NOT the simple story. Getting the basics right in the beginning.
For thousands of years (and before) the Chinese have used the idea of yin and yang to explain reality. It is the versatility of this idea which has kept it alive for centuries. (more…)
August 31, 2009
August 28, 2009
Qigong Practice: #1
Don’t assume that Qigong starts with deep breathing or lightning bolts shooting out of your fingers.
Start by just standing there for a minute. Qigong begins when you Tiao Shen (control your body). Start with your feet apart about shoulder width. Slightly bend your knees. Relax your hands at your sides. Let your shoulders just hang ( I promise you, no matter how relaxed you make your arms and hands, they will not detach and fall off). Keep your head up. Don’t use strength, pretend you are balancing one block (your head) on another (your torso) and so on (pelvis).
Half close your eyes. Imagine your back and shoulders are just drooping, like melting wax. Let your breathing settle.
Don’t strain. Try a minute at a time. You will feel things, guaranteed, but just start with a minute of quiet standing. Put the world on hold for a bit.
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August 27, 2009
What Makes a Qigong Master?
Actually the answer to this is simple: adversity; same as with any practice. Take the example of Wen Mei Yu. At 13 she started practicing under the 73 year old teacher, Yang De Shan. Naturally dedicated she eschewed comfort for her art staying outside when others went indoors to warm up, lying on cold benches and still circulating her energy.
Then WWII came. She and her husband became guerrillas, resisting the Japanese invaders when they could. Captured with a group of others, she and her comrades were buried alive while soldiers looked on. Calling on all of her skills she kept calm and silent, turning inward, remembering her practice. When she knew that the soldiers had left she dug herself out of the ground and saved comrades from death.
A master of Wild Goose, a wonderful and complex Qigong, she also ran into hard times with her own people, especially during the Cultural Revolution where she was put on public display and forced to sit or stand motionless for hours while passersby could criticize and insult her. But every trial she turned into something else. The old saying that the word for “crisis” is the same as the word for “opportunity” in Chinese is not exactly true, but in essence it is.
The point isn’t to go out and be caught by terrorists so you can be better at Qigong. Most people who’ve lived past a certain point already have a backlog of adversity. When you practice Qigong use this to encourage you to go deeper into the practice. You will find an amazing thing: that adversity can actually be re-programmed, squeezed for its benefits by turning it all into something else. Was it Isak Dinesen who wrote that, “Anything can be endured if it is seen as part of a story.”
The story is you.
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What Happened to Chinese Medicine?
When I first began to study Chinese Medicine back in the 1980’s, it was in response to my fascination with Taoism and martial arts. Here was an ancient medicine based on principles of harmony and an understanding of our relationship to nature. It was radical in its premise that nature is self correcting, and that humans can heal naturally by tuning back in to the rhythm of natural cycles. The doctor’s job was to search out the cause of a patient’s disharmony and help them restore balance. We took the pulse; we listened to the voice; we observed movement, bearing, and skin tone; we asked questions about the patient’s life and their illness. Then we recommended changes in diet and lifestyle; we used needles, moxa, and herbs. We restored balance. Patients got better.
Somewhere along the line, things started to change. It’s been a subtle process, and therefore easy to miss. But Taoist medicine, in which skill is dependent on the refinement of the doctor’s sensitivity over a lifetime of practice, is getting gradually replaced by a westernized approach that emphasizes the constant acquisition of new treatment techniques and diagnostic tools.
I suspect this all started from the justifiable need for acupuncturists in this modern age of technological medicine to make a decent living and enjoy a modicum of respect among other health care professionals. Thus the emergence of what is now called “complementary” medicine (complementary to what I wonder?) and the blossoming of doctoral programs in Chinese medicine that teach us western medical skills so we can fit in better with the medical establishment.
All of this leaves me disheartened. These days, instead of instructing our patients in the art of meditation or qigong, reading their fate in the stars, and adjusting their home environment to correct imbalances, we are more likely to send them for lab tests and spend our time taking courses on which procedure codes to stack up on our insurance bills. Perhaps this is all necessary to survive as a healthcare provider in this strange antagonistic world.
But I long for a return to the Taoist roots of Chinese medicine, when a poem might be the prescription, and a life well lived, not a lab test, was the measure of success.
