Some friends of mine have suggested that we hike up Pike’s Peak in Colorado this summer. I haven’t decided yet, but, frighteningly, I’m actually seriously considering it. It’s a good sign because it shows how much I’ve improved in the past few years, that that’s even in the range of my thought. However, if I decided to do it I’d have to condition myself for it.

But if I do it, I’ve decided that I’m not going to train for it in a conventional way. Instead I’ll follow a qigong way of training. I’ve been inspired by these stories.

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My first week of qigong training is over.

My initial criticisms still stand. I think the course really works best as an intermediate training program. I find that my background in qi, Chinese medicine, and body movement help immensely to make me feel like I’m at a good baseline. Initially this was quite off-putting since I didn’t quite expect to be thrown into the deep end. It still makes me worry about what I’m missing.

As the week went on, though, I also began to see how that blade cuts both ways, and it actually started to excite me. I mean, really, would I really have wanted to sit through more detailed lectures on the Five Elements? Would I really have wanted to sit through lectures on what is qi and descriptions on how to achieve qi sensation and flow? I sure wouldn’t.

This was an information dump, no question about it. Not much time for emphasis or individual assistance; just plain turning on the fire hose full blast. But in the midst of that I start to see a pattern in the madness. There are so many details that begin to make sense. And I think I’m starting to understand that this form of healing could be really, truly awesome. All of the details point to a very systematic and refined way of using mind, body, breath, and energy to heal. It’s no less than a science of energy healing.

At the end of the week, I sat back and realized something: This is what I’ve wanted for years.

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This qigong training is rubbing me the wrong way a little bit, and it’s taking me some time to figure out why. Forgive me as I complain.

Basically, it reminds me of a Tom Brown, Jr. class. One week of being bombarded with material, to the point of information overload. Do this, do that. Got it? Good. Some inspiring stories to break up the routine. Repeat.

It’s not that it’s bad information. It’s that the quantity of the material is being presented without attention to the process of learning.

I like it when the teaching of something starts from the beginning. What is qi? What’s the experience of qi? What are the foundational things that lead to that experience? Once experienced, what are the basic ways you can direct, use, and refine it? That’s what I thought this would be like. Instead, it launched into esoteric theories followed by multiple exercises for dispersing and tonifying various kinds of qi in various organs.

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I’ve embarked on another step in this journey: Today I started a training program in medical qigong.

I’ll only note one thing right now, and that is that I feel that this, which is in some ways touches deeply into the essence of the type of healing I would like to do, has the remarkable ability to touch one of my greatest strengths an done of my greatest weaknesses simultaneously.

I enjoy the strength of being relatively sensitive to energy.

I suffer the weakness of being fairly incapable of inhabiting my body well, leading to tension and weakness and a weak constitution.

The combination means that I can command energy but it’s not well grounded. And as anyone who works with energy knows, ultimately energy and matter go hand in hand. In other words, if I want to progress anywhere with my qi capabilities, I have to allow it to flow and settle correctly in myself first.

Which touches on so much: on breathing, on posture, on emotional blocks and mental habits.

The learning, and the challenges, never seem to stop. Sometimes I like it that way, but other times … Damn, I wish I could just say I’m done learning for awhile.

This weekend I graduated from the Toyohari program in Japanese acupuncture and meridian therapy.

I have to say that it really revolutionized the way I practice acupuncture, and has honed the way I feel qi. I remember that during the first few months of acupuncture school, I had no idea how to feel for an acupuncture point, and it was never made that clear to me; and, indeed, the more common Chinese method is not really that precise. A couple of my classmates recently went to China; I saw a video they took of a Chinese doctor inserting needles, and they were these really thick, long needles being plunged quickly and without sensitivity into the abdomen of a thin woman and stimulated mercilessly. And that’s the way people are used to doing it in China, and by many practitioners in the States.

Nothing wrong with that, of course. It gets results. But it’s a different philosophy.

For me, I’ve acquired the ability to run my finger very lightly along a channel and feel whether there’s qi at a point or not. It really does feel like a pooling of energy — there’s a buzzing, a softness, an aliveness that’s present when the point is active. How do I know it’s really active? Because when I feel a good point, fellow Toyohari practitioners who are taking the pulse will tell me that the pulse feels improved when I’m touching that point.

It’s an exquisite, sensitive, and refined way to do acupuncture, and fits my character and constitution, as a practitioner — and as a patient!

So now I have some more tools under my belt to use.

The next stop for me is something one step even more esoteric. I plan to take a program on medical qigong being offered locally by a national organization. I currently practice a style of qigong I find really beneficial, but see no way to apply it in treating others, and don’t feel very drawn to the martial arts stuff that’s emphasized by the instructor. So I’m trying out a different style which is aimed specifically toward patient treatment.

This stuff seems very weird and fluffy and not like anything that should work according to everything that’s taught in the Western world. But when you start seeing severe pain vanish within thirty seconds of applying a non-insertion needling technique, then many more things seem possible.

