Today I want to talk about 'seated meditation' as an energy practice. There are thousands of schools, styles, and methods for this. But as always, I want to (a) approach the topic more from the martial arts tradition than from the yogic tradition (though they really aren't all that separate); and (b) make it practical by stripping it down, eliminate non-essentials.
We all know that there's a jumbo-size tradition and history of 'quiet sitting' or meditation for energy in the Taoist tradition (often overlapping with Buddhist/Zen spiritually oriented meditation, but generally more tightly focused on a very technical, highly articulated architecture of energetic and physiologic anatomy). In fact I learned the Taoist 內丹 methods from a Chinese master and practiced sitting them for years. That stuff is great but it's just too complex for most people to deal with. And the good news is, to really soak in the deep end of the internal power pool, there is a much simpler approach. But the existence of that stuff does underscore the deep insight that was expressed well by internal martial arts master Sun Lutang:
以後靜坐亦如此、練拳亦如此。到此方知拳術與丹道是一理也。
"I found that meditation and boxing produced similar energetic effects. I thus came to understand that martial arts and meditation are founded on a single common principle"
So there you have it, straight from the horse's mouth. It's a great statement as far as it goes, but still not specific enough: what do you actually do to experience this for yourself?
Fortunately he gives us another more specific insight, basically saying "from boxing you can get it, and later it will manifest when you merely stand or sit". That is exactly the key to it, that I'll explain in this post.
So first, you need to "get" the martial arts energy. That's what all my books and films are trying to convey. Most particularly for this purpose, you need to experience what I call the 'flying squirrel' connection, which means the energy bridge zone that joins the inner edge of your arms to the sides of your torso. By practicing the stuff in 5G Tai Chi, and the Infusion graphic book, and the Tai Chi Ox Power film, you will eventually be able to mentally 'switch on' this zone, that is, activate it energetically.
Once you've had a taste of that Flying Squirral activation, one of the best poses for working it deeper is the ZMQ 'Left Wardoff' stance (emphasized and illustrated in most of my books), and Single Whip is also very good for feeling and intensifying that activation. So let's say you are able to switch on your torso activation at will when practicing in martial arts mode. Then you can do it in seated meditation too. In fact, "activating while seated" IS "seated meditation". That's about all there is to it.
Yes I do know that there are literally thousands of schools, methods, books, teachers, websites, protocols, programs, DVD's, guided CD's and other tutorial materials available to specificy breath regimens, visualizations, point/hotsopt sequences, time of day charts, meridian maps, mantras, and all the rest.
But here we operate on the principle 'eliminate non-essentials'. So from the pov of strict energy cultivation, most of the above stuff is irrelevant at best, and actually distracting at worst. The best thing is to just sit down, activate it, and then focus on gently maintaining that full activation. That's all there is to it.
Sitting: The best pose is seiza. When you meditate by just sitting simply in seiza, that's called shikantaza (只管打坐 - zhǐguǎn dǎzuò, literally 'just sit') in Japan. Actually some people do shikantaza with crossed leg or lotus posture. But for this post and this purpose, seiza is the best. With shikantaza, there is not complex mental, spiritual, respiratory, imaginal, or visual regimen to follow. Sit with conscious awareness.
By what right do I even speak of this? Well apart from having had quite a few hours of formal Soto Zen meditation training, more to the martial arts point, I trained intensively in Iaido (seated Japanese sword techniques) for many years.
The foundation of Iaido, the pose from which all the basic movements begin and to which they all return, is seiza. In advanced Iaido, we began from other forms of kneeling and also did standing work. But believe me, the essence of Iaido is all in seiza. So that's a good frame for us, but what about the energy? Tons of people sit in seiza, it was the normal indoor mode of being for a thousand years in Japan, and even still, to some extent. It's preserved in all formal Japanese traditional disciplines like martial arts, tea ceremony, calligraphy and many others, including formal ceremonial occasions like meeting the Emperor.
So that's fine as far as it goes too, but it's not bringing everything together. My Iaido classmates and myself could all sit in seiza long beyond normal human endurance, literally for hours at a time. But those classmates had absolutely no idea about, or experience of, the energy I write about. So just sitting in seiza, whether in a Zen meditation hall or a martial arts practice, is not sufficient to experience the power infusion of which I speak.
However, it is really simple. Physically you 'just sit' in seiza. But all the time you're sitting, you use your mind to first trigger/engage and then maintain the full blast torso activation (which you should have first come to experience and understnd through more active martial arts practice, like Tai Chi, Xingyi, Mantis or whatever - see INFUSION book for more). With that background, and that ability to light up your torso with the power, the sitting is just night/day different from regular sitting - even for experienced meditators or people who pride themselves being able to sit seiza for hours without moving. It's a radical, absolute distinction, a totally divergent experience.
I can compare the difference between sitting in seiza for 'ordinary' meditation (including all forms of traditional martial arts, spiritual practice, and ceremonial function) vs 'ox torso activated' seiza sitting to the difference between sitting in the driver's seat of your parked Lambo in your dark garage without turning the ignition vs. driving that Lambo at highest gear out on the open freeway, sunny day, dry road, no traffic, no speed traps.
Sit. Arms relaxed in your lap or on thighs. Forget your arms for the moment. Put your mind in your torso. Put your mind in the sides of your torso, your ribs. Turn on the power! Feel the raw vibrations in that initial area. Then use your mind to expand the outer edge of energy further, ripple it out so it fills your entire body, including head, arms, legs - everything. Then maintain that state of energetic radiance - that's meditation.
So you have your work cut out: first learn to activate this energy through the martial arts practice. Then over time, start to include an interval of 'just sitting' into your regimen, where without any physical distractions at all, without worrying about breath, or mantra, or dogma you figure out how to turn it on and maintain it indefinitely, at will. And if you have to ask whether you in your current practice, of Zen or whatever, are 'already doing this' then trust me, you aren't.
Your model should be Tesshu Yamaoka (pic above), bodyguard to the Meiji Emperor, and veteran of uncounted sword challenges of all kinds, at a time when bokken duels resulted in deaths. He had that active martial practice and then he expressed and experienced that same energy in simple seated practice.