My previous post demonstrated how to open and free up energy in our hands and wrists, allowing energy to flow more freely in our lives. This post expands on the concept of energy radiating from our hands and arms and discusses how to cultivate an awareness of your energy through the different arm positions in yoga .
Yogic Energy (Qi) Cultivation
Pay attention to your arm movements the next time you practice yoga. In yoga, we employ many upward motions, sweeping our arms out to the sides and up, or through the center and up.
Yoga gathers, rises, lifts and stretches energy, and then brings it back into our heart or down to the earth.
In classic yoga, our arms tend to extend straight or flex at the elbow. These arm positions reflect a more masculine expression of motion, consisting of angles, and sharp lines. However, if we reverse our perspective and reflect these movements back to us from the outside in, we can see how these lines actually create a circle!
When Lines Create Circles
Imagine your arms are connected to invisible lines of energy. As you lift them, energy is pulled up from the ground. As your arms float back down from a vertical or horizontal position, such as in Warrior II or Triangle pose, you cast those lines of energy back down to the earth. If you could film an entire yoga class with a special “energy camera” at double speed, you’d see how our arms throw lines of energy around our body, eventually forming a circle, much like daVinci’s Vitruvian Man.
If expanded into 3D, this circle becomes a sphere of energy around the body. Formed by precise linear points, this sphere of energy appears large and powerful, and it is. In this sense, yoga greatly expands our external energy field.
However, unless we include bandha, meditation and breath practices to cultivate our internal energy field, we will be out of balance, and eventually suffer from an overly strong external field (Yang energy) layered over a weak internal field (Yin energy.)
Dangers of Energetic Imbalance
I see this a lot in athletes, who tend to be competitive and results-driven. At first, yoga creates a magical high with tremendous physical gains. We become stronger, more agile, flexible and balanced, but all of this is strictly noted from an external performance lens.
Unless we add into our physical practice yoga’s internal energetic practices, we will experience imbalance. We may look incredible, but internally we’ll know something is not quite right. We may find it harder to manage stress, or we may not be able to deal with emotional, spiritual, or psychosomatic tension. When this happens, it’s a sign that we need to strengthen our internal energy fields.
What Can I Do?
First of all, don’t stress. Begin to play around with your awareness this week. Notice how your arms create energy fields. Sense how certain postures or movements make you feel. Take notes, if you like, or just put it into your internal memory bank.
We’ll explore how to use Qi Gong Energy Arms to re-create balance in my next post.
Aria Morgan is an Educator, Writer, and Mom. As a certified yoga teacher, Reiki Master, retired Doula, and Mindfulness Life Coach, Aria draws on over 26 years of daily practice in yoga, Qi Gong, meditation, mindfulness, and energy cultivation. She passionately believes that when we awaken our body’s innate intelligence, anything is possible.