Swimming Dragon Exercise - Lose Weight in the Waist

I love Dr. Mao. I have recently begun to read his columns and find him to be a good dose of common sense coupled with down-to-earth and real-life ways to improve health via natural remedies, cut calories and lose weight.

Today I found this exercise which, I discovered, I have been doing a version of for the past six months or so,  but I call it part of shaking my booty around the bedroom at night with shades drawn and no one watching :)  I love the name of this exercise and find it most evocative of the more esoteric aspects of playing chess and/or Xiang Qi.  Not to mention - it has the qi ("chi") of the universe flowing through it :)

By Dr. Maoshing Ni - Posted on Fri, Mar 19, 2010, 1:27 am PDT

America’s rapidly expanding waistline has become a huge concern in the past decade. Today, eight out of ten adults are overweight and some 40 million people are considered obese. It’s not hard to see why: We eat foods that contain tightly-packed calories in smaller packages and don’t engage in enough physical activity. Here are 3 unique and easy exercises that will get you in shape this spring!

You have to move to lose weight
The number one cause of being overweight is inactivity. The human body is designed for physical activity. Our ancestors were hunter-gatherers who spent most of their lives on the move; their metabolic functions matched their physical lifestyle. Nowadays, we live in opposition to our nature. The reason most diets fail is because our bodies are not designed to subsist on meager foods. We are designed to consume a good amount of energy -- and then to burn that energy. Physical activity is the key to a healthy metabolism.

Physical activity does not necessarily mean abrupt, fast-paced and forceful exercise. What if I told you that gentle, slower, and deliberate movements are just as beneficial for your health? Unique to China are the gentler kind of movement arts that promote energy, balance of function, and a calm mind. I call them mind-body exercises, and they include tai chi, qigong, and Dao In yoga. Many recent studies have confirmed that these mind-body exercises help balance blood pressure, sugar, cholesterol, equilibrium, and other organ functions. Mind-body exercise works through a system of energy communication within the body. By deliberately activating the flow of energy and removing blockages, communication is restored and organ functions return to their optimal level. You can learn these mind-body exercises with a teacher or from instructional DVDs.

Taken from a tradition that is thousands of years old, here are three qigong exercises that target your weight and get you in shape. The qigong exercises from this article are adapted from my book Secrets of Self-Healing, where you can find many more exercises to benefit a variety of health conditions.

Exercise 1: Swimming Dragon speeds up your metabolism
This simple qigong exercise can help speed up your metabolism and reduce your appetite. Not unlike a belly dance, Swimming Dragon is a wriggling rhythmic dance of the torso, which burns energy and promotes fat burning in the abdomen.

1. In a comfortable, quiet place stand with your feet together and ankles touching, or as close together as you can get them. Bring hands over your head, with palms together and fingers pointing up. Keep your palms together during this entire exercise.

2. Inhaling, push your waist out to the right side while keeping your head and upper torso straight. Simultaneously move your right elbow to the right, so that it rests at shoulder height.

3. Exhaling, push your waist out to the left side while keeping your head and upper torso straight. Simultaneously move your left elbow fully to the left at shoulder height.

4. Repeat this movement several times. Every time you move your waist to the right, bend your knees slightly more, lowering your entire body as you squat. Be sure to keep your upper torso and head straight.

5. With each right movement, move your hands lower, keeping your palms together and fingers pointing up. When your arms reach your chest, turn your fingers toward the ground and continue the movement.

6. When your arms reach your knees, you should be squatting.

7. Continue the movements, now rising with each right movement until you reach the standing position. When your arms reach your chest, switch the direction of your fingers so that they’re pointing up again.

Throughout this exercise, your hands should produce an S-shaped movement and your body should do a rhythmic belly dance. Remember to inhale on the rightward movement and exhale to the left. Only do this exercise on an empty stomach. Begin slowly and increase speed, warming up the whole body, but not to the point of perspiration.

The Chinese Fountain of Youth! - Exercise!

