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I’m changing topics from what I’ve been posting about for the last month or so. I need a distraction. You can’t get to emptiness by trying, so, I need to continue practicing what I know and wait to stumble on the next step.
I thought I’d post about a topic that I’ve never understood – the Five Elements. But, rather than go into what each is or how to train them, I thought I’d start at the end with the Earth element. Earth is a funny element it is distinct from all the others, has its own unique quality, but clarifies the others at the same time. This seems to be a product of its binding quality. Once I found that quality all the other elements seemed to make sense all at once. Before that they’ve never made enough sense to bother thinking about them.
How I found it: I was practicing and remembered how Bruce always described twisting out going along the yang meridians and twisting in going along the yin surfaces. I thought that really isn’t the way I’m practicing. I’ve never found that to be the way my energy flows work. I wondered why. My conclusion is that you can do whatever you can conceive. If you can create the intent, the body will do it. But I’ve also found that Bruce is always accurate particularly with descriptions that come up time and time again. So, why doesn’t my chi organize this way? I decided to organize it the way he described. That’s when I discovered the earth element.
I simple concentrated the flows along the yin and yang surfaces in coordination with twisting in or twisting out. That’s when the binding quality of earth got very clear. There is something unique about this practice. It enables you to express the other elements more clearly as well. I think it is the integrating quality of the binding of earth. It is as though the communication gets clearer and coordinated more completely.
This seems to be an important element of integration and whole body unity.
So, why do you think this is showing up in my practice after all of these years? It isn’t random.
You can make up any story you want, but I’d guess it is simply necessary. The Earth element is needed to properly execute the Lake Palm. Why?
The Lake Palm is taking everything you do in the Mountain Palm which includes everything in every other palm change and does it completely relaxed and perfectly balanced. The integration that comes from the Earth element is essential to that balance and integration. I’ve practiced all of the other elements for years (whether I knew it or not), but not the Earth element.
I need to develop even greater balance and integration to perform the Lake Palm Change and upgrade my system. So, it isn’t enough to understand that in and out need to occur at the same time and it isn’t enough to be able to perform each separately, and it isn’t even enough to be able to perform both at the same time with a great deal of intent. Yin and yang need to be done well, without any strain. This isn’t an intellectual exercise. It is manifested and you shouldn’t feel strong.
It needs to be so perfectly balanced that it is empty.
So, I think this perfect balance creates the state neither yang nor yin.
Combine this with a few other bits and pieces and you have a nice system expressed by the I Ching’s hexagrams. This is a bit of a leap, but it is certainly possible. I’ll try to connect the dots.
On one of Bruce’s videos, he describes the three tan tiens. I can’t remember if he uses the term gua or if he just talks about the lower, middle, and upper sections. In any case, on that video he said something I’ve never heard before or since – he said that there are three sets of chi. There is a lower set, a middle set, and an upper set. In Bagua, we use the lower and upper to make the middle ultimately dominant.
In Bruce’s NY seminar he said that ultimately the lines of the I Ching are instructions for the lower, middle, and upper tan tiens.
All I’m suggesting is that you can create the four with each section. If you express the four with a pair of lines (yang/yang, yin/yin, yin/yang, yang/yin), and then we stack three pairs of lines, we get a hexagram. The 64 hexagrams express every possible combination.
If you know how to express the four, you can express them with each set of chi: the lower, middle, and upper. So, the hexagrams are ultimately instructions for the lower, middle, and upper tan tiens. You just can’t express them fully and clearly without a tremendous amount of training.
Or this could all be a load of BS. Who knows?
Opening the Energy Gates develops the Water element, see the EnergyArts video “Energy Gates Qigong”, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g08L0GTSAgk at 10 sec.
Spiraling Energy Body develops the Fire element – see the EnergyArts video, “Spiraling Energy Body Qigong”, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5lkpUi5uw4 at 16 sec.
Marriage of Heaven and Earth develops the Wood element.
Bend the Bow and Shoot the Arrow develops the Metal element – see EnergyArts video, “Bend the Bow Spinal Qigong”, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1A07d3P3vw at 18 sec.
Gods Playing in the Clouds develops the Earth element – see EnergyArts video, “Gods Playing in the Clouds Qigong”, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJ_DnHDM55E at 38 sec. Note just a little further Bruce mentions that Earth is about integrating the body and all of the elements together.
Note: I used Bagua to find the Earth element not Gods. Also note that Dragon Tiger isn’t a part of this neigung set. It is a seperate chigung set and that’s why I never bothered with it for any length of time.
I posted all of these because the 5 core neigung sets are organized around the 5 elements. My guess is they are a complete unto themselves.
Bagua has it all and is complete. In the same way that Gods integrates all of the components of neigung, Bagua’s Lake Palm integrates all of the palm changes. This is a blurb on Gods from the EnergyArts Qigong page. It summarizes what I’ve been working on with the Lake Palm.
