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Hello everyone,
As I understand it, most parts of the body open and close; the joints and cavities open and close, the internal organs open and close and so on. Opening and closing almost seems the idiom of how the body functions.
My question is does qi itself open and close, or does it just circulate? Does it expand and contract with its own rhythmn?
Hope this question makes some kind of sense to someone…
Probably more of a wave oscillation if you look deep enough, presuming that it in any way resembles AC electricity which it may not. The positive and negative oscillations of electricity are kind of like opening and closing but more like a push/pull.
I doubt many people have the sensitivity to answer that question.
It’s pretty interesting stuff
.
Hey Guy,
To me, the body feels like the best reference point for feeling the chi move. In other words, I can feel the chi moving through the body, the tissue, the fluids, etc. in that open and close rhythm….so which one is opening and closing?
Dan
Hi Dan, hope you are well. Ye, I am really trying to get a handle on this nature of chi circulation. For example, is it the case that if chi circulates strongly and smoothly, then opening and closing of the joints and cavities occurs equally properly? Does chi circulate like water, not opening or closing? In the centre to periphery and periphery to centre circulation of chi, is this a pulsating action like breathing? Or, like water circulation, is there a simultaneous circulation from centre to periphery and vice versa? Because of course chi flows up and down, but if I understand it, both occur simultaneously.
Hi Cameron, thanks for replying. It is interesting that you mention AC electricity, because I think this whole discussion hints at a possible relationship between chi and the bioelectrical activity of the nervous system. If this were the case, then the AC electricity model would not describe the electrical nature of the nerves. If I understand it, there exists a DC flow of current across the cell membranes, but also an AC-like, if I can use that expression, flow of depolarisation and reploarisation along the length of the nerve cell dendrites or axons or whatever. This is interesting, because it approximates an AC current, but it is not the same; not the same in the sense that it is not a regularly alternating flow of charged particles. But it definitely approximates it.
Actually, thinking about it, I was wrong to describe the flow of ions across the cell membranes as a DC type of electrical circuit. I was thinking of the standard high school static model of a nerve. But of course no nerve is static in reality. This type of electrical flow could be described as AC electricity of sorts.
To add another level of complexity, any alternating electrical flow will produce a corresponding magnegtic field and vice versa. I am straying towards the limits of my understanding, but electrical and magentic forces are fundamentally intertwined.
I am trying to resolve the problem, but it seems to me that the flow along the length of nerve fibres, although unique, seems to resemble the nature of light, or electromagnetic waves, although symbolically represented biologically. This would certainly provide an explanation of the ‘etheric body’ or a series of biological electromagetic fields. But I am certainly no expert. Here we need a physicist qigong practitioner!
Best wishes and maybe this is all irrelevant…
To comment on the irregularity of the charged particles, I think it’s because the fact that there are so many variating charges: calcium, potassium, magnesium, nitrogren, carbon dioxide, oxygen, various cells and their charges, ATP, adrenaline, and all the varying chemical reactions, elicit varying strengths of charge, not to mention their own varying charges. The poorer the nutrients, the more degraded the strength of the chemical reaction, the healthier the better and so the more deficient and weaker or stronger the qi and qi field may be.
In regard to qi circulation, as I understand it thus far – qi just is. It’s there like any and all the nutrients of the body (also existing outside the body). So, yes the qi does circulate like water (it’s often compared to that) and how well the opening and closing of cavities and such improve the flow. Through breathing, we are more easily able to access and quickly recognize the subtlty of qi and furthermore influence its movement and accumulate it. Because we learn to do this by using the breath and the mind together, often we assume it’s happening through the breath. But as the axiom goes: the mind moves the qi; the qi moves the blood. Through the breath, we are able to interface with the qi.
Also, yes, there is a simultaneous push-pull as well. This is an aspect of yin and yang that we experience. Along the microcosmic circulation following the Ren Mai (fornt of the body) and the Du Mai (back of the body) as qi moves down the front, it may also be felt moving up the back simultaneously, and vice versa.
Are you practicing I-Chuan? Because you are exactly describing I-chuan’s practice method which basically overflows to a majority of other energy practices.
Anyway, I think you’re right on track, but are just looking for confirmation. Not that I’m anybody or anything special, but I do think your getting it.
