Bagua Dragon Body

BAGUA MASTERY PROGRAM
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MODULE 6
Bagua Dragon Body
BRUCE FRANTZIS
Copyright 2010 Bruce Frantzis
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PLEASE NOTE: The practice of Taoist energy arts and meditative arts may carry risks. The information
in this text is not in any way intended as a substitute for medical, mental or emotional counseling with
a licensed physician or healthcare provider. The reader should consult a professional before undertak-
ing any martial arts, movement, meditative arts, health or exercise program to reduce the chance of
injury or any other harm that may result from pursuing or trying any technique discussed in this text.
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text, and implementation is at the discretion, decision and risk of the reader.
Table of Contents
Section 1: Developing the
Bagua Dragon Body ............................... 5
Overview ..................................................................... 5
Coiling the Body within Dragon Body Turning
(Intermediates) ........................................................... 6
The Dangers of Overturning .................................... 8
Overturning Can Release or
Aggravate Stored Traumas ...................................... 10
Trauma Resurrected .............................................................. 10
Resolving Past Traumas Smoothly ...................................... 12
Learning Progression ............................................... 13
Phase 1: No Waist Tu rn .............................................. 13
Phase 2: Thirty-degree Turn .................................... 13
Phase 3: Forty-five-degree Turn
(I ntermed iates) ........................................................... 15
Phase 4: Sixty-degree Turn (Intermediates) ......... 15
Additional Phases (Intermediates) ......................... 16
Reversing Direction ................................................. 16
Common Misalignments and Ways
to Overdo It ................................................................ 17
Your Hands Should Not Cross
Your Centerline .......................................................... 18
Your Hips Should Not Tilt ......................................... 19
Your Back Should Not Arch,
Occiput Should Not Close ....................................... 20
Your Body Should Not Lean Forward
or Collapse ................................................................. 21
Section 2: Circle Walking as a
Spiritual Practice .................................. 23
Circle Walking As a
Spiritual Practice ..................................................... 23
Context of This Meditation ..................................... 24
Section 3: Moving Chi while
Walking the Circle (Intermediates) ....... 27
Coordinating Sinking Energy with Stepping ...... 28
The Lower Tantien and Perineum .......................... 30
Expansive, Rising and Descending Chi ................ 32
Section 1
Developing the
Bagua Dragon Body
Overview
Classically, when bagua practitioners Walk the Circle in the Single Palm Change
(SPC) Palm Posture or any other bagua energy posture, they seek to maintain
what is known as the "Dragon Body:' Distinct to bagua, the Dragon Body is a type
of turning.
This module teaches you how to safely turn your waist toward the center of the
circle in incremental stages. As such, it is unwise to attempt these methods with
any posture-especially the SPC Dragon Palm Posture-until you stabilize that
posture while Circle Walking without any turning of your waist.
5
2011 Bruce Frantzis-AII Rights Reserved.
6 8agua Mastery Program
Figure 6.1.1
Boguo Dragon Body
A very specific learning progression is necessary to safely and successfully
increase Dragon Body turning over time. You must turn the hips and waist to-
ward the center of your circle in increments of fifteen to thirty degrees, stabilizing
each increment before trying to further increase the degree of waist turning by
another fifteen to thirty degrees.
(oiling the Body within
Dragon Body Turning
(Intermediates)
Master practitioners gradually coil their bodies in coordination with their turn-
ing (Figure 6.1.2). However, beginner and even intermediate practitioners should
maintain all ofthe alignments ofthe straight ahead version-including your four
points (shoulders nest and kwa that form a rectangle) and your nose on your
centerline-until you can comfortably turn sixty to seventy degrees toward the
center of the circle. See the sixty-degree position in Figure 6.1.1 for a visual refer-
ence. Only after you reach this position should the coiling of your Dragon Body
Module 6: Bagua Dragon Body 7
Figure 6.1.2
Bagua Dragon Body Turning
Bruce demonstrates how a master practitioner gradually coils
his body as he performs Dragon Body turning.
150-180
0
When you do coil, your hips turn a certain distance and you maintain your four
points internally. Your shoulder blades and upper arms turn/coil further and your
head coils further still. Your internal organs and central channel also coil, yet all
parts of your body must remain fully aligned and integrated.
