The Tao of Stress: How to Calm, Balance, and Simplify Your Life by Robert G. Santee Read Free Book Online Page B

witness to what’s occurring in your mind and body as you stand. Try to do
    this exercise for five minutes. If you feel uncomfortable or dizzy while performing this exercise, stop, get a drink of water, and sit down for a few minutes. Return to the practice when you feel settled and comfortable.
    When you’re finished, reflect upon and write in your journal
    about what happened to you as you practiced Wuji Standing. How
    did you feel when you finished the exercise? Did you feel relaxed?
    Were you able to stand straight and keep a stable posture? Did you find yourself moving around? Did you feel rooted in the ground? Did you feel centered? Did you sense any movement, pulsating, tingling, heaviness, warmth, lightness, or flowing, like water through a hose, in your body? If so, this is normal. These kinds of descriptions are often used to describe the feeling of qi moving throughout your body.
    Again, you may wish to mark this page and use this paragraph for
    guidance in writing in your journal as you learn each new posture in the Yijinjing sequence.
    Essential y, Wuji Standing is a Taoist practice for acquainting you with your body and mind. What usual y occurs when people first practice this exercise is that they notice tightness, stiffness, minor aches and pains, and sensations of being uncomfortable in various parts
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    The Tao of Stress
    of the body. This is normal. If you experience this, it’s just your body letting you know that there are some problems you need to address.
    Another common experience is that people are easily distracted or
    bored and complain about being stuck in their head. This is also
    normal. If you experience this, your mind is letting you know that there are problems with your attention and concentration.
    At this early stage in your practice, the most important aspect of this technique is what you learn about yourself when you apply guan during the practice. Wuji Standing provides you with information
    about what you need to change in order to eliminate chronic stress.
    Conclusion
    At this point, you should have a fairly good idea of the basic components of Taoist meditation techniques and how the practices are performed.
    Give them a chance to work for you. Remember guan. Try to apply it whenever and wherever you can. Remember to smile whenever you can.
    You’ll notice a profound difference in yourself and your life if you do so.
    Building on the basis established in this chapter, let’s now move forward into the first component of the Taoist path: simplifying life.
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    Part 2
    Simplifying Your Life
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    Chapter 3
    Simplifying Your
    Thoughts
    In Taoism, the more complex our lives, the greater the likelihood that we’ll suffer from chronic stress. Thus, across all forms of Taoism, simplifying life is of fundamental importance for eliminating chronic stress, and also for spiritual development. Simplifying life includes both mental and physical approaches, which are intertwined like yin and yang and cannot be separated. This chapter focuses on the Taoist path of simplifying life by simplifying our thoughts, including beliefs and judgments. In order to do this, of course, we first need to be aware of our thoughts, and then we need to examine them to determine which should be simplified or eliminated. This is an application of guan.
    The Galloping Mind
    In the previous chapter, you learned about the Taoist notion of galloping while sitting. This refers to our high degree of distractibility and our problems with attention and concentration— difficulties that result in a continually agitated mind that gallops all over the place.
    Because the continually agitated mind is filled with absolute con-
    cepts, beliefs, expectations, judgments, biases, and perspectives that gallop, seemingly out of control, across our mental landscape, its thinking is quite rigid and complex. The more rigid and complex our thinking, the greater the