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I thought the 200th thread should be about something significant. I thought I’d share some thoughts on how the 16 part neigung comes full circle and begins to become “one, unified energy”.
In fact, I’ve recently started to see many parts of the 16 part neigung system as arbitrary distinctions describing the same one thing. More importantly I’ve found a new way to work with the body that really starts to make sense of the whole system and how it comes together. Phrases like “when the channels are aligned the space inside an individual has no end”, or “instructions [for the trigrams] always pertain to lower, middle, or upper tantien” start to make sense. For Bagua it explains why the palm changes really aren’t about physical movement or just forms as much as they are about how you move your energy.
Part 16 makes Bagua possible.
I’ll be using “The Sixteen Neigong, http://www.energyarts.com/sixteen-neigong, as a reference. I’ll try to make sure all numbering is consistent with this document.
I believe that neigung elements 11 through 15 work like a progression with each element building on the previous. Like all of the other elements, the better you are at one, the better you can be at the others. The difference in this set is that you can’t fully do 12 without having completed the previous element, #11 – spinal neigung.
I also think neigung 11 has a lot more layers than Bruce has taught to date. A rough outline might look like this:
* Learn to vaguely connect the arms to the spine. (Arms at the same height using bend the bow movement)
* Learn how the arms move the vertebrae in all of the possible ways.
* Learn how to target a single vertebrae and manipulated it with the arms.
* Vary the height of the arms and learn how to target every vertebrae using bend the bow.
* Learn how to move them all at the same time.
* Connect the legs vaguely to the spine
* Learn how the legs control the vertebrae
* Connect the legs to a specific vertebrae
* Connect arms and the legs to the same vertebrae
* Connect the arm and legs to every vertebrae
* Rinse and repeat adding the headThe integration is based on one of the core principals, separate and combine. At the end of each step you are going for a level of complete integration where all of the individual pieces become one thing. This is one way we unify the body, but it is very, very basic. And it is still primarily physical connection.
Next, you start going for the side channels – part 12. Completing part 11 thoroughly is an absolutely critical foundation for moving onto the next step. If you haven’t mastered the spine at a physical level, you won’t be able to control the basic alignments that necessary to start working deeply and powerfully on the side channels.
I realize everyone thinks that they work their side channels but few do. It is a lot more than just having someone bounce you on the shoulders to see if you can transfer weight through the torso and into the legs. That’s an absolute requirement, but the side channels are much more powerful than that. They have the capacity to torque the crap out of sacrum (DONE INCORRECTLY!). If you haven’t done the requisite work of part 11, you are likely going to hurt yourself – badly.
I think this is why Bruce hasn’t taught this. It’s not that he is unwilling, he just doesn’t have the time or access to students long enough to make sure they are doing it correctly.
This is also where everyone’s spiraling falls far short of what it is capable of doing. Spiraling increases all of the pressures and efficacy of levers of the body. Without this foundation, spiraling (part #9) can never reach its potential.
It took me about 10 years to work out what needed to be done and about 2 more to actually train it well enough to move onto the next step.
Part 12 changes over time as you get better and better at working the side channels. When I started working on this material I used the “Taoist Energy Anatomy”, http://www.energyarts.com/taoist-energy-anatomy, as main reference.
Over time I’d find the central channel and work it as well, but looking back, the side channels ultimately opened the central channel. When Bruce taught the Water palm change, he was teaching how this really works. I’m sure there is more, but this was the foundation of moving onto the next step.
The diagrams that David drew are only two dimensional. They don’t tell the whole story, but they are a great starting point. Sometimes I think of this as the side channels have side channels. Which really just speaks to the subject in three dimensions. At some point in your practice, you’ll have to commit to trying to understand how these channels work.
At the Water palm I asked Bruce about how I was training these. He said the Taoists had specific practices like I was doing, but there was a bigger, simpler approach in the beginning. So, I can’t say exactly how you should approach these. I can say that you have to before you can open the central channel. I had worked the central channel for years before I got how the side channels. I thought I was working the central channel. I was wrong. It was more like the shadow of a shadow. You don’t know what you don’t know. All I can say is it gets clearer.