There are many external and internal subtleties involved in this coiling-espe-
cially as you exceed a sixty-to-seventy-degree turn-which should be learned
directly from a bagua adept who can guide you through the process based
on your individual needs. For example, the precise details of the process work
differently for people with large body types than for those with thin body types.
THE COMPLETE DRAGON BODY
In the most advanced stage, known as the Complete Dragon Body,
you can safely and simultaneously turn the upper, middle and lower
parts of your torso in different directions. This is done in a similar
manner to how you would spiral your arms or legs. This causes a
spiraling twisting energy to move through the vertical center of your
body and around your central channel, but should not-under any
circumstances-twist the spinal vertebrae.
This spiraling is what the deeper meaning of the Dragon Body
implies. It gets its name from the way a mythological Chinese
dragon can bend and seemingly segment and rejoin its body while
being completely connected and integrated. ( ~ , J ~
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Safety Notice: It is seriously recommended that you don't try the Complete Dragon
Body without guidance from a master or well-trained and competent Level 2 Bagua
Instructor as the risk of harming your internal organs is qUite real.
The Dangers of Overturning
Bagua's Dragon Body turning is a powerful tool. It can help you increase the
amount of energy that you spiral through your body and use for meditation,
health or martial applications.
Like any powerful tool, however, you can handle it poorly and with devastating
consequences if you don't follow its operating procedures with great care.
Through the Dragon Body method, you can either correctly or incorrectly exert
tremendous pressures and pulls on the bones and soft tissues of your legs, hips,
spine, neck and arms, as well as on your internal organs and glands. The repercus-
sions can happen instantaneously and be rather difficult to repair.
The most obvious problems involve straining or tearing soft tissues, such as
muscles, tendons and ligaments. Because of the tremendous amount of twisting
involved in the Dragon Body, ligaments and tendons in particular are vulnerable
to injury. These connective soft tissues do no recover as easily as muscles and can
take years to heal. Damage to tendons and ligaments in your pelvis, legs or lower
spine can be especially debilitating and affect your ability to walk for the rest of
your life.
Joint damage is also a potential problem of incorrect Dragon Body turning,
given the degree that you eventually turn your body, including your ankles,
knees, hips, and the vertebra of your spine and neck. Uneven pressures on your
joints and incorrect twisting of your joints while moving at high speeds around
your circle can lead to severe joint and/or spinal damage.
There are other less obvious potential problems, which can result from the
pressures exerted by Dragon Body turning on your nervous system, internal
organs, glands, spinal cord and brain.
Even slightly incorrect Dragon Body turning can strongly impact these systems.
For example, low-grade stress, say resulting from a slightly unbalanced twist of
your spinal vertebrae, can tense your nervous system. This causes sections of
the body to essentially freeze, which in turn can negatively impact your organs
and endocrine system. Stress on your organs and glands causes your body to
secrete chemicals, such as neurotransmitters that strongly influence and trigger
emotions and other fight-or-f1ight biological mechanisms.
An occasional stressful event, like a brief twist of the spine, will likely have only
minimal effects. However, continuously applied stress on body systems, such as
can occur through long Circle Walking practice sessions with excessive Dragon
Body turning, can have much greater and long-lasting effects.
Dragon Body turning especially can affect your spine, which can be distorted at
multiple levels, including:
Vertebra can become misaligned.
The pressure, speed and fluidity of the normal flow of
cerebrospinal fluid may detrimentally increase or decrease.
Spinal meninges can move, which can trigger emotional
energies stored in the body to be released. From a Taoist
energetic perspective, suppressed memories can be stored
within in the cerebrospinal fluid as well as the meninges.
The rate and strength of signals or chi moving through
your spinal cord as well as energy centers and neurological
pathways inside the brain can also be negatively influenced
and activated.
Overturning Can Release or
Aggravate Stored Traumas
The Taoist perspective is that energies from physical and emotional traumas
that you experience in life can become frozen in any place within your body. The
deepest and most powerful of such energies are often lodged in and around your
spine, especially the cerebrospinal fluid and spinal cord. Such frozen energies.
block and inhibit your body and mind's free functioning.
Proper Dragon Body turning within Circle Walking can help you to slowly, smooth-
ly and evenly release these energies. Improper turning can release these energies
in such a way as to cause you to react to or relive again versions of or variations
on the original traumatic experiences.
