Healing, Meaning-Making and Story

Posted on July 27, 2018 by admin

In the last post, I included a link to an article on Non-dual Chinese Medicine and the Chong Mai or thrusting vessel, as there were many aspects raised by the author that intrigued me. One that struck home was his comment on the existential angst ‘fundamental to Western consciousness’. Given the state of the world these days, a certain amount of anxiety is impossible to avoid if you are paying attention. But author Michael Greenberg is referring to something more subtle, and more deeply embedded in the psyche.

Adyashanti, one of my major mentors in the field of awakening has been exploring this Western angst, as he sees it in many of his students (and probably himself earlier on) and has developed a home study course on what he is calling ‘Redemptive Love.’ Adhya gets right to the point: “Unworthiness is the pandemic of Western Culture.” I love this quote as it points to a serious barrier to truly deep awakening. Many years ago I heard of the Dalai Lama responding to a question from a Western student about low self esteem and having no idea what that was. He was puzzled !!! I’m not. I have heard parts of Adya’s course, but now need to really absorb it more deeply as I my own personal angst is demanding attention. This angst can be seen as continually re-occurring disturbances or dissonance in our bio- energy field, so we can make sense of their nature, we may be able to tease out and release many of these patterns.

A common source of this angst/unworthiness are the many unresolved issues of our childhood. Michael Greenberg, cited above, has a book on healing journeys called ‘Braving the Void’, and in the chapter entitled ‘Childhood Terrors’, he states: “While the average adult can control or mask unresolved childhood traumas, as we reach old age these mechanisms can weaken, allowing the hurt of fearful child to reappear. I believe this is why we so often see older people regressing to childhood behaviors and behaving irrationally. It makes sense then to try to come to terms with these fears at a time of life where we have the energy and will to integrate our various contradictory feelings.” My recent PTSD experiences are clearly coming from this dimension.

A more insidious example of childhood trauma is shame. Tara Brach, in her extraordinary book ‘Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of the Buddha” offers this commentary on the same Dalai Lama story I mentioned above. “While all humans feel ashamed of weakness and afraid of rejection, our Western culture is a breeding ground for the kind of shame and self-hatred the Dalai Lama could not comprehend.” This quote comes from the very first chapter, entitled ‘The Trance of Unworthiness”.

From another perspective, this angst can also be fed by a flawed story embedded in the ancestral field through the DNA field our parents, grandparents, great-grandparents etc. Their belief systems around religion, personal value, cultural values and parenting all impact our personal energy fields in the present moment. In Classical Chinese Medicine, the ‘jing’, one of the three treasures is the carrier of our ancestral karma and learning how to nurture the jing can lead to more healing and transformation.

This involves the epigenetic fields and cell biologist Bruce Lipton is a great source for studies and practices. Epigenetics is where we learn about how changing environments, internally and externally, changes the ways in which the genes and DNA are activated. By healing ourselves, we are also healing our lineage/ancestors ‘now’ through the epigenetic DNA fields, and our planet needs lots of healing. We can also employ active dreaming and shamanic journeying to work with the ancestral karma.

Belief systems also manifest in our movements through what we can call ‘meaning making structures. I first encountered the idea of meaning-making as a self-organizing component of our biology in “How Life Moves” by Kevin Frank and Caryn McHose where they describe four structures that underlie how we move through life, and how life moves through us. These include the physical structure of muscles, bones, connective tissue; the perceptual structure where we store patterns of attention that determine how we perceive the world, inwardly and outwardly; the co-ordinating structure where we store learned patterns of movements, small and large that the body can call upon, and use in combinations, when movement is required; and finally, the meaning making structure, where we create stories/ideas/beliefs about ‘what things mean’, and embody those meaning in patterns of movement and also inhibition, where certain movements are ‘not allowed’.

As a simple personal example of these four structures, in my ongoing sax education, the physical structures of my whole body have to engage to facilitate new subtle movements in my fingers, wrists, throat, jaws and diaphragm. The co-ordinative structures have to keep evolving when new note combinations and different fingerings are required. The perceptual structures are being challenged by my sax guru Karl to hear nuances in pitch, rhythm, note lengths and chord harmonies. These are relatively straight forward. But when my meaning making structure is dominated by the inner critic embedded in the ‘story of unworthiness’, which probably extends back generations, there is no joy or delight possible when challenged.

