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Is anyone here open to the notion that the movements of Qigong are effects rather than causes?
If anyone wants me to clarify what I mean by that, let me know and I’ll do so. But I suspect it’ll be clear just as-is.
I guess I see it as both effects and causes, kind of like yin-yang. Anotherwards I believe it to be a relationship. The actual doing of the Qigong is the cause (yang) and the opening or awareness of our chi (subtle body) is the effect (yin).
But perhaps you are getting at something else that is not as obvious.
=================Yes. I’m suggesting that it’s the other way around; that these movements are the emanations of the opening or awareness. They don’t cause the opening awareness; they are the effect of it.
In other words, the awareness/opening comes first (with the intention to do the movement…just ahead of the movement), and the movements result from that. The intention does the work.
Winn talks about Chi as being the waves of communication between Jing and Shen. The emphasis I take from that is that is “communication”, not a directive from one aspect to another.
What I hear from jimbo is a suggestion that the flow of communication is one way – from Shen to Chi to Jing.
What I hear from DamonM is more similar to my interpretation of what Winn says.
The communication from Shen to Jing makes sense to our minds – we do things because we think them, the movement being from subtle to dense.
The communication from Jing to Shen, though, is an essential component to living and to the importance of this life. At the level of the self, of living, it is important to experience the limitation and desires of Jing and for that to be fed back to the Shen. At the level of the Universe, it is important for it to experience the limitations and desires of Jing of all beings, to influence the grand dynamic. In this latter sense, it is similar to the situation “Matrix”, but instead of feeding energy to some greater being, we are feeding it information.
I have to admit, I am comfortable with my first assertion (the value of Jing to Shen communication at the level of the individual), but not quite so sure of the second (the Universal level).
Thoughts?
I can agree with the notion that it works both ways. What I have trouble with is that a given motion creates an effect…just like that. If that were true, traffic cops and violists would be creating all sorts of energetic mayhem for themselves day after day (that’s not the crux of my point…mostly just making a joke).
I come to this from yoga, where it’s widely believed that the poses were originally spontaneous movements by people in very high states of consciousness. Even today, less cultivated people exhibit “automatic yoga” during deep meditation or spiritual arousal. The pose is effect, not cause. And yoga practice is, therefore, a sort of boostrapping whereby you emulate the movements and try to find your way back to their original germ of inspiration, which creates both the movement and the energetic/spiritual/therapeutic effect. In other words, movement and effect are both consequences of attention and intent.
Watching Michael’s Qigong DVD, I feel the effects from just watching. It’s contagious. Same with yoga…strongly visualizing a pose can bring a profound sensation of having actually done the pose, and even some of the therapeutic effects.
And that brings me to the heart of what i’m suggesting: it’s not the movement that does the healing/opening/energizing. It’s the intention. The movement is an aftereffect, a relic, an empty pattern in and of itself.
Let me put it this way. I’m supposing you all would agree that a dry, cursory practice of qigong, with no internal focus, breathing, and all the rest, would have little effect. I’m also supposing you’d all agree that great focus and breathing applied to an inner experience of the motion without the gross physical acting out of the motion would have pretty good effect (or even the full effect). I’m wondering if you’d all go a tiny bit further and agree that the physical movement itself is really nearly beside the point.
Of course, I’m not saying the “boostrapping” (of learning the motions, be they asana or qigong) isn’t useful for the vast majority of people who need to work with coarse gross movements. They learn to inhabit those empty patterns, and then, in time, learn to “add” intent and attention. There’s no shortcut, unless you have an innate sense of your energetic body.
But what I’m proposing is that swinging your hands and twisting your torso don’t ground your kidneys. The grounding of your kidneys make your hands swing and torso twist.
That’s my intuition, anyway, for whatever it’s worth. I may be wrong, but hope it’ll provoke insightful discussion.
Voice,
I think if communication goes two ways between shen and jing, wich I believe it does, then wouldn’t it be obvious that communication between ourselves and the universe goes both ways as well. It is not just us feeding the universe, but the universe feeding us at the same time. Through our communication with the universe we can acces all the energy and information available.
