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Now that I’ve gained a lot of control over my body I’m starting to notice that I basically go from one stuck point to the next. That is, I create some shape using some function of the body or another and then create another shape and then another. I’m wondering if you could say I manifest the shape, dissolve it, and then create another shape.
While practicing I notice there is really only two different ways to create the shape: by expanding or by condensing. I don’t care what shape it is – you either got into that shape by expanding or by condensing.
The interesting thing is that you can release the shape by changing to its opposite; by flipping condensing to expansion or expansion to condensing. The in-between state may be emptiness. It certainly doesn’t last long, but you can move extraordinarily fast from one stuck shape to the next. You can also feel how it takes “energy” to maintain the shape. And, you can feel how “energy” is released when you let it go.
That stuck shape is a moment of inertia. Is this method of changing from one moment of inertia to the next really the one change that Liu described as step #5 in his overview?
That would move you from finding the one change to step #6 where you start studying this moment and this change to discover your essence and the nature of emptiness.
Make sense to me at this moment but who knows…I may just be stuck.
Right after I posted this I realized that it was unnecessary to get stuck. If you just maintain even the slightest inkling of the opposite, you’ll stay in the flux.
You balance the body in a similar fashion but this is subtler. I think this is the tai chi space.
“shape” is one translation of the Chinese term “gua.”
Hence, bagua is a reference to an 8 sided shape,
the hexagonal diagram of the I-Ching.
So, the balance that I had been doing was all body based. I’d guess it could be called physical or jing. Very concrete and all based on physiology.
This is using the CNS to direct the body, but it is more about the how the mind is directing the body. I’m literally using the central canal (not channel) to direct the physiology.
“The central canal, also known as ependymal canal, is the cerebrospinal fluid-filled space that runs longitudinally through the length of the entire spinal cord. The central canal is continuous with the ventricular system of the brain.”
None of this is possible without the foundation I’ve laid through lots of practice. You may get a gist of it but I don’t think you’ll have the level of control without a lot of fumbling around.
So, I’m still doing all of the physical stuff but it is almost entirely masked by the sensations produced by cerebrospinal fluid. The fluid naturally integrates and organizes in ways that the previous processes can’t. It is way more efficient. Thus you abandon any real concern for the underlying basis and just start talking about chi or “energetic stuff” because you have no idea what made it all work in the first place.
Now to figure out if the four ventricles are the basis of sixiang…
Another comment: in the jing phase the balance is much more about the 8 directions. When you get to the Chi phase it seems to be more about expansion and condensing.
It is possible that sixiang is nothing more than 4 basic ways you play with the expansion and condensing. I’ll try to find the video where Bruce describes this. I watched it in the last few days.
He talks about the expansion and the condensing and then he talks about condensing really hard to create a fast expansion. Then, you expand really hard to create a fast condensing. That’s basically it for the martial arts. Once you can do this you have the basis for power and transforming power. The shape doesn’t matter. The power of expansion and condensing and the ability to rapidly change from one to the other without losing their balance is key.
In lesson 8 of the Tai Chi Classics that is part of the Tai Chi Mastery program Bruce touches on this as well but it isn’t the place where Bruce talks about the learning progression that I’m referring to. I also don’t think that this is a magnetic flux field at the Chi phase. It may be when you reach the shen phase (that’s another conversation but it is only theory at this point), but not in the Chi phase.
We want (intend) to breathe evenly, without jerks or gaps.
It is more difficult to negotiate an even transistion between the end of exhalation (expansion) and the beginning of inhalation (condensing) because the motor neurons of the diaphragm have largely ceased to fire; when the neurons start firing again to begin inhalation, there is a jerk in the system.
This jerk can be remedied by maintaingtension in the abdomen throughout exhalation, especially toward the end, merging the abdomenal tension into the beginning of the cycle of inhalation.
See: Coulter, “Anatomy of Hatha Yoga,” 2001Shunryu Suzuki says that “Exhaling, you gradually fade into emptiness”
“You are actually aiming at emptiness.” “The important point is your exhalation.”Master Jou thought that focusing on the Lower Dantian (expanding and condensing) rather than the respiratory/diaphragm was the key to even breathing, breathing without breathing.
I can do this during slow Tai Chi,
but I have no idea how to do it in bagua.
Must have something to do with maintaining a spherical shape.
