Qigong for Art
Ch'i Kung for Art
Chi Kung for Art

Visual Artists

Have easy access to a canvas, or fairly large drawing pad; brushes and paints, or marking pens--or whatever it is that your art requires.
 
Breathe ten times into the center of lower abdomen. Keep your attention--your mind’s eye--there.
 
Continue this breathing. Be aware of it filling you with creative energy, with Chi.
 
If you are not sensing the chi, then imagine it: that your body is filling and circulating chi-power.
 
Continue with what I call Semi-Spontaneous Qigong. Your feet are straight (like standing on railroad tracks) and shoulder-width apart; knees slightly bent; spine upright; shoulders relaxed. Gently rotate--first one way then the other--your hands, wrists, lower arms, entire arms. Shake your head side-to-side, move your shoulders, belly, hips (hula hoop, hula dancing), shake legs, wiggle feet, squeeze the toes.
 
With eyes semi-closed allow the chi to move your body as the chi chooses to do. You also might pretend you’re an animal, or bird, making soft grunts, or cooing noises.
 
Important: Dispassionately observe what you are doing, making sure that you do not hurt or harm anyone or anything. This is an exercise in controlled freedom--(it’s not a free-for-all. That’s why the “Semi” in the title.)
 
Now continuing this Semi-Spontaneous Qigong, pick up the marking, coloring devices in both hands.
 
Allow the chi-energy to flow down the two arms, wrists, and hands and manifest on the canvas or paper. Don’t think about it. Keep this chi flow free and independent from your traditional artist thinking head-space: No more habits, no more aesthetics, no more technique, no more criticism. Just let each hand spontaneously move making shapes, or colors, whatever.
 
Just stay with the energy manifestation. It is you; you are it.
 
 Keep your ego turned off and out of this; but do your observing common-sense awareness turned-on to make sure you don’t paint the walls and floors of your studio, or spontaneously-automatically dance out a window.
 
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Sculptors could do this exercise with clay. Computer graphic artists with two computers and keyboards. Infinite variations are possible.
 
As for all Art – Energy Exercises, have someone who is not aware of your doing the chi-energy process comment on the completed work, perhaps comparing and contrasting it to other things that you’ve done in the past.

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