If my primary interpretation of a challenging situation is that ‘obviously my being is flawed or ‘I am fundamentally unworthy of being whole’, my cellular capacity to respond from its own deep intelligence is compromised. What fascinates me is that I get the absurdity of this belief system intellectually, but that understanding is not penetrating into the biology. In fact, as I dive more deeply into the cellular/biologically driven sub-conscious and unconscious in my embodied practice, more of these strange energy fields are being released into my conscious awareness. My current ‘meaning-making’ model of the flaw in the core ‘meaning-making’ structure is that I am awakening in the DNA field of my Irish Catholic ancestors (with some English pathology as well) and ancestral healing is being requested.

This idea of inherited story opens lots of portals into fun explorations. First of all, it gets us into Dan Siegel’s work on ‘narrative integration, (see The Mindful Brain), where we need a healthy and ever evolving capacity to tell our ‘self-story’ by organizing all of our personal experiences and integrating them into our behavior. Religion and spirituality, and in fact all aspects of culture are transmitted through story. My mentor Thomas Berry, along with Cosmologist Brian Swimme, co-wrote ‘The Universe Story” as a primary story for all humanity in the 21st century, orienting them to the magnificence of creation as everyone’s personal story. I’ve been studying Vedanta for almost 50 years, and Vedanta is all story based. The Bhagavad Gita, a mini story, is embedded in the 1.8 million word “Mahabharata’ one of the greatest epic stories in human history. The Katha Upanishad tells the tale of a young boy calmly confronting Lord Yama, god of death. Vedanta’s overall perspective is that this angst arises because we ‘forget’ our inherent wholeness, or ‘basic goodness’ and just need to be reminded, through teaching.

The Tao’ists believe that the human at birth is placed in the center of the creation process, providing a link between yin and yang, making them naturally connected and relevant. Like the Vedantans, the Taoist view is that our humanity is always an expression of the whole, the macrocosm, the Universe, but because we inhabit a world of constant change, we need to continually ‘re-tune’ ourselves through practice. going out of tune, experiencing imperfections, confusion and doubt are all par for the human course. We just need to learn some skillful means (upayas) to navigate our lives and fully participate in the unfolding of our soul’s journey here on Mother Earth in the early years of the 21st century. We all have a unique contribution to add to the story of our time and place. Discover it and live it fully.

Trauma, Neuroscience and the Microcosmic Orbit

Posted on July 3, 2018 by admin

The microcosmic orbit encompasses two of the eight extraordinary vessels recognized in Chinese Medicine; the yin Ren Mai or Conception Vessel, and the yang Du Mai or Governing Vessel. These two complete a balanced circuit linking both front and back, and inner and outer bodies, and also hold energy in support of the traditional twelve organ channels commonly used in acupuncture. (These include the six yin organ channels: lungs, spleen, heart, kidneys, liver, and heart protector (pericardium); and the six yang channels; large intestine, stomach, small intestine, bladder, triple heater (sanjiao) and gall bladder.)

The microcosmic orbit meditation awakens the flow of Qi in the two vessels, but can also point out blockages in the circuit. And these circuits and blockages have layers and levels. One of my first awakenings when I began exploring this was the amount of glue I felt along the back or Governing Vessel. Using the clock image below, my key areas of tension are around 2 o’clock behind my heart, and around 4 o’clock, or the region of my kidneys.

To no surprise, this tension is manifesting as an elevation of my blood pressure. And there are similar regions of tension on my front, along the Conception Vessel, between 8 and 10, up into the 5th chakra.

When my PTSD was activated in January, after the fire, the primary locus was on the front, near CV-12, the center of centers, (nine o’clock above). My yin blocked up and the yang tightened even more, preventing me from sleeping normally and doing a number on my nervous system (yang) and psyche. It took about a month, with lots of help from friends and various therapies, for my sleep pattern to settle back to some sort of equilibrium. It has been re-triggered twice since then, once in May and then again last week, and on both occasions, the initiating factor was acupuncture needling at CV-12.

PTSD activation is a very unpleasant experience filled with fear-based, chaotic energies disrupting my moment to moment experience. Fortunately, my process is mutating, the energy is finally moving, and my overall capacity to make sense of the process and hold it in open awareness is evolving. I am grateful for the Somatic Experiencing work I did years ago with Caryn McHose. This therapy, first articulated by Peter Levine, requires building strong ‘resources’, or regions of somatic strength and stability, that can anchor you during the release of the trauma. Other key principles in SE include not releasing more trauma than you can handle with your resources, and finding the support and guidance of an SE practitioner who can hold the space of open awareness and presence, help you track the sensations, and recognize that they are memories from the past that you are feeling in the present with some spaciousness.

