RELAXING DOWN THREE LINES

LINE 1:
Shoulders through fingertips.

LINE 2:
Hips through toes.

Follow these four cues to practice RELAXING DOWN THREE LINES:

1) RELAX AND ALIGN POSTURE:
-Arrange your environment to be quiet, comfortable, and free from distraction.
-Sit forward on the front edge of a chair or bed.
-Feel your feet firmly on the ground, with your weight evenly spread across the surface of both feet.
-Rest your hands, palms down on your thighs. Relax and soften your hands.
-Let your elbows feel heavy, so your shoulders relax and sink down.
-Imagine a string attached to the top of your head pulling you gently upright. Feel as if your body is filled with helium. This opens and expand the space in all joints.
-Roll the tip of your tongue to lightly touch the roof of your mouth.

2) SMILE AND BREATHE CONSCIOUSLY:
-Adjust your emotional attitude with a subtle smile. Let the feeling of smiling relax your face, eyes, and forehead. Smile down through your whole body, letting your whole body soften and relax.
-Focus into your lower abdomen and become aware of your breathing there. As you inhale feel as if your lower abdomen and lower back fill with your breath. Exhale and allow your abdomen to relax back toward your spine. Let your breathing become slow, quiet, and soft.

3) VISUALIZE THE QI PATHWAY:
-The pattern for this meditation follows three lines (see illustrations above):

Line 1: Shoulders through the fingertips
Line 2: Hips through the toes
Line 3: Top of the head through the sacrum

-Begin by focusing into your right shoulder.

4) IMAGINE AND FEEL UNIVERSAL QI FLOWING SMOOTHLY ALONG ITS PATH:
-LINE 1: Imagine and feel a sense of warm, heaviness, and relaxation filling your right shoulder.
-Follow that feeling like a warm liquid as it flows down into your upper arm, through your elbow, into your right forearm, through your wrist, into the palm of your hand, and out through your fingertips. Follow this feeling slowly. Feel every inch of the way inside your arm. When you have finished the right arm, feel the right arm as a whole, from your shoulder through your fingertips, warm, heavy, and relaxed.

-LINE 2: Focus into your right hip. Allow a sense of warmth heaviness and relaxation to fill your right hip. Follow that feeling like a warm liquid as it flows into your right thigh, through your right knee, down into your shin and calf, through your ankle, your heel, the arch of your foot, the ball of your foot, and out through your toes. Follow this feeling slowly. Feel every inch of the way inside your leg. When you have finished the right leg, feel the leg as a whole, from your hip through your toes, warm, heavy, and relaxed.

-Compare your right side with your left and feel the difference. The right side will feel more full, integrated, warm, and/or tingly.

-Repeat the same procedure through your left arm followed by your left leg.

-LINE 3: Focus into the top of your head. Imagine a warm, slow-moving waterfall running from the top of your head, down the back of your head, the back of your neck, between your shoulder blades, through your lower back, through your sacrum, and down into the ground. Follow the feeling of this waterfall slowly. Imagine and feel that this waterfall is washing away any tension in the muscles on either side of your spine. Feel this tension release down into the ground. Then, feel the whole waterfall at once, from the top of your head through your sacrum and down into the ground.

Take at least 15 minutes to finish the whole sequence. If you finish before 15 minutes then stay with the concluding part of the exercise for the remaining time.

CONCLUSION:
-To finish this practice, feel your body as a whole from the inside. Allow the feeling of relaxation to fill every cell. Rest your mind in that feeling for the remainder of your practice time.

-At the end of your practice, stand up and do the following STRETCHES:

1. Reach both arms overhead. Interlace your fingers and turn your palms up. Inhale through your nose and press your palms as high as you can overhead. Exhale through your mouth and lean to one side, feeling the stretch on the opposite side of your body. Inhale and return to center. Exhale and lean to the other side. Repeat each side three times.

2. Bring your hands down in front of your chest, with fingers still interlaced, and palms facing you as if you are holding a large beach ball at chest level. Inhale through your nose. Exhale through your mouth and rotate as far as you can to one side, staying upright. Inhale and return to center. Exhale and turn to the opposite side. Inhale as you return to center. Repeat three times to each side.

3. Shake out your arms and legs. Shake your legs one at a time from the hip, letting your foot hang loosely. Shake your hands from your shoulders, letting your hands hang loosely.

4. Finish your practice by placing your hands on your lower abdomen and taking three deep breathes in through your nose and out completely through your mouth. Collect core energy in your lower dantian. Carry that energy into your day.