Like working Bend the Bow at a single level with just the arms, you have to work the side channels wherever you can feel them, and then work until you can access the entire circuit. All of the neigung sets use these channels and Bagua’s trigrams are built on organizing this material in specific ways. The side channels are a safer way to work through how energy moves than trying to go directly for the central channel.
You could say that the side channels are the yin and yang that create the tai chi space. I’m certain you can’t access the deeper layers of emptiness without proficiency with the side channels. IMO, Bruce has never described this material in any detail, but he transmits it at every event he teaches. IMO, you’ll never learn what he taught unless you start focusing on it.
I used the neigung set Spiraling Energy Body to start working on gaining access, but I think I did SEB incorrectly for the most part. I practiced what I thought it was, but without access to the central channel, I don’t believe you can really understand spiraling (I’m not referring to spiraling physical body which can be done fairly easily,).
This is a case where neigung loops back on itself and reveals the next step. It also explains why no one really understands spiraling – they haven’t gained access to the central channel in the requisite manner, or worse, you think you have. I’ve been in that place a million times!
I don’t know how to describe how I learned to use the side channels. I spent a lot of time making sure I could feel the circuit without gaps. I also remember using spiraling (my bastardized version) to gain access joint by joint. You have to open the whole circuit. That’s another reason why no one is progressing. They are opening the whole system up. You have to complete the arms, legs, torso, and head; otherwise it won’t flow strongly. Any missing part acts like a dam in a river. The energy can’t flow.
There are some important pieces missing in the outline. It wasn’t intended to teach the subject. I was just trying to convey that there are a bunch of steps that aren’t taught explicitly and are absolutely a part of the neigung set “Bend the Bow and Shoot the Arrow”.
There is a whole subject of balancing the left and the right channels which is usually reduced to a caricature of the subject. This is usually taught by inspecting whether the shoulders and hips are level or as I joke: is one nipple higher than the other. As amusing as this may or may not be, it could be viewed as the most important point of the neigung set. Because you are supposed to learn how to balance all of the forces acting on the spine at every level and in every direction. Without this experience you can’t protect you sacrum and spine from the forces that can be produced from the side channels, part 12.
The second major element I didn’t mention is going through all of the material with the arms at different heights and angles. Again, the goal is the same – how do you balance all of the forces as they get increasingly complex. Remember that even if the arms are at different heights you are still targeting a single vertebrae and balancing all the forces. This is just harder. It is designed to get progressively more complex.
I originally worked the side channels like they flowed along the yin / yang meridians as lines. Now I work them like they are made up of thousands of small channels flowing toward and into the bones forming sides to the central channel. This happens at every level simultaneously and requires a three dimensional understanding of the body. I have an architect’s mind so it is easy for me to “see” this. Stated another way, I can hallucinate better than most people which has both its benefits and pitfalls.
IMO, energy works the same in all three dimensions. The two sides can be up down, left right, or front back. It works the same. I found up/down first. Heaven and earth. In the Water palm you cross one side to the other to start opening the central channel, but before that you have to work each side one at a time and then in combination. Working one palm or more accurately one side at a time is a single palm change methodology. Working both at the same time or more accurately in all combinations – is a double palm change methodology. Both methods require access to the side channels.
For a long time, they don’t work that well because the full circuit isn’t open. For me there was a back and forth between the side channels opening the central channel and the central channel giving me clearer access to the side channels. The channels literally get clearer. They run smoother without obstructions. This is where dissolving is helpful. I also liked the Thunder palm for clearing. It is like using vibration to feel the body. Thunder exposes what is still stuck and simultaneously helps break it up. Be warned, it also let’s your crap fly. This is like whacking a bees nest. You are going to get spiritually stung…a lot.
As the side channels open the central channel, you gain more access to the spine as well as places on the central channel like the lower tan tien. You start moving through the progression of part 12 (left and right channels) to part 13 (the central channel) to the lower tan tien, part 14. I had worked with the lower tan tien for many years before this phase, but the integration/unification (part 16) hadn’t started.
