Eight Pieces of Brocade

(Made in China)

These eight pieces of brocade are for regenerating health, not for hanging on the walls. They are also not really part of ancient Chinese medicine since they were devised about 500 years ago and not 5000. That makes them fairly modern.

These eight pieces are exercises coming out of the martial arts and Qi Gong traditions of China. The purpose is to stir up and transmute the energies of a sick body to help it get well again. The exercises are simple, direct and easy to do, as you would wish them to be. if you were sick. There are four sets of exercises called Eight Pieces, this one is the simplest. The most complex form could blow the fuses in your Kundalini.

This set of Eight Pieces are best done sitting on the floor on a small pillow, cross-legged but can be done from a chair or even seated on a bed. I did them for a 100 days and even though I was not sick, the doing of them opened a new era of health in my life.

So it isn't necessary to be sick to do the Eight Pieces, but the results are are bound to be more noticeable with sick people. When a person has a chronic, long-term ailment, noticeable results should begin happening within a a week or two. If well people do them I would not be surprised to hear that they had raised their Kundalini a notch or two.

So, lets get into it. Take off your metal jewelry and get naked. Sit facing east, cross-legged on the floor or on an armless chair. To get the chi energy moving, rub your hands together briskly or rub them on your thighs vigorously.

First Piece

Place the left palm over the belly just below the belly-button and the right palm directly over the left palm. Slide your hands all the way to the left, then all the way to the right and back to the center. Rub back and forth 36 times. Stop at the center and hold your hands still for a minute; you might feel tingles in some part of your body as the Chi settles into a new location.

Second Piece

Keep your left hand on your lower belly and reach your right hand around back placing the the palm over the bony part of your pelvis with the fingers pointing down. Rub your palm leftward across the top of your pelvis, down the left side, rightward across the bottom of your pelvis, up the right side, leftwards across the top of your pelvis, down the left side again and on around the circle 36 times. At the end stop moving your hands and let the Chi settle in.

Third Piece

Place the palms of both hands on the back as high under the ribs as you can manage. Rub toward the spine, down the center along the spine to the top of the pelvic bone, outwards along the top of the pelvis towards the sides, upwards along the along the back as high as you can reach easily, inwards to the spine again, then down towards the top of the pelvis, round and round until you have made 36 circles. Stop and let the energy settle.

Fourth Piece

This one has two parts and is called "Pounding the Celestial Drum."

Part One. Put your palms over your ears solidly with the index and middle fingertips at the base of the skull just at the base of the occipital bump there. Then stiffen the index finger, put the middle finger on top of it and snap the middle finger off the index and onto the skull. This makes a "thump" in the ears like the sound of a drum. Thump yourself 36 times.

Part Two. Leave the palms over the ears and the fingers at the base of the skull and click your teeth together lightly 36 times. (Rumor has it that this can cause a third set of teeth o come in!) Rest your hands a minute and give your ears a chance to come back to normal.

Fifth Piece

Raise your right hand over the crown of your head, palm downward. Move your hand up and down with an oval motion about 3 inches high. Do it 36 times before resting. This is called "Priming the Celestial Pump" and it raises the Yang Chi up the Thrusting Cannel. What to do with the left hand? I sit with my left hand under my groin at the lower end of the Thrusting Channel to complete the circuit.

Sixth Piece

Close your mouth and put the tip of your tongue against the teeth and make small clockwise circles with your tongue tip against the teeth and gums. At the same time rotate your eyeballs together with your tongue and as far as your eyes can move about. Coordination is really tricky here for those of us who wear glasses or contacts. Maybe you should remove your contacts first; they might decide to fly out and away.

Make eighteen clockwise circles with the eyes and tongue and then eighteen counter-clockwise circles. End up with a short rest but do not swallow the spit: save it for the next piece.

Seventh Piece

Swish the saliva around all the recesses of the mouth: under your tongue, outside the teeth, through the teeth, at the root of your tongue and everywhere else. This helps the tongue get strong. Don't swallow the saliva yet.

Repeat the whole cleansing of the mouth 9 times.

At the end, swallow the saliva in three gulps. Really get into the swallowing, like a pelican. Stretch your neck up and gulp as if you were swallowing something precious.

This exercise scrubs the mouth out, stimulates the flow of digestive juices and exercises all those important muscles at the back of the throat.

Eighth Piece

Stretch your left leg out in front of you. Put he right foot over the left knee. Grab the right toes with the left hand and rotate the foot and ankle nine times clockwise and then nine times counter-clockwise. Then put your left hand palm over your right foot palm and your right hand palm over your right knee and rub 36 circles in one direction with both hands then 36 circles in the other direction with both hands.

Then uncross your right leg and put your left foot over the right knee and do the same process with your left foot.

Stop and feel the tingle in your feet. The Chi is excited about its new home.

That's all there is to it. Once you get the motions and sequences learned, it takes about twenty minutes.

The best time to do this is the very first thing in the morning before anything else.

Don't eat for a half an hour before or after and no sex for two hours after. The Chinese also specifically warn against doing Eight Pieces during thunderstorms, eclipses or earthquakes which mess up the Earth Chi and your Chi too.

These exercises are very intense. Doing them for 100 days continuously will make an amazing change in your life. Those persons who have done them for 100 days continuously never forget them. Should you ever notice an illness coming on, doing the Eight Pieces for a few days is Preventative Medicine of the best kind! No pills, no herbs, only a little time in the morning to get the day off to a good start.