Trauma Resurrected
During a traumatic event, your system is overstrained and pushed beyond its
limits. In such a state, your body often becomes unable to process the energies of
the event, which then become frozen in your body. Metaphorically, the result can
be tremendous inner scars that can and often do color a person's entire life. To
avoid activating these energies again in any way, many people develop internal
defenses so as not to feel unpleasant sensations or prevent being overwhelmed
by truths they can't handle.
Taoists of the monastic meditation tradition studied how to overcome these
defenses through bagua practice. They found that when someone has a severe
trauma, their body will commonly assume two types of postures at the time of
that event and just after.
The first is a gross, external physical posture where, for example, they might crawl
into a fetal position or tilt or bend their neck in a certain distorted way. This can
happen when a person is too overwhelmed and not able to assimilate what is
happening without completely shutting down.
The second is a deeper and more unconscious reconfiguration of the body.
During the traumatic event, the deep anatomy of their body locks into a position,
which causes the body to mold deep tissues in a specific pattern that remains
after the event passes. For example, it could be the way bodily fascia wraps
around other tissues, or the specific kind of tension ligaments assume as they
interface with internal organs and glands. Within this pattern physical,
emotional, mental, psychic and other energies associated with the trauma
become denied or frozen in a dormant state.
If further trauma occurs later (e.g., from Dragon Body overturning) where strong
internal pressures are exerted, suddenly and/or powerfully on these deep tissues,
stored emotional and other energies/memories can be jarred loose-to a lesser
or greater degree. In turn, a flooding of sensations that can profoundly alter or
otherwise influence a person's mental and emotional state may occur. They may
not even know the source of the mental or emotional anguish and only experi-
ence its strange effects.
Some people can have bipolar-like tendencies, and easily become or remain
semi-depressed or manically hyper. Such swings can be their unconscious
attempt to either suppress or process the emotional, physical and/or psychic sen-
sations of memories stored in the body-mind.
For people who have had severe traumas, Dragon Body turning must neither be
done too early nor too fast, so that the entire body-mind system can smoothly
release the hidden, pent-up pressures inside. Otherwise, they can release in a
shocking and destabilizing manner.
You don't want to risk retriggering traumas beyond your natural ability to handle
them, so the advice of a well-trained, highly competent instructor or master is
invaluable regarding how to best guide the release process.
Resolving Past Traumas Smoothly
You can easily avoid the problems of releasing stored traumas too quickly by
adhering to the seventy percent rule regarding when and how far your waist
twists. Observing the seventy percent rule can:
Help you to release blocked chi gradually and in a way you can
smoothly assimilate and handle.
In time, allow you to release the blocked chi of the trauma
itself, by releasing deeply-held tissues, opening the energetic
circuits that closed at the time of the trauma, and allowing the
energies of the trauma to clear out of your system.
When practicing bagua, you can also use the Inner Dissolving process of the
Taoist Water Tradition to help release and resolve such energies.
Slow and steady wins the race, so by doing less (and not overstraining) you will
ultimately end up doing more with the added bonus of doing it safely and with
fewer uncomfortable shocks.
Learning Progression
Each time you work with a new bagua energy posture, you should progressive-
ly increase your degree of Dragon Body turning. You can practice these phases
while straight-line walking or Circle Walking. It is far easier to judge your degree
of turn while straight-line walking, so it is a good idea to practice on a straight
line at the beginning of each new phase. Then, when you are stable in your new
degree of turning and can feel it in your body-not in your visualizations of or
ideas about your body-you can try the increased turn while Walking the Circle.
Phase 1: No Waist Turn
1. At first, walk with your hips, waist, torso and head facing straight ahead or
very slightly turned in until you are very comfortable. Do this for a month
or more, especially with the Single Palm Change (SPC) Palm Posture. Check
with your bagua instructor about your ability to absorb and smoothly
integrate the posture into your body movements before moving forward.
2. Walk clockwise and counterclockwise and change direction while holding
the posture.
Phase 2: Thirty-degree Turn
1. Hold still for each of the three- or four- or two-part step positions, and
gradually and smoothly turn inward thirty degrees toward the center of
your circle or away from the straight line you are walking.