With the side channels fully open and access to the central channel, I started to find that the lower tan tien could activate thousands of tiny channels as one unified set. You don’t have all these parts you are trying to juggle. You just move the energy in the tan tien and everything happens simultaneously. Well sort of. At first there are a lot of gaps. You have to train and find where you hadn’t connected as well as you should have. You have to clear more and more and more. But, it is a lot easier to recognize what is stuck and the energy flowing stronger makes accessing any place easier. “When the channels are aligned” means when you have all of the channels acting in concert. You have them all doing what you want. This refers to the thousands of tiny channels that activate the larger flow of the the yin yang meridians or the side channels or the central channel depending on how you are organizing everything.
The simplest organization is in and down along the yin surfaces of the body. You can also organize in and up the yang channels. If you get these going at the same time you can start to find a form of stillness movement, movement stillness. This is a more advanced way to create stillness. Previously I’ve posted about a physical interpretation of creating stillness and movement.
Part 15, the middle and upper tan tiens, are just special points on the central channel. They specialize. At this point I’m still talking about the jing phase. Part 15 isn’t nearly complete, but it is accessible and the unification of the lower tan tien is getting more and more complete.
In part 11, you were connecting the physicality of the body. The arms and legs and head were connecting to the spine through tissue: muscles, fascia, ligaments, tendons, etc. The side channels start transitioning you to energy mechanics. Then the central channel takes that further and gives you access to a deeper physical connection – the fluid around the spinal cord.
It is at this point that spiraling starts to make sense. So you are going back to part 9, amplifying the circles and spirals of energy inside the body. Spiraling Energy Body is a methodical system for training all of the connection/unification at a deeper and more complete level. The body and its energy are trained to worked as one unified system. The lower tan tien can activate every channel simultaneously by a single movement, but this will never work unless you’ve connected each piece one piece at a time.
That’s a very high level overview of part 16. Bagua starts there.
The single biggest obstacle to finding all of this is completion. We don’t complete things. We don’t fully experience our emotions or allow yin and yangs to reach their maximum and change naturally to the other. Whether we obstruct the process on purpose or just are incapable, it doesn’t matter – we don’t complete the energy.
If we don’t fully practice a neigung element or its stages, phases, levels, and parts – it doesn’t complete and it won’t unify. Particularly when you get to the higher numbered neigung parts because it isn’t enough to open the side channels in the torso. You need to open them in the arms, legs, and head; otherwise, they don’t flow and they won’t setup the next step.
If this seems daunting, keep in mind that this is step 1 of Liu Hung Chieh’s overview, http://www.energyarts.com/forum/liu-hung-chiehs-overview.
The end result of all this is simply that you’ve created a container for the tai chi space.
This is what threw me at the Mountain Palm change. I had started looking both inside and outside for the tai chi space. Bruce’s teaching brought me back inside, deep inside the body and I started to understand how yin and yang gives birth to the tai chi space.
For me, the process of unification has three distinct levels that happen to correspond to how I use the three tan tiens; 1) a very physical phase, 2) a very mental phase and 3) an empty phase.
The physical phase is what I worked on for many, many years. You never leave it but things get more interesting. In the mental phase, I found all of the mental gymnastics. I’ve described a lot of this phase in previous posts. This culminated in finding a way to create the tai chi space from yin/yang pairs that I could understand before really getting what Yin and Yang were.
The last phase is the most difficult to discuss. It requires some understanding of the tai chi space. Yin and Yang finally make sense at this point. They really come down to something that goes out and letting it all in. But you have to experience how that comes from the tai chi space. Not intellectually. Experientially.
Thanks James,
By now you’ve probably have figured out that I know very little about Bagua.
Nevertheless everything you talk about is very interesting and applicable to tai chi generally.
Lately I’ve been looking at some of the work of Michael Winn ( he’s actually helped Bruce and Mantak Chia on some of their books.)
Today on YouTube I watched Winn do a simple qigong exercise of circling his hands up and down his left and right channels– in order to create spiraling energy.
A couple of days ago I was playing around with Winn’s and Chia’s concepts of “The Inner Smile” and “Healing Sounds.”
For the first time I actually sensed energy flows in my internal organs and dantiens.
With your information maybe I can also feel the energies in the side channels.I’m always amazed at the unending depth of the energy arts.
Bob
One of the big differences between Bagua and Tai Chi is how they organize from this point. Tai Chi organizes through the lower tan tien. Bagua uses the ligaments of the feet. This is one of the reasons why Tai Chi doesn’t cross the centerline and Bagua can. It is also why Bagua is ultimately superior: it can do everything that Tai Chi does and then some.
