Functional "Meditation" in the Bajiquan/Pigua Zhang system I am acquainted with goes something like this:
1) The "meditation" is not engaged in until you have done basic foundational training (3 years minimum) in order to assure proper structure, breathing and relaxation. Typically this involves the first training form, xiao baji jia, in which you hold each posture and direct your thought to a given area for a relaxed in breath and then an outbreath e.g. shoulder, elbow, wrist/hand area - you also would be many other types of training during these 3 years such as da qiang and pi gua zhang so this is not done independently from weighted training.
2) After this phase is completed you can then sit in a chair, standard relaxed meditation posture and direct the mind/imagery qi to the palms of the hand - after some time you should feel warmth and a general swelling (due to increased blood flow or if you wish, qi). This will increase your strength and when you engage in application you direct your thought to the area to be employed, e.g. your fist, and your "power" will be increased.
Interestingly a number of studies indicate, as posted below, show how mental thought can increase strength and the effects can be long term.
No arguments or proofs here - just a point of information for those who might be interested in seeing meditation from another angle.
THE SCIENCES
How to Grow Stronger Without Lifting Weights
A study finds improvement from pretending to move musclesBy Clayton Mosher on December 23, 2014
We yearn to believe that we can get fit without effort. We build “ab belts” to electrocute our muscles to give us six-packs. We invent chocolate-chip cookie diets to make us thin while eating fat. We wish to get fit from doing absolutely nothing. We wish to lie in bed, think about going to the gym and then, poof, obtain the body of a Greek god.
Well, a remarkable new study from Brian Clark at Ohio University shows that sitting still, while just thinking about exercise, might make us stronger. Clark and colleagues recruited 29 volunteers and wrapped their wrists in surgical casts for an entire month. During this month, half of the volunteers thought about exercising their immobilized wrists. For 11 minutes a day, 5 days a week, they sat completely still and focused their entire mental effort on pretending to flex their muscles.
When the casts were removed, the volunteers that did mental exercises had wrist muscles that were two times stronger than those that had done nothing at all. The idea behind the research is not a new concept – just a concept that’s often neglected in the field of neuroscience: our bodies and our brains evolved together. Even though we treat our mind and bodies as two separate entities (brain vs. brawn; mind vs. matter), they are ultimately and intimately connected.
Indeed, even before Brian Clark published his study, other researchers had demonstrated links between the brain and the muscles. Ten years ago, Guang Yue at the Cleveland Clinic reported that imaginary exercise increases the strength of finger muscles by up to 35%. Just five years ago, Kai Miller at the University of Washington, showed that imaginary exercise activates the same brain areas that are activated during real exercise. Brian Clark’s research adds to this body of knowledge and provides compelling evidence about the role of neuromuscular pathways in strength training.To examine brain-muscle pathways, Clark and colleagues placed a magnetic field above the motor cortex and stimulated neurons in the brain. When they turned on the magnetic field, they saw the muscles of the volunteers flex and then become momentarily paralyzed. By measuring the amount of muscle contraction and the duration of paralysis, Clark and colleagues were able to make inferences about the connections in the brain. The longer the paralysis lasted, the weaker the neuromuscular connection. Not surprisingly, the volunteers that performed imaginary exercise had stronger neuromuscular pathways and hence, stronger muscles. The mentally-lazy volunteers had weaker neuromuscular pathways that were beginning to degrade.
Whether we get weak from wearing a cast, or we get weak from lack of exercise, or we get weak from aging, keeping the mind active keeps the body healthy. But, the mind alone cannot keep the muscles strong … any more than zapping your muscles with an ab belt builds a six-pack. Lifting weights or playing sports is more effective than mental exercise alone or muscle-zapping alone, because it activates both the mind and the body at the same time. In fitness, and in health, the mind and the body both matter.
Are you a scientist who specializes in neuroscience, cognitive science, or psychology? And have you read a recent peer-reviewed paper that you would like to write about? Please send suggestions to Mind Matters editor Gareth Cook. Gareth, a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist, is the series editor of Best American Infographics and can be reached at garethideas AT gmail.com or Twitter @garethideas.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)
Clayton Mosher is a postdoctoral fellow at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. He studies how the brain gives rise to emotions and produces social behaviors.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti ... g-weights/Mental gymnastics increase bicep strength21 November 2001
By Philip Cohen
It is a couch potato’s dream – just imagining yourself exercising can increase the strength of even your large muscles. The discovery could help patients too weak to exercise to start recuperating from stroke or other injury. And if the technique works in older people, they might use it to help maintain their strength.
Muscles move in response to impulses from nearby motor neurons. The firing of those neurons in turn depends on the strength of electrical impulses sent by the brain.
“That suggests you can increase muscle strength solely by sending a larger signal to motor neurons from the brain,” says Guang Yue, an exercise physiologist at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation in Ohio.Yue and his colleagues have already found that mentally visualising exercise was enough to increase strength in a muscle in the little finger, which it uses to move sideways. Now his team has turned its attention to a larger, more frequently used muscle, the bicep.
Thought experiment
They asked 10 volunteers aged 20 to 35 to imagine flexing one of their biceps as hard as possible in training sessions five times a week. The researchers recorded the electrical brain activity during the sessions. To ensure the volunteers were not unintentionally tensing, they also monitored electrical impulses at the motor neurons of their arm muscles.
Every two weeks, they measured the strength of the volunteers’ muscles.
The volunteers who thought about exercise showed a 13.5 per cent increase in strength after a few weeks, and maintained that gain for three months after the training stopped. Controls who missed out on the mental workout showed no improvement in strength.The researchers are now repeating the experiment with people aged 65 to 80 to see if mental gymnastics also works for them.
The research was presented at the Society for Neuroscience conference in San Diego.
Read more:
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn ... z7DXHR6MEH