I just wanted to report on an interesting “discovery” and some fun experiments, and would like to get some feedback!
Recently, a Chinese standing posture called “standing like a post” (zhanzhuang) was mentioned in the forum as a possible grounding exercise. So I tried it out for a few weeks each day for about 10 minutes, following the first two videos in this course.
After two weeks or so I noticed an energetic pull when standing for a few minutes that would align the sacrum, the hip and legs, as well as the arms and hands into position that made holding that posture feel nearly effortless. So, it felt like a combination of subtle automatic yoga plus the onset of a freeze response, something I’m familiar with from sitting practices in siddhasana.
As an experiment I tried now some of my regular AYP sitting practice sessions in this standing posture and it is very interesting. I can nearly go as deep as when sitting down. I suspect that if I were to practice standing like this more regularly then a meditation in this standing posture could be as effective as sitting down.
I’m curious to know if there is any posture like this known in yoga? And if not, why not? This particular posture seems to be a natural attractor in the sense that when I deviate from the posture slightly, for instance by letting my arms hang relaxed, an automatic “yoga” sets in that will bring my arms and hands back up. A process I’m familiar with from yoga postures: if the posture is done roughly correct and I relax my mind, the body just starts to refine the posture more skillfully then if I tried to do it deliberately. So standing like a tree feels like a yoga posture!
I’m also curious to know if it could be counterproductive in some ways if I were to do the standing version of my otherwise standard AYP sessions more regularly (e.g. it might make my sitting down practice less effective because of whatever rewiring might happen when standing up). Of course, I know the drill that this is my experiment and AYP can’t predict the outcome. But still, someone might have a hunch, whether this experiment is a bad idea or not.
While your mind is a though machine your body is an asana machine. It produces poses day and night without pauses….if you include everyone else the number of asanas is infinite.
For our sake asanas have been refined to just a few practical ones.
However for the advanced yogi every asana can become practical. The question is should you make it part of your routine?
I’m doing a bit of tai-chi, it is like dynamic asanas, infite number of positions, and the effects of practicing AYP are felt and are recognized as ecstatic bliss, I don’t know if that is an effect that tai-chi practitioners are developing or not. But AYP practitioners are developing ecstatic bliss as a result of AYP.
So I believe that AYP alone can make you a vessel of ecstatic bliss that can fill any positions with ecstatic bliss, but trying to use positions by themselves is not conducive.
So, I conclude that you are blessed with an AYP condition that makes you react to your body’s postures and your abilities to experience ecstatic bliss wherever you are.
At this point a little bit of experimenting shouldn’t hurt as long as you still do your core practices.
I don’t doubt there are infinitely many asanas the body could want to move into. So, my question could be rephrased as “In which postures can we effectively do our regular AYP core sitting practices?” We know that we can sit on a chair, or on the bed, or in siddhasana. In all cases AYP recommends back support, but it’s probably fine to do it without (which is what I do). We also know that we shouldn’t lie down, so corpse pose isn’t recommended. But there might be other postures, that could be potentially equally useful for doing core AYP practices. And some of these postures might not even have a yogic name yet.
My “hypothesis” (based on my experiments so far and extrapolation) is that this particular standing posture seems to be a good posture for doing the AYP sitting practices for the reasons I mentioned. I don’t think that most other asanas of the AYP starter kit would be suitable for that purpose (for me at the present moment), excepting the kneeling seat. For instance, I wouldn’t consider it a sensible idea to sit for 20 minutes in a right spinal twist while doing DM.
I will keep my experiments going for a while and report back if I have something interesting to say
Quick update: It just so happened that I learned this particular standing practice just this week as part of the Tai Chi course I started earlier this year. Interesting, that this practice was introduced only now in the sixth class. We already do a bunch of dynamic warm-up taoist exercises and the static “standing like a tree” has now been added to this series of warm-up exercises right before the Tai Chi form. My Tai Chi teacher recommended not mix up my AYP and Tai Chi practices deliberately. Feels like the universe is telling me something, so I’m going to listen for now, and sit down for sitting practices
And another update, answering one of the questions in my original post.
There is a yoga posture called “mountain pose” or tadasana, that can look similar to the Taoist “standing like a tree”.
During asana practice at a recent AYP retreat we went repeatedly into this posture (for half a minute to a minute or so) as way to reset and connect with the body in an innocent and relaxed way in between sequences of more dynamic postures.
I was also told by that teacher that standing postures are not used by yogis for meditation practice because they are grounding, rather than insulating. Traditional yoga meditation asanas seek to insulate from the earth so that heat (tapas) can build up. I find this curious, since I noticed in myself the tendency to also seek grounding during meditation practice (like a desire to sit on the wooden floor rather than a rubber mat and cushion, etc. that I mentioned elsewhere).
It’s certainly an interesting question what kind of relaxed steady posture is most conducive for meditation and health for any given individual at a given time on their path.
