Articles
How to Know Your Best Friend: Yi Ren Qigong and the Body's Wisdom /The New Times November, 1998
By Jill Gonet
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.
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). This article is an attempt to describe the
process of making the switch, of beginning to live from the deep consciousness,
a consciousness that embraces all levels of our being, including our very
intelligent and under-utilized body-consciousness.
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
Qigong practice. When a person becomes more energized and as the awareness of
the body increases, the body will start revealing that person's 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 reenforcing that depression, how can you break out of that
cycle without the energy?
Yi Ren 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 Qigong's main project is to circulate the energy and work
through blockages in the body's energy-information system. Once circulation is
well-established, all the internal organs are cleansed, by means of increased
energy circulation, of accumulated toxins and waste products. 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 Yi Ren Qigong view, what's happening is this: the internal
organs form a communication network, 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 perfect
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
energy-information system provide a more accurate lens. Without these systems 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 this internal communication network, and to activate the
body's energy-information field requires practice. And the precondition for
uniting the mind with the consciousness of the body is a peaceful mind. 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.
Getting a peaceful mind is a step-by-step process. First, through Yi
Ren Qigong practice, we activate the body's energy-information system. By doing
so, we enhance the body's feelings and sensitize the mind; we tell the mind to
pay attention to this place here, and to that place there. In this way, the mind
becomes connected to the body's energy field. Once this connection is
established, the noise of the mind is steadily cleaned out; as a result,
single-mind concentration is enhanced. It becomes easy to stay quiet mentally,
and, therefore, to hear the signals and communications from the body's
consciousness. In a sense, when we practice Yi Ren Qigong, we are doing body
meditation, down into the deepest layers of the body and the body's
consciousness. 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.
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