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Connecting With the Chi Field
The presence of a universal energy field--permeating the earth and connecting all living things--is now acknowledged by many quantum physicists.
Our Chinese ancestors understood it long ago. Early Daoist meditation texts (the Neiye "Inward Training" section of the Guanzi, ca. 320 BCE) describe this universal energy field as chi (also qi and ch'i), "That mysterious vital energy within the mind: One moment it arrives, the next it departs. So fine, there is nothing within it; so vast, there is nothing outside it. We lose it because of the harm caused by mental agitation."
I've had chi gong practice for about six years. I love the opportunity to combine movement with meditation and connection with the elements. The movements are simpler than Tai Chi, so are much easier to remember.
This month I want to share a specific chi gong practice I have been using daily for almost a year. In the Chi Field Meditation, visualizing specific geographic places, especially places you love, enhances the power of your connection to and felt sense of the universal field. Like the Earth-Cosmos Meditation I often refer to, it is a vehicle for calming your mind, body, and nervous system. It is a vehicle for increasing your life force and consciously weaving yourself into the fabric of all that is.
As one of my chi gong teachers, Vivienne Verdon-Roe writes,
"Qigong means 'cultivating energy.' Indigenous peoples and mystics recognized that everything is energy. Scientists looking under powerful microscopes found that at highly magnified levels all forms are made up of vibrational energy. Thanks to quantum physics, the Western world is now waking up to the fact that only 4 percent of the universe is form and visible. The other 96 percent is formless and invisible. But it is not empty. It is a great seething ocean of vibrating energy that is always available. Beyond eating, drinking, and breathing, we are constantly exchanging energy with the universe, whether we are aware of it or not.
In Qigong, when we consciously connect to the invisible energy and imagine bringing it back as light into our bodies, we increase our life force. The bridge between formlessness and form is the mind, not our ordinary, everyday linear mind that is conditioned to interact with our world only through the five senses. When we close our eyes and use our imagination, we access another part of the brain that recognizes that physical and non-physical energies are the same...
...Whether you are suffering from cancer or a headache, you do the same Qigong practice, expanding energy out to the universe and bringing it back in, thereby accessing life force and creating its free flow throughout the body. Qigong teaches us that it is thought that gives energy structure. So our beliefs and the stories we have about ourselves take part in the creation of our physical bodies. With our intention we can activate the innate wisdom of the body, a state of wholeness that exists as a blueprint within every human being."
Chi Field Meditation
Here is how to do the meditation, along with some ideas for visualizing the horizons.
Stand with your feet about two feet apart: knees bent, tail tucked, and core pulled in.
Raising your arms out to your sides and above your head, gather chi with your hands, bringing it down in front of your torso. Repeat this four times.
Continuing to stand with your knees bent as above, place your hands in front of you at hip level, palms flat and angled about 30 degrees out, as if you are creating a tunnel into your dan tien (also known as hara, belly, and q'osqo).
Visualize the field of chi above, below, and on all four sides of you as follows:
Visualize as far as you can to the horizon in front of you. Note the trees or buildings you can see, the skyline or hillside beyond, and take your mind's eye as far as you can. Include as much actual detail as you know or remember, including places you have been but cannot actually "see."
For example, when I face the western horizon from my home in California, I include the coastal hills, the ocean surf, the great Pacific Ocean, the Hawaiian Islands and volcanoes where I have hiked and swum, the coast of Japan, Mt. Fuji, and across Asia to the Himalayas.
Now visualize as far as you can to the horizon behind you, including as many actual places as you can.
For example, when I visualize the eastern horizon behind me, I include the Central Valley, the Sierra Nevada Mountains, the Great Plains, the Appalachian Mountains, the Atlantic Ocean, and the great glaciated lands of Scandinavia.
Now visualize as far as you can to the horizon to your right, including as many actual places as you can.
For example, when I visualize the northern horizon to my right, I include the chains of mountains extending North along the continent, Mt. Denali in Alaska, and the Arctic.
Now visualize as far as you can to the horizon to your left, including as many actual places as you can.
For example, when I visualize the southern horizon to my left, I include the volcanic ring of fire extending south through Mexico and Central America, the Andes Mountains with their glaciers and lagoons, and the Antarctic.
Now visualize as far as you can above your crown and up into the cosmos, including as much detail as you can.
For example, I visualize the Milky Way, deep space, the Andromeda galaxy, out to the endless horizon of the cosmos and the heart of the universe.
Now visualize as far as you can below your feet to the center of the earth, including as much detail as you can.
For example, I visualize roots, earthworms, moles, bedrock, down to the magma at the center of the earth, and the black light residing there.
Breathe into this vast chi field you have connected with. Sense your energy body expanding and flowing in the field. Notice whatever transpires in your body and heart.
When you feel fully connected, raise your hands flat in front of your heart, right closest to your body, left out a bit. Continue to stand with knees bent, breathing with the chi field and noticing whatever transpires.
When you feel ready, raise your hands, facing out, to surround your third eye, creating a kind of tunnel for your vision. Continue to stand with knees bent, breathing with the chi field.
To come to completion, gather chi with your hands again, raising your arms out to sides, above your head, and down in front of your torso. Repeat six times. On the seventh, bring your hands together in prayer position above your crown, down to your heart, and all the way to the ground. Release any energy you need to.
I am very interested in hearing how this meditation works for you. Please try it, and let me know! As I work on my book on energy fields, I am trying to discover which practices are accessible to everyone, no matter what their spiritual bent or state of consciousness.
Meg Beeler/Earth Caretakers
Copyright � 2012
 | | Connection Despacho, Mt. Tamalpais |
"The field is infinite; there are infinite possibilities out there that are actually not out there at all, because they're within you. Each person has the seed of greatness within them. And all they need to do in order to access that seed is to stop being anyone else but who they really are." --Richard Bartlett "As we complete this apocalyptic passage, we will conceive ourselves, increasingly, as fractal expressions of a unified field of consciousness and sentient aspects of a planetary ecology - the Gaian mind - that is continually changed by our actions, and even our thoughts." -- Daniel Pinchbeck | 
