We do it in some circumstances and then forget that we do it at all. My wife thinks I am like a dog because, when I am sick, I don’t need nursing so much as retiring to a dark room to lie and wait. My world shrinks and my “being” does, too. I draw inward: which is a little different from just withdrawing. Everything is still in there. I’m not pulling away from anything, I’m just consolidating my-self. (more…)
January 27, 2010
October 13, 2009
The Twitch of Anxiety
Not everyone knows it but there is often a lot of “standing still” in the practice of Qigong. That’s right, you just stand there without moving and, as you might guess, this can be difficult for people. Here’s a thought on one of the reasons for our antsy behavior.
We stand and we wiggle. (more…)
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October 12, 2009
October Warning: Don’t Sweat the Negative
There’s an expression making the rounds lately among beginning Qigong practitioners. Some times you will hear, “Wow, he just like dumped his negative qi all over me.” In a society like ours where some of these ideas are very new there is going to be a lot of slop-over at first. There’s no way around that. (more…)
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September 12, 2009
Self Correction for Moi?
Ancient writings say “Nature is self correcting.” At first blush this sounds poetic but hard to comprehend. Nature is so difficult to fathom, so impossible to simplify, so far beyond prediction. But ultimately the ancient writings are correct. When we stand back from our fears and our desires we see that Nature resolves everything in its own course. And what does that mean? It’s more than a nice philosophy, it validates the most basic observation humans ever made, namely that Nature has a direction, a hidden organizing principle. Nature continually returns to its own essence, it continually resolves itself and all the problems it creates. (more…)
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September 4, 2009
Qigong Physicality
What have I seen in Qigong classes? I’ve seen the wrinkled brows of the confused slowly smooth out with an internal experience of comprehension as though their mind’s eyes were seeing a code deciphered. I’ve seen shoulders slip off their invisible sandbags. One elder student had not played the violin for two years then reports one day that he is playing again, shoulder pain suddenly gone. I’ve seen the beginning of incipient self-knowlege, body knowledge grow not from the mechanistic movements of someone distressed and unenthusiastically following his PT’s instructions but accompanied with a sense of self-exploration that goes beyond determination. (more…)
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September 1, 2009
The Yin and Yang of Yin and Yang: Part 2
Here’s the rule we were talking about: Stillness engenders movement and movement creates stillness. Stillness itself is considered yin and movement is yang. But as the yin/yang symbol (known as the Taiji Tu) shows, when stillness reaches an extreme it starts to turn over to movement (like the moon waning after fullness). (more…)
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August 31, 2009
The Yin and Yang of Yin and Yang: Part 1
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…)
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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 18, 2009
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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