ChiQSo let me ask you something, since you opened the door to questions. Any thoughts on interpersonal transfer of energy? . . . . . .No one talks much about it, for obvious reasons. But I've thought that it would be interesting to be wired up, to see if my body is reflecting what I'm sensing. Best metaphor I can come up with is volcanic activity - the energy that is stored in the muscle erupts and releases.
AMy old Tai Chi Teacher would not talk about Chi, she said that westerners were too prone to conceptualise it and this thinking could get in the way of the real stuff, actual practice to realise it. With this in mind, I will have a go; (I do not think you need this warning but it helps to remind ourselves). She was especially critical of descriptions like “imagine your arm is hollow, like a hose pipe, and the chi, like water is flowing through it”. Some Chinese treatises speak of many different kinds of Chi, though others relate that there is only one but that it behaves differently depending on how it is gathered and expressed. The Japanese are often critical of the Chinese concepts of Chi. The Chinese have been critical of Indian concepts of Kundalini. The Tibetans just smile at everyone and sit in sub-zero temperatures wearing simple cotton gowns soaked in freezing water – that they then dry completely by raising their body temperature!
I have met Tai Chi teachers who could make one hand cold and the other hot, at will. Who could place one hand on my shoulder blade and I could feel something moving from them to me. I have seen little old eastern martial arts experts who were completely immovable by big strong western men. Clearly something is happening here. Some of this can be explained by wonderfully high skill achievements. My old Tai Chi Teacher said this: “There are three levels of Martial Arts. The first, is to be physically stronger than anyone else. The second level, is to be faster than anyone else. But the highest level of all is to not be there in the first place". ( Rose Shao-Chiang Li )
High skill levels and being very wise do not explain what is happening though. It does seem that there is an energy in the body that can be (a) moved from one part to another (b) can be accumulated and then released at will (or by accident, or, manipulation). Chinese Tai Chi Masters and Taoist adepts talk of practices that result in accumulating the Chi, moving it and expressing (projecting) it at will. Western body therapists talk of body armour which is a combination of bad posture and defensive physiological predispositions that result in chronic postural “holding”. In its extreme form this can be very debilitating but it a problem for many of us. When this “holding” is released, through a combination of therapy and postural exercises, (or direct manipulation), a characteristic “rush” of energy can take place. It has been noted how this “rush” in its strongest format, can be remarkably similar to an orgasm.
So it feels like something moves in the body – but does it actually move? This is worth exploring in some detail as it later could impact on our approach to practice.
If I have a power source, say a battery and an output from it, say a wire, to a devise, say a bulb, I can measure what happens during various states. When the battery is off, I can measure that there is no voltage in the bulb and can seen that there is no light. If I switch the power source on, I can measure the voltage in the bulb and see the light. It is safe to assume that electricity has “moved” from battery to bulb. But if I have a long tank of water and drop a brick in one end, although some of the water moves, it is a wave of energy that travels from one end of the tank to the other. If you put a feather near where you drop the brick, then release the brick , the feather is not carried piggyback on the water to the other end of the tank - yet the wave does move through the water.
Some types of sneezing, orgasmic release, loud music during the emotional scene of a movie, ticklish reactions, shivers up and down the spine – there are many kinds of sensations that involve a sense of movement in the body. But is this like electricity moving from battery to bulb, or, like a wave moving through water? Scientists have shown that chemical reactions in nerve endings can spread down the nerves at incredible speeds. Electricity is involved too. Those surviving lightning strikes can be severely disabled, the electro-chemical functioning of theirs brains being permanently altered. There is so much more to find out about all this.
My own experiences would indicate that the energy in the body is more like a wave than an electric charge. So, something would not pass from me to you, as in, it was “in” me and now it is “in” you. It feels more likely that the wave analogy is the more fruitful. However, it is tantalising to consider this: I have felt the Chi of Tai Chi master even when he was not physically touching me. This means that the “wave” passes through the water of his body, through his skin barrier, through the air in between us, through my skin barrier, into the waters of my body. This is quite some wave! But when you think, heat from the sun comes through the atmosphere of space, through our atmosphere, through my skin and if I was not careful could heat the entire contents of my body.
So what is Chi? To me it seems to be a wave but why has it not been spotted and identified by western scientists? Can it just be that we are so repressed we could not look at anything that was too much like sex? Is it that teachers from the east were not interested in alerting western scientists, or protecting a heritage from aggressive western colonialism? I think that it will become known in the west eventually. In the same way that light was thought to be white, until it was shone through a prism, and some of its colours revealed, then in the future, the energy of our bodies will be more widely known. We will look back and wonder why it took so long. And then of course, we will wonder some more about the connections between the energy that is in our body and al the energy “out there” . . . . . And what is the relationship that this energy has with consciousness? Advanced Tai Chi practitioners can move this energy by will alone. Do you hear that sound? That is the sound of the universe getting bigger and even more mysterious. . . . . . . What is consciousness made of ? |
