HOW TO PRACTICE WILD GOOSE-I

Wild Goose-I Qigong is one of the most important and comprehensive qigong in the Wild Goose system. No matter how advanced your Wild Goose level is, please keep practicing the First 64 Movements everyday. Don't expect to know everything about this qigong after attending one or two workshops. Quite often it happens that after you practice several other sets of WG Qigong, your understanding of the First 64 Movements deepens. Therefore, depending on your level, the emphasis on how to practice WG-I may be different.

1. Suppose you are a beginning learner in WG-I, I would advise you to first relax and enjoy the lovely circular and round movements in WG-I. You can even imagine that you are mimicking the lovely movements of an innocent and care-free wild goose.
   
2. Technically speaking, learning how to shift our body weight while playing the movements of WG-I is the key to relaxation. Please observe that lots of the postures and movements in WG-I are designed so that we can support our body weight mainly on one foot, not two; the standing postures in "void steps" are some examples. Also, the sequence of the movements in WG-I is arranged in such a way that we can always sense the sifting of body weight. We know by basic physics that "gravity" pulls us down toward the earth all the time. But if we are standing on "void steps", we can move much more freely the side of the body which doesn't support much of the weight.
   
3. For learners of intermediate level, please also pay attention to the balance of our body's yin-yang aspect. For example, if we examine the beginning part of WG-I Qigong, we'll find that there are many movements arranged in "oppositional pairs". It starts with "Spread the wings and close them"; "Lift the arms and push out"; "Draw wings to the back and jerk them", etc.
   All these and many other movements are not only suggestive of the lovely and graceful movements of the Wild Goose, but also subtly creating a rhythmic flow of two beats, such as "open and close", "up and down", "left and right", etc. The purpose of which is to regulate the breathing and to balance the "yin and yang" aspect of our body.
   
4. If you have practiced WG-I for a while, and you have also practiced other WG Qigong, including WG-IV (Tripod & Spiral Qigong), then I would advise you to pay more attention to making your WG-I movements as gentle and soft as you can. As Grandmaster Yang pointed out, Wild Goose movements should start from the circular and then develop into spiral movements. Only when our movements are circular and spiral, can we develop a "closed" qi- field, which usually holds the strongest energy. Also, only when our movements turned gentle and soft, can qi pass through our whole body, including all the main meridians and all the tiny meridians which circulates all over our body from the surface of the skin to the deepest part of our body. And that is the ultimate goal of how to train our qi, and how to disperse our dirty qi, and take in fresh qi.