Quiet standing.

Post standing 站樁

Also called zhan zhuang — zhàn zhuāng, pile standing, or simply standing meditation. Standing like a post: a held posture, kept long enough that the body's habits become audible. It is the single practice that appears in every part of what we do — in the Daoist curriculum, in T'ai Chi Ch'uan, and in the Eighteen Lohan Palm — which is why it is worth a page of its own.

Two things are being trained at once. The first is structural: where the weight sits, how the joints stack, what has to be doing work and what does not. The second is attentional: staying with an unremarkable sensation for longer than is comfortable, without adding anything to it.

Why standing and not only sitting

Sitting removes the problem of the legs, which is useful, but it also removes a great deal of information. Standing keeps the ground in the picture. A body that can be settled while upright and loaded is a different achievement from one that can be settled while supported — and the second does not automatically produce the first.

It also works the other way round. Standing is often the most accessible entry for people who find seated meditation difficult, and there is no requirement to arrive at sitting through it or at all.

Three Elixir Fields 三丹田

Standing is worked with attention at the lower, middle and upper fields in turn. These are handled as places to put attention and as terms with a long history, not as anatomical claims. What each is said to do is described in the tradition's own terms and left there, rather than dressed up in the language of physiology.

Practicalities

Start with a few minutes. Time in standing is not a score, and adding minutes faster than the structure can hold them produces tension rather than skill. Discomfort in the shoulders and thighs is ordinary; sharp joint pain is not, and is a reason to stop and say so.