There are various methods of doing Yiquan’s standing meditation (zhanzhuang).
Wang Xiangzhai (王薌斎) wrote about these methods in his document titled “Zhanzhuang gong 站樁功.”
The most basic method is relaxing activity.
In this activity, as you do zhanzhuang, you try to relax and minimize use of your physical strength as much as possible while maintaining your posture.
Other than relaxing your arms, shoulders, wrists, fingers, waist, legs, back of your feet, and toes, you have to relax your eyes, mouth, muscles of your face, as well as breathing softly and quietly.
After you become good at it, you can be able to stand in one posture without feeling tired because you are using minimum strength to keep your posture.
By the time you become able to stand in one posture for one hour without feeling tired at all, regardless of whether you stand two hours or six hours, you would not feel tired.
If you strengthen your muscles to stand in one posture for a long time, you may feel standing for two hours is harder than standing for an hour.
However, if you become able to stand for a long time by using minimum strength, regardless of standing one hour, two hours, or six hours, you feel the same.
There are some people who explain that zhanzhuang is a training which cultivates your strength but Wang Xiangzhai said that it is a training which reduces your strength.
These two explanations of zhanzhuang may sound contradictory to each other but they are not.
By reducing your brusque strength, you can cultivate more refined strength.
Edited by Jun Ming
