"Resistance" by any other name

... stagnation, blockage, pain... I've come to see these as very close cousins, or different faces of the same phenomena.

Leah, your attempt to force energy through this blockage in your back reminds me of my own shoulder/arm issues... frustrated with this distant, disconnected tissue... if only I could control my energy better, concentrate it more, push it through and experience that warm sensation of healthy flow!

Although I still think along those lines at times, I've honestly never had that much success forcing energy to go anywhere. I have come to believe that

1) energy is flowing everywhere all the time, albeit in varying quantities
2) my awareness is not qi, yet is a tool by which I concentrate qi and open the door for qi to intensify naturally ("where the mind goes, the qi will follow")
3) resistance to awareness is the main hurdle for me to overcome; clearing blockages feels more like opening than pushing...opening first to my own awareness, then subsequently to qi.
4) there are many subtle interactions, reconciliations and realignments the need to occur at the border of a stagnant area...sometimes this can take awhile.

I now see my role as less of a qi-engineer (go here, do that, faster, move along now...) and more of a facilitator... helping my body tissues and energy circuits open up to and relate with one another.

Play with this idea... of "resistance to awareness"... especially in the context of simultaneous body awareness. What is this resistance? What is stopping you from feeling with every cell in your body? From opening to your own natural qi flow?

I still play with this concept, in pretty much every session.

8/21/06

``blog`` sounds like the feeling i had when i pushed past the block in my spine. the first few times i got to that point using spinal spirals i could not proceed beyond it and i was frightened to feel that wall. there was also an acute emotion triggered in that point, and the first few times i poked it i felt like i would cry. when i dwelled on the point using vertical spirals it became less guarded and i could sense its complexity even though i could not undo the disturbance or move beyond it. the one time i forced myself to move beyond it--``blog!``--my energy promptly derailed from my spine and travelled into the muscle near my left shoulder, which startled me and felt un-healing. i will not force energy to move again, but would like to keep working below and on the blocked area.

dantien microcircuit

A recent lower back injury has me refocusing on my dantien, lower spine and pelvic area... with interesting results.

Spending lots of time on the microcircuit (small orbit around dantien... through bellybutton to back, down spine to tailbone and up again) is helping create a solid ball of qi, which improves the rest of my practice... I'm realizing that I often too quickly pass over this core microcircuit in favor of larger circulations.

One interesting detail in this microcircuit is with the tailbone... as the energy flows down my lumbar spine and into my tailbone, I really try and feel it, imagine it mobile, and work on feeling the energy flowing from my tailbone, arcing horizontally through my perenium, then towards my front to go up again. I even "feel" the tailbone moving, bending and pointing as I do this.

I'm feeling like spending time in this core dantien circuit, really heating up my dantien before I engage the rest of my body, is very helpful. I guess there's a reason Master Liang had this as the first exercise!