The Zen expression, “Selling water by the river” means that you already have all you need to be fully healthy and active. All a teacher can do is point out to you, skills you already have and health that is already inside of you. Our modern culture teaches us to lock up our skills and our health. It seems to take a lot of effort to make ourselves unhealthy.
One of the most effective exercises you can do to unlock your health is to move your hips. I have taught thousands of people over many years and almost all of them came to me with locked hips. All the muscles in that area, including the lower back and the gluteus muscles were frozen.
The hips connect the activity of the upper body to the legs. Whenever you step, the weight of the upper body should smoothly sink into the legs. When the forward leg presses up so you can take a step, that upward force should flow through the hips to the upper body. In this way the forces the body experiences are always gentle.
With locked hips the upper body meets a solid floor at the hips instead of at the real floor below you. So those forces reverberate throughout the torso. The forces generated by the legs also hit the bottom of the hips and reverberate down the legs. It is no wonder that so many people have hip replacements.
Any activity that moves the hips gently and in all directions can greatly improve your health. Elvis Presley was a health innovator in that sense. The chi-gung system of “Zookinesis” emphasizes movement of the hips and of course the hips move slowly and gently in the Tai-chi forms.
While “loose lips” may sink ships (a World War 2 saying), loose hips relax the whole back which then relaxes the shoulder area and the neck. There is a Tai-chi saying, “Align the body with heaven and earth”. This means, among other things, that the legs which are closest to the earth should be the densest, just like the earth. The upper body which is closest to the sky should be the lightest. The hips should be in an in-between state, relaxed yet strong, which results in a rubbery quality. The result is strong legs with a flexible and relaxed upper body – perfect for the martial arts and for maintaining health and vitality throughout life.
When students are finally able to move their hips they say, “I feel for the first time that I actually have hips”. I suggest that as they do a form, that they drop the lower front ribs to the front of the hips as they sink and breathe out. As they breathe in and rise, they should relax the rear part of their lower ribs towards the back part of the hips. The lower ribs then act as a see-saw. This starts to bring the mobility of the hips into the upper body. It also helps to eliminate a lot of back pain. If you try this, it is important to keep the rest of the upper body stable as you “rock” the lower ribs towards the hips. Each rib can move independently and separating the activity of the lower ribs from the rest of the ribs is important in bringing mobility to the ribs.
This all may seem very difficult to achieve but it is the natural way the body works. I almost feel as if I am getting away with something as I teach this because it is something that every living creature should already know (and all species but ours do know). It is almost as if I am teaching people how to see by telling them to open their eyes. But in this case I am asking the students to open up their inner eyes – their ability to feel and use each part of their body. How much sickness and misery could we avoid if we all opened up our inner eyes?