Cherry Picking Qigong

If you don’t happen to have a cherry tree nearby, imagine yourself standing beneath one. Take off your shoes and physically stand up and sense your feet on the ground and the earth fully supporting you. If possible, find a patch of earth or grass nearby where you can stand barefoot. Sense how you are breathing. Don’t try to alter your breath in any way. Just let it be exactly as it is.

Sensing your feet touching the earth, look and stretch upward first with one hand and then the other to pick the imaginary cherries and then look and bend downward to put them in a bucket at your feet. Inhale through your nose as you stretch upward; exhale through your nose as you reach down to put the cherries away. Remember to close your fingers around the cherries when you are picking them and to open your fingers when you release the cherries into the bucket. Keep your hands relaxed so that you don’t crush the cherries.  And be sure to take your time finding a comfortable rhythm. Really sense, feel, and enjoy what’s happening in your entire body.

I’ve done this simple qigong practice over the years. It is a good practice to do when you feel lethargic and out of sorts, or when you’ve been sitting too long at your computer, or just sitting too long. If you do this simple practice with full attention, it will help open up the breathing spaces of your body and get you sensing and breathing again. It will get your energy moving and help you feel more alive and alert. It will help you become more present to yourself.

Copyright 2011-14 by Dennis Lewis