At the Spring Forest Qigong Centre, one of the biggest Qigong schools in North America, you will learn a number of meditations and techniques that can help with everything from aches and pains, to high cholesterol. However, because of the very nature of meditation and the slow moving exercises that form much of Qigong, these can all help to reduce stress as well.
Assuming you are meditating correctly and you are focusing on the right meditation, then you shouldn’t have an issue. So, to keep you stress free, and to ensure that every other aspect of your mental and physical health is as it should be, we’ll focus on some key meditations and ways that you can get more from them.
All of this info and these guides were taken from the Spring Forest Qigong Centre and from Master Lin in particular, who founded the centre. We have a lot of respect for the SFQ and for Master Lin and have managed to reduce our own stress and improve our own mental health because of these courses, so we are more than happy to pass this advice on.
Meditation Tips
Meditation is fairly basic, and the visualisation techniques and breathing techniques, as well as the postures you need to adopt, are usually covered in the meditation guide. But before we get to that, here are some simple meditation tips that can make the process easier, while ensuring you get more out of it.
- Sit or Lie: You don’t have to sit cross-legged if you’re not comfortable in that position, in fact, you don’t need to sit at all if you don’t want to. Do what feels most comfortable to you. Sit on the floor in the lotus position if you can, but sit in a chair or lie flat on your back if you can not. As long as your back and your neck are straight, you will be fine.
- Open Your Eyes: Keep falling asleep? Simply open your eyes slightly. You don’t need to open them completely, just enough to let in some light and to keep you awake. As long as you focus within yourself, and not on anything in front of you, this should not hurt your practice.
- Listen to Meditation Music: Although music can be an unwelcome distraction during meditation, there are specific compositions that can actually help you. The Spring Forest Qigong Centre has a couple of these available, both of which were created by Master Lin. These include Inner Beauty, which can be used in all meditations, and Back to the Universe, which is ideal for longer, deeper meditations, as well as more advanced meditations.
Meditate with the Spring Forest Qigong Centre
At the Spring Forest Qigong Centre you will find a host of meditation guides, all of which you can download on MP3 or purchase on CD. Even outside of Qigong, where this practice is essential, meditation has been proven to help to reduce stress, to cure depression and to cure a host of other mental health issues. When you factor in the energy healing potential of Qigong meditation, along with the many visualisation techniques and breathing techniques that separate one meditation from the other, they can go much further and do much more than simple meditations can.
The meditations below are all guided by Master Lin and, in our opinion, are essential for every Qigong practitioner:
- Small Universe: This is a basic meditation, but that doesn’t make it any less essential and all Qigong students, from those set to complete their studies to those who have just begun, should know how to perform it. If done correctly, Small Universe can keep your two main channels free of blockages and can keep your mind and your body free of illness and disease as a result. On the Spring Forest Qigong Centre website, the Small Universe meditation is available as a 30 minute guide and a 60 minute guide. Both of these are similar, and which one you choose is all down to how long you want to meditate for and how deep you want to go.
- Sun Meditation and Moon Meditation: These two meditations are both aimed at intermediate students who have made it to level 3 at the Spring Forest Qigong Centre. These two meditations are available separately and complement each other perfectly, but they are included together in the Qigong for Advanced Healing course. They both aim to unlock the energy you have within you and to become more confident as a result, and they can also help you to open your third eye.