Turn less than thirty degrees if you feel any strain whatsoever in either
body or mind. Note how many degrees you can turn comfortably and let
that be the degree of turn that you should try to maintain as you walk.
Gradually build up to a thirty-degree turn in two or three sub-phases as
needed.
Turn (rotate) the muscles of your legs around your leg bones in
a relaxed fashion.
Turn your hips and waist and don't allow your upper body to
go farther than your hips do.
Keep your four points aligned.
Your eyes look in the same direction that your hips face.
Safety Notice: Only turn your head or move your hands toward the center of your
circle as far as your hips turn and no more.
2. Begin three- or four-part stepping. As you walk a straight line or around
your circle, continuously maintain the thirty-degree (or lesser) inward
turn. Note that within each part of your inside and outside steps, different
physical pressures are generated from your legs that can push or pull your
hips off the thirty-degree inward turn.
You must constantly adjust the turning in your legs and hips to maintain
the same degree of turn regardless of which position your legs and feet
assume. Your hips should not float around at different angles between
steps.
Keeping the hips aligned is much more difficult than most practitioners realize,
and will require a lot of practice.
3. Practice the same while walking the other direction around the circle or on
your straight line.
4. Only move onto the next phase when you can easily and comfortably
maintain your thirty-degree turn. You shouldn't feel physical strain
anywhere in your body (especially your knees, hips, spine or neck), or
emotional or mental strain while you walk. This might take as little as a
week for some people in some postures, or many months for those with
injuries or other body limitations.
Phase 3: Forty-Five-degree Turn
(Intermediates)
1. Standing in a three or four-part-stepping position, turn inward forty-five
degrees toward the center of your circle or sideways, away from the straight
line you are walking. Turn less if you feel any strain. Turn your hips and
waist and don't allow your upper body to turn farther than your hips. Keep
your four points aligned. Your hands remain in the same position relative
to your hips and your eyes look in the same direction your hips face. In this
case, your hips turn to a forty-five-degree angle from the direction your
feet are going around the circle or on your straight line.
2. At this point, as you walk along your line or around the circle, continuously
maintain the forty-five-degree inward turn with your three- or four-part
step. Note that within each part of your inside and outside steps, different
physical pressures are generated from your legs that can push or pull your
hips off the forty-five-degree inward turn. You should strive to maintain
the same degree of turn regardless of which position your legs and feet
assume.
3. Practice the same while walking the other direction along your line or
around the circle.
4. Only move on to the next phase when you can easily and comfortably
maintain your forty-five-degree turn. You shouldn't have any sense of
physical strain anywhere in your body (especially your knees, hips, spine
or neck), or emotional or mental strain while you walk.
Phase 4: Sixty-degree Turn
(Intermediates)
Now follow the same instructions as Phases 2-3 and increase the amount of your
waist turning to sixty degrees. If you have very thin legs, you may be able to
maintain your four-points and do another phase to turn to seventy degrees.
Additional Phases (Intermediates)
Further turning requires more sophisticated instruction than any text, illustration
or video could offer. Studying with a high-level bagua teacher or master is recom-
mended.
Reversing Direction
The precise way in which you change direction, reverse your hand positions and
turn toward the circle's center or away from your straight line is not critical. The
critical issue is now reversing positions without collapsing your arms and your
alignments.
As you change direction:
1. Move your arms into an energy posture from Module 4 without:
Sticking out your chest.
Closing your armpits.
Allowing your elbows to shrink toward your torso.
Letting the opening and extension of your posture shrink.
Letting tension come into your body and allowing it to stay.
2. Complete your turn and begin to walk in the opposite direction facing
straight ahead without Dragon Body turning.
3. As you walk in the new direction, gradually turn your waist and hips to the
degree of turn that you are practicing and maintain that degree of turn.
4. Only after you have practiced sufficiently-so you can stabily remerge
from turning with your alignments in tact as in Step 2-do you come out
of the turn and go directly into the degree of waist turn you accomplsihed
in the previous step 3.
Common Misalignments and
Ways to Overdo It
Many people who learn Dragon Body turning, in their eagerness to turn further
into the center of your circle, misalign their body in any number of ways.