I’ve been my own SE support this time around, which is challenging, but there is progress and it is my on-going sitting meditation practice that is my primary resource. Resting in Pure Awareness, even as the mind/body are doing their dance, requires a lot of trust, because most of the ‘time’, the practice doesn’t seem very ‘silent’. The mind field is a busy place. But the silence is ever -present, independent of what is arising, and this trust/faith that you are being held by the Divine, called shraddha by Patanjali (sutra I-20), is your most important strong resource. As a meditator, this begins as a ‘non-judgmental witnessing consciousness’

As Swami Dayananda taught me years ago, our moment to moment experience, observed formally in meditation, has two components. The first is Awareness, aka Pure Awareness, Purusha, Ground of Being, Luminous Emptiness, Stillness, or Witnessing, etc. The second is ‘What is arising in Awareness’. This includes all the transitory phenomena of sensation, perception, action and thought, or what we call ‘reality’. If we can sustain some dimension of the witnessing, then what arises doesn’t fully take over the mind field, but can be held and examined by the intelligence, known as buddhi in Sanskrit.

‘What arises’ has layers and levels and this is where the suffering and/or liberation takes place. Awareness is always free and unbounded. The first level of ‘what is arising’ is pure sensation, a triggering of the sensory nervous system by an impulse of energy. At the reflexive level of the nervous system, this sensation may immediately trigger an an action, as when a doctor taps your knee to check on your ‘mono-synaptic’ response. The knee-jerk tells the doctor your spinal nerves are working.

A fun piece of trivia I’ve retained from my MIT biology days is that frogs have a neuron in the retina that only fires when a black dot moves horizontally across the visual field. If triggered, a muscle at the root of the tongue fires and the tongue extends out to ‘capture’ the dot. No interpretation or deliberation is required. More primitive creatures have mostly reflexive nervous systems. Not a lot of thinking or analyzing goes on in the lower brain.

As evolution expanded the brain, a new type of brain cell, the inter-neuron, appeared, allowing the possibility of pausing, deliberating and/or analyzing the sensation before acting. This allows learning, and more and more nuanced responses to take place. Humans have lots of inter-neurons, and this scientific reality is what allows us to get lost inside our own heads. Our attention is drawn to the various loops of non-stop thoughts, beliefs and confusion flowing through neurons not directly connected to our moment to moment experience and this inner dialogue become our day-to day reality. This is the monkey-mind noticed by mediators. What is actually arising moment to moment is totally missed. When the PTSD kicks in, the mind reels in desperate attempts to escape, and the practice is to just notice the actual sensations, in the moment, however, wherever. The body wants to process and return to balance, but staying present to its information allows the body to reveal its innate intelligence

Any mindfulness practice will help develop the capacity to stay present so matter what by directing the attention to the sensations of the body as they arise, before interpretation kicks in. B. K. S. Iyengar did his best to teach me this. His constant lesson to me: Stop thinking about what was supposed to be happening in a yoga pose, or how it felt yesterday. Start actually feeling the sensations and tracking them and let them dictate the action of the pose. That did not happen over night for me! (A full articulation of his teaching on this is included in the 2 part ‘Samyama in Asana’ posting. Part1 and Part 2.)

Our use of the micro-cosmic orbit is a great way to organize and train our attentional field to lock into the flow of energy (qi or prana) and track it in and through regions of the human energy field. This practice builds stability of the mind (abhyassa) and frees up the organic field to improve not only health, but spiritual sensitivity through cosmic resonance with the life forms and energy field of Mother Earth and the celestial realms of the sun moon, stars and galaxies. To the Taoists, the micro-cosmic field is an immediate and conscious expression of the macro-cosmic field including all layers and levels of creation.

What other resources can we find within the micro-cosmic orbit? In previous posts we have explored the whole circuit, with the lower dantien as the root of our practice. We want to continue to deepen the connection to the lower dantien by breathing with the 4 points on the diagram below, CV-1, GV-4, CV-12 and CV-6, as if this is a small circle, and then expand into a dynamic sphere. Feel your tail and lower limbs being embraced by this to strengthen the grounding. You can do this as a meditation or breathing practice, or even add it to any asana you may be exploring. We are working with 3 dimensional volumes here!