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August 25, 2009
The Most Radical Health Program
No one should feel bad that the Chinese did it first. After all, they’ve had 5000 years to noodle with these things. But before we go on we have to take a simple test. If you still believe that the quality and kind of health care we have is dependent only on the attempt to supply the finest care for the most people then this new (old) approach may be too much foryou. If you can see the influence of such extrogenous factors as money, status, power and-very important- convenience then you are ready.
This absolutely radical approach which the Chinese employed for millennia was this (and as we will see it directly relates to the practice of Qigong): you pay the doctor when you are well, not sick. If he keeps you well forever, so much the better. If you get sick his fees stop until you are better.
Let me take a second to recover myself. And I know about this. Whew, better now. Well, first off some could say we already have this and it’s called insurance but of course that’s not true because insurance you pay when you are sick OR well (there’s that convenience issue again, but not for you).
We could discuss this plan for days and turn it around a hundred ways but I want to address just one little twist in the road. Doctors weren’t stupid. They figured out pretty quickly that people really didn’t want to be sick and, better yet, if they could enlist the patient’s cooperation they would be more assured of their fees. So Chinese doctors actually encouraged their patients to do healthful practices.
Such as skiing, bungee jumping, locking and space dodge ball, right? No, they helped to design exercises which were consistent with the medical practices of the culture with a different emphasis such as longevity, conservation of energy, rejuvenation, balance, optimization of movement, reduction of stress. Qigong, Tai Chi and other studies were seen as perfectly grooving in with the needs of the people and, as far as fees continuing to trickle in, with the needs of the medical community.
We somehow think that the pursuit of happiness is tied to returning to the slopes for the fifth time after your fourth ACL operation. I wonder if our medical practitioners would be less likely to feed this delusion if their income were tied to preventing our whimsical self destruction?
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August 24, 2009
Beneath the Personal
There are two great endeavors which require us to leave our personalities aside. By this I mean social endeavors, not individual efforts. In the West this is science which at least aims at an objective sense of the universe. In the East this is meditation which aims at an objective sense of ourselves.
Of course neither is perfect. If they were it would imply that we humans- their creators- were also perfect, and we both know the rest of that story.
People talk a lot about getting away from the personal in our real, too-personal lives. But, as in science, the important thing is to realize this as a goal, a striving and a refinement. In science we have the materialist viewpoint to at least give us something to aim at. This is extremely helpful because, rather than trying to do what Alan Watts used to call “pulling ourselves up by our own bootstraps”, we can shelve our immediate failures while acting as though objectivity were at least possible.
But what is objectivity in the Eastern sense? Objectivity is the knowledge that the subjective world inside you is not a reflection of your personality. Through decades of centuries Asian thought has refined the idea of something deeper than personality, more fundamental than the individual. Call it Atman, call it Qi, call it the Awakened state but realize at least that it is a sense of grace outside human concerns.
The foundation of Qigong is a recognition that we have an internal world which is not a soap opera centered around our own needs, fears and desires. We are, after all, human beings before we are men or women, old or young, intelligent or not. This undifferentiated plasma of consciousness vibrates like a universe of strings to a melody more intimate than anything we could ever even want much less understand.
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August 22, 2009
Stardust Qi
I walked through our local Arboretum this morning amazed at the diversity, the endless adaptivity of the trees. I try to recall the names of the most intriguing but whenever I do, I remember Richard Feynman’s father warning him that he should never confuse knowing the name of something with knowing about it. Take Qi. Right now people are so concerned about the definition. But there are so many things we know the names of and very little else. Love, for instance. Or inertia. Or the evolutionary origins of certain chemical reactions in the body such as blood clotting.
Qi moves in you whether you believe in it or not. It is, according to one non-definition, the same Qi that manifests in the Aboretum’s banksia ( Plantae/Angiosperms/Eudicots/Proteals/Proteaceae/Banksia) is the same Qi everywhere, like stardust, and nothing we can think of—including that which thinks—can be anything else.
Sometimes I become concerned that this obsession—that everything is either scientific or not—is a kind of superstition. (Some people call it “scientism”.) It’s too much like how we react when something horrible occurs for which we have no reason, such as a school shooting. We make up the causes because causes soothe us. I guess I’m a realist. I can’t abide such superstition. My real world is composed of things I do know and things I don’t know. Both are honored because both are true.
