21.4.07

 
This article was submitted to 'The Journal of Qigong in America' for possible publication. The journal is pulished by the National Qigong Association.

The Qi of Taiji


Opening to Illumination

Some time ago I received an e-mail message from the publisher of, Taijiquan Journal, requesting my opinion on Qigong and Taiji teaching requirements. This message stimulated an immediate remembrance of my Teacher Training experience with Dr. Roger Jahnke, of the Institute of Integral Qigong and Tai Chi, based in Santa Barbara, California. The particular training that I attended was offered through the Omega Institute, located in Hudson Valley, New York, during the late summer and early fall. Dr Jahnke led us through a month long resident program of intense, enlightening, and exhilarating teachings, which included direct teaching experience for all in attendance, as well as exposure to presenters of depth knowledge in Taoist philosophy and martial arts.

I had studied with Roger previously, having attended a one day weekend seminar held at the Open Center, in New York City. This took place some years prior to the Omega training. My praxis in the martial arts had provided opportunities for study with many masters in various disciplines. The teachings of Roger Jahnke, for me, formed a matrix of integral templates, which emphasized healing, and the continuity of internal development. This generates power potentials.

For example, I remember during an exercise at the Omega training, our group of approximately twenty-two students, was working on bone marrow washing. We were standing in a row by column formation, gathering Qi by way of inhalation, and dispelling Qi through exhalation. On each in-breath, we raised our arms toward heaven. I momentarily focused, placed my attention at the top of my head, on the site of the crown charka, and inhaled Cosmic Qi into that spot. Using will and imagery, during each inhalation, I infused Qi throughout my body. This description of infusion can also be described as a feeling; an internal sensitivity to energy flow within. Warm currents of Qi began to flow.

During this particular exercise, a sense of primal awareness blossomed within my mental eye. Life and its usual problematic became instantly resolved, as I stepped through an infinite doorway into the realms of cosmic expansion. There was, within me, a sense of certainty without explanation, beyond mere belief and opinion.

We can apply an analogical perspective here, with respect to self-organizing systems, attractors, and the emergence of a higher level of complexity, or level of order. In other words, when a system, in general, or a human system, in particular, emerges from one state to another, we may experience a movement from relative chaos, or fluctuating instability to an enhanced level of relative stability. For example, going from sickness to health, may be understood as a form of emergence to a more beneficial state of being. In psychological states there are higher orders of understanding which fluctuate between ignorance and enlightened knowledge. Chaos represents the fluctuations and change within states. Enlightenment represents the higher order of complexity which emerges as real knowledge. Practicing Qigong and Taiji generates higher order states of enlightenment. This can lead to human beings becoming attractors of cosmic energy and, ultimately, of Divine Illumination!

Initiation

The direct experience of Qi flow within my body was, perhaps, the most dramatic internal sensing I had ever known. My initial practice of Qigong began with a book I purchased from a Sufi Center in Tribeca, New York City. I was interested in the text because of my training in martial arts. I thought that studying Qigong would allow me to project a focused power across empty space. I was a neophyte practitioner at the time. I began with the demanding exercise of standing-on-stake, a form of Zhan Zhuang Qigong which I learned from reading the book entitled, 'Chi Gong: The Ancient Chinese Way to Health', written by Paul Dong, and Aristede H. Esser, MD. I still have the volume, among many others on the subject by now.

During my early days of study and practice, I held various Qigong postures for relatively long periods of time, increasingly moving from five minutes up to thirty minutes, and sometimes even up to fifty per posture. Initially, the questions in my mind were: What is Qigong? How will I recognize it within my own being? Would my intellect help me to directly understand? I knew from my previous and ongoing experience with the practice of Taijiquan, the Supreme Ultimate Fist, the Heart of all martial arts, that similar questions had been answered to some degree. I learned from the practice of Aikido, that the Way of Harmonious Energy was a direct experience, beyond words.

A survey of my notes from the Omega lectures of Dr. Jahnke, on Qigong and TaiChi (Taiji), provide indications of answers to my questions. The idea of initial alignment of the mind-body complex is important in terms of three intentful corrections concerning posture, breath and mind. The idea of the ubiquitous Taiji Yin-Yang symbol, as a partial representation of body and spirit, is important in fostering internal balance and harmony. The ideas about gathering, storing, transforming, circulating, dissolving and transmitting energy, are important with respect to self-healing, and the confirmation within a personal Self, on the nature of how to be. During the time at Omega, Dr. Jahnke also introduced us to a brilliant and effective form of Taiji and Qigong he created, which introduced a student to a synthesis of Taijiquan. This allowed a novice to learn an Integral Taiji Qigong composed of twelve brief forms, moving from alignment to closure. All this provided us with well formed intentions which removed blockages and obstructions from our potential for natural flow. Therefore, practice produced immediate answers for me, in the form of feeling and sensitivity, in terms of new energy pathways, filled with tendrils and tides of warmth, and occasional eruptions of heat throughout my entire body.