Next, join the lower dantien with the middle dantien in your breathing practice. You can do this in two sections like this: inhale lower 1-2-3, upper 4-5; exhale lower 1-2-3, upper 4-5. Feel the diaphragm softening as it is supported above and below. Try other combinations until you find something that feels right for you. Upper dantien stays quiet, like in any breathing practice.

A more challenging, but fascinating option is to have three sections/parts, like Viloma Pranayama. Section 1 is the lower burner, or the bottom 2/3rds of the lower dantien; section 2 is the middle burner which is the liver/stomach/spleen/pancreas, or the abdominal organs inside the lower ribs. Section three is the area of the chest above the diaphragm, heart and lungs etc. Keep the primary in the lower. Inhale lower 1-2-3, pause middle 4-5, pause upper 6; exhale lower 1-2-3, pause, middle 4-5, pause upper 6. Or something like that. Like the shape of a snowman, only no head, three torso sections.

Working in Segments:
Another option is to use the circuit to look more closely at various segments or arcs to see the where obstructions manifest in our embodied energy field. If we imagine the circle as a clock face, we can use the numbers to define some of these regions. Looking from the left side as above, 9 is the front and 3, its complement at the back, passing right through the third chakra, or more specifically, CV-12, the ‘center of centers’ directly connecting with the middle burner. What has worked best for me is to by-pass CV-12. When I can link GV-9 to GV-4 and GV-1 ( not shown but at the tip of the coccyx) and through to CV-1, my back softens and opens somewhat. As a down the back inhalation, I can feel the kidneys grasping the qi as GV-4 and GV-9 work together to ground the breath at the root.

Similarly, if I can link CV-17 with CV-6 and CV-1 in a down the front action and link this to GV-1, I can feel a stabilizing of my front body to help support the softening back body. This ‘abdominal tone’ that arises from this circuit gives a presence to your sitting posture that is yin (internal and front body) which helps allow the witness to rest in stillness. Too much use of the back muscles keeps a yang inner state, a bit less conducive to quietness.

And please add any and all of these suggestions, plus your own that arise when you practice, to any pose, any time, when on the mat, sitting at your computer typing, in your car, walking about. Make it part of your moment to moment awareness. This is the neuro-plasticity that really is the core of the practice we do as awakening humans embedded in the cultural, relational fields. We can change how are brains are wired and this changes the field of the whole, as we are the field.

And, a question for all to ponder, How can we continue to speak-out and protest the stupidity, ignorance and violence being perpetuated by our government and segments of society without demonizing anyone??? This is no simple answer to this, but we have to use our intelligence and spiritual insight to find other options. The demonization of others is the primary problem of our times and the cause of all the suffering. We have political leadership that uses this ‘demonization of others’ to rally its base. As long as ‘liberals’ get sucked into the same insanity by ‘demonizing the demonizers’, there is zero chance of moving into a more progressive society. The first principle of Taoism, and Buddhism, and Vedanta is wholeness. There is no other;ther is only us. And we, the collective are seriously out of balance. The wisdom of the body knows this, and that is why embodied spiritual practice is so crucial to our times.

Keep practicing !!!!!

Taoism and Yoga: The Three Treasures

Posted on May 25, 2018 by admin

Three Treasures: Jing, Qi and Shen

Review

In the previous workshops and posts we’ve been exploring some specific points along the microcosmic orbit and noticing that by bringing our attention to them, and using the breath, we can discover energy lines, planes and volumes, giving us our 3 dimensional sensory/perceptual field of embodiment. In a moment we are going to go more deeply into the volumes, but first we need to add another point to root ourselves more completely. We have been working extensively with CV-1, Hui Yin or the ‘Seat of YIn’, where 4 major yIn vessels meet. (We’ve worked with the Conception and Thrusting vessels. There are two more that link through the legs into the torso.) Our overall imbalance, at all levels, is deficient or repressed yin, which of course represents the feminine, Mother Earth and the inner realms.

In your home practice add GV-1, the first point on the yang Governing Vessel which sits directly in front of the coccyx and directly behind the anus. It is not marked on the diagram above, but CV-1 sits just in front of the anus, making the anal mouth the bridge linking the Conception and Governing Vessels in the lower body. The upper bridge is the upper mouth so we find the gut body a major player in bringing energy balance to the whole.

Imagine the connective tissue surrounding the coccyx converging energetically and radiating from this point, GV-1, through the anus to CV-1, CV-6 and all the way to the tailbone of the sternum, the xiphoid process just below CV -17.

