The Body Seeks Equilibrium - Fong Ha (1996)

Excerpt from T'Ai Chi Magazine, Vol 20, No 3 (1996)

Wuji Qigong: Harvesting Inner Resources

Fong Ha said that by putting yourself in a standing position such as Wuji, "You are activating your own automatic maintenance system. So it doesn't matter if you have bad posture. Every single cell in your body will want to maintain itself so you can stand up straight. Therefore, it is self-correcting at all times, regardless of your state of health, regardless of the state of destruction going on in your body. Your body is automatically self-adjusting and self-maintaining. By simply doing the Wuji stance, you are activating it already. There is nothing else you have to do. In my theory, you don't have to be able to stand in any special way. Just stand up and already the work is done."

"The body seeks equilibrium." Through the equilibrium, Fong Ha said, the mind and body become more integrated. "Integrated means the awareness comes from the center and extends to every extremity of the body. Then you have integration. Integration can also be talked about as evenly distributed tension, or even as density, as in matter. So the body, through the practice of qi, opens all the meridians and you become more and more integrated. The Chinese word is solid, meaning one, unity."

Fong Ha said that in terms of martial arts, "I have come to the understanding that knowing and developing awareness continues to be far more important than developing self-defense technique. Our awareness is there, we just don't know that it is there. So when we put our mind in the dantian, that is just a method to remind yourself it is there. That is the beginning of it."