Like a thing that is right under our nose, we don’t see it. We can’t learn its systems or feel its properties clearly, or know its capacities. When we’re too close to a friend or a situation, we lose our objectivity, and we lose our ability to see the friend or situation clearly. It’s the same way with our bodies. Our body has been with us all along, so we can’t see it in general. And it’s our loss, because the body has rich potential to be mined in our self-development. It has the ability to help us know ourselves better, to purify and refine ourselves from within. This friend that has been with us all along will whisper solutions into its own “ears”, if we only knew how to listen. In most cases, what prevents our hearing is a classic tension between the surface consciousness (which easily becomes frightened and tries to protect itself and its fragile structure) and the deep consciousness or true self (which really wants to change in a good way).

In order to make the switch and to live from the deep consciousness, a consciousness that embraces all levels of our being, including our very intelligent and under-utilized body- consciousness, it is necessary to meet the following requirements.

The first requirement in shifting the locus of our perceptions, and thus of our responses, attitudes, and ultimately our outlook on life, is energy. If people don’t have enough energy during the process of changing their central authority from the surface consciousness to their true self, they feel frustrated, confused, and frightened.
The second requirement is awareness. However, the function of energy-increasing exercises alone can stimulate the body into new awareness; the body begins to understand things the mind cannot see. It’s easy for the mind to lie and have illusions, but when the body begins to be aware, it can actually correct the minds’ misperceptions. This is one of the key points of Yi Ren Medical Qigong practice. When a person becomes more energized and as the awareness of the body increases, the body will start revealing that person’s emotional and mental habits. It’s almost like we start being able to listen on two different levels, and the one level gives us awareness of the other level. As it becomes more clear and familiar to us, the body’s information becomes a very important reference point for our mental activity and for decision making.

Sometimes you can have the best mind in the world and a great heart too, but you also need the power and the energy to make changes, and make them stick. If we don’t have the energy it’s hard to go for, say, loving-kindness and not be frustrated. Or if you want to get out of a depression, for example, and your environment is reinforcing that depression, how can you break out of that cycle without the energy? Yi Ren Medical Qigong practice can help us to live more harmoniously within ourselves, so that we can get along better with each other. Based on energy flow in the body, Yi Ren Medical Qigong’s main project is to recharge and circulate the energy of the body and work through blockages in the body’s energy-information system. Once circulation is well-established, all the internal organs can be cleansed, by means of increased energy circulation. This cleansing effect, with practice, reaches deep into our tissues, and, as the energy pathways flow more freely and clearly, all the way down into the cells and our DNA, encouraging the expression of healthy genetic information. And with this change–of these newly energized and cleansed organs–the mind and the body consciousness become connected. The mind becomes connected with the body, and the internal organs connect to each other, and learn to balance and harmonize each other. Once they are connected and can communicate well, the internal environment of our body becomes a powerful force in communications with other people in our lives.  For example, anger, love, worry, fear, sadness–everything depends on the body on the inside in terms of how we respond to the outside world. When we have cleaned, strengthened, and harmonized ourselves internally, we respond in a different style, a different manner, compared with before. Inside, we begin to develop our connection to the cellular consciousness, to the organs’ consciousness, and then it’s easy to come out with a new response to situations. The wisdom from the inside, the intelligence from the inside, tells us maybe this is a good idea; and these communications come quickly, and are more effective than our previous strategies. You can call it intuition, or universal connection, or wisdom.

In the view of Yi Ren Medical Qigong, what’s happening is this: the internal organs form a communication network through Energetic Operational System (EOS), which, as we practice and learn to listen to our bodies, offers suggestions and solutions to each member of the network. If one member only has one way of responding to a situation, but is connected and able to communicate instantly with the other members, the others can offer balance and harmony; when the heart or the liver is stimulated, it can tell the lungs or stomach, help me–right now, I am in this situation, how do I deal with this? The heart, or the liver, gets advice–so to speak–very quickly, and then responds in a better way than it would have on its own. This improved internal communication network ramifies into our external environment, to our great satisfaction. In this way, we become able to break out of unproductive habitual patterns–patterns we may have wished to change years ago, or patterns that we might only recently have become aware of through enhanced energy awareness.

It’s not like we don’t have emotions, we just find the appropriate degree of the emotion–the degree that agrees with the body’s capacity for holding that emotion. And, once we know the body, if we find ourselves with an excessive degree, we learn how to harmonize and balance that emotion, rather than being at its mercy. Throughout this process, our communications increase in depth and quality as well. Our internal communication network and our activated EOS provide a more accurate lens. Without EOS in place, its much harder to have real communication; we really only see what it is we think were seeing, and that is a very limited mental perception. It’s not a visceral perception; it’s not something we can feel in our bodies–therefore we may not really know the entire truth of something, and maybe the real truth of it. To develop the EOS and internal communication network requires practice. And the precondition for uniting the mind with the consciousness of the body is a peaceful mind and internal authentic Qi (vital energy) cultivation. When we get peaceful and connect to the body’s consciousness, our will is more practical, more close to reality—because were in more direct communication with reality. A peaceful mind allows us to hear the body’s signals and alarm system, because authentic Qi cultivation empowers the mind to become synchronized with the consciousness of the body.

In a sense, when we practice Yi Ren Medical Qigong, we are doing body meditation, down into the deepest layers of the body and the body’s consciousness and memories. Living from our true self becomes practical and real, our spiritual connection grounded to physical reality, as we become better acquainted with this friend that has been with us all along.

***********

Note: A Medical Qigong Self Care Program has been scheduled on October 14-17, 2016 in Crowne Plaza Hotel – 2 Somerset Parkway, Nashua, NH 03063.  If you are interested in Medical Qigong training, more detailed information at https://www.iqim.org/medical-qigong-self-care-program-2016-2017-new-hampshire/

________________________________

About the author

Jill Gonet, MFA earned her B.A. at the University of Massachusetts, and her M.F.A. from the University of Washington. Her writing has appeared in numerous literary journals over the years, including Poetry, Ploughshares, The New England Review, The Gettysburg Review, The Best American Poetry, and The Best of the Best American Poetry, among others. She is the recipient of awards from the Poetry Society of America, as well as grants from the Seattle Arts Commission. She has been interested in ancient Daoist classics since her high school years, and has studied Dao De Jing– the Way of Virtues, Yi Jing– the Book of Change, Ling Shu– the Spiritual Pivot, Zhuang-Zi, and Lie-Zi, diligently. She has meditated and practiced Qigong daily for over 20 years. She has combined her interests in writing, Chinese culture, and the art of internal cultivation by collaborating on many writings with Dr. Sun. She is the author of two books: Red Pellet, Golden Bones and Riding the Phoenix to Penglai.