Been having some issues with my zhanzhuang (ZZ) practice lately. The problem is that sometimes I feel sleepy and whenn I stand, if I close my eyes, I feel as if I will almost fall asleep and then fall over! When I first started ZZ, I initially trained with a lower postures but eyes opened. This was pretty hard since it was the “sink/swim” type of school. Then when I moved to my new school, most of the people train in a very high standing posture with their eyes closed. At first, this seemed strange to me and I would sometimes feel off-balance if I closed my eyes but then I started incorporating the closed eyes training for a couple of weeks.

So now.. when I try to open the eyes and then relax, my eyes start to want to close and I just want to fall asleep! I think it might have something to do with myself not getting enough sleep lately and I hope it’s not the case that I just got used to doing ZZ with closed eyes. I’ve read that closed eyes is ok for health training but for martial training, one should keep the eyes open. Anyhow, found a nice excerpt regarding falling asleep during meditation:

In some of these postures, a person will fall asleep if he or she is too tired, but if that is the case, it is perhaps better for the person to sleep, and get caught up on sleep rather than fighting sleep, and trying to tough it out by meditating through it. — source: On pain during meditation

So.. I guess it’s best that I just not fight my body and sleep when I feel tired and eat when I feel hungry. Plus, I think it might be a good idea if I get more sleep at night too