Three Dantiens and Soup
So enjoyed my morning practice. Lots of low lying fog, high clouds with sun breaking through. Warm enough not to wear a jacket, yet cool enough to be quite comfortable.
I decided to work on the three dantien moving meditation. After a brief period of standing and getting in touch with the three by breathing into each, starting at the bottom, I decided to do three short (34 movement) forms focusing on a different dantien each time.(If you don’t do a short form, take part of your form, like the first section of the Long Form, and do that). First the lower, then middle, then upper. And to give even more focus, I decided to place a full bowl of soup in the dantien, and as I moved, to make sure not to spill any of the soup. This keeps the body aligned straight, and eliminates the possibility of jerks, bends, changes in speed, etc.
I started out facing south towards Indian Island and Mt. Rainer in the background. The tide was high, yet fairly placid. I started. The two intentions really helped me to focus right from the start. I was still playing the opening Grasp the Bird’s Tail (Ward Off Left and Right, Roll Back, Press, and Push) when a seal appeared right in front of me. A beautiful animal who appeared to be studying me. I brought my attention back to my meditation, yet was easily distracted by the seal, as he keep swimming figure eights in front of me, glancing at me with apparent interest. This continued for the entire first run through, about 6 minutes. Needless to say, my mind keep leaping from my focus to the seal. Back and forth. At one time a seagull flew down and landed on the water a bit to my right. The seal dove down and a moment later came up and made a leap towards the gull with his mouth open, but missed as the gull took off. Wow – life and death.
And speaking of death, in between the first and second rounds of practice, I went to the railing and noticed that there was a very large school of little fishes, and the seal was swimming in figure 8’s, herding them and then taking a big mouth full. He would glance at me from time to time, and I would call out to him – brothers in movement.
I went back to my practice and found great centering with this intention – moving from one dantien and having a bowl of soup staying full and level in that center. I did this for each of the three. Each time upon conclusion, I would stand for a few moments and feel how I felt. When I finished, I did one final round with concentration on all three at the same time, all with soup. It turned out to be a really positive experience – meditation in movement, and unity with nature. I feel so fortunate to live in a place where all this is possible.