I like your fluid theory.
(I’m having a hard time keeping up with your bullets.)My thoughts about controlling the motor neurons of the diaphragm with the mind to create muscle tension in the abdominal muscles may be in this area of analysis—it’s using the CNS.
After all, there are 2 dedicated nerves directly from the brain that serve these functions: the phrenic nerve controls the heart and the vagus nerve serves the gut.
Additionally , fluid is more electrically conductive than the axon to a motor neuron (and part of the immediate environment around the axon).
The axon depends on shifting chemical reactions—sodium and potassium I think—to change the electrical potentials that wave down the axon,
The surrounding fluid is involved— but I’ve never heard that fluid itself carries any information to motor neurons—
but it’s possible—
(can’t ignore the fascia here)
brain neurons float in a sea of brain fluids,
which facilitate up-take of neurotransmitters (dopimine, seratonin, norepinephrine—etc) hopping between synapses and recharging the axons’ bio-electrical systems.This brings us closer to your scientific/physiological theory beyond the mystical leaps in classical Tai Chi/bagua.
IMO, there is a really simple reason why breath and breathing becomes the focus of and equated to chi. If you know how to extend and bend your arm, you know how to breathe.
Breathing becomes important to meditation because it is unconsciously maintained 7X24. The body is absolutely amazing. The diaphragm is positioned to maximize its impact on key systems and processes.
The same physical balance I’ve described in the jing phase can be applied as well as the Chi phase balancing. If you were trying to explain it to someone without a thorough understanding of the underlying mechanism, I think it would sound like the quotes you referenced. So, the quotes are valid, applicable, and potentially helpful, but don’t help you to understand what is unique to the internal arts.
The expansion and condensing I’m describing includes everything. Everything. So, that includes breath. The diaphragm is just a large, weird shaped muscle that happens to be strategically placed to maximize its impact.
I still don’t focus on the breath because everybody breathes …until they don’t.
That said, I’m about to get schooled. Every time you post, I end up thinking about something more than I had and usually find something that I’ve missed.
This is helpful in several ways.
One interpretation of the term heart-mind I’ve been playing with is the mind of the heart or the independent mechanism that controls the heart and keeps it beating. The other I posted in the last two days.
My pie in the sky theory of how the “enlightenment” works is that the body literally becomes an electromagnetic wave generator based on two or three possible electric charge flows. One is the hemoglobin of the blood. Oxygenated blood is negatively charged. De-oxygenated blood is positively charged. From Maxwell’s equations we know that a moving charge generates the magnetic field. Now we have the basis for the chicken and egg scenario that Bruce describes and possibly the etheric field. Another is based on the axons and the potassium pump. There’s another one that I found more recently but I can’t recall it.
So basically the human body becomes a transmitter/ receiver of consciousness. The would explain the extreme expansion of awareness that Bruce talks about. It would also explain what he means by “transmission”. It would explain synchronicity. Blah, blah, blah.
Gaining conscious control of the blood circulation starts to make more sense. Besides the obvious health benefits you gain control of this charge flow. Then in the Chi phase you gain control over the other flows via the CNS and CSF.
The runner-up prize is great health and vitality. Perhaps I’ll stumble on how this works. I’ve been thinking that the capillaries or cells are where the magic happens. They might act like Hertz’s spark gap.
It may be possible that all of the Taoist bodies represent the frequency spectrum in some way.
I’ve also wondered if glimpses of emptiness could be when you get the mechanism working for very short periods of time. You recognize your essence. If so, I suspect that becoming a Taoist immortal is when your consciousness just keeps expanding non-stop 7 by 24.
Who knows?
I just wanted to note another possible interpretation of sixiang.
Everyone probably has felt the expansion of peng (whether you know how it is generated or not). When you control that expansion from the CSF, it can expand until is reaches the extremities and then the expansion actually starts expanding back toward the center again. It is still expanding but the expansion isn’t just out and away. It continues out and away but you can feel it compressing the center.
The next stage is to catch the expansion toward the center and sort of pull it in. It ends up being a condensing or close. So you have your basic open and close.
Just like expansion starting to expand back toward the center, the condensing will continue until it starts to flip and you get an expansion from the condensing. You can condense to the extremities.
And that is sixiang: yang yang, yang yin, yin yin, yin yang.
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