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.

Perhaps all this pursuit of the correct language or method of expressing or being myself in this world would automatically resolve itself if I discovered my deeper motivation, what makes me tick, what drives me in the world — in a lower, more “physical” and less rational sense. The spark of desire that precedes the manifestation.

Here’s an earthier, sensual description of something sounds a lot like my experience of the Great Mystery, from Desire: A Tantric Path to Awakening, by Daniel Odier, an adherent of Kashmiri Shaivism. It resonates with me.

When you relax the whole body by the gentleness of the breath, when you abandon yourself, surrender, totally to gentleness, you will discover that the body is space and this is the most gentle of caresses, this is the most profound of orgasms because it gradually becomes established in continuity through the practice of presence to the world. Sexuality cannot be isolated, or made the special or choice vehicle of ecstasy, because the human being needs totality, he is totality. All searching that isolates one element of human nature in order to make it the only vehicle of the quest anticipates neurotic contact with life.

Sexuality is important if we believe that each and every contact of the senses with the world is a love affair. This is what the yoginis have taught us. This is what I understood from my time with [my master] Devi. For her, a leaf falling from a tree, a cloud passing, a fish in the river, the sensation of the sun or ash on her skin, the passing of an emotion or an idea — all that was lived like an unending love affair with the world. Every second, we are Shiva-Shakti in loving union; every second, our life provides us with a thousand propositions of ecstasy that a yogini does not let pass by because the flow of her consciousness continually inundates the tremoring, vibrating yoni of the world. To be this absolute lover in ordinary daily life is what causes wonderment to arise unceasingly. When the whole of life is permeated with this tremoring vibration, ecstasy is no longer linked to one particular activity: It flows in all things.

I have to remind myself continually that the game of chasing results in the clinic is dangerous. It’s a fine balance to strike, because of course that’s the whole reason people come in the door: to get improvements in their health. No one’s going to plunk down cash for some abstract concept like an improvement in the pulse, if it doesn’t also include their own experience of feeling better.

A point that has been hammered in many times, but which I still forget, is that before you rush to treatment, you need to make a proper diagnosis. This, too, is more difficult than it sounds, because often diagnosis is an ongoing process, not a one-time-only affair. Thus treatment can become part of the process, confirming or contradicting the diagnosis. But when this is combined with the rush to get results, sometimes diagnosis gets thrown by the wayside.

I wrote about this a few months ago. More recently I had a similar challenge.

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As I ponder language and communication, I begin to recognize that there are different objects to which I wish to relate, and they require different approaches.

• God
• Self
• Other humans
• Nonhumans (the natural world)

The first two are experiences that, for better or for worse, are more introspective and mystical endeavors for me, requiring the exclusion of outside relationships. They are a turning inward and upward of soul and spirit.

The latter two are in some ways the opposite; they are the turning outward and downward of soul and spirit. Of course, this is very rough; others might experience God as being more fully alive and immanent in this world than in any place “higher.” But I’m just explaining what I currently experience, for whatever reason.

I feel that I’ve made my path one that’s weighted more fully towards the first two. It’s the latter two that I have troubles with. I’ve made inroads but in fits and starts, and as much backtracking as advancement.

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I refer to God more and more, but I don’t mean that term in the same way as many other people use it. I found a passage recently in Aryeh Kaplan’s Inner Space that matches how I think of God, and why many times I prefer to refer to the Divine Principle.

… We can think of [God] in two distinct yet complementary ways. We can speak of God as the Creator of the universe, thus conceiving of Him as a “Being.” On the other hand, we can speak of God as the creative Force that gives existence to the universe, thus conceiving of him as an abstract “Principle.”

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“I was young when I first tackled my ally,” don Genaro finally said. “I remember that it was in the early afternoon. I had been in the fields since daybreak and I was returning to my house. Suddenly, from behind a bush, the ally came out and blocked my way. He had been waiting for me and was inviting me to wrestle him. I began to turn around in order to leave him alone but the thought came to my mind that I was strong enough to tackle him. I was afraid though. A chill ran up my spine and my neck became stiff as a board. By the way, that is always the sign that you’re ready, I mean, when your neck gets hard …”

“What happened when you grabbed your ally, don Genaro?” I asked.

“It was a powerful jolt,” don Genaro said after a moment’s hesitation. He seemed to have been putting his thoughts in order.

“Never would I have imagined it was going to be like that,” he went on. “It was something, something, something … like nothing I can tell. After I grabbed it we began to spin. The ally made me twirl, but I didn’t let go. We spun through the air with such speed and force that I couldn’t see any more. Everything was foggy. The spinning went on, and on, and on. Suddenly I felt that I was standing on the ground again. I looked at myself. The ally had not killed me. I was in one piece. I was myself! I knew then that I had succeeded. At long last I had an ally. I jumped up and down with delight. What a feeling! What a feeling it was!

“Then I looked around to find out where I was. The surroundings were unknown to me. I thought that the ally must have taken me through the air and dumped me somewhere very far from the place where we started to spin. I oriented myself. I thought that my home must be towards the east, so I began to walk in that direction. It was still early. The encounter with the ally had not taken too long. Very soon I found a trail and then I saw a bunch of men and women coming towards me. They were Indians. I thought they were Mazatec Indians. They surrounded me and asked me where I was going.

“‘I’m going home to Ixtlan,’ I said to them.

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The way that can be spoken
Is not the enduring way.
The name that can be named
Is not the enduring name.
Nameless is the origin of the ten thousand things.
Named is the ten thousand things’ mother.

- Dao de jing, chapter 1

It’s like this.

In the beginning there was God, beyond all possible comprehension, simply the One.

But in the Creation of the cosmos, the One became Many.

It’s here in this world of the interaction among the Many that we live.

Since we’re separate beings, unaware or unable to reconnect to the One that binds all of us, we have to find secondary means of interaction.

This is language.

My definition of language, therefore, is the interaction between one thing and another.

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A book I’ve been reading based on Neurolinguistic Programming, Communication Magic, describes more clearly what I was trying to say in my last post, from a different angle.

“The map is not the territory” succinctly highlights that we do not operate upon the world directly, but indirectly through our maps (or models) of the world.

Herein lies the magic. The magic lies in the very structure and syntax of our words, pictures, sounds, sensations, smells, etc. … Precisely because our maps or models of the world powerfully influence and govern all of our experiences, if we change the map, our experiences change. What we call transformation of personality, awareness, emotion, and the emergence of new skills and abilities, arise from our mental frames.

Pretty consistent with, say, Seth’s dictum that “you create your own reality” through the structure of your beliefs. Where it gets interesting is in the how.

Our maps differ from the territory in that we have deleted lots of information. We do that to prevent ourselves from getting overwhelmed. Further, to cope with things, we have created generalizations to summarize and synthesize patterns. And in deleting and generalizing data, we thereby distort things according to our neurological, cultural, and individual constraints.

… The richer our map, the more accurate, adequate, and useful our menu, the more choices. The more impoverished our model, the fewer choices. The richer and fuller our linguistic maps, the richer our mind.

And, conversely, the more inaccurate, inadequate, or distorted the map, the more this is reflect in experience.

This feels like a succinct way of describing my problem. My map of the world is too heavily weighted in the realm of the printed word. I have an underlying need to participate in stories, but the only tool I have to do so is reading. To pursue alternative stories, I need to expand my map, by developing other modes of perception (the senses) and participation (skills and abilities). This will take an input of energy and grunt work or dirt time.