Yeah, well, I'm sure not going to be outside exercising in 3 feet of snow and 20 below zero temperatures. I'll save myself for pruning, sawing, never-ending bed edging and lawn mowing once spring, summer and autumn finally cycle around again (if the ever do; this may be the year of the winter that never ends - worst weather we've had in over 20 years). From The Times Online March 9, 2008 All the chi in China Shouting, whip-cracking, wrapping their ankles round their ears: the citizens of Beijing have strange ways to free the life force In the grey stillness of predawn, I followed the silent figures ghosting down Beijing’s long avenues towards the Temple of Heaven. They were on foot or on bicycles, alone or in couples. Shuffling through the gates, they spread out through the park that surrounds the temple. As the first rays of the sun slanted through the trees, I realised that there were hundreds of them scattered across the grass, and that some were dancing the foxtrot. Everything about China is different, from the alphabet to the cutlery to their habit of ending dinner with soup. To the casual visitor, even to those not given much to ruminations about physiognomy, one of the striking differences is the physique of the Chinese. There are few fat people. Occasionally, you may see a slightly plump type, in a cosy Chinese way, but the spreading girths of western society, the rolling buttocks barely contained by terry-towel fabric, have no place here. And it is not just a diet of rice and cabbage that keeps them so slim. The Chinese secret is that they exercise. To catch them at their fitness regimes, however, you need to rise well before dawn. I broke the habit of a lifetime to witness these early-morning rituals. Creeping through the dark streets, it felt like a nature safari, an expedition to glimpse the mysterious rites of some strange species. Geoffrey was one of the regulars in the Temple of Heaven park. He waylaid me just inside the northern gate, chiefly to practise his remarkable colloquial English. He liked to arrive before 5.30am, he informed me. “Flitness,” he said, “is for the early worm.” He tapped his forehead. “For flitness, you must let the energies flow. Chi,” he said, making a noise like sneezing. “Chi is energy in the body. It must be flee.” In China, exercise is chiefly the preserve of the old. There were plenty of younger people in the green acres of the park, but the middle-aged and elderly – scarce in a western gym – predominated. And the results don’t half show. China has old people the way Russia has chess champions. They are the best old people in the world, old people as a source of national pride – fit, slender, supple, their skin smooth, their eyes bright. Anywhere else in the world, you would suspect surgical intervention, coupled with a heavy regime of hormones. Chinese 70-year-olds could pass for middle-aged in London, and for thirtysomething in a Glasgow pub. Geoffrey was typical. He was 75, but looked like a man in his early fifties, perhaps not coincidentally the age of his wife. In the Temple of Heaven park, astride the great meridian known as the Dragon Line, where the emperors used to pray for national redemption and good harvests, the assembled masses were deep into their morning rituals. Chief among the activities was t’ai chi, the classic Chinese exercise. Originally, it was a martial art. As an exercise, it is performed, usually in groups, at half speed, a slow-motion ballet of precise movements, a kind of synchronised swimming without the pool. T’ai chi is illustrative of what is so different about Chinese exercise. There is lots of mental concentration and very little sweat. Exercise is elegant, graceful, almost sedate. Not for the Chinese the muscle-pumping of the gym, the slog of the jogging track. Nobody here is going for the burn. Instead, it is all about balance and concentration and flexibility. In a western fitness programme, t’ai chi would register only as an elaborate warm-up, a series of stretching exercises. In China, it is the main course, because it involves thought as well as movement. In the wide spaces of the Temple of Heaven park, however, t’ai chi was only the tip of the exercise iceberg. On all sides, straight-faced people were engaging in a range of ever more bizarre activities. In the shade of a pine tree, an old man was limbering up for the day by tapping his head repeatedly, moving his fingers round the ley lines of the skull, a sort of self-administered acupressure. Nearby, three elderly women stood in a flowerbed, rubbing their backs slowly up and down the bark of the camphor trees. At another tree, another woman was engaged in a sort of sniffing exercise, pressing her nose to a trunk and inhaling in short, sharp bursts. Suddenly, from beyond the shrubbery, I heard gunshots. Hurrying round the oleander bushes, I came upon three men cracking long whips. Like lion-tamers minus the lions, they prowled back and forth, exercising first with one arm, then the other. Beyond them, on the open grass, a group of young women, arms raised, knees flexed, were twirling long ribbons with balletic grace, like Chinese cheerleaders. Over by the eastern gate, a group of elderly women had hooked their left legs over the chest-high railings, bending forward to flex their back muscles. It was the kind of thing that would have been impressive performed by an east European adolescent gymnast. As performed by elderly grannies, in nylon shirts and cotton slippers, it was astonishing. In the gardens to the south of the great temple, I came upon the happy clappers. A large group had assembled between the flowerbeds in orderly rows. They were engaged in a sort of call-and-response clapping. First, the Clapper Chief – a willowy young man with the fervent look of an evangelical preacher – gave them a short burst of clapping, which the whole group then copied in unison. It was like one of those old-fashioned communist rallies where everyone spent much of their time applauding themselves. The vocal exercises were a more solitary pursuit. Across the green lawns, individuals stood alone, gazing into the middle distance, shouting, albeit in a restrained Chinese manner, presumably hoping to get the chi flowing by letting it all out. Meanwhile, contortionists, many of them of an age when getting their socks on straight might have been a struggle, were wrapping their ankles round their ears. Badminton players had set up nets, but nobody was gauche enough to keep score. The long arc of the shuttlecock, the graceful rallies, seemed an end in themselves. Even the swordsmen and women, whose ceremonial blades glinted in the morning light, had reduced armed combat to an elaborate slow-motion mime. Of all the strange activities in the park, my favourite was the ballroom dancing. One of China’s many surprises is the quality of its ballroom dancing. Across the country, you see couples in the evenings, in the squares and parks of small towns, dancing the waltz and the tango. And here, early in the morning, among the whip-crackers and the t’ai chi exponents, sedate dancers were limbering up for the day with the foxtrot, the polka, the rumba and the two-step. Ballroom dancing has it all – the elegant, unhurried movements, the gentle companionability, a degree of mental alertness, the need to avoid other people’s toes. It is the ideal Chinese exercise, and a triumph of restraint. Among the rather formal couples, making their neat turns as they gazed politely over one another’s shoulders, Geoffrey and his wife glided expertly between the rose beds and the shrubbery. Later, they walked with me to one of the park exits. “Phwoxtwat,” Geoffrey said, unlocking their bicycles. “One per cent perspiration. Ninety-nine per cent concentration. Werry genius exercise. Lots of flowing chi.”