I think this is the beginning of the “real game” that Bruce talks about on the “The Strings of Tao” CD. This is just a sort of trick to organize them all at once. the inner alignments is a phrase that describes when all of the energy channels are acting in concert. “When the channels are aligned, the space inside an individual has no end…”
Never thought about the feet never crossing the centerline in tai chi.
But come to think about it, it’s true.
And in Bagua feet cross the centerline a lot.I once made the mistake of saying the that hands have no muscles, only ligaments.
One of my students said, “Baloney!”
He’s right.Same with the feet: ligaments and muscles.
(External ligaments from the legs and intrinsic ligaments within the foot).I’ve heard Bruce say many times that Bagua focuses on the feet.
OK. And Taiji focuses on the lower dantien.
And I’ve heard him say to drive energy down the outside of the leg to the heel. And push off like a sprinter out of the running block.I’ve always had a hard time doing this.
I squat lower sometimes, I try breathing with the heels, I lift my foot to the knee, I grind my toes in and out, I rock to the outside of the foot, to the inside, I twist the muscles of my lower leg in and out, etc.Exactly how and why does Bagua use “ligaments” of the foot?
“Ligaments” are controlled by the liver and gall bladder, according to acupuncture theory. The animal spirit is either the deer or the tiger.
Muscles are controlled by the spleen and stomach (bear or monkey animal spirit).This morning I used my feet to run for my car–when at daybreak (4:30) a wolf started howling outside my tent–Forest Service Road 638, Priest Lake, northern Idaho.
Forget tai chi, forget bagua.
Feet don’t fail me now.Bob
(Somewhere near the Canadian border)
Now you are starting to ask the right questions. Before I try to answer, I can’t help note that you are illustrating one of the minor points of my post: Bruce uses a lot of phrases that his students don’t really understand.
So, it isn’t really just the ligaments, the feet do have muscles, ligaments, tendons, fascia, etc. I used ligaments because most people that have been doing Tai Chi or Bagua for a long time know the distinct feeling when the ligaments begin to soften and when their springy nature is restored.
The point is that the foot is triggering the entire body.
This is related to the simple foot-break that Bruce has described a thousand times. It is also the key to understanding all the times he has talked about pressure in the bubbling well or in the heel.
Take the simple foot-break. That stretches the physical tissue on the bottom of the foot toward the bubbling well. This is the yin side of the foot (one of them anyway). I’m actually stretching every yin surface of the body (in the legs, torso, arms, and head) at the same time. I’ve linked it all up. I linked it using Energy Gates, Marriage of Heaven and Earth, Bend the Bow, and Spiraling Energy Body neigung.
That extreme yin action changes into yang. The bubbling well is part but the tissue on the yang side of the body gets activated and energy comes up the entire yang side of the body.
You can’t do this the way I’m doing it without the connection that I tried to describe. If you’ve got it, the tailbone, the lower tan tien, and the foot work as a unit to control the yin/ yang flows up and down the body. If you haven’t done the unification work I’ve hinted at, you’ll only get a shadow of what this is really about. If you are blocked anywhere along theses paths, it will diminish the flow significantly. It will be almost none existent.
Note that I didn’t mention Gods Playing in the Clouds in the list. Why?
The reason is that Gods neigung is the integration set; hence, it represents the earth element. This is a set that brings all of the previous neigung sets together and then takes them to where they can go.
In contrast, I used Bagua circle walking and the single palm change to do this. If you read through my posts over the last five years, you’ll notice the theme of interpreting neigung elements and trying to associate them with the trigrams. It ultimately doesn’t work because neigung is neigung and the trigrams are something else.
That said, you can do exactly what I did. It is harder than using Gods but that is from a retrospective point of view – hindsight is 20-20.
I can brake down the seven exercises of Gods and map them to the same material I’ve mapped Bagua palm changes to at times. The neigung elements are supposed to be there – all of them.
What I think I’ve got is how the entire set of 16 part neigung comes together, how it unifies.
IMO, you could learn this from Gods, but you would have to do what I did; go back through all of the neigung sets and find all of the missing material that is only implied. Without that foundation you could do Gods for a very, very long time and never get any closer to understanding the energy arts.
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