Spine Self-Care
Outer chaos, inner calmness, and healing
Master Glenn Tobey
Addressing your emotional response to the pandemic.
March 27, 2020
Qi flow in the Spine. How it is important for strengthen your vitality.
The spine is about vitality. The spine is about flexibility. The spine is about strength. The spine is about flow of the Qi. The spine is really the key thing finding the connections to all the organs through energetic fields. It’s very important.
Maybe you’ve grown up with someone saying, “Stand up straight. Move your shoulders back. Don’t slouch.” All these things maybe about posture. But from the Qi point of view, it’s really about the flow of the Qi around the two main energy channels – the front and the back channel. You want the Qi flow up to the body, up to the head. So the posture is really important. You also sure have heard the phrase “carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders.” Imagine what that does to the shoulders to the Qi if you always carry the weight of the world on your shoulders.
We are in a crisis now. How does that affect our Qi? As a therapist, I always ask, “What is the color of my wall?” One person might say this color. The partner might say a different color. What you say doesn’t matter. The way you see the wall really is the way you see it. So, the way you understand the world is the way you understand it. So, the spine, the slouch of the spine. The color of the wall. Here is how I understand the world right now. Here is how I understand this. Have the confidence to stand up to say, “This is my understanding. This is my perspective.”
If the spine gets too flexible or too stiff, the energy doesn’t flow well. You always want to keep the energy flow. I understand what I know now. I have confidence what I see. By the way, let me open to more other possibilities and options.
Here are some tips about how to keep the spine flowing. One is to drop the shoulders, so the connection to the base of the spine and the shoulders is really important. Shoulders are good to hold fears and stress. The more you hold it up, it impacts that whole area. You want to be able to drop the shoulders and slower your breath down.
The tailbone and your C7, the little bump on your neck and spine, really are two important flow charts. It is like you have two lane highway coming up all the way to the top of the head. Like the construction is on the C7 and the tailbone, so the traffic narrows down to one lane. After passing the tailbone and the C7, now it opens up to two lane highway. You always need to keep the C7 and the tailbone open.
Tapping the tailbone often is really a good way to deal with especially now you are sitting down a lot. Get up and tap the tailbone.
Massage the energy point on the back of your hand where your index finger bone and the middle finger bone meets. If there is soreness, that means you have energy blockages in the upper spine. Then massage the point where your middle finger and ring finger meets. That’s your middle spine. Massage the point where your ring finger and pinky finger meets. That’s your lower spine.
So, you can massage these three points. Massage your C7. And tap your tailbone.
Qigong Master Glenn Tobey
Master Glenn Tobey, M. Div., M. A. in Management, is a Licensed Independent Clinical Social Worker in private practice in Duluth, Minnesota.
He has almost forty years of experience in the Human Service field and has worked in both urban and rural settings, and values the collaborative community-based model.
He has also taught at the college level, and conducted numerous SFQ workshops and trainings in various community settings. Glenn continues to teach and to share his knowledge and wisdom of Spring Forest Qigong which is at the center of both his professional focus and his personal passion.
Glenn is a member of the SFQ teaching team. He teaches Level 1, Level 2, Level 3, Instructor Certification, and other workshops.