Steve
Yes that was my thought a long time ago when I first discovered the magnetic sensations of the etheric field. My understanding hasn’t really progressed far from there. It’s still a hypothesis that I’m exploring.
Hey Guy,
I would just echo what Steve said: “But as the axiom goes: the mind moves the qi; the qi moves the blood. Through the breath, we are able to interface with the qi.”
When you work any of the physical practices (not just breathing), you have the chance to interface with the energy. The better you set up a physical rhythm (like opening and closing the joints), the more likely you are to find the flow of energy once that rhythm becomes stable and smooth.
My 2 cents.
D
Hi guy
short answer is Yes!and more to the point, can you pulse these parts your talking about? do you have a tangible sense of what pulsing is, and can you get your mind to instigate it?
can you feel your chi (Qi)?
have you tried pulsing it?
time spent practicing will give the opportunity to experience the answer, rather than indirectly deduce it. and it’s a step by step process,
the chi ball exercise is a very simple and direct way to experiment with the question you are asking, (there are other good methods, but this is what I got started with)
my experience, first, I could feel the chi between my hands, kinda delicate and easily missed, like a whisper in a crowd.
later, I could pulse it and roll the ball.
after a while, the ball got “bigger”, it was more like holding a huge swiss ball rather than a basketball.later, the chi ball encompassed my whole body.
but it maintained the same qualities of the little chi ball in my hands, except amplified and, well, just more encompassing.
depending on what I am doing, the awarness of it comes and goes, but over time has gotten more tangible and stable. still working on it.
the 9th and 10th arm postures of bagua circle walking are particularly suited for the transition from little to big chi ball, in my experience.
I will also mention that the other energy bodies do it to, and a big goal is to get all of them to connect and move together. my clarity on this is not as good as the chi, but I don’t doubt it, It’s just still fuzzy.
hope this helps, man
rock on
richard
Hey Guy,
I was thinking of your question when I sat down with Senior Instructor Paul Cavel to discuss developing soft tissue in the body. The issue is related because you’re trying to sort out internal feelings that run the gamut from overtly physical to subtly energetic. If you want to have a listen here, I think Paul has some useful stuff to say on the topic:
http://dankleiman.com/2012/03/29/qigong-radio-episode-2-developing-your-soft-tissue-with-paul-cavel/
Dan,
bend and close the arms is not open and close or push and pull as this are no energetics or chi questions as Paul Clavell admits. But he and you are right that the chi or breathing question becomes on charged fluids e.g. in the streams within the spine and not only the muscles and fascia as in present mp 36 on the rear diaphragm.
The chi actions of the arms push and pull, forward or sidewards with the arms or between the hands as open and close are often transfigured for other chi processes as e.g for releasing energy from the joints as storage places of energy and chi.
But as a question of the arms for the legs it becomes still more metaphorical. The action of a bird lyind up by the backlegs as a springboard or a dog bouncing suddenly upwards from lying down is more complex as the said arm movements.
To keep these metaphors on the opening and closing push and pulling of chi for all forms of chi overextends them. Better describing the chi structures which these exercises produce. They act different.
Axel
This sounds interesting, Axel.
“To keep these metaphors on the opening and closing push and pulling of chi for all forms of chi overextends them. Better describing the chi structures which these exercises produce. They act different.”
Are you saying that the exercises set up certain states that are fundamentally different from the exercises themselves? Can you give us an example?
Thanks!
Guy took open and close like a symbol of life force of opening and closing of flowers and organs and such a role of chi or the rolling of the ocean at shore like the push and pull of releasing and withdrawing energy, Such difference in the chi I meant between the metaphors aimed at a first experience of chi till further experience shows other forms of chi.
This may happen in any moment so that the ball between the hands suddenly changes in a ball enveloping you as a posting in this string reports. Haola in ‘Zhineng Qigong uses this exercise by uniting by the hands two white halfes in a ball allowing to distribute this healing chi or energy to others in different with the time more and more willed ways.
So indeed as Dan says the exercise and its content get different as the ball e.g. suddenly deviates into an meridian at the hand and opens it.
Later you may separate from the hands doing the same by the eyes or ony the in a a free play with the energy. Chen qi, a sideward stretching exercise of the upheld hands has witout a ball such effects.