In the human digestive system, we need to ingest a certain variety of nutrients to stay alive. Generically speaking, we need to eat carbohydrates (sugars and starches), proteins, and fats, as well as fiber, vitamins and minerals, and of course water. Different foods will provide different proportions of these nutrients, and of course, regular, well-balanced meals are the foundation of a healthy digestion.

So that’s nourishment on the dense, material level. Here’s my thinking: On an energetic, psychic level, we have the same kind of needs. We need to absorb psychic energy that’s quick and easy to digest, like simple sugars. We need to absorb energy that’s more difficult to digest but more nourishing in various ways, like complex carbohydrates, or proteins, or fats. We need trace amounts of specific types of energy, like vitamins and minerals.

The psychic analogue to simple sugars is the type of resonance that’s mentally and emotionally easy to digest. That’s interaction with that aspect of the world that’s most like ourselves — other human beings and their products: light conversation, easy company, entertainment like television shows and movies or reading. Just as everyone has different dietary needs and preferences based on their constitution, chemistry, and dietary upbringing, everyone has different psychic needs. Some people will be easier to “take” than others. Some social activities will be nice for some people, too “sweet” or not “sweet” enough for others.

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I only have seven months left to go until I graduate from acupuncture school. It’s the home stretch.

I only entered clinic last year, almost exactly a year ago. There has been so much stress about recruiting patients, and no doubt I will have some of the same stress when I start my own practice. But for now, recently, a remarkable thing has happened:

I’m booked.

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I’ve been remiss in my blogging, thanks to finals and thanks to some more traveling as Abigail and I try to get a more solid feel for where we want to live after graduation. Nothing solid to report as yet, but we know that we dislike Texas.

I have eight months left before I graduate and enter the wild blue yonder of the world beyond formal schooling. It’s a transition that basically coincides with my 30th birthday, and astrologically fits with the whole concept of the Saturn return.

I’ve been feeling more and more strongly the powerful energy that wants to, and could, be channelled through me, if I were pure enough. Divine energy, for lack of a better term; cosmic energy that flows down from the heavens. I find that it’s stronger if my mind is clearer; it’s stronger if my heart is relaxed and open. It’s stronger if I’m just physically relaxed. Of course all of these are difficult in a stressful, fast-paced life like that of a busy graduate student. I always feel the flows more strongly on breaks.

I also notice that there is a force that opposes this flow of Divine energy or love, and my experience of it is that it is dark, and heavy, and obscure, and emotional; and in many ways it makes a lot of sense why others have labeled it “evil” or “sin,” because that’s exactly the type of energy it feels most resonant with. It growls; it rages; it sits low in the body, condensed, tight, unwilling to balance. In me I feel that it drives everything from violent urges to odd musical preferences. It’s the shadow, that repository of all those things that we consciously believe that we are not — but that remain in us, untransformed and untransmuted, unintegrated.

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A guy comes in for treatment the other day. He’s down on the table and I start putting needles in him, when he starts complaining that his headache, which had been vague today, was getting worse and worse, like it was really stabbing him like a knife in the head. I asked him where it was and he pointed at the top of his head, just a little to the left of midline.

So this is what’s remarkable. First, I had to know that the acupuncture meridian that crossed through that point was the Bladder meridian. Then I had to know that the Bladder meridian was associated, in an esoteric Chinese theoretical way, with the Small Intestine meridian. Then I had to know that the Small Intestine meridian ran along the ulnar edge of the arm. Then I had to know that the hand correlates to the head, and therefore the point that might best be associated with his headache was Small Intestine 3.

Most of these are things many an acupuncture student will know, but it just blows my mind how what once seemed esoteric has become practical.

So anyway, I stuck a needle into SI-3 and stimulated it strongly.

And the headache died down dramatically.

A quick cure with just one needle.

That’s so cool.

A fascinating experience with Japanese acupuncture:

On Friday I ate a pear that a fellow student offered me. I don’t know why I thought it was okay, as I usually avoid anything that has starches or sugar, even natural sugars, due to my hypoglycemia. Quite soon afterward, I started feeling woozy and fatigued. Since I knew I still had a whole afternoon of classes to get through, not to mention a very busy weekend, I became very concerned. I didn’t know what I would do, I just knew I felt like shit.

Just on a whim, I decided to try this non-insertion acupuncture stuff. Toyohari focuses much more on sensitivity to qi, which is right up my alley; but a hard-science part of me is still skeptical of it. But in a pinch, I thought, why not give a shot? So I got out a 40-gauge silver needle and did a tonification technique on my right foot, at Spleen 3.

I felt qi rising up to my head, giving me a sense of “filling” it with energy. Immediately I felt lighter, my head cleared up, and even though I was still tired, I felt much more stable. I was stunned, and just sat there in amazement at the efficacy of one needle that didn’t even pierce the skin.

Good stuff.

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