Metal Balls?

[Qi dup]

you know those two shine metal balls that come in those oriental looking cases and they have little bells inside of them and people roll them around in there hands? Does anyone know if these are used for Qigong or Meditation in any way?

[prana]

just roll em clockwise and counter clockwise. Some fun stuff are also to roll them without them touching each other, and also with them constantly touching each other.

Excellent stuff, might have more meridian type benefits too I presume, but really good for blood flow to the palms

[red_fists]

Hi Qi-Dup.

My Style uses the heavier ones without the bells in them.

Those are about 2 inches in diameter and weigh about 27 ounces each.

As mentioned we roll them clock and counter clockwise for about 30~45 seconds in each direction.

We don't use muscle power to do this, but rather a breathing method. combined with Finger movement.

The second training Method is to hold them in our Hands while doing form training. Again no muscle power is used to either hold them or balance them.

A good way to get the shoulders to relax and also trains the fingers for Chin-na Strength.

They way we use them they work as a form of Qi-Gong.

The ones you refered to are called Medicine Balls and are used for a form of medidation and pressure point massage in the Hands.

This method is more for meditation and healing.

But I think that they are smaller belled ones are a fairly newish concept as such.

Either way be carefull with the chromed ones and don't drop them as they will rust where they have been dropped.

Hope this helps.

[Nexus]

Contact juggling uses larger glass balls uses the same concept and also has some neat tricks and advanced techniques,all using the hands to manipulate spheres. You might want to do a search for "contact juggling" on a search engine to learn more about what you can do with your balls. (No pun intended).

[Qi dup]

Thanks for all your responces everyone, lots of good advice.

[Pakmei]

You'll find that these balls are heavily used by Tui Na medical practitioners as one of their many exercises for increasing finger, hand and wrist strength & flexibility.

While circling the balls in your hand they stimulate & activate points P8 (LaoGong), H8 (ShaoFu) & L10 (YuJi) which are the fire points for the heart, pericardium & lung Yin meridians.

So by stimulating these points in a clockwise action you are tonifying (increasing) the Qi and blood flow to the heart as well as the lungs. Being that the Heart & Lungs share the part of the body called the "Upper Burner" which is basically responsible for the circulation and distribution of Qi & blood around the body.