Working with the Internal Organs

[Anonymous]

I’ve always thought that the subject of the internal organs was too advanced for me. There were plenty of fundamentals to concentrate on. I recently had a sort of revelation that the whole subject (although it can get very technical) is terribly simple.

Basically, the organs can move and our arms and legs are connected to them both directly and indirectly. When we move our arms the movement of the organs (or lack of movemement) can either oppose and detract from what we are trying to accomplish or they can assist and add senergistically to the movement. That might sound a bit complicated but it really just means that they get in the way or help.

You have to open your body and your awareness enough to start noticing how they work. Part of opening the body is restoring the natural motility of the organs. The arm postures really help. For me the trick is to relax and allow the internal pressures to move through the body. This is easier said than done, but when you start to get it, you’ll realize how silly and complicated we make something that is very simple.

[Anonymous]

Hi James,

Thanks for your posts, as a beginner with Bruce’s Bagua most of your content is just fantastic to me-literally! I’m really impressed with your obvious dedication to your practice, and what you write seems truly insightful- one day I hope to experience some of what you mention viscerally rather than merely mentally.

On that note, I had a really similar experience to you re: the internal organs a day or two before you posted this! (I meant to reply straight away, but I rarely find time to post….only 3 months late!!!)

I’m glad you shared your experience so lucidly as I could never put it in to words the way you have, and as a consequence I’ve been able to reflect on it more deeply in my own practice.

On reflection I can see that this relationship between the limbs and the internal organs has been on the edge of my awareness in one shape or form for many years. In fact I’ve been in a kind of denial about it, as I thought it was ‘wrong’ to feel pressures within the abdomen whilst practising internal martial arts!

Since my experience and reading your post I’ve played with and embraced the idea of the connection, especially between the arms and the organs, I tweak my static arm postures and the organs respond by making my arms feel lighter…….. well, a bit lighter! Its no longer central in my awareness and for the time being has become just another part of my practice and I know there is a whole load of depth I simply haven’t got yet. But that seems to be the nature of this work, you gain little pieces of the puzzle here and there and add them to the picture, after you gain a few bits elsewhere, you come back to them and see more depths.

My current challenge is how to build up my time in the static arm postures (and has been for 2 years now!) Too often I catch myself trying to force a conclusion with one particular component or nei gong element, as if it was ‘the magic bullet’. I think it was in the flash of awareness when I first felt my internal organs ‘helping’ instead of ‘hindering’ me, that I realised there is no magic bullet. I realised I have to do it all at once and completely naturally. It takes all the 16 Nei Gong hard wired in whatever small degree I have them to complete the whole. What a fantastic undertaking, and a great privelidge to be exposed to this teaching.

Your posts give me great hope for my own practices furture fruits……….happy circling,
Saul

[Author]

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