Prior to Omega, in the initial time of study, I worked solo in the evenings, practically everyday in my studio styled apartment. I continued my studies of Qigong with other texts, and by way of my computer as well, when possible. At that time, Internet web resources were not as pervasive as they are today. Several months after I began practicing Qigong on my own, I had an opportunity to study with a living master, at the New York Open Center in Manhattan, New York City. By then I had already introduced a friend, colleague, and fellow martial artist to Qigong. We signed up for the seminar together.

Open Center

A Qigong adept, Dr. Shen Hongxun, O.M.D., led the seminar. He was listed in the catalog of courses as a Qigong specialist from Shanghai; well known in China, with experience of teaching in European universities; specifically at Ghent in Belgium, and Venice in Italy. This was an evening seminar about Qi and Buqi methods. It promised to be an introduction to healing and spontaneous movement.

I held no preconceived expectations. There were approximately thirty five people in the group attending the seminar. We sat on folding chairs, in a relatively large room at the Open Center. Dr. Shen was dressed in a white jacket and slacks, and he was accompanied by an attending female assistant. He began to speak in a heavily accented, and highly pitched tone of English, which to me, sounded somewhat unintelligible, as if he was suffering from a bad head cold. My initial reaction was one of disappointment in not being able to clearly understand what he was saying. However, as he continued to speak and gesture with his hands, a subtle understanding began to blossom within me. He explained the spontaneous sensations and movements which occur within Qigong practitioners in receiving transmitted Qi, or when cultivating internal Qi. Dr. Shen demonstrated his explanations after his talk was over, by asking us to stand-on-stake while forming various Qigong postures.

In one particular exercise, he had us standing, facing a wall, feet shoulder width apart, knees slightly bent, and arms extended forward toward the wall, palms pressing through space. We were instructed to press as hard as possible, in the eye of the mind, against the wall. We alternated between mental states of pressing through the wall, and relaxation. During the relaxation phase, we stood with our arms held as if we were holding a large ball against our abdomens, palms facing in toward our bodies. All the while, as we practiced this technique, Dr. Shen moved among us, observing our efforts. A few people became overtly stimulated during the set. Some began crying, others started to bounce up and down.

An unusually strange phenomenon occurred within me as well. My eyes were closed at the time. I felt the edge of my left hand begin to flutter and vibrate at high velocity. It felt as if a site specific wave of energy had invaded my palm and worked its way to the edge of my hand. At first I imagined that Dr. Shen had done some sort of energy transmission near me. This was not so. I was told later, by his assistant, that what I had experienced was, perhaps, a form of, sick Qi, leaving my body during the exercise.

After the seminar, I went home and began practicing immediately, since, so to speak, I felt positively charged up from my exposure to the Qigong group and master. During my session at home, I experienced unusual electrical phenomena, by way of a crackling internal sound accompanied by a sensation of being zapped by a spark. The experience brought to mind a feeling of having momentarily become a human capacitor! Needless to say, it was a totally new phenomena for me, and extremely startling. Over time, there have been other esoteric exposures.

Those were the early days of my praxis. Since then, I have studied whenever possible, with many teachers. Among them were: Nan Lu, O.M.D., Bruce Kumar Francis, Ph.D., Yang Jwing-Ming, Ph.D., Roger Jahnke, O.M.D., Mantak Chia, Fong Ha, Tzu Kuo Shih, and C. C. Chen. Over the years of study and practice, the benefits of these mind-body disciplines have been extensive, in terms of helping to heal self and others, general health enhancement, and spiritual illumination.

Closure and Continuity

Since my completion of Teacher Training with Dr. Roger Jahnke at the Omega Institute in the New York Hudson Valley range, I have been prepared to teach Qigong and Taijiquan. I have, so far, taught a course at a Community College in my area, and provided private lessons to people who have contacted me through my web listing with the National Qigong Association. This necessary and enlightening work is continuous.

In closing, I present a quote which usually appears at the end of most e-mail messages sent out to our Qi Family, from Dr. Roger Jahnke:

When you cultivate balance and harmony within yourself, or in the world, That is Tai Chi. When you work and play with the essence and energy of life, nature and the universe for healing, clarity and inner peace, That is Qigong.
posted by Ronn 03:00