“Gods Qigong amplifies all the physical, breathing and energetic components of the Energy Arts core qigong programs and completes the process of integrating all the components of neigong. It is also the final stage of learning to strengthen and balance the energies of your three tantiens, central channel and spine.”
It is this integration that makes the balance of your chi from the feet to the head to the hands recognizable, stable, and conscious. I can literally feel the entire body from head to foot and everything in between. The integration makes the opening and closings of the organs, cavities, and joints obvious. Most importantly it isn’t just an opening or closing. Both occur simultaneously. Any time a hand or foot is extending, there is always a consonant flow inward as well as an awareness of what’s in the middle.
This allows you to explore the in and out and to recognize that there really isn’t any difference: they are connected.
At this point I’m still not extending out beyond the physical body. I’m at the extremities (the hands, feet, and head), but not going beyond them. I”m just integrating everything in between and getting clearer about how the internal organs, glands, central channel, and spine are supposed to work. But there is the question of what’s next and how to integrate the outside (beyond the extremities.
This is where Bagua begins to be a celestial art. You literally start to use the energy of the Earth to power all of your movement. So much is going on a once it is difficult to describe, but you are simply noticing that everything is coming up from the planet Earth. We all know that essentially your body is constantly pushing against the ground. That’s all I’m talking about, but at this point you can feel how that is an energy and how it is connected to every part of our bodies. The integration allows you to feel it as a real living force that fills the body.
This further accentuates the feeling and notion of three sets of chi. This one emphasizing the lower set. Here is where Bagua separates itself from Tai Chi. That’s as far as Tai Chi needs to go. Bagua will continue the process and differentiate the upper set, and then marry them in the middle. Earth, Heaven, smooth palm changes.
We are returning to the beginning of the circle again, but with a much deeper understanding of what this is all about.
I salute your attempting to express, and explore, further.. although I wonder if you are making a pun below, or if you meant to write-it this way (perhaps a miscommunication):
>> This is where Bagua begins to be a celestial art. You literally start to use the energy of the Earth to power all of your movement. <<
The energy of the Earth powering the movement would make it a terrestrial art… (and energy up from the “root” is a bit different, though perhaps on the continuum-path, than bringing up the power &size of the Planet), and I’d differentiate the Earth element (Tu) from the planet (or the Root-E).. [ perhaps you were thinking of the power of the WuXing-Tu “powering one’s movement”? -which would be moved-by integration&density…]
Perhaps a “celestial”-art would relate to the celestial-bodies and the forces that move-them and hold them together (in their orbits, and their structure).. following the flows (touched-sensed by intuition: as mentioned in Bruce’s Tao-Te series at times) would be a distinct from being driven-by (one’s identity not gone, but at-effect of.. how then “choose” choices…)
— but before that, if only looking at the physical expressions of the art, the energy of the Skies coming down (vs of the ground coming up)..
whether “the above” =sky, or “heavens” or “space” or the design-aspect of the GreatImage (which seems to be begun with The GentleRain… to sense, and be open to, that in seated-stillness seems a task, to receive and be in contact in motion, and then to be driven-by, as step as well as change.. is that what you mean?)=====
all of the WuXing are aspects of our experience, but it seems, as Bruce has mentioned, to really grasp them we need experience them beyond just in this context.. so it is how things integrate (“fit” in a place, whether phy, or a mental idea, or E…), which:
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is neat, but I wonder if that is a pun also (as mentioned above), about different meaning-associations that could be related to Earth.. “energies” (especially as in prior posts you’ve mentioned you’re approaching this through the physical, vs through energetic-contact, and then how to interpret what you are hinting at in your use of the term “different types of chi.” -or perhaps now you are starting to refer&work with chi directly?)-either way, luck in your seeking
Yes, I was using Bruce’s phrase “celestial art” meaning related to the sky or planets. The Earth element is an entirely different topic.
Heaven includes the Earth. It implies the spherical nature of Bagua and the Earth is just one particular side. When Bruce uses the term space, he is rarely referring to space as in outer space. I tend to use the term the same way, but I searched and I didn’t use it in this thread. I also didn’t find the phrase “different types of chi” here so I can’t comment.
As for the Gentle Rain, I still haven’t sorted that out. I think it is still beyond my level of understanding. It think it is somewhere after the shen phase of the sequence jing, Chi, shen, wu, tao.
I would comment that the way you define and seem to think about a phrase like “how things integrate” misses the point of what the Earth element is really about. It isn’t an intellectual idea or a thought. It took me so long to understand it. I’m not surprised I can’t convey its meaning clearly in words.
All that said, the point of that last post was simply that I’ve opened up to not only my physicality, and the chi (connected pressures), but I’m starting to understand why the Taoist speak about the Heaven and Earth and perhaps how Bruce goes out beyond the physical body.
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