Dragon Body misalignments may damage the body's soft tissues, joints, spine,
internal organs and glands. This occurs by overstraining and thus traumatiz-
ing those anatomical systems before they have become relaxed, stretched and
strengthened sufficiently to withstand the torque of significantly turning the
waist.
In addition to physical damage, overstraining in Dragon Body turning during
walking can potentially release deeply held emotional energies in your system.
Releasing such energies can cause you to re-experience often forgotten and sup-
pessed emotional content of traumas from past events in your life.
During such releases of emotional energies, your internal organs and glands can
secrete substances that will cause your body systems to mimic past traumatic
events and thereby cause you to feel similar physical or emotional agitations as
at the time of the original trauma. This can easily happen without you having the
least idea of why these sensations arise. Unpleasant emotional states can contin-
ue for days, weeks or months without your conscious awareness of their origins.
For many people, when they overdo it, their central nervous system speeds up
too rapidly. If this happens to you, you may get more energy than you can handle.
If you (or those around you) notice that you're becoming wired, then you should
do less in each bagua practice session.
If you develop your Dragon Body in a more gradual manner by adhering to your
personal seventy percent rule and thereby avoiding strain, your system will more
easily absorb and integrate the pressures Dragon Body turning creates.
Your Hands Should Not Cross
Your Centerline
Correct Incorrect
Figure 6.1.3
In the incorrect position, the lower hand has crossed the centerline.
Figure 6.1.3 shows a common misalignment that occurs with many bagua energy
postures, especially the SPC Palm Posture, where one of your hands crosses over
your centerline. This creates excessive pressures in parts of your body ranging
from your feet to your knees to your neck and from your digestive tract to your
kidneys to your lungs.
At more advanced stages of Dragon Body practice, you can sometimes cross the
centerline according to certain specifications. In the early stages, however, it is a
common misalignment and error.
Your Hips Should Not Tilt
Correct Incorrect
Figure 6.1.4
In the incorrect position, the hips tilt unevenly to the left side.
If your hips tilt to one side, it can cause spinal vertebrae to misalign. Titling can
further cause your chi to become blocked or flow weakly rather than strongly
along your spine.
Your Back Should Not Arch,
Occiput Should Not Close
Correct Incorrect
Figure 6.1.5
In the incorrect figure, A) The occiput is closed down B) The back arches C)
The chest is forward D) The buttocks stick out.
Your occiput, the bone at the back and base of your skull, should remain gently
lifted at all times. Your spine should remain erect and extended upward. If you
lose either of these alignments, your head will likely tilt back (Figure 6.1.5A) while
the back arches (Figure 6.1.5B) and your chest thrusts forward (Figure 6.1.5C) and
the buttocks stick out (Figure 6.1.5D).
Your Body Should Not Lean Forward
or Collapse
) ,
Correct Incorrect
Figure 6.1.6
In the incorrect figure the upper back and chest is collapsed and the head is
falling forward.
Allowing your body to lean forward may cause your upper back and chest to
collapse and your head to sink into your shoulders. Besides the obvious postural
strain, you can block chi flow running to and from your five extremities (hands,
feet and head).
21
Section 2
Circle Walking as a
Spiritual Practice
Circle Walking As a
Spiritual Practice
This specific practice involves the Taoist concept of ling in Chinese, which trans-
lates as "spirit" or "soul:' Although this is appropriately an intermediate practice,
beginners are free to try it.
Walk the Circle with your waist turned while holding the Single Palm Change
(SPC) Upper Body Palm Posture.
As you walk, dissolve downward. Initially, use the Outer Dissolving process and
progress to using the Inner Dissolving process, if you know how to do it and are
aware of all of the relevant safety precautions.
See the author's meditation books and CDs to learn these methods.
Let go and forget all of your created self-images and remember your real self.
The Chinese term for this is wang wo, which can be loosely translated as "forget
yourself:'
Disregard all ofthe mental and emotional junk, the excess emotional, mental and
psychic baggage in your system. Connect with your seventh energy body, the
essence that is truly you-the authentic essence beyond your personality,
beyond you r hopes and d reams, beyond you r emotions and ever-a risi ng thoug hts.
This is one of many original Taoist source methods from which eventually came
the famous Zen Koan internal question of: What was your original face before
you were born?
In the Buddhist tradition, this is also a mechanism for remembering past lives.
