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One of the basic posture is Engaging the liver, does anybody know if that posture can be effective against hepatitis, liver fibrosis?
Hi, Maria. I see no one has answered your post. Perhaps they feel, like me, that a specific TCM application of one of the bagua exercises is outside their expertise. Hopefully, a more experienced person will offer an answer.
Matthew, thanks. It is a tough question. I am just wondering if anyone happens to know.
Well – I don’t often feel that attempting to answer medical questions in a forum is a good idea, as it usually opens up several cans of worms, but somehow I felt like this needed an answer, however rudimentary it might be.
This question that goes into a lot of different areas.
I’m speaking from my own experience working with people’s health problems over the last 20-some years. I often teach and use various forms of standing and moving postures to help build up a body’s energies when working with disease or dysfunction.In the specific case of Engaging the Liver, the short answer is that yes, it can ultimately help with liver disease. The longer answer is that yes, but not right off as there’s often a lot of preliminary work that must be done before it can be helpful instead of harmful.
Once the right flows have been established this posture is very nourishing. But just starting right off with it is fairly useless – I’ve found that there’s a lot of basic work that needs to be learned/integrated first. Such as a certain level of “grounding” – that is, developing the ability for energy to move downward; some proper breathing; energy storage; emotional work; etc.. Generally speaking, putting a lot of energy into a sick system/area will often exacerbate the problems unless someone who can tell and moderate what is going on is watching carefully – and especially if a person is more or less trying to do this on their own, then they must have developed some facility to handle the (often extreme) emotional reactions that can occur when pushing energy through a block serious enough to have caused this level of physical illness. And it’s very important to really start slowly – 20%, maybe, of one’s capacity. Indeed, most people with liver problems are unable to even do the posture for any beneficial amount of time until other work has been done. A fair question at this point would be “So how do you know this?”, and my answer would be, ” I’ve learned a lot from my clients, and I wasn’t always as careful with such things as I am now.”
The above brings up the question(s): is it the posture alone that brings the benefit, or is it all the other stuff along with it? This posture, like most everything, is not done in isolation. The benefits from it are built upon and derived from a whole range of practices. This posture does have a certain focus – otherwise why have hundreds of them? – and it is very nourishing for the liver, but I don’t regard it as solely being “effective” against liver disease. It can help, along with other good practices, to heal the body.
A very important use I’ve found for this particular posture (which in my opinion is one of the very best all around postures for the body and not just for the liver; this posture was called “the Pose of Man” in the style of ichuan I studied), is that by observing a person’s energies as they try to hold the posture, one can determine where the main energetic blockages are occurring and thus determine the most effective places to work with the person so that they can become aware of them as well and start to correct these problems. Starting right off with a posture like this is apt to just create short-circuits in the bodily flow unless, as I’ve said, some grounding is established and some ability to store and move energy has been developed.
Sorry for the lengthy response, but it’s really all too short as it is.
Peter
Hi Peter,
Thank you for taking the time to write all this out, it was helpful to read. It matches my own experiances and the experiances of other students that I’ve talked to.
I liked how you mentioned how you figured this out “I’ve learned a lot from my clients, and I wasn’t always as careful with such things as I am now.”.
The school of hard knocks is how I figured it out as well. It’s nice to know I have company
Janak
Peter, Thanks a lot!
Peter, how do you circulate the chi/energy in this case for the engaging liver posture? Thanks a lot!
Maria-
Sorry I haven’t responded to you earlier – I’m dealing with some family emergencies, and so don’t have a lot of bandwidth right now.Trying to talk about this is in part why I don’t do it over email or in forums – it’s too narrow a medium. But since I started…
I usually begin with simple standing – or seated postures if that’s too much. Bruce’s energy gates methodology is nice; though a bit complex it’s well laid out and written down – so start with that. Also some gentle breathing, working towards breathing to the tan tien. I also work with somone to develop some conscious control and awareness of their energy field as a whole – expansion/contraction, density, etc. When there’s some grounding and breathing capability established, then gently start to work with the hands/feet, elbows/knees, shoulder/hip connections. I also prefer to teach a few more general nourishing postures along the way – Bruce’s second posture is one good one. Basic healing chi gung practices are a help here. There are many to choose from.
Don’t try to force the chi circulation with mental control – by establishing grounding and breathing, energy will circulate on it’s own as it can. Let it build slowly, with an intention to heal – but don’t push (exclamation mark, emphasis, italics and just don’t). You can work up to specific circulation, but it’s a really really really good idea (like I wouldn’t do it without) to have someone who can see/sense what is going on, and has some experience in the matter monitor what you’re doing. I’ve blown out my own energy system by pushing things too hard too fast (it felt like a great idea at the time), away from my teacher and it took years for me to recover, and I was healthy and strong (as an aside – I’d moved out of his area by a few thousand miles and hadn’t heard from him for over two years – he called me that night and said “what the hell are you doing?” I didn’t know, obviously). My point being, you can mess yourself up, probably more easily than you can help yourself. Find someone who knows what they’re doing when you are dealing with serious physical illness.
Also –
I know how frustrating it is to have people repeatedly say “find someone who already knows and learn from them…” – but it’s a very valid thing to keep saying. There is of course plenty of room for personal learning and exploration and slavish adherence to someone’s knowing/methods isn’t always (well, rarely) good. But until there’s a certain baseline established, or unless you’re a very rare type of person, it’s an important safety measure and it’s worth following in the wake of someone who has already blazed a trail in the direction you want to go.The other thing I want to say is, you asked how “I” would work with this issue and I answered in a very general sense. “I” would do very different things with different people, depending on them, me, our interaction, and the circumstances. The main things I work with (in addition to physical modalities) are the energetic and emotional blockages that are driving the presenting issue, and there is too much to talk about to do it here – I’d be typing for decades (and no one would be reading it after 5 minutes). The basic thing is move slowly into whatever blocks are there, don’t push, allow your reaction to move naturally. Allow is the key word here. Learn to allow, with aligned intent. Which is why people usually need someone else – so they can hold and model that space for them.
Thank you so much, Peter. I highly appreciated.
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