[Martial Arts] Eyes Closed, Standing Alone, Blood and Qi Reconstruction

Author: Jeffi Chao Hui Wu

Time: 2025-7-29 Tuesday, 10:23 AM

········································

[Martial Arts] Eyes Closed, Standing on One Leg, Reconstructing Qi and Blood
Standing on one leg with closed eyes, known as the Golden Rooster Stands on One Leg, is a training method that far exceeds the superficial notion of “standing on one foot.” The true difficulty lies not in whether you can maintain your balance for a few seconds, but in whether you can, in a completely closed-eye state, remain relaxed yet stable, grounded yet flexible, focused yet undistracted, and maintain a state of stability akin to a pendulum returning to zero, even without visual reference. This is not a result that can be achieved through simple physical ability; it is a deep practice. The long-term results of multi-system coordination must be adjusted collaboratively by the nervous system, musculoskeletal structure, circulation of qi and blood, and the guiding consciousness.
In a closed-eye state, all “shortcuts” to balance are instantly severed—you can no longer quickly correct your center of gravity with your eyes, cannot rely on the environment to judge the direction of your body’s tilt, nor can you use your hearing or limbs to instantaneously adjust your support. At this moment, you must activate the continuous perception of your feet against the ground, the tension feedback of your spine, the accommodating point of your hips, the flexible balance of your spine, and the balancing effect of your breath on the central nervous system, allowing your entire body to enter a state of “maintaining absolute balance amidst slight fluctuations.” This state appears still, yet is more “turbulent” than running; any slight misadjustment in the system will immediately lead to a loss of balance.
I personally started with the basic horse stance, gradually practicing the Golden Rooster Stands on One Leg, and continuously challenged my body’s limits in a closed-eye state. My highest record is standing on one leg with closed eyes for 23 minutes, a true state achieved without any external physical support, without opening my eyes, without moving my feet, and without changing legs. If one can maintain this for over 30 seconds, most bodily coordination systems are considered qualified. In martial arts terminology, this is referred to as a “maintainable state.” For professionals such as dancers and gymnasts, being able to maintain the Golden Rooster Stands on One Leg with closed eyes for one minute is still considered a “controllable state,” and achieving over three minutes is regarded as truly entering the realm of advanced practice.
Reference data for different age groups is as follows (derived from sports medicine review experiments and clinical assessment studies): Healthy males aged 20-30: average time standing on one leg with eyes closed is about 20-35 seconds; 31-50 years: slight decline, generally standing for about 15-20 seconds; 51-65 years: significant decline, average standing time is about 12 seconds (approximately 6-18 seconds); over 65 years: most are between 5-10 seconds, or even shorter. (The above data are laboratory averages, non-trained individuals, and any instability is counted as a failure.)
It is worth noting that this does not refer to the natural state of closed eyes + one leg + both hands hanging naturally without any tool support, nor does it refer to the wall-supported standing during auxiliary training; it belongs to a high-complexity balance test item in standard medical testing models.
When I achieved “13 minutes of closed-eye Golden Rooster Stands on One Leg” (with a highest record of 23 minutes), it was at a level that is extremely rare or even unrecorded in current publicly available data and databases. We can provide the following comparative data:
• Average standing time for ordinary people with closed eyes on one leg: males about 5-8 seconds, females about 6-10 seconds;
• Professional trainees such as ballet dancers (eyes open): occasionally 10-30 minutes, but mostly maintaining with eyes open;
• Advanced martial arts (eyes closed): over 90 seconds is the “standard boundary” for repeatedly trained individuals’ coordination systems;
• 13 minutes with eyes closed is a state that “far exceeds conventional limits,” and currently there are no publicly verifiable “archive samples” or database “growth records,” requiring a “research not yet initiated” note.
It is important to emphasize that this is not a training that you can achieve simply by wanting to persist. It is not about gritting your teeth and enduring through willpower; it must be achieved through “structural relaxation,” seamless breath, and “neural feedback loops” to naturally integrate the body’s overall structure. The logic of qi and blood circulation and the interactivity of the nervous system determine the path; relying solely on willpower cannot coordinate a 13-minute balance. In a closed-eye state, the brain lacks a “correction map,” and you must rely on the natural coordination of multiple systems online “under the ring,” which is a real mid-term examination between you and all your years of practice, stance work, breath, and nerves.
The practice of closed-eye Golden Rooster Stands on One Leg is not only a technical upgrade but also a reversal of cognitive systems. In an open-eye state, humans can automatically generate “correction commands” through the prefrontal cortex, and the feet will naturally lock the weight; when the reliance on integration is “deprived,” it can support expansion, and if injured but not severely, it can hold firm; the spine makes “micro-adjustments” within the structure, each time like “serpentine wide vibrations,” continuously repairing old distortions; breathing in this state becomes long, slow, and deep, reaching the marrow fibers, with the breath flowing like ribbons through the body, leading me to marvel—closed-eye Golden Rooster allows me to focus more on “how long I can stand,” because that falls into the “passive inherited cold-driven state” outside your body, entering a state of deep awakening of your own system that can mobilize self-regulatory structures. This is not about resistance but about reconnecting with the body’s operating system.
In summary, 13 minutes of closed-eye Golden Rooster Stands on One Leg is not a limit of skill but the result of the reorganization of the body’s systems, a real process of “neural self-control, qi and blood redistribution, and sensory reconnection.” When I broke the 23-minute record, I truly understood that this is not merely a physical breakthrough of “Golden Rooster Stands on One Leg,” but a “verification of awakening” of an entire operating system.
This is not a “world record” of competition, but what you have accomplished, a new structural research entry for human bodily wisdom, torn open with a photograph and real evidence. There are no rankings, no deification; everything is verifiable, experiential, and replicable. As long as you step into the practice space, you can understand the reality and weight of 13 minutes.

Source: http://www.australianwinner.com/AuWinner/viewtopic.php?t=697064