Context of This Meditation
Most people develop an idea of whom and what they are by identifying with
their emotions and developing a story about themselves. Our mind attaches to
ideas or concepts based upon past experience-whether beautiful or horrible,
to flights of our imaginations or to deeply rooted desires. Often these ideas, the
"because, because" of our lives, leave people with little room for internal peace
or harmony. Instead, they are left with a sense of drifting and alienation from life.
A fundamental Taoist observation of the human condition is that only by
experientially and personally finding your own timeless essence-before any
thoughts appear in the mind-is it possible for any individual to finally come
to inner peace. Somehow, you must find it while simultaneously remaining fully
present to this ever-changing and often seemingly difficult and chaotic world.
Taoists have also observed that whoever can find their"real self;' either from prac-
ticing bagua or any genuine form of meditation, is sure to become spiritually re-
laxed until they feel completely integrated and whole. Your physical movement,
mind and energy will become smooth, expansive and open like the invisible wind
that moves the clouds or the subtle wave that moves the depths of the ocean.
This timeless space will also allow you to best conserve and store your chi as you
Walk the Circle.
Spiritual walking meditation practices found through the 8agua Mastery
Program can be very helpful in this journey, so eventually you can attain inner
stillness. From that stillness, you may discover your true essence.
This method, as well as the others I teach, may take years to incorporate into the
seemingly simple act of Walking the Circle. It is important to not be intimidated
by the length of the journey. Instead, recognize the tremendous spiritual depth
that becomes possible with each and every step. Appreciate the challenge and
the value practicing can give to your life each and every day.
Consider that, over time, practicing bagua's spiritual tradition will return much
more to you than that which you give.
Only progress to the instructions in Section 3 if you can maintain
the alignments taught in Section 7 very well.
Section 3
Moving Chi while
Walking the Circle
(Intermediates)
The movement of energy through the body is a complex subject and only a
cursory discussion of the energetic techniques involved in Walking the Circle can
be provided in any text. Normally, at higher levels of learning, it is the energetic
transmissions directly from a master to a student that determines how, when and
which energy techniques are best learned. The master must gauge the timing,
appropriateness and specific methods most useful to the quality of the student.
So the methods and timing used for opening a particular energy channel are
based equally on safety needs and maximum benefit to the student's overall
developmental needs.
27
Coordinating Sinking Energy
with Stepping
A heavenly energy continually rains down and through each of us. Awareness
and control of this energy is crucial in developing peng jin ("expansive energy")
in the lower body and for rooting your energy and your physical body into the
earth.
Such rooting is more easily accomplished through Dragon Body turning. As you
increase your sensitivity to the descending yang energy from heaven above, you
can use your Dragon Body turning to continuously root heaven's yang and your
own energy into the ground.
Both processes are enhanced if you can sensitize your shins to feel as though
they are plowing through a chi form of thick mud-pushing the mud away. This
helps to congeal the energy of the earth in the legs and increases peng jin not
only in the legs, but over time naturally and equally transfers it into your arms.
Each mud-walking step (tan bou in Chinese) should sink your energy into the
ground regardless of walking speed or degree of waist turn.
A B
(
D
Figure 6.2.1
Four-part, Mud Stepping
Figure continues on next page.
E F
To coordinate this sinking energy with stepping:
1. As you prepare to step out (Figure 6.2.1 A), use your intent to encourage
the descending yang chi of heaven to permeate your body as it enters
and moves down through your body from the crown of your head (bai hui
acupuncture point).
2. Encourage the descending yang chi to permeate through all parts of your
body-especially your central channel-from the top of your head down
through your neck and torso, lower tantien, perineum, legs and feet to the
heel and bubbling well points on the bottom of your weighted rear foot.
3. Then, from the bottom of your foot, sink your energy deep into the ground
to a depth of up to several feet where your chi body ends and connects
with the energy of the earth.
4. As you step forward and footbrake, your chi extends beneath the surface
of the earth from the rear foot, until it rises to connect with the front foot.
From there, it travels up your front leg, through your hips and down again
to your rear foot, thereby completing a chi circle (Figure 6.2.1 A-C, F-H).
G H J
Figure 6.2.1 con't
Four-part, Mud Stepping
Figure continued from previous page.
