Qi Gong Yoga? Exploring Simon Borg-Olivier's teacher Zhen Hua Yang's Calligraphy Yoga

Having become so absorbed with practicing Simon Borg-Olivier's approach to Yoga of late, it seemed a good idea to look more closely at his sources. BKS Iyengar, Pattabhi Jois, Shandor Remete I'm familiar with of course but recently I've been curious about the man Simon credit's as his main teacher for the last ten years or so, Zhen Hua Yang. Practicing Simons Spinal sequence before my regular practice I'm reminded of Qi Gong, Tai Chi, my own martial Art training in Aikido and Iaido, perhaps by exploring Zhen Hua Yang's Calligraphy Yoga I will better understand Simon's teaching and my attempt to bring it into my own practice.

The master plan was/is to, at some point, apply all that I've been exploring with Simon and now with Zhen Hua Yang and see how it informs my Vinyasa Krama, to finally go through again all Ramaswami/Krishnamacharya's asana, subroutines and sequences and see how they present themselves...., but perhaps it will go the other way, my Ashtanga/Vinyasa Krama practice informing my Qi Gong yoga.

Was this what Krishnamacharya did perhaps, explore Burmese, Buddhist, Tibetan Yoga to see how they played out with hatha and raja.

I have a post in the works about how really there is no yoga tradition but rather a hodge podge of jumbled up techniques and methodologies, asana with mixed up names and representations often drawn, painted, sculpted, reported by non practitioners and written down in a great game of Chinese whispers.

In the end it probably doesn't matter, against an horizon of yama/niyama we practice our physical exercises, our breathing practice to better allow us to focus on our contemplation of self.

Below I've included some videos and a post of Simon introducing his teacher as well as a demonstration by Zhen Hua Yang on one of Simon and Bianca's YogaSynergy courses. That's followed by Zen Hua Yang's own introduction to his Calligraphy health approach.

A nice introduction to the practice is with Master Yang's 'Wake up' program, I've included videos of him demonstrating as well as a demonstration with instruction by one of his students.

I was asked about the DVDs by a reader of the blog so contacted the website, I received no reply so just went ahead and bought the complete set and downloaded them. I've been exploring them this week.

The six DVDs follow the same format. Zhen Hua Yang teaches four exercise on each of the six DVDs with one of his students demonstrating (Sasha below) ,then he will demonstrate himself, first from the frount and then from the side. At the end of the DVD Master Yang demonstrates the four together as a complete form.

My approach to the exercises has been to add some of them on/build them into Simon's Spinal sequence.

Just as Indian yoga as hundreds of asana and perhaps thousands of variations, Qi Gong has hundreds, possibly thousands of exercises. We start perhaps with a core practice, some simple exercises/asana (Morning Wake up program perhaps) which we then build upon (see the 30 minute practice videos just before the appendix at the end of the post ), or more challenging (or not) variations that we encounter and seem more appropriate to include in our practice. Ashtanga, Vinyasa Krama seem to me not unlike a Qi Gong practice. Just as a Qi Gong practice, if grounded upon the yama/niyama and followed by breathing exercises and a Sit is surely Ashtanga.

Note: I believe the argument of Qi Gong is that the practice includes breathing exercises and is basically a moving meditation with focus on the breath......., now where have I heard that before.

You can see how some of these exercises have flowed through Simon's teaching although practiced in Simon's own manor, there seems to be a lot of freedom in this approach. Some exercises I'll probably end up including in my own practice, others I'm not sure of yet.