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August 21, 2009
Health Care: Free, Simple, Self Reliant
The health care debate at present has moved into the realm of fantasy, a very dark fantasy. Besides ridiculous misrepresentations of what each side intends, cross accusations of wrong doing, sloppy thinking and name calling on the level of kindergarten there’s a problem no one mentions. This problem, pandemic to modern culture–particularly in America–is the persistent misrepresentation that money equals quality health care and vice versa.
Nothing could be further from the truth and, in fact, it’s a sad day when a nation acclaimed for its “know-how” equates health care with pocketbooks. But let’s be frank, health care is shifting from an honest attempt to help people to strictly a money game. Insurance companies dictate doctors’ fees, legal departments compel malpractice rates, insurers routinely refuse to pay claims just to see who will go away.
And then there’s the national shame for what some people believe to be a great health care system. There has never been a proper encouragement of preventative care. The action-oriented, antagonistic, results-craving mentality finds it hard to comprehend that the best approach to any illness is to not let it happen in the first place. So little effort and money is spent on preventative medicine—not the prejudiced studies, mind you, but the medicine—that any health care model must always resolve itself into a major obsession with who gets the pie instead of how good the pie is.
Enter Qigong and other practices like Tai Chi. Even if Chinese medical terminology seems confusing, or the theory strikes you as mystical, these practices have fundamental strengths to recommend them. Take Tai Chi example, an exercise partly designed by a doctor. Its great benefits come from the fact it is slow, careful, strength building, rhythmic, calming, highly efficient, posturally correct, pleasant, age and sex suitable, engaging and, with slight modifications, can even be aerobic. It requires no equipment and, once learned can be practiced for the length of one’s life. Qigong is the same with the added advantage of having a modularity which allows you to learn very small exercises one at a time rather than memorizing the more intricate and complex routines of Tai Chi.
Once learned the cost of either is exactly nothing. The movements are very safe, encouraging good respiration and reducing stress at the same time. It can be communal or solitary; requires no special area to be built, like a stadium or a court; it encourages an efficiency and grace that is expressed in everyday life.
And there’s another bonus which could be huge. Qigong encourages people to reflect on themselves, to take a bit more responsibility for their own health. One of the most disappointing things about the health care debate is its top-down, condescending, hierarchical, money-dominated orientation. The people are left wondering which “provider” to bow to (forgetting that, according to some of their own beliefs, there is only one health care provider ultimately). It certainly doesn’t encourage the kind of self-reliance so many people pride themselves on but which crumbles like a dirt tower when it comes to the topic of health. We are, instead, encouraged by this system to be dependent, about something so fundamentally ours as our own health and well-being. We have become a nation of people afraid of self-examination, unfamiliar with our own bodies, only capable of asking the doctor which pills go in which combination.
Don’t expect anyone to pick up this noble banner soon, though. In this scheme there’s no one except a few underpaid Qigong instructors to make any money and, like they say, if cars were free and ran on water instead of gasoline we’d still be riding bicycles.
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August 20, 2009
Entelechy
Entelechy and Jing
What is this? Definitions first. Entelechy is the implicit tendency that every living being contains to realize its true nature. And Jing is a Chinese medical term. It has several meanings. One is, in a very literal sense, sexual fluids. But in a broader sense it is the part of us that knows how to reproduce itself. By implication then it is the patterning in the DNA that understands how to differentiate cells, how to heal a wound for example.
Many people today are disconnected from their true self and confused about their purpose in life. They are looking for a way to reclaim authenticity and a compass that can keep them on track. Qigong can help us with this. It trains us be attentive to the expression of our own Jing.
Though not a familiar word, entelechy is a more familiar concept because it permeates our western culture. For instance, we can easily understand the idea that an acorn implicitly knows how to become an oak tree. It is much harder for us to understand the Chinese view of Jing as a source of life direction. Qigong practice may be a way for us to learn to see that.
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August 19, 2009
No Practice
Sometimes my morning qigong practice consists entirely of sitting and gazing out the window. I used to feel guilty about this, as if I were dodging my commitment, succumbing to laziness, just plain goofing off. But my dog, a Chinese Pug whose ancestors lived in Tibetan monasteries and who knows a thing or two about these matters, is teaching me the value of simplicity. She is a master of the Taoist meditation practice called “sitting and forgetting.”
