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The last time I met with Bruce he mentioned that the diagrams of the central and side channels in The Power of the Internal Martial Arts book weren’t entirely accurate. I was curious if anyone knew what Bruce was referring to. He started to go into it with me but stopped short of a full explanation.
I’ve been thinking about the illustrations more and have a couple of ideas but I’d be curious if anyone who is particularly sensitive to energy has a better idea what Bruce meant. Let me know what you think.
Would be good if you could explain it as best you can if nobody has anything to add. I have no idea about different types of energies or how it ties in with the i-ching (other than the most basic understanding of the top line being heaven, bottom earth, and middle the human body).
I think Bruce was referring to the pathways that the side and central channels travel through the body but he might have had a different meaning. I was hoping that someone like Bill Ryan who is extremely sensitive and aware of the the energy flows might be able to feel the flows and thus clarify if the illustrations are accurate and if not, how.
Here’s and example of how I don’t think the illustrations are accurate: I don’t think the side channels are two separate lines running down the inside of the bones. I experience the side channels more like a hollow cylinder inside the bone with the central channel running through the middle of the “pipe”.
When I do the double-palm change, I run energy down all sides of the cylinder. This is expressed in the foot as a spreading of the entire foot in all directions and the energy splits equally from the center of the foot to the heel and ball. If your single palm change is good, you should be able to simultaneously run energy up the central channel. Hence the expression “you never leave the single palm change”. When you perform the mountain palm, you balance these two flows (as well as a bunch of other body mechanics and flows) which creates a stability and stillness that helps you feel much more at once with significantly greater clarity. Anyway, that’s my experience so far.
If anyone can clarify or verify the basic pathways, that would be great.
Ah right, for some reason I thought you were talking about the side trigrams. Drrrp.
So you’re saying that the side channels are the pipe itself, and that pipe is the inside lining of the bone or thereabouts? It blows my mind to think that anyone could feel such intricacies.
That’s basically it. Think of a cooked beef bone; the center is the soft marrow. The marrow is where the central channel runs. The harder bone is the pipe where the side channel runs.
If this is correct, it would be difficult to represent this in a two dimensional drawing particularly from the front perspective that David illustrated.
A lot of people have misinterpreted the yin and yang as just the forward projecting side and the retracting side. I think that’s true from the point of view of the soft tissue. My experience is that’s how you work your way toward the bone and it seems to be a necessary step in the progression from external to internal. Getting into the bone and bone marrow is considerably more challenging.
Of course, I could be hallucinating the whole thing.
I think it’s easy to have it happening in a much broader sense as well. Something I was working on the other night was taking a force in through my arm (grabbing my wrist) and letting it rest on my center flowing back from the outside layer, and then projecting back through the center of my arm. It certainly didn’t feel like it was in the marrow per se but more like just the skin layer and slightly underneath was coming back and everything else was going forward.
Is that typically where you begin, and over time you condense it inwards?
I’m not sure we are talking about exactly the same thing. In this thread I’m just trying to clarify the actual paths of the central and side channels and possibly how they are actually parts of one larger circuit.
It sounds like you are describing what Mike Sigmund used to call the peng path. If it is, you are on the right track. It is the foundation for just about everything internal. IMHO, many of the forces or chi descriptions are just detailed observations about how things feel inside.
Sorry if I’ve misunderstood you. It would be so much easier if we could meet. A lot of misunderstanding comes from threads like this.
haha yes indeed. I never know if I’m talking about the same thing. Will just keep training and eventually I’m sure it will become clear.
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