Embodiment and the energy body

I have some random thoughts. Chris talks about emphasizing the chi kung as a communication skill which is helpful. To keep living in the question and listen.

I also hear in what you describe a tension between the contained physical feel of your one practice and the lighter energetic one of IA. I think what Chris is inferring is this is not a problem but another portal through polarity where openings can happen if we can listen and use it.

Your experiences/results may appear as opposites and perhaps the linear internal development paradigm of your tai chi practice would see this as moving so quickly you cannot integrate the two. That is an inner belief you have to challenge and question for yourself.

It seems if IA attracted you the capacity to integrate is present and by putting it out to the Forum to be witnessed you are on the verge of discoveries.

My personal experience is opposite yours but may offer an idea. I find it easier to connect to IA as the energetic practice it is and have found the need to discover ways to ground myself.

In the practice it seems if I really attend to detail of structure and form….say in the Primordial…rooting as one would in standing practices the tension between the energy body which is stimulated by the form, intention and visualization etc. is met by the intention to root in body.

This has been helping me with all the forms Michael teaches, Fundamentals onward. Not to get sloppy with them is helping me now. Stay intentional and grounded.

The other thought is when a practice affects my life deeply, areas of emotion and relationship with work, intimates, my past, my future are all affected. If this is happening and the chi is being shaped according to some mysterious and uncontrollable origin I am happy (well not always happy but stimulated)

And we live our lives on all these levels anyway don’t we, so I think the paradigm from the tai chi approach as you understand it seems impractical and unusable as life is daily lived. Looking forward to others, Barry

The heart the belly the feet the earth…I like it…balance out the big head

Plus I am feeling more the sense behind the pearl which holds substance and energetic wanderings. Holds the physical circulations and the energetic/heart circulations.

Thanks, Sophia

“…IA is a high art and requires a certain grounding and opening in the physicality of the body before you can work with the energy body in an embodied way.”

Ludrup, The essence of the work, as I experience it, is finding balance between yin and yang until that balance spontaneously continues on its own. It’s always a matter of unifying the physical body, the yin, with the energy body, the yang; they are the two modes of the one original force. There is a long process of integration at higher and higher levels until it establishes itself as one. But it is never about anything but this balance.

As for what you say about people being ungrounded- we must be able to feel the energy in order to be properly grounded because that is part of what we are grounding. But we will be able to go only so far into the higher formulae if we are not willing to take the body and its emotions along with us. Disconnection is due mostly from not allowing our feelings to direct us instead of our minds -as in Barry’s comment about balancing out the big head.

From the Heart, S

B- “When we say people are disconnected from their bodies what do we mean?”

What *I* mean by that is not being in touch with what we feel, physically, emotionally, psychically or spiritually. The place that we feel from is our body. We want to bring it all down here. That is what is meant by “embodiment.”

B- “These practices are made to break us open.”

Personally, Barry, I do not like the use of the word “break” there. I am not trying to break myself open in an effort to get free of my stuff. I think of all this more as a spiritual sex kind of thing where the body and spirit are moving together in love, and through the space they create in the middle let love steam away the miscreated energies and blockages, and create identification with neutrality and wholeness.

I think of doing these practices as simply following the course of nature. When we do them we “accelerate” our growth only because we are deciding to swim in the direction life is already taking us. It is actually easier to swim with the tide than against it, so the idea of working hard on my growth I have come to understand as part of the problem.

Ludrup is suggesting that if he takes people into their energy bodies before they have some rooting skill that they will get lost, and I agree with him. But a careful balancing of both sides is necessary and that is a very individual thing. Westerners in particular have the desire to escape from their feelings and ignore their bodies, and to live from their heads instead. So it is necessary to emphasize building a relationship with earth energies downward to support the growth upward, like a tree does. Since we are human, we encounter ourselves along the way. This shows us where the love isn’t, and what we have next to do.

For emphasis, I agree with focus on the center, the cosmic space in which it all happens.

Steamy Love,
-S

S,

Thanks,I feel the warmth of your comments and approach. Also the wisdom of not working so hard. A constant edge for me in this time of great shifting.

Your comments make me look at what I really mean and try to put into clearer words.I will ramble a bit, but that is what the forum allows- to listen to myself unedited and get reflections back.

Granted I tend towards the excitement/fire of breaking ground but not so much to get away from my stuff as to figure out with heart/mind how use its energies to take me to another level of self expression.

I think my point is people want a spiritual practice but not want to really change which is impossible. Just look at what is happening to yoga in the culture. Not all but the image of comfort,beauty, wealth, attainments has risen to the surface. Most who are into yoga will go once a week, if that, to a class and not know how to touch deeply into their halted voices.

Yogis stare at this and scratch their heads.

When I want to get away from my own stuff I get nowhere- though a part of me tries over and over. I do this as a subtle way to resist real change. I think your expressed approach(taoist approach) reveals a strong earth-body connection.

I get that real change is an acceleration of where I am already swimming. That is a good touchstone.

It is in the space though between meeting the places where love isn’t and doing what we have next to do where the discussion opens up.

This is where life can break open and really shift like a plant that pushes the soil up over its head. But unlike the plant we bring fear along and together- adventure and fear- one is on their own journey.

On some level I experience it as a gentle art. In my deepest heart. I would like to rest here more. And I am, with modeling like yours and others, but I also struggle and fear and resist and move awkwardly.

As I do I remember most people will move from this place as they try to hold what has given them apparent safety in the past. So I have great self compassion and for others too.

Well, I am called to a promised card game with a 7 year old- be well, barry

I agree with what I think Barry is saying, which is that by practising the inner smile/fusion/kan and li, and forging a pathway of communication with the five shen, we are communicating with the body-mind.

The forms of unconsciousness and resistance that come up are what make up the disconnect, these are hopefully dissolved at various levels by cultivation.

Rooting takes place through connecting with our inner earth and creating a sense of boundary that allows us to feel our individual self. Earth energy practice is very important, but be careful not to focus externally for grounding; by being aware of our energetic consciousness through cultivation, we can find the earth energy within ourselves that communicates with the earth being below our physical feet, and bridge and embrace the areas of physicality within ourselves that resist communicating with our inner witness.

Of course, though westerners are very head centered so any physical qigong or movement practice will be helpful in getting us out of our heads and into our body.