Thoughts on Qi
Posted: Mon Sep 09, 2019 9:40 pm
Imagine two stone columns, equally bearing the weight of a beam above. In the other situation, there is twice the weight placed on one of the columns than the other. In that situation you could expect the second column to deteriorate faster than the first one, but depending on the building material interesting things could happen. For example, let's say that due to the pressure placed on the one column, it became less porous than the other, and held less water -- and as a result it did not deteriorate so quickly.
When uneven weights are placed upon the body the way your structural muscles respond is to expand to support the weight:
weight pushing here =====> <====muscle expands====> |wall/floor| (base of support)
So, in the body there are balanced supports on either side of the body, on the front and back of the body, in any way there is a muscle there is a support of the body in this regard. There are also supports from your bones, tendons, your fascia (although it is not nearly as important as muscle or tendon) and so forth.
When uneven forces are placed on the body, the natural way the body deals with these forces is to expand along the force path from the point of contact, through the support network, through to the ground. This is called the ground path. Here are some examples;
a)
force (downwards)
============
=
=
=
============
support(ground)
b)
force downwards
=
=
=
=
=
=
=
support
in "a" there is a c-shaped structure, with a bend in it. This is not as efficient as "b" because you will need to employ great strength to keep the structure from collapsing further. In 'b' the structure itself supports the load and the muscle use is employed merely in keeping the structure, and is minimal.
In situation 'a' you are tense, and in situation 'b' you are completely relaxed. From this may we deduce that the groundpath is an external form of martial arts? no, because the ground path would exist independant of how it is maintained (it is in both a or b). So what we see instead is that knowledge of the ground path is irreverent and the key to understanding what is going on lies elsewhere. Focusing on a ground path is focusing on force against force. Instead, relaxing this force and allowing the body to return to balance allows you to yield to this force. Therefore only by relaxing and seeking balance can you apply these taiji principles and never by maintaining a ground path. Although technically you would be aware of the ground path, it is more something to avoid than to embrace.
The key to understanding: The Yi leads the Qi
=============================================
The point of Qigong is that you cannot control your Qi flow, at least in the sense you can control the muscles of your hand. Whenever there is an effect of Qi, it is subconscious, it happens outside of your control as the result of some physical practice. It may also be difficult to explain precisely how you should move physically, and the effect of the qi (however important) may be exceedingly small. Therefore you are given visualizations. These visualizations serve two purposes: They give you a clue on how you should move or position your body, and/or they describe the feeling you will get when you start feeling your qi. Training your mind to expect these feelings will lower the shock value when you feel your qi so the experience may last longer and you can practice for longer. In general though visualizations are the collected experiences of teachers before you, and only serve to increase your rate of progress. You never need visualizations, you can come to the ideas on your own through standard practice, but you must dedicate yourself to the study of the art if that is how you want to approach things.
So since the only way to cause the qi to move properly is via an induced effect, and we have no mental control over it, it should be obvious that this is something that requires the physical pattern to be drilled into your mind and body until it becomes second nature, until you could run around in your own house blind, if you had to. Then you can make your body subject to the feelings and visualizations slowly over time as you make steady progress.
Against any kind of strength training or loading
=========================================
A Qi channel is considered open when it is expanding <======> and considered closed when it is shrinking >=====<. When all of the qi channels are balanced, either expanded or contracted, this is song. This is different than being blocked. When a qi channel is blocked, the subconscious has closed the channel and/or locked it so that it may not move. Because it stagnates, it will create death. This is similar to frozen muscles or low-airation in side the body leading to cancer.
Imagine some muscle A<======B=====C=>D where A and D are the expansion endpoints .What are B, C? They are some points along which there is a discrepancy in the amount of force produced by the muscle. On load this will cause the muscle to pull. When a wave of force passes A to D and is interrupted by B or C it will cause a sharp pain and the qi channel will block.
When train you create a system whereby A<=====>B<======>C<======>D are song, i.e. they are open or closed together (one parts move, all parts move). If your muscle BC is incongruent with the force produced or loaded onto the body the channel will close and become blocked and you will injure yourself.
In this situation you cannot allow yourself to completely relax because doing so will expose the fault at 'B' or 'C' and you will experience great pain. So your body subconsciously refuses to allow you to relax, and you cannot even detect which qi channels are blocked in this state, so you cannot fix the problem yet.
Breath
=======
When you raise your hands and breathe in, the lungs expand and the shoulder muscles expand, leading to the maintenance of harmony in the body. When one of these forces are out of place, the body is unable to connect it's qi channels and it is like a jigsaw puzzle, there is no image available to be seen so nothing is seen. When the pieces start to fit together, the picture is seen.