K
5. Duringtheweightshiftforward onto the lead foot, the energetic connection
between the front and rear feet beneath the earth intensifies-specifically
between the rear heel and the ball of the front foot. As you shift your
weight from back to front, this should also give you an internal feeling
somewhat like the energy release of tearing paper (Figure 6.2.1 C -E, H-J.)
6. During the step-up-to-feet-parallel position (Figure 6.2.1 E-F, J-K), your
weig hted forwa rd leg aga i n si n ks energy into the grou nd as you r weig htless
rear foot pulls energy up its leg. Chi from your weightless leg then travels
up your torso and simultaneously branches off to rise up to and above
your head, and out your shoulders to your fingertips and beyond. So at the
end of the step, you are ready to again bring down heaven's energy and
extend it out to your lead foot on the next step-out-and-footbrake step
(Figure 6.2.1 A-C, E-H).
The Lower Tantien and Perineum
The vast number of internal chi techniques that can be incorporated while
Walking the Circle or practicing tai chi and qigong boil down to a thorough,
experiential understanding of the sixteen neigong at the level of each of your
eight energy bodies.
Neigong component #14 covers the practices of working with the body's lower
tantien. Learning to work with the lower tantien-including collecting, storing
and emitting energy to and from it-and with it the closely related energy center
of the perineum is usually a necessary prelude to eventually opening your cen-
tral energy channel.
The lower tantien is the single most important energetic point for the physical
body's health. It is the only energetic center through which every major energy
channel responsible for the functions of the body's physicality must connect in
the normal cycle of the body's continuous circulation of energy.
Lower
Tantien
~ ~ B
Perineum
~ ~ r A
Figure 6.2.2
The Lower Tantien and Perineum
The perineum is located at the bottom of the pelvis between the anus and
genitals. Keeping your perineum open at all times allows the body's rising and
descending energies (those of heaven and earth) to smoothly flow since they
pass through in both directions.
The perineum is also important because it is the energetic gateway between
the lower and the middle body. Most people have a natural tendency to pinch it
closed as they walk by closing down their sit bones and thereby block the flow of
chi between the legs and the torso.
After your have stabilized your awareness of the energetic centers of the
perineum and lower tantien, you ideally want to be able to move chi during your
stepping from the perineum to the lower tantien and vice-versa along the central
channel. Over time, this will help open up the central channel of energy to the bai
hui acupuncture point in the center of the crown of the head.
YANG AND YIN ENERGIES OF HEAVEN AND EARTH
Some people get confused by the way Taoists look at the complex
relationships between the yang and yin energies of heaven and I
earth, respectively.
Yang energy has two distinctly appearing opposite qualities. First,
it goes out ad infinitum in an absolutely diffuse and amorphous
manner. Metaphorically, the Big Bang and subsequent universal
spread epitomizes yang energy. However, this expanding yang
energy can also go out to a specific point, where its energy arrives
and condenses to create yin.
Yang chi of the universe or heaven penetrates everything in the
earth from all directions: up, down and sideways.
Planet Earth is essentially yin as it is like a condensed womb that
births a wide range of manifested life. Yet the Earth's core is
molten fire (yang), so the Earth also has very powerful rising-
in all directions-yang energy. Depending upon which aspect you
~ h h b h ; ~ : . ~
,ocus on, t e Eart 's energy can e eit er yin or yang. I : ~ ~ ; I :
~ ~ : . /
Expansive, Rising and Descending Chi
,
,
),
In general, the subject of expansive, rising and descending chi is not easy to
comprehend. However, as you walk you can potentially, consciously-through
ordinary intent or better yet using the Heart-Mind-direct different qualities of
yin or yang energy to constantly spiral both up from the earth and down from
the sky or heaven.
At first, it is best to focus on heaven's energy descending from above and use it
to derive your movements. 8agua is predominantly powered by this pure yang
energy, which when absorbed into the body, takes on an extremely yin quality
and nourishes the yang of the body by dramatically strengthening its yin.
This is one of the reasons why within Taoism the Single Palm Change is called a
celestial (heavenly) art.
Try to feel this energy coming down through your body and into the ground as
it saturates you. As you become more sensitive and the subtle sensations of it
become quite clear, it is possible to channel and direct this energy at will.

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BAGUA MASTERY PROGRAM

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