With the quietude of an old monk, she spends some portion of each day sitting by the window watching life unfold in the yard outside. One morning I took my tea and joined her instead of immediately starting my daily qigong exercise. We sat on the landing halfway up the stairs (her favorite spot,) where there’s a view of the garden from two corner windows. Squirrels dashed about; the neighbor’s black tabby cat sat quietly watching the fish pond; woodpeckers dived at the feeders; a few falling leaves, harbingers of autumn, traced a lazy path through the air. We just sat and watched. I sipped my tea. I thought maybe I should get on with my morning practice instead of wasting time staring out the window. But then I poured another cup of tea, my gesture as simple and natural as the drifting autumn leaves.
Sometimes our practices become self-improvement projects. It’s not easy to notice when this happens. At what point does commitment become drudgery, discipline a lifeless and repetitive routine? How do we stay true to the living moment, the ever fresh and spontaneous movement of the qi? Surely daily practice is important, you argue. We couldn’t just go along doing whatever we want like children at play. After all, we have to show up for work every day. How will we make progress, stay healthy, achieve our goals, if we don’t practice every day? Well, yes. I know these arguments well, and I agree. My daily practice creates a sturdy vessel for me. Anchored by the consistency of that container, I’m better able to handle life’s unexpected and unpredictable events with some measure of grace.
On the other hand, perhaps the ultimate mastery is the practice of “no-practice,” just doing each thing as it comes up. Yes, like a child. Right now, I’m gazing out the window. My dog leans peacefully against me. I reach for another cup of tea.
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August 18, 2009
Baskin Robbins 3000
The Chinese government has estimated that somewhere around three thousand (yes, 3000) forms of Qigong still exist in China. It’s true they may be disappearing faster than the rain forest but, as of now, there is still a great inheritance.
Martial arts fans of Kung Fu may know that Kung Fu used to boast (before the devastation called the Cultural Revolution) somewhere around 350 styles of martial practice. But the 3000 forms of Qigong makes one pause. Why, that’s inventing one new style a year for the last three thousand years. Good Lord, that would be astonishing if, as is the case, Qigong were not about 3000 years old.
Think of it, one of the most creative peoples on the face of the earth given 3000 years. It used to be a fact that the amount of poetry written in the Chinese language exceeded all the poetry in the rest of the world combined. Hardly surprising when you think of how long the Chinese have loved poetry and how many Chinese have done so. Remember this is a culture that looks to be entering it’s SIXTH renaissance soon.
But the major reason there are so many styles of Qigong is that it is deeply rooted in the lives of the Chinese folk. I remember traveling to Taiwan on a plane. You know one of those long, drowsy trips. I awoke suddenly around midnight and the old lady next to me, the one I had helped with her seat belt, was rubbing her hands together. After a few second this lovely old Hui (Chinese Moslem) woman held her palms out and we both watched as they turned a deep purple. Then she proceeded to massage her face. This was as dramatic a demonstration as any teacher I saw in Taipei. And, obviously, it was a family thing, a little traditional self-maintenance handed down from grandmother to grandmother
So, let me tell you, 3000 is probably just the number of Qigong methods which have survived the centuries. Qigong is one of the great contributions of Chinese society and to think that it all depends on what modern people, fickle as the wind, think or don’t think about it all is to be a little naive. Qigong is on the planet to stay. How it will develop in the next hundred or so years may, in part, be up to you.
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Joy and Qi
The Nei Jing is the oldest medical record in China. Here’s a section from it:
“It is known that all diseases arise out of the upset of Qi.
Anger pushes the Qi up,
Joy makes the Qi slack,
Grief scatters the Qi,
Fear drops the Qi down,
and Anxiety stagnates the Qi.”
Of course we can see the etiology of disease in other terms, such as the germ theory. But let’s consider this ancient approach for a minute. We know, for example, that fear can make someone pee in his pants (down), or that anxiety locks up the whole person (stagnates). We recognize that strong emotions can affect the entire metabolic system and, in this case, we regard Qi in its funciton of representing the whole human being, not just a fuzzy energy floating around inside body.
