Store and Release:

I’ve been training all sorts of things lately. I thought I’d share some thoughts on store and release since no one has posted much lately. My hope is that this is particularly helpful for beginners.

At the moment I like the phrase “store and release” better than opening and closing or shrink and grow. They are all related but store and release has more of a physical connotation for me, however, it can just as easily apply to the most advanced internal practices. It also explains how a 5 foot 2 inch old man that weighed about 100 pounds could be stronger than Bruce in his prime. How was that possible?

I’m going to suggest that the answer is store and release. But before you can talk about this at the advanced level, you need to understand where to start. So, in the beginning…

I think store and release starts with twisting. I think the tissues of our bodies are designed to store and release. Somehow, somewhere we screwed up this natural mechanism. When you start training the body to re-learn this, you want to develop a simplified version of twisting. If you can understand how it works from the hands through the arms back to the spine, you can understand how it works at virtually every level within the physical body.

I currently train the twist in discrete segments. Bruce talks about this in every mastery program and in his books so I don’t want to rehash the whole subject here. Besides Bruce goes into much more detail than I can in a simple post. Instead, I thought I’d try to get you to understand how the parts fits together. Lots of our training is counter productive because we don’t get the big picture. Each part might move in the correct way in and of itself, but in the whole, it may conflict with what you are really trying to accomplish.

I realize this is an utterly vague statement, but it is true. This is even more confusing because once you’ve mastered the art, there are fewer and fewer limitations. It is in the beginning that you have to do it rigorously one way. Later, there is a lot more room for variation. But until you really understand, you are probably fighting with yourself and getting limited results.

So simplify. The hand twisting in closes the joint and draws energy toward the lower tan tien. The hand twisting out opens the joint and sends energy away from the lower tan tien. Period. You don’t engage the central channel and you don’t engage the other tan tiens until the side channels are open (able to smoothly function in both directions, open and close). Period.

The whole of these arts could be summed up as being able to fully, smoothly, consciously store and release using every energy channel in the body, mind, and spirit. But, you have to start somewhere. So, you work with the physical body. The hand twists and spirals inward toward something. You can spiral it into the muscles, fascia, ligaments and tendons, a joint, a gate, a side channel, or into the central channel. You can also combine them together in a sequence. Twist the hand into the wrist, the forearm into the elbow, the upper arm into the shoulder blade, the shoulder blade deeper into the shoulder’s nest, the shoulder’s nest to the midriff.

I can’t easily describe how the leg connects to the arm in this post. I believe the top and bottom join at the midriff in a very particular way, but Bruce hasn’t taught this. For now, just relax the area and allow the spiraling to pass through. Bruce has taught that there is an incredible symmetry between the structure of the hands and feet, elbows and knees, shoulder’s nests and the kwa. This is the subject of the three external combinations. The three internal combinations are the chi, yi, shen. I don’t think Bruce has really taught what this means. I think the chi has to do with the lower tan tien, the yi has to do with the middle tan tien, and the shen has to do with the upper tan tien. And, there is a way to organize these internally that makes the lower tan tien connect to and be primarily responsible for the opening and closing of the shoulder’s nests and kwa. The middle tan tien be primarily responsible for the opening and closing of the elbows and knees. And finally the upper tan tien to be primarily responsible for opening and closing the hands and feet. if I can get verification from Bruce, I’ll post on this in detail.

The point of this digression is simply that there are ways to organize the body that makes it really easy to do and to control openings and closings that would otherwise be a complete mind bender. The way all this stuff fits together is the key. I think this is what a lineage disciple is taught. But I digress.

Going back to twisting, there is a very precise way the hand’s twisting spirals in toward the joint that makes its energy store. The joints don’t work linearly. They absorb along a spiral. It only took me five minutes to show my son how this works all the way from his hand and wrist back to his organs. I could do this because I’m so clear about how each segment connects back to the next. He can’t do this himself, but he could immediately feel the store and release into the physical tissue. So, I believe that this isn’t something special. I didn’t train long and hard so only I can do this. My son has never trained. This is simply the way the body evolved. It is a completely natural mechanism.

Once I got how this worked, I realized that you could go into or away from anywhere tissue and that it wasn’t necessary to go back to the lower tan tien through this long path (wrist, elbow, shoulder,…). Instead, you can spiral right into the central channel. This enables you to absorb or discharge from any point in the body. It also helped me to be very clear that all of the physical body had a distinct quality to it that was different than chi for example. So the heaven palm I could focus on opening all of the channels of the physical body or shift the metaphorical frequency to the chi.

Bruce said it was Liu’s ability to store and release from emptiness that made him so powerful. When we train we store and release and store and release over and over to clear the channels. First the physical and then etheric, and so on through the eight bodies. But everything starts with our physicality. Once you get what this is, you are in the game. Until then, we just fumble around and lots of our training is counter-productive.

The wind and unwind that Bruce describes is the beginning of store and release. It can open the body very quickly providing you do it right. To do it right you have to put together a bunch of pieces each of which Bruce has taught in great detail. The hard part is seeing how they all fit together.