Yin and yang
==============
When force is transferred from one leg to another, there is a continuous change in the loading of the pillars of the body. This causes the channels to open and close smoothly in accordance with the weight transfer, and the opening and closing of these channels must also be in accordance with the breath. Thus, the long-flowing and continuous motions of tai chi produce long-flowing and continuous (cyclical) patterns of qi flow within the body. Originally various kinds of qigong were used to open specific channels, when these are linked together in sequence the channels open and close smoothly (in sequence), and if they are linked together in a specific sequence they can open and close smoothly in a specific sequence. Thus all Chinese martial arts know about qi and jing, and use it, but all use it in different ways, some try to send it out, some try to move left, right, up, down, in, out, some try this and that, but only when the qi flow is recycled by retaining the force sent out by the physical action, and re-used internally (as the old timers are said to prefer less fajing, versus the young) can you show that the motion really is smooth, circular, and unbroken, across the whole body and not just a part of it.
Qi
=======
It's impossible to do all of this without a guide, and the guide is itself the Qi. When you coordinate all of these things, it will be the flow of Qi in the body which begins to control the individual motions which come together to make the together-motion. A great example of this is in Charles' Tauber's video where he shows how various independent motions come together to make circular silk reeling.
Full Circle
===========
Since any kind of strength training will create B<===>C within A<====>D to detract from the whole body song, and since you cannot control it mentally, there is no sense in using muscle tension during training (at least until you reach higher levels). The only thing you can do is completely relax and look for the feeling of qi, based on the tips (put your mind here, think of this, hold your hands on your dantian, tuck in your chin, etc.) which are all forms of visualization mixed with the postural tips, or rather a lower form of visualization, which will help pull you into the right structure or get you close enough to start feeling your qi.
Qi-less practice
================
Any martial arts practice which occurs without qi is bad because qi-less practice depends upon the increase of B<===>C and thus lays a foundation of destruction which is a kind of potential energy that lies in wait to destroy the body, like a lion, or a snake in the grass. When the wrong force is applied, esp. the force generated from qi sensitivity, it can easily hurt or even kill a person who has built up too much imbalance in their body.
It's even easy to hurt yourself if you push against the blockages too quickly, sometimes you have to go around it, or even tense yourself up to avoid falling into a black hole of pain and collapsing. Don't enter the pain cave. Just look at it until it goes away.
When uneven weights are placed upon the body the way your structural muscles respond is to expand to support the weight:
weight pushing here =====> <====muscle expands====> |wall/floor| (base of support)
So, in the body there are balanced supports on either side of the body, on the front and back of the body, in any way there is a muscle there is a support of the body in this regard. There are also supports from your bones, tendons, your fascia (although it is not nearly as important as muscle or tendon) and so forth.
When uneven forces are placed on the body, the natural way the body deals with these forces is to expand along the force path from the point of contact, through the support network, through to the ground. This is called the ground path. Here are some examples;
a)
force (downwards)
============
=
=
=
============
support(ground)
b)
force downwards
=
=
=
=
=
=
=
support
in "a" there is a c-shaped structure, with a bend in it. This is not as efficient as "b" because you will need to employ great strength to keep the structure from collapsing further. In 'b' the structure itself supports the load and the muscle use is employed merely in keeping the structure, and is minimal.
In situation 'a' you are tense, and in situation 'b' you are completely relaxed. From this may we deduce that the groundpath is an external form of martial arts? no, because the ground path would exist independant of how it is maintained (it is in both a or b). So what we see instead is that knowledge of the ground path is irreverent and the key to understanding what is going on lies elsewhere. Focusing on a ground path is focusing on force against force. Instead, relaxing this force and allowing the body to return to balance allows you to yield to this force. Therefore only by relaxing and seeking balance can you apply these taiji principles and never by maintaining a ground path. Although technically you would be aware of the ground path, it is more something to avoid than to embrace.
The key to understanding: The Yi leads the Qi
=============================================
The point of Qigong is that you cannot control your Qi flow, at least in the sense you can control the muscles of your hand. Whenever there is an effect of Qi, it is subconscious, it happens outside of your control as the result of some physical practice. It may also be difficult to explain precisely how you should move physically, and the effect of the qi (however important) may be exceedingly small. Therefore you are given visualizations. These visualizations serve two purposes: They give you a clue on how you should move or position your body, and/or they describe the feeling you will get when you start feeling your qi. Training your mind to expect these feelings will lower the shock value when you feel your qi so the experience may last longer and you can practice for longer. In general though visualizations are the collected experiences of teachers before you, and only serve to increase your rate of progress. You never need visualizations, you can come to the ideas on your own through standard practice, but you must dedicate yourself to the study of the art if that is how you want to approach things.