For describing this actions you make metaphors concrete but abstracting more and more from the outer forms of moving arms helping in the beginning.
There are many more aspects or content laid into the exercises by the masters or as spontaneous phenomena especially in group energy fields.
Axel
Hi,
Qi OpensCloses.
Last weekend I attended a push-hands class by Scott Rodell
(in Idaho; he’s from Washington, D.C.).He noted that it’s YinYang.
It’s not Yin or Yang.
It’s not even Yin and Yang.
Nor is it Yin in Yang and Yang in Yin.
It’s not even Yin-Yang.
YinYang.Rodell studies the Tai Chi Classics.
I think it was Yang Lu-Chang who wrote,
“Long Quan, like a great river, flows unceasingly.”
(Changquan is an old name for taijiquan.)
In his book, Taiji Notebook for Martial Artists,” Rodell explains the concept of “Flow.”
In class he translated “Chang Chang” as “Torrent Torrent.”
It’s not like a great river merely flowing unceasingly to the sea.
It’s not yielding then issuing.
It’s yieldingIssuing–torrent torrent torrent torrent relentless torrents.Qi relentlessly torrent torrent.
It just doesn’t just circulate.
It doesn’t just open AND close.
It CirculatesOpensCloses relentlessly.Qi is everything.
Qi is in constant flux and in varying states of aggregation. From one viewpoint it looks Yin: substantial, heavy, full.
From a different viewpoint it looks Yang: insubstantial, light, empty.
Maciocia, in “Foundations of Chinese Medicine,” notes that modern physicists agree that “Qi” may be termed “energy” since Qi expresses the continuum of matter and energy. Albeit, he chooses to leave the term “Qi” untranslated.The term “energy” itself wasn’t introduced until 1807 by Thomas Young.
“Qi” and “energy” are not actually “things.”
Your question assumes that “Qi” is SOME “THING” that might open and close.The process of energy transformation is often described in such concrete terms; like energy flows from one place to another. But this confuses energy with “power” and “work.”
Stop focusing on the stuff that embodies energy.
Consider the form that is embodied.
Energy is a difference that makes a difference.
Qi is a difference that makes a difference.
Energy then is more accurately “a relationship of difference or asymmetry, embodied in some substrate which is spontaneously unstable and self-eliminating–a tendancy described by entropy and the second law of thermodynamics. See, Deacon, “Incomplete Nature,” 2012.So joints are forms, substrates, as are cavities, internal organs, the breath, blood, mind.
My most recent metaphor is a fish–a salmon.
The salmon pulsates–OpeningClosing gills.
The current of the river flows unceasingly to the sea.
Yet the salmon returns to its spawning grounds upstream in the mountains.
Torrent after torrent, the 30-pound salmon can never rest in the current. (Actually, it may rest in a quiet pool for a short time).
If it rests it gets swept back down stream.
It struggles to hold its own at the bottom of a waterfall and then mightily leaps up each waterfall.
Even then it cannot rest; it must keep swimming or be swept back down the waterfall.
When it finally does stop to spawn, it dies.The water is Qi, the current is Qi, the salmon is Qi, swimming is Qi and life-and-death is Qi.
Post Falls, Idaho.
Robert,
you bring the still more metaphysical aspects of chi which is as tai chi the ceaseless movement in nature basing on Wu wei and the movement from emptiness from which also yin and yang appear. As yin (female) and yang (male) they represent the unseparable unity and relationship of all as a couple like the tantrical couple of purusha and shakti or the similar Aristotelian couple in love (the church did not like that but it is in the texts) of the unmoved mover creating the world.
The first idea I had on Guy´s question was a kabbalist meditation and operation in the tree of life in the realm of the spirit as the ceaseless flowering and decay, where life and death loses its difference in a timeless eternity. The symbol of it may be taken from creation the flourishing of a flower from the seed to the flower and again the seed as life and death. A known example also in the bible. But this imaginative meditation has all these processes in one timeless moment in such eternal cycles and life.
So open and close push and pull can have also such a content which may be experienced in aweful moments but firm and stable on the ground and earth which otherwise you would lose.
But questions of chi in the sequence of jing, chi and shen reside normally not in the spirit or shen level but pass from the physical body by the etherical energies into the soul level or middle dantien of the heart by transmuting the jing into chi.
Axel
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