10 Reasons to Practice Twelve Rivers Qigong

10 Reasons to Practice Twelve Rivers Qigong

Twelve Rivers is a set of qigong exercises from Long White Cloud Qigong. The exercises involve slow movements co-ordinated with your breath and awareness of your body. Each movement massages one of your internal organs and stretches and stimulates the related acupuncture meridian. These meridians flow like rivers of energy through your body, hence the name ‘Twelve Rivers Qigong’

In this article I will give you 10 reasons why you might want to practice these beautiful qigong exercises! The reasons are in no particular order, but let’s start with:

1. Range of Motion

The Twelve Rivers exercises encourage you to move every part of your body through its full range of motion. Your neck, shoulders, elbows, wrist, hips, knees, ankles, and back will all become more free as you practice. And what’s more it does it gently. There is no pushing or straining. Each time you do the exercises you will naturally move further into your range or motion, making your movements more free and your body more flexible.

2. Breathing Capacity

We co-ordinate our breath with our movements as we do the Twelve Rivers exercises, and most commonly we do the exercises slowwwwly… This means that over time your breathing capacity naturally increases as you breathe more fully and deeply to keep synchronized with the movements.

3. Cardiovascular Health

This slowing and deepening of your breath while moving greatly improves cardio vascular health and endurance. Getting sweaty and working hard is not the only way to improve the health of your heart! You can also do it by relaxing and working gently! Twelve Rivers qigong is a great way to do this.

4. Health from the Inside

Its not only your heart that benefits from this process. The movements in Twelve Rivers qigong gently massage all of your internal organs. As they become healthier the will naturally improve the health of your whole body from the inside out. It’s a bit of a different approach – improving the health and fitness of your whole body by focusing on the organs, rather than just focusing on the muscles.

5. Stress Reduction

Slowing down, relaxing, deepening your breath, and gently moving your body to release tensions naturally reduces stress. You will find yourself calmer and more at ease throughout your day when your practice Twelve Rivers qigong regularly.

6. Mental Focus

Moving slowing actually requires great mental focus as we become aware of the details of how each part of our body moves in slow motion. This ability to slow down and focus on detail with clarity will spread into other areas of your life as well!

7. Posture

The Twelve Rivers exercises open up your muscles and joints by moving them through their range of motion to release tension in the internal organs. The natural result of releasing these tensions is that your posture becomes more balanced. Some people say this even makes you look better!

8. Emotional Balance

Part of the reason why we develop tensions around our organs and imbalance in our posture is because of emotions that we have not processed and have become ‘stuck’ in our bodies. Each human emotion requires different activity from our internal organs as we release different hormones as part of the emotion. We also instinctively assume different postures as we have different emotions, to support the organs and respond to whatever in the world in causing our emotion. As we release these tensions, and balance our posture, not only does our organ health and physical body improve, but our emotions become more balanced too!

9. Energy Boost

The net result of releasing tensions and balancing your body and emotions is that your energy will flow more freely. You may even be able to tangibly feel this flow within your body as you practice. As the energy flows freely, you naturally feel more energized and vital in whatever you do. Practicing Twelve Rivers qigong in the morning is a great way to set yourself up for the day, or later in the day if you find yourself getting tired or stagnant, you may find that practice helps to refresh and renew yourself!

10. Personal Insight

This process of becoming more aware of the flow of energy in your body opens the way to understanding yourself better. As you practice Twelve Rivers qigong on different days, you will notice that your body feels different. Sometimes you will have tension in one place or another, or a movement that is usually easy for you maybe a bit more difficult at times. This helps you to understand how you are responding to what is going on in your life. And little by little this awareness will spread outside of your practice time, and into a better understanding of yourself in everything that you do.

There are many more reasons why you might want to practice Twelve Rivers qigong. These 10 are just a few, and may not even be the top ones for you. What do you think? If you already practice Twelve Rivers Qigong, what are you main reasons for doing it, or what have the benefits been for you? Let us know in the comments below.

If you haven’t practiced Twelve Rivers qigong before, here is a video you can follow along with to give it a try!

We also have an online course starting on 14^th January 2019 called Qigong Foundation Practices which will take you through these exercises in depth so that you can understand how they work and there many benefits. The course also introduces the basic foundations of qigong – breathing, posture, and energy awareness.

Email us here if you would like to register for our courses.

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