Phil’s blog

I’ve been intrigued by qigong for a long time, but until a couple of months ago, had serious doubts about whether it was really possible to manipulate one’s energy.

In late August, Justine and I went to visit some friends at East-West Wing Chun in Oakland. Their eskrima master, Sultan Uddin, was visiting from L.A. and giving some demos and guidance at the school that evening. At one point he mentioned that controlling energy could make techniques more effective. I asked him if he was talking about something similar to tai chi or qigong, and he offered to demonstrate. He did three demonstrations.

In the first demo, he had me stand with my arms straight out in front of me, hand over hand, at shoulder height. He pushed down on my hands while I resisted. The first time, I was able to resist slightly but he’s way bigger than I am, and was able to push my arms down. The second time, he pushed them down immediately, claiming that he disrupted my energy. Surely he could have simply pushed harder and more suddenly, but I didn’t say anything. The third time, he first told me to relax as he slowly ran his palm up my spine, about an inch away. I didn’t feel anything. When we did the exercise again however, I was able to resist easily. I could tell he was pushing harder than before, leaning on my hands with his body weight. It was unreal. After a few seconds, something popped in my shoulder and my arms finally fell. He said that he had given me energy with which I was able to resist. I was shocked by what I had just experienced.

For the second demo, my memory is hazy but I think he first did something similar to the first demo to fortify me with energy. He then had two people stand behind me, feet planted and arms propping me forward to keep me from being pushed back. With two fingers, he pushed just to the side of the gap below the sternum. Seemingly without much effort, he pushed me and the two people behind me back a few feet despite that they were pushing as hard as they could in the opposite direction. I suppose the key point is that I was completely unhurt by a fairly large force concentrated into a single point on my chest.

For the third demo, he had Justine stand facing me with her left arm outstretched, palm a few inches away from my chest. He stood behind her with his palms a couple of inches away from her back. I just stood there not knowing what was happening. After a little while he finished and I asked what was supposed to have happened. He told me to ask the people watching. I did, and they said that I was swaying back and forth. I guess he was supposedly controlling me by sending his energy through Justine.

The second and third demos were questionable; I can see how they could easily be faked. But the first one blew my mind. Resisting with my arms that last time definitely felt different. He had definitely done something to me. I asked him if this was part of eskrima and he said not really; it’s something you can develop by practicing anything for a really long time. He joked that you could even gain such power through gardening. He added that he had only shown me the kind of energy manipulation used for fighting, and that healing was much different. During the drive home, Justine and I were both wired. It was amazing to see that this was real, and of course I had many questions. Unfortunately, Master Uddin only visits every couple of months, so it would be impossible to train with him regularly.

A couple of weeks later, I searched for qigong teachers near Mountain View and found Unison Health Connection, an accupuncture and qigong healing practice owned by Master Philip Yang. He was offering a class that started in a few weeks, so I stopped by after work one evening to talk to him. He seemed very genuine and gave satisfactory answers to my questions, so I decided to go for it despite the high price.

The bulk of each class covers principles of qi, with a bit of technique at the end of each session. The techniques form a 16-part sequence of movements and meditation which we’re supposed to practice each day if possible. It’s only 30-45 minutes to go through the whole thing, but it’s hard to keep this up during the work week. I’m averaging about 4 sessions a week, and the only way I’ll realistically do this every day is if I wake up earlier and make time for it in the morning (which is when it’s optimal anyway).

I think I’ve made decent progress. For the first couple of weeks I couldn’t feel anything, but during the third class he had us emit qi from the fingers of one hand into the palm of the other. I could definitely feel it. I’ve since tried sending qi into Justine’s palm a few times and she can also feel it almost every time. At this point I can usually send qi into my hands at will. It feels like a very subtle internal pressure, like my hand is being inflated slightly. If I send a lot of qi, my hands will start to tingle. I think I can also draw qi out of other things through my hands and into my body, but this would be harder to confirm.

We’ve covered a lot in the class, some of which is difficult for me to believe, such as contacting ancient masters or gathering qi from things that are thousands of miles away. Each class seems to cover more fantastic things, but I’m trying to keep an open mind. For the moment I’ll keep practicing and will post again if there are breakthroughs :]

It’s late and I’m procrastinating as usual. Now that my blog has these fancy new digs, thought I’d write a bit more and respond to a post on Marcus’ blog about meditation and the brain. Btw, if our blogs implement Trackback correctly, this should show up in a comment to his original post. Anyway, Marcus asks if one’s baseline happiness and compassion can be elevated, likely inspired by the hapiness report I wrote about a few days ago. As a disclaimer, the following are late-night, half-baked, unresearched ideas. So Marcus’ question implies a more general question of whether we can consciously reprogram ourselves in profound ways. I’m thinking yes but with great effort. First, let’s be pessimistic and write off depression as a chemical imbalance, so conquering it doesn’t necessarily count as reprogramming. We do minor rewiring every time we learn something, quit bad habits, or otherwise reinforce behaviors. Mental association tricks such as mnemonics or crazy imagery are ways to intentionally manipulate our neurons, but they’re very basic and seem generally limited to pairs of concepts. Tweaking general happiness is surely orders of magnitude more complex than remembering to always put your keys in the same place when you come home. I’m not talking about short-term tricks such as counting one’s blessings; I’m referring to “baseline” happiness which is more permanent and not affected by hedonic adaptation. Of course, if we believe that fundamental reprogramming is possible, nothing is necessarily permanent. Anyway, it seems to me that to be able to change one’s very outlook on life, one would need some incredible insight into how his/her brain is currently programmed. Or maybe it’s as simple as meditating - focusing on something for long periods of time. Perhaps the monks don’t know how exactly it works. Thinking the same thoughts stimulates the same neural pathways and thereby strengthens the connections. Perhaps focusing on happiness and compassion strengthens their associated pathways so much that they become stimulated by inputs that normally wouldn’t have any effect. Perhaps some of these connections become continuously activated so that at an unconsious level, the monks’ brains are still lit up with happiness and compassion even when not meditating on them. Or perhaps I’m making things up and need to go to bed. Anyway, thanks Marcus for making me tired tomorrow. Really though, thanks for causing me to think about this. Too bad I wasn’t interested in cog sci during college. Good night.

I’ve been meaning to post about a report on happiness that someone sent out to a mailing list within Google. The report, done by DRKW, has a lot of common-sense advice such as get enough sleep, exercise, and reflect on the good things, but also presents some interesting claims (all from other studies). They say that 50% of happiness is due to genes (inheriting a tendency to have some level of happiness), 10% due to circumstances, and 40% to intentional activity. Circumstances such as wealth count for so little due to hedonic adaptation, the tendency to get used to new conditions (bad or good) and revert to one’s baseline happiness. Intentional activities such as socializing and working on personal goals aren’t subject to hedonic adaptation due to their episodic nature. In my case, this all confirmed what I already believed, but it’s a quick and interesting read, so check it out if you’re curious.