By Yan Ming Li
When I was eight years old, I injured my ankle playing soccer with a ball made of rags. In the ramshackle neighborhood where I grew up in Northern China, we didn’t have real sports or doctors. We had instinct, the body, and the silence of our own awareness.
I couldn’t sit cross-legged because of the pain. So, I stood.
Hands together. Knees gently bent. Spine upright.
I didn’t know it then, but I had discovered what I would one day call the Whole Body Prayer.
I stood in that pose for what felt like hours, breathing slowly, feeling into the injury. Something in me shifted—not just physically, but energetically. By the time I relaxed, the swelling was gone. The pain had dissolved. And something much deeper had awakened.
I’ve taught this same pose to thousands of students over the years—from cancer patients to burned-out engineers, from the spiritually devout to those with no interest in religion at all. And again and again, the results have been the same: healing, stillness, connection.
What’s powerful is not just the position—it’s the intention inside it.
The simple act of standing upright, hands together, body aware, heart open—this activates a “circuit of internal Qi.” Our hands in prayer position complete a loop, flowing a subtle electrical current, that helps the body regulate itself. This is not belief. It’s biology. And it’s also Grace.
Across the world, every culture seems to understand this pose.
In India, it’s Namaste.
In Christianity, it’s prayer.
Children everywhere instinctively press their hands together when asking for kindness.
The body knows something the mind forgets.
But I’ve also come to realize: the word “prayer” can be a barrier.
Some feel unworthy of it. Others carry painful associations from their religious past. And many today—especially in the secular West—have closed the door to anything that sounds too spiritual, even if their body is crying out for healing.
That’s why I’ve decided that it’s time to rename the practice.
From now on, we will call it Whole Body Meditation.
The practice is the same—standing in gentle awareness, hands together, inviting the body to heal from the inside out. But by changing one word, we open the door a little wider. We make room for everyone—the faithful, the skeptical, the wounded, the hopeful.
Because this practice belongs to all of us.
In a time when the world is hurting—physically, emotionally, spiritually— we need more ways to reconnect with our innate wisdom. Not through dogma, but through presence. Not through ideology, but through the healing power of simply being fully here, in our bodies, in our breath, in the stillness between thoughts.
Whole Body Meditation is an ancient gift, rediscovered by a limping boy in Northern China.
Now it’s time to share it with the world—no labels, no boundaries, no gatekeepers.
Just human beings, standing. Healing. Returning to themselves.
— Master Li