So since the only way to cause the qi to move properly is via an induced effect, and we have no mental control over it, it should be obvious that this is something that requires the physical pattern to be drilled into your mind and body until it becomes second nature, until you could run around in your own house blind, if you had to. Then you can make your body subject to the feelings and visualizations slowly over time as you make steady progress.
Against any kind of strength training or loading
=========================================
A Qi channel is considered open when it is expanding <======> and considered closed when it is shrinking >=====<. When all of the qi channels are balanced, either expanded or contracted, this is song. This is different than being blocked. When a qi channel is blocked, the subconscious has closed the channel and/or locked it so that it may not move. Because it stagnates, it will create death. This is similar to frozen muscles or low-airation in side the body leading to cancer.
Imagine some muscle A<======B=====C=>D where A and D are the expansion endpoints .What are B, C? They are some points along which there is a discrepancy in the amount of force produced by the muscle. On load this will cause the muscle to pull. When a wave of force passes A to D and is interrupted by B or C it will cause a sharp pain and the qi channel will block.
When train you create a system whereby A<=====>B<======>C<======>D are song, i.e. they are open or closed together (one parts move, all parts move). If your muscle BC is incongruent with the force produced or loaded onto the body the channel will close and become blocked and you will injure yourself.
In this situation you cannot allow yourself to completely relax because doing so will expose the fault at 'B' or 'C' and you will experience great pain. So your body subconsciously refuses to allow you to relax, and you cannot even detect which qi channels are blocked in this state, so you cannot fix the problem yet.
Breath
=======
When you raise your hands and breathe in, the lungs expand and the shoulder muscles expand, leading to the maintenance of harmony in the body. When one of these forces are out of place, the body is unable to connect it's qi channels and it is like a jigsaw puzzle, there is no image available to be seen so nothing is seen. When the pieces start to fit together, the picture is seen.
Yin and yang
==============
When force is transferred from one leg to another, there is a continuous change in the loading of the pillars of the body. This causes the channels to open and close smoothly in accordance with the weight transfer, and the opening and closing of these channels must also be in accordance with the breath. Thus, the long-flowing and continuous motions of tai chi produce long-flowing and continuous (cyclical) patterns of qi flow within the body. Originally various kinds of qigong were used to open specific channels, when these are linked together in sequence the channels open and close smoothly (in sequence), and if they are linked together in a specific sequence they can open and close smoothly in a specific sequence. Thus all Chinese martial arts know about qi and jing, and use it, but all use it in different ways, some try to send it out, some try to move left, right, up, down, in, out, some try this and that, but only when the qi flow is recycled by retaining the force sent out by the physical action, and re-used internally (as the old timers are said to prefer less fajing, versus the young) can you show that the motion really is smooth, circular, and unbroken, across the whole body and not just a part of it.
Qi
=======
It's impossible to do all of this without a guide, and the guide is itself the Qi. When you coordinate all of these things, it will be the flow of Qi in the body which begins to control the individual motions which come together to make the together-motion. A great example of this is in Charles' Tauber's video where he shows how various independent motions come together to make circular silk reeling.
Full Circle
===========
Since any kind of strength training will create B<===>C within A<====>D to detract from the whole body song, and since you cannot control it mentally, there is no sense in using muscle tension during training (at least until you reach higher levels). The only thing you can do is completely relax and look for the feeling of qi, based on the tips (put your mind here, think of this, hold your hands on your dantian, tuck in your chin, etc.) which are all forms of visualization mixed with the postural tips, or rather a lower form of visualization, which will help pull you into the right structure or get you close enough to start feeling your qi.
Qi-less practice
================
Any martial arts practice which occurs without qi is bad because qi-less practice depends upon the increase of B<===>C and thus lays a foundation of destruction which is a kind of potential energy that lies in wait to destroy the body, like a lion, or a snake in the grass. When the wrong force is applied, esp. the force generated from qi sensitivity, it can easily hurt or even kill a person who has built up too much imbalance in their body.
It's even easy to hurt yourself if you push against the blockages too quickly, sometimes you have to go around it, or even tense yourself up to avoid falling into a black hole of pain and collapsing. Don't enter the pain cave. Just look at it until it goes away.