[Article] How to exercise Ki

Ki is very natural, so it flows in and through people, whether they are familiar with the concept or not. What needs to be trained is to experience this flow, increase it, and learn to utilize it better. For a good ki flow, several things have to be worked on, mainly:

• Posture
  Breathing
  Center
  Extension

These interact, so that one without the others is not enough. It is difficult to breathe correctly with a bad posture, yet it is correct breathing that perfects the posture. A strong sense of center promotes correct breathing, and correct breathing strengthens the center. And so on. So, all of them are needed, and they help each other along. You have to work on them all, and gradually the progress with one will help your progress with the others, and vice versa. Still, there is a proper order to them:

A straightened posture opens for belly breathing.
Belly breathing leads to awareness of the center.
The center is the source for a strong spirit of extension.
The spirit of extension equals a good ki flow.

There is one more ingredient, important in all of the above: relaxation. This may be the most difficult one. We tend to be tense, both in mind and body, and this tension is not easy to loosen. Belly breathing is the best, but that is still dependent on how the other factors above are developed. Maybe the best you can do to relax is to want to, and then give it time. Your progress with the other factors will automatically help you along. Below, I give some very simple exercises for the above steps. They are really very easy – I bet that anyone can do them, without any preparation. But they have to be repeated, until they become almost instinctive, the normal way of being. This can take long – maybe a year, maybe several years. In aikido this development is sort of automatically contained in the regular training, so that you develop posture, breathing, center and extension without even having to think about it – unless you practice aikido in a very misguided way. Still, the below exercises will surely speed up the process, and help you focus on it also in aikido training.

Excerp taken from article by Stefan Stenudd

For full article on "How to exercise Ki",

go to http://www.stenudd.com/aikido/ki-exercises.htm