ball here, and it is circulating around its sides. Then change again, as if you pressurize the ball a little; it could become smaller. Still find your navel so the pressure is at or just below your navel. Let both the lower hand and the upper hand change position, meeting at the level of the navel or slightly under it. Breathe in, and breathe out. Can you let this movement of the arms spread so you feel you are expanding through the whole body? The more you relax, the more you can expand. Feel that you are getting bigger. The muscles are relaxing and becoming really big, not tight. Big and alive, like rubber – you’re like a rubber woman. The biggest, softest color you can imagine – you decide the color. Let the shoulders relax. You do as little muscle work as possible, but still stretch the muscles, stretching the tissue and fascia connected to the muscle. Then, when both hands are parallel again, bring the hands towards your tummy, just under the navel. You can always go back and check this area if you need to, because sometimes we hold too high or drop the hands too low. Now let’s see if we can do the opposite: breathing into the spot just under your navel in your tummy. When you are breathing out, you are just letting go – a big ball just letting go. Here you focus inward with your mind, just making that area small and aware of it. If the breathing doesn’t match perfectly, that’s fine – just let it be easy. Do the movements and see if you can get into the rhythm. Maybe you sit a little lower, making more space, giving your stomach, hips, legs almost half of the ball of attention. Breathing out, breathing in, feeling your stomach and the diaphragm. If the diaphragm is tight, tight breathing will restrict stomach function; when the diaphragm relaxes it massages the stomach and inner organs. That is very natural – like the rhythm of life. You know that everything is not tense, but relaxed in the right way. So things are working together. What we can do now is just feel this area a bit. You can open the side between the hip and the lower ribcage and then roll forward. Now it’s maximally open again between your pelvis and your lower ribcage; then you roll over to the side and feel that the pelvis can go down and the ribs can catch up so there is maximum space. This space between your pelvis and the ribs is what you are feeling. You are stimulating it and making the space as big as you feel you can right now. Be careful with your lower back. Of course, be very careful with your body, and you can do the other side as well. Let your diaphragm and solar plexus relax and be soft. One more. Okay. And the last exercise again: one hand down, the other up. We’ll do it together: take your right hand down and let it drop. The other hand lifts up, all the way until your palm is turned toward the ceiling or the sky. Now one palm is facing down, the other is facing up. Turn both palms back so that they meet again at the level of the navel or slightly under it – like holding a ball. Let the hands pass each other, rotating in front of your face, ending up with the opposite palm facing upward, the other downward. Again, turn both palms. You’re holding your ball. Let them pass each other like sliding past. This imitates the function of the stomach – separating, letting something go down and letting a lot of things go up, transforming and transporting upward. The idea is that we invigorate the spleen and the stomach function, because the energy here has to be strong enough, almost like a fountain or a mist, opening upward. Let everything light come up in the body. It’s a lightness – energy more than heaviness. Let the heaviness that you don’t need go down, and let the good energy rise. Your mind is in the hands, in the movement. And with a deeper sense you also follow what is happening in your body: What is happening in my stomach? Am I stretching? Is it just a feeling, or some kind of energy? Maybe something is racing, moving upward. Do one last round and then come back to your stomach. Just connect with the pumps back to the center. This is something you can practice in your life. You might be doing tasks or projects, but you go back to your stomach, back to your center, harmonizing things. If it is too much, you can listen to your stomach. “Is this too much?” You will hear it. It will say, “Yes, that’s too much, don’t do all ten things,” or, “No, that’s fine, I can do these three things today.” That’s fine – check in with your stomach. It’s a very good thing with your heart as well, but the stomach is more practical – the practical center. To finish, make a big circle: breathing in up, breathing out down. Then a smaller circle: inhale up to your chest, hands together. And inhale, exhale. Let the fingertips drop and open, palms toward your lower abdomen. Maybe you feel a temperature difference between your tummy and your hands. There can also be a sense of movement under your palms from the breathing. Okay, thank you. Enjoy the day. Bye.