Now, using your attention and perception, feel energy slowly moving in a small circle, starting at GV-4 ‘down the back and up the front’ to CV-12 and back to GV-4. This will help un-block any yang energy trapped in the lower spinal muscles as it merges with the Yin and stabilize the lower dantien. This is a traditional energetic ‘tucking action’ opening the posterior spine. To ‘untuck, moving the energy in a down the front and up the back circle, do not break the circuit at the anus or the spinal muscles will overwork (excess yang). Rather release and lengthen the ilio-psoas opening the anterior spine. You can also do the full micro-cosmic orbit circle passing through GV-20, the crown chakra point.

When we expand the lower dantien in our breathing and meditation practices, especially rooting down into the earth, this integrating action of the GV-1 point is very important in maintaining the organic integrity and tone. As the volume expands, so does the tone so there is no prolapse of the pelvic organs. If you can find and feel this energy link and strengthen it, your sense of ‘tucking’ will be much more subtle and powerful. No contraction of anything, but there may be subtle adjustments of bones and connective tissue as the body readjusts to the new integration of the base of the body. This action will also help us discover the center channel, aka the ‘Thrusting Vessel’, as this is an expression of balance between front and back, yin and yang, right and left.

The Three Treasures

The alchemy of an embodied spiritual practice, whether yoga, qi gong, is a process of cultivating, integrating and refining the basic substances or energies that make up the embodied human form and living a life based on love, creativity and connection. In Taoist practices, the basic substances are known collectively as ‘the three treasures‘ and include Jing, Qi and Shen. Each of these treasures is associated with the subtle energy center in one of the three Dantiens, the bony volumes (pelvis, rib cage and skull) and one or more of the yin organ systems. As we can see from the side, our Microcosmic Orbit linking the Conception and Governing Vessels encloses these three dantiens in a loop.

Dantien translates as ‘elixir field’, implying that there is an alchemical potion stored/hidden in these internal spaces. (A Western perspective would acknowledge each of these spaces has its own ‘nervous system’ as well as hormone secreting glands.) Our embodied spiritual practice awakens, transforms and integrates these three to allow our lives to be radiant expressions of love and creativity, with a large sense of humor to help us deal with the many challenges and limitations of the human condition.

Korean Taoist master Sung Jin Park uses the analogy of a candle to describe the three treasures and Jing, the first is the wax and wick of the candle. The densest of the three, jing is centered in the Lower Dantien and stored in and associated with the Kidney OrganSystem. There is no good English equivalent, but jing can be seen as the essence of vitality, the seed of life, the creative energy immediately involved with eggs, sperm, DNA and reproduction, the primal source of things. As it has an ancestral connection extending back eons it is often unconscious. Jing provides our constitutional strength and gives us our unique expressions of bones muscles, skin etc.

Jing differentiates life from inanimate objects, and comes from two sources. Pre-natal Jing comes directly from the DNA of our parents and is nurtured by the kidney energy of our mother while in utero. It determines our basic constitution, is said to be limited in quantity and to be treasured, not wasted. Post-natal Jing is created through the transformation of oxygen and food by the stomach and spleen systems, and the absorbing of life lessons from the environment. It gives birth to the Qi that moves us through life, like the wax gives birth to the flame. Because of its density, it responds strongly to gravity and helps ground us in the larger Cosmos. We can also make a loose analogy with jing to the 1st and 2nd chakras. In our practice, we can help maintain the vitality of our jing through careful diet, hydration, qi moving exercises like yoga and qigong, herbs and acupuncture. Kidney health is crucial to healthy jing, so keep working with K-1, the bubbling spring on the soles of your feet whenever you remember.

The second treasure, Qi, is the flame of the candle, the energy of movement transformed from the denser substance of the body. Qi is the flow of energy from yin to yang and back again, maintaining and allowing both stability and dynamic activity. Qi includes metabolism at a cellular level and all forms of human movement from dance, vinyasa and qigong to rolling around on the floor or walking. Qi’s home in the Middle Dantien and associated with the Spleen/Pancreas and Liver Organ Systems. Chinese Medicine, for help in diagnosis and treatment, describes many types of Qi, but here we are using the word in a general sense for all of its embodied forms.