In a sense it is very much like the internet.This discussion interests me tho it is abstract. When one speaks of sequences and what precedes or follows it doesn’t really resonate with the experience I have while cultivating.
It is my mind’s experience, yes, but not my experience from the center where time isn’t in the same sequential formula.
From the center I do sense that smaller or more highly focused I am with my physical movements there is a tendency for larger more significant inner responses. As in Feldenkrais or deeper levels of yoga.
I guess where the hair on my back rises is to the idea we don’t really need the body to initiate or even have these experiences- that it is for beginners and those less adept.
I am not sure why this bothers me except it feels off base and slips into polarities that don’t need to be separated.
What is the body? How have I raped and exploited it- pushed and ignored it and how forgiving it is when given a voice.
Perhaps this is a digression but it is what came up for me…Barry
I think I get what you’re saying Jimbo. It’s like when starting Primordial Chi Kung, and waiting for the earth energy to arise, and give that impulse to start the form. Or, like how the movements with Ocean Breathing get smaller and smaller until it is really an internal movement.
But, we couldn’t do chi kung unless we had a body. So, the original movement of chi kung practice is incarnation from spirit to body, shen to jing, because of the attraction of jing. What about jing was attractive? How did it initiate motion in shen (the counterpart that you seem to be talking about, how shen motivates movement of jing in chi kung).
Chi kung and alchemy is, for me, not about becoming filled with spirit. The body is as important as spirit. Really, there is a continuum from jing to chi to shen, but our culture is so jing focussed (actually, we are focussed on other people’s jing, and have a hard time being centered in our own body) that to open up we end up swinging to the extreme of becoming shen focussed.
Again, for me, alchemy is about the dance of it all – jing chi shen, heaven earth humanity, later early primordial heaven, yin yang yuan etc.
Fun discussion!
Two-way communication all the way:
Universe to me, me to Universe,
personal shen to personal jing, personal jing to personal shen.etc to etc
Welcome back Chris. I appreciate your way with words. I come from such a feeling level I can write in circles but I hear your mental clarity and gentleness and it is supportive.
You must have had a good lake experience, eh? Barry
Interesting. I just came upon the following Michael Winn quote, which seems to indicate he feels the same. He’s speaking here of breathing rather than qigong movements, but I’d be pretty surprised if he’d say this doesn’t still apply:
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There is a relationship between an energy field and a physical process. The pattern in that energy field is what determines the pattern in your physical breathing; it is not the other way around. You can change your physical breathing pattern around but in order to do that you have already made a shift energetically. The energy field shift always precedes the shifting pattern of physical breathing.
——–Michael talks alot and is sort of like the bible – you could probably find him saying something to support any view! (At least, thinking that way I can hold onto my views without being wrong, and without having to comb through his many tapes and transcripts for support for what I am thinking/saying 🙂
We’re all just talking about where we are right now: tomorrow I could be where you are, and the next day off to something different.
Michael talks alot and is sort of like the bible – you could probably find him saying something to support any view! (At least, thinking that way I can hold onto my views without being wrong, and without having to comb through his many tapes and transcripts for support for what I am thinking/saying 🙂
We’re all just talking about where we are right now: tomorrow I could be where you are, and the next day off to something different.
Ha! Fair enough! 🙂
But I wasn’t fishing for proof that “I’m right”. Just interested to get at least some basis of agreement that what I powerfully intuit might not be entirely nuts 🙂
My feeling is you can’t really do all that much from the strictly gross level. Spiritual systems that have you enter via the gross level seem to do so as a skillful means to “trick” practitioners unfamiliar with the energetic level into engaging there….over time.
For reasons I stated above, my feeling is that qigong is the same. However! I’m new to qigong, and am sticking with the gross movements for now (I’m having kidney issues, and am practicing deep earth/kidney pulsing qigong from Michael’s DVD). I may have some questions for y’all in the near future…..
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