The idea of strong emotions affecting people isn’t new. But the concept of the benefits of nothing in excess, a basic attitude not only of Chinese medicine but of Chinese culture, can be a little confusing to over-reved modern man.
Let’s take a telling example: Joy. How can you have too much joy (other than knowing it has all got to end sometime)? Well, let’s push the idea a little and see if it pushes back. Imagine someone on drugs or drunk who has begun to feel “real good” and starts to jump around, dance wildly, annoying people in a friendly way, spilling drinks, etc. in his ebullience. Well of course the first negative result might very well be a punch in the mouth. On another level the part of the character which “holds us together” is so weak that the over-joyed (think about that word) person stars going off in ten directions at once. Waiting for a fall? Of course. What about joy at that new relationship that just took you over by storm? Heartache in the morning? Scattered so much by that inheritance that you ignore your friends? Definitely hidden shoals ahead. Joy can be as dangerous as other emotions- in excess. Remember all those lottery ticket winners who fall over with heart attacks. And, as the medical sages always said, joy attacks the heart.
A good, rational look at the emotions convinces us that the developers of the ancient medical theory had at least something right in their observations. As we explore the uses and meaning of Qi we might be surprised at just how right they were.
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August 17, 2009
How do You Define It?
Qi is the energy of life in all its forms.
Millions of people practice this ancient art: a way of life, of stress reduction, of finding contentment and of learning about yourself. Yet it’s all based on a word that most people can’t even define. Of course we shouldn’t let that bother us too much. We live our lives reacting to, chasing, pondering and hoping for all sorts of things we can’t define. You know that. Be honest. Can you really define the love you have for your mate or the hopes of a life that matches your aspirations? Defining things is nice and important but too many people have a superstitious—yes superstitious—belief in definitions. If they don’t have one they feel hollow or insecure.
For instance there is no acceptable definition of Qi as of yet. This does not mean it is “unscientific”. It means quite the opposite. The guy who rushes out and creates a definition with all the currently popular ideas and words such as “bioelectric energy” or “somatic auras”, “biological electrical field” and other guesses is indeed performing a sort of a service but only if the guess is a good one. On the other hand real honesty demands that when you don’t absolutely know something you admit it. The finest minds we have in physics admit that super-string theory, though possible, is not necessarily plausible.
Look, you know you are alive, right? The DNA of a dead person is the same as a living one but there’s a vital something missing. Possibly a soul, definitely life. You know that, and you feel it. Just as we cannot define love, humor, beauty, serenity, truth and a thousand other things that make our life worth living so we have a thing called Qi, the essence of our life energy. Looked at rationally it isn’t a thing at all. It is a combination of factors which were identified three thousand years ago by the Chinese sages. Unlike just about every other culture on the planet the Chinese never developed their own origin myth. They borrowed these from other cultures because, in the truest sense, the Chinese never saw a beginning or end to the universe.
But they recognized its energy, its pulsing life. As you practice Qigong, keep this in mind. A definition of the chemical components of your dinner would be interesting but what helps the most in the actual enjoyment of the food is to relax and experience it. Who knows? if you focus your intention you might develop into a gourmet of life.
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A Free World Inside
The only thing keeping Qigong from being one of the most controversial topics in the twenty first century is that so few people know anything about it. That’s, of course, ignoring the over fifty million people who practice it now. Just this month we have two beautiful examples. The first is from the Gainesville Sun and it’s a short article telling how people in that area are coming to Qigong for everything from stress reduction to toxicity.
On the other side of the world, in the very country of Qigong’s origin, we have the beginning of a repressive movement to ban all new Qigong groups.
Why is this? What is the threat poses suddenly by a three thousand year old exercise that is beautiful, ritualized, relaxing and serene? Well, one answer lies in the fact that freedom is always a radical concept. Now there’s all kinds of freedoms but wise people from all over the earth have, throughout history, discovered that the freedom we obtain from knowing out true selves is often the deepest and most personal form of freedom. Not the same as freedom from restraint or political freedom, the freedom of self-knowledge poses a threat not to this or that form of compulsion but to the very idea of compulsion.
The world of Qigong is a wonderful place and a wonderful practice. But, as you can see, some times the idea of change itself scares some people while beckoning others.
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