Like the Sanskrit word Prana, Qi is a Taoist word that cannot be pinned down by Western conceptual thinking. Qi is the mystery of creation itself, neither exactly energy nor matter, but something in between, in an E=mc2 kind of way. Qi is the essence of all levels of reality from sub atomic particles to galaxies. The Qi as a treasure as noted above is a more limited use of the word, but still reflects back onto its more primordial counterpart. We can find a connection to the 3rd and 4th chakras, the solar plexus, heart and lungs. We all feel energy, whether we consciously recognize this or not. Learn to track the quality of your energy and make adjustments as needed. Like with vitalizing the jing, diet, exercise, sleep and an overall healthy life style all support healthy qi.

The candle flame, the Qi, gives off light, and this luminosity is the third treasure, Shen or Spirit. Associated with the heavens and centered in the Upper Dantien, shen is the spiritual mind. The Yin Tang acupuncture point on the 3rd eye is the point (cavity is a better word than point) associated with the Shen as it connects the the very center of the brain where the pineal gland resides. Buddha is often depicted with his Pineal (Pine cone like) gland enlarged and protruding, indicating his awakened/enlightened Shen. This lovely Buddha lives in Sedona Arizona and we were just visiting him last month. In esoteric Taoism, this inner space of the brain/skull is called the Spiritual Valley with the ‘Mud Pill Palace at the center which includes the pituitary gland as well. This is the spiritual yin center in the yang upper dantien.

Interestingly enough, although Shen resides in the brain, it is associated with the Heart Organ System which, in Taoist philosophy/science governs the brain. In fact, in Chinese Medicine, the brain is not considered an organ but is known as the ‘sea of marrow’, marrow including bone marrow but also all nerve tissue. Shen can be seen as the radiance of the heart showing directly through the eyes. Cultivation of Shen leads to compassion, loving kindness and a spiritual perspective on all aspects of life. Shen is unbounded by space and time and allows the timeless divine presence to manifest on earth in the human form. When cultivated, by converting Jing to QI and Qi to Shen, it impels the human to live an enlightened life.

The Five Shens

Also similar to Prana, Shen is further subdivided into five different expressions, Shen, Zhi, Yi, Po and Hun. Each of these is connected to one of the five yin organ systems, the five elements of Taoism, the five visible planets and five directions of the compass. As in many Chinese models, the Five Shens are related to society, with the heart Shen as emperor and the other four ministers, so there is a hierarchy here.

The ‘smaller’ Shen is centered in the Heart Organ system and rules the others. As its element is fire, it is spiritual passion in an integrated and compassionate way, inspiring one to live a meaningful life. Its direction is South, the planet Mars. Heart Shen is an embodied expression of the spiritual impulse of joy and delight, and guiding the other aspects of Shen to harmony and balance.

Zhi, or will power gives us direction, discipline and perseverance to gets things done. Connected to the Kidney Organ System and the element water, Zhi, when aligned with the Heart Shen, guides our spiritual practice through the many obstacles that pop up along the way. Its direction is North, the planet mercury, the closest planet to the sun. Zhi can also be seen to have a yin and yang aspect. Yang will is more obvious and usually involves conscious choice in the moment. The Yin aspect of Zhi however is much more mysterious and is not usually noticed until well after the fact, usually later in life when we notice that we were being moved in a direction without actually noticing. At a deeper level of practice, Zhi becomes ‘wu wei’, or effortless effort, as the individual ‘will’ becomes one with the Divine Will of wholeness.

Yi is translated as discriminative intelligence. Associated with the Spleen/Pancreas Organ System, Yi helps distinguish between the desirable and the undesirable choices we have presented to us continuously by our experience. Its element is Earth, its direction is toward the center and its planet is Saturn. Along with Shen/passion and Zhi/will, Yi can be refined by paying careful attention to our actions and the unfolding of the world around us. Yi helps calm the mind when the mental states are disturbed by emotional upheavals.

To make life even more intriguing, the next two “Shens’, Hun and Po, come as a yin/yang pair. Po is the aspect of our being that dissolves at death so, lacking the broader vision of the other four shens, is really only concerned with this physical body, this lifetime. Known in English as the corporeal soul, it is the tangible yin counterpart to Hun, the ethereal soul. Po is associated with the lung organ system, the planet Venus, the element metal and the westerly direction.

Hun represents spirit that lives on after death in other realms of existence. It is the yang counterpart to Po, associated with the Liver Organ System. It carries us in dreams and on shamanic journeys

Discover how these ‘Three Treasures” reveal themselves to you. Nurture and integrate them into your life and learn the alchemy of an embodied spiritual practice.