Sore throat / tight throat from Qi Gong.

[mbokohutu]

I used to have a similar problem in my early days, it is because you are pulling air in with your throat. Relaxing your shoulders and scanning the body for residual tension may help.

Nothing to worry about.

Happy training.

Ummm. Weren't you the guy who just last year was "messing around in his backyard" with kung fu?

I should search that to see if I can find it.

[master splinter]

Hi there,

Sorry its been a long time since ive posted here.

But im a little stuck

while doing Qi Gong (Ba Duan Jing and 5 Animal Dao Yin Qi Gong) over the last year or so, some times i get a sore throat / tight throat

even though im relaxed with tongue to the roof of my mouth, calm slow breathing through the nose

im not sure if im some how sub consciously thinking about that area

even though im visualizing my dan tain.

Thanks for any advice

VOid !

If your throat constricts as you inhale, the friction from the air, especially if its cold, can inflame your throat and vocal chords. If you have a sore throat it could be from many things. I.e a virus/bacterium. try to practice indoors if it it too cold, or too dry, since this leaves you more susceptible to actually catching airborne viruses colds and such.


Are you familiar with abdominal breathing? It may have a relieving effect on your throat tensing up, it may also help to breathe strictly through your nose as you inhale/exhale and do chi gong.

It could also be that you are over thinking it. Try some meditation, a tip to remember during meditation is that meditation is simply concentrating on your breathing for an x amount of time. Moving meditation is combining movement with meditation.

I used to have a similar problem in my early days, it is because you are pulling air in with your throat. Relaxing your shoulders and scanning the body for residual tension may help.

Nothing to worry about.

Happy training.

[doc]

Yes, great avatar too!

[mbokohutu]

Damn I am good!

[mbokohutu]

im not activly trying to circulate my chi, mbokohutu you mentioned about possable blockages and way to learn to adjust your body so the chi can flow through the blockage.

i understand it is complex to explain this, but what basic methods could be used or employed to slightly adjust while breathing to help aid the flow or releave blockages.

I spoke to my Sifu about it, he said i could have a slight blockage and in a future class do a triple burner meditation.

thanks for any advice

Void

It is complex to explain because the person has to know their body, and the body has to be in a certain kind of condition. If you are not familiar with your body, then you can't really tell if it is blocked or not.

Try rotating your head just a little bit from side to side. Does the pressure get worse or better or stay the same? Then try rotating your upper torso while your head mostly stays in one place. This might be hard if you cannot isolate your upper torso. The movement is sort of like a woman shaking her titties. The chest moves but the head stays still. It's ok if your shoulders move.

If it is a blockage, at some point in the arc you rotate your head or body in, the tightness should lessen. The point on the arc where the tightness releases would be the point where the blockage has opened. So you would want to move your head or torso to the position where the pressure goes away, and then just stand there and see what you feel. The area where you are blocked should feel different from the surrounding area.

A person can learn a lot by looking at themselves. Take a picture of yourself with no shirt on in that posture you are doing. Then sit in front of the computer and just stare at it. Do you see any kind of strange looking thing in the picture? The human body is designed to be symmetric or identical on both sides, so look to see if one half of your body looks different from the other half. If you find a spot, that is usually a clue to where the trouble might be.

I would look especially around the pectoral muscles and of course the neck area if you get blocked in the throat. Look at the head and the rest of the torso too, but you should notice something in the pectoral area if I am on the right track. Maybe your shoulders are slanted from high to low or maybe they are uneven from front to back. One shoulder up one shoulder down, or one shoulder forward one shoulder back.

If you are thinking about what I am saying, you should realize I am talking about body alignment. If your body is out of alignment, the power generated by the Chi Gung will jam where the body is not aligned.

Or the pressure generated by the chi gung makes an out of alignment body part more obvious than it usually is. For example. Pretend the distance from your hip to your throat is supposed to be exactly 2 feet. But your body is misaligned so the distance is 2.1 feet. In your everyday life you might feel some discomfort, but because the distance is only.1 away from what it is supposed to be, it doesn't bother you too much.

When you do the chi gung though, your body is generating more power. The extra power pulls harder on whatever it is that connects the throat to the hip. With the extra pulling caused by the chi gung power, that .1 misalignment is enough to cause discomfort.

If you find your shoulders are high/low or front/back instead of even, then because your throat is in between your shoulders, you throat would feel either high/low pressure or front/back pressure from the misaligned shoulders. Common sense should tell you that the soft fleshy throat is not going to like being pulled from high to low or from front to back, and it will let you know about it by producing pain.

[Void]

thank you for your replies

when i get the tight / sore feeling in my throat area its after we have performed a qi gong set and we then stand still

hand to the side, eyes closed and tongue connected to the roof of my mouth and we breath deep and slowly into the lower dan tien for a few mins.

im not activly trying to circulate my chi, mbokohutu you mentioned about possable blockages and way to learn to adjust your body so the chi can flow through the blockage.

i understand it is complex to explain this, but what basic methods could be used or employed to slightly adjust while breathing to help aid the flow or releave blockages.

I spoke to my Sifu about it, he said i could have a slight blockage and in a future class do a triple burner meditation.

thanks for any advice

Void

[mbokohutu]

Dood! You haven't figured out that Doc doesn't know anything about kung fu yet? He runs a kung fu forums but he jokes about chi or any other serious kung fu discussion topic.

Your problem could be sorta normal. As the Chi Gung exercises work, they are of course changing your body. I hope I am not talking down to you, but Chi can be visualized as being like cookie dough being squeezed out of the dispenser. The dispenser can be thought of as being in your stomach, and the cookie dough squeezes out to your arms, head, and legs.

As the Chi/cookie dough moves out into your body, it expands the body as it moves through it. That is kind of common sense. If something new is going through a part of your body, your body has to open up so there is room for the something new to flow through.

Your throat could be sore because the exercises are opening a new area of your body you never felt before. Because it is brand new to you and you never felt it before, it is like a little baby. All sensitive and touchy. So it might get sore.

Alternatively, you could be doing the exercises wrong, and sending the chi to the wrong area. If that is the case, it would be very hard to offer help long distance. You need someone to watch you so they can see what you are doing wrong, then correct you.

Holding your tongue to the roof of your mouth or anything else will not change a tight area of your body feeling sore because Chi is forcing its way through. If you have a blocked area, you need to learn to adjust your body so the chi can flow through the blockage.

That subject could get complicated pretty fast, so I will stop here.

[doc]

There is no western medical reason for qi gong to cause your symptoms.

Hard body stuff, with spears and the like against the neck, well, obviously, there could be issues. But with regular qi gong exercise, unless you're training out in the cold weather (and then, any exercise could cause this), you should not be getting pharyngeal irritation.

[Void]

Hi there,

Sorry its been a long time since ive posted here.

But im a little stuck

while doing Qi Gong (Ba Duan Jing and 5 Animal Dao Yin Qi Gong) over the last year or so, some times i get a sore throat / tight throat

even though im relaxed with tongue to the roof of my mouth, calm slow breathing through the nose

im not sure if im some how sub consciously thinking about that area

even though im visualizing my dan tain.

Thanks for any advice

VOid !