There’s a principle in qigong that offers insight well beyond the scope of energy work:
Where Attention Goes, Energy Flows
The direction of attention, and consequent energy flow, is a defining feature of qigong over and above general meditation, which, as far as Weightlessness is concerned, is practice in egoless non-attachment.
Taken to it’s natural end, non-attachment implies presence without intention, or perception without judgment. There’s no hard and fast line between meditation and qigong, as they occupy different places along a spectrum of meditative development, but it is one spectrum nonetheless.
The longer one meditates, the higher the chances they’ll experience energetic shifts that seem extraordinary. Likewise, for qigong to be effective, it requires a base of unbiased and deeply connected presence.
All that said, we might place a firm line between the two in principle (though not in practice), marked by intent, and the willful direction of attention within training.
Where Attention Goes, Energy Flows
While general meditation (mindfulness or transcendental meditation) often lead with a focal point that stabilizes attention - an anchor from which the mind is allowed to expand laterally - those points of attention ought to be considered training wheels meant to graduate you beyond the desire for outcome and control.
Qigong, on the other hand, leads with and emphasizes the placement of attention in very specific ways, trading some of the experiences and awarenesses exposed via mindfulness for the accumulation and distribution of felt energy in the body.
The order flow of energy cultivation makes a great deal of sense once you become acquainted with it, but it also provides a useful framework for approaching the stuff of life, even when uncertainty reigns.
In the beginning, qigong practitioners feel nothing. Take note of this in particular.
The practice begins with a promise that hard work and dedication will bear fruit. Then, after weeks of practice, and careful attention paid to the lower abdomen, the sea of energy begins to show life.
Sensations go from a point of pursuit to undeniable experience. And the unpredictable, accidental energetic shifts that occur early on later become points of skillful activation under mental control. This is the beginning.
Once the well is full, in a manner that is undeniable to both trainee and instructor, the next stage focuses on manipulating that energy through the torso - from abdomen, down past the perineum, up the back, over the crown point at the top of the head, and back down again to the dan tian (located center of mass, and just beneath the belly button). This phase alone may take many months to a couple years of regular practice.
The final stage of training is manipulation of energy through the extremities - to the feet and hands. This stage marks the mergence of attention and energy through agile skill, and the height of energetic cultivation.
The Grass is Greener Where You Water It
The grass is always greener on the other side, eh?
It’s so easy to fall into the trap of valuing that which we don’t possess, and disregarding that which we do. But this isn’t a letter on gratitude, which is an extraordinary thing in and of itself. It’s about attention, and designing greener pastures where none currently exist.
It sounds so simple: You want green grass? Just water it.
And yet, in daily life, those things most yearned for often receive the least amount of attention. And, rather than audit where attention is truly spent, how it’s distributed and in what degrees of quality over the course of each and every day, the tendency for most is assume that those who have that green grass are just built different.
They’re lucky. They’re gifted. They started early. The love the process.
Excuses, all of them, that prevent you from adding just a little bit of water to the grass you want to grow each and every day. But if you could just allay the skepticism and self-doubt, and create the space to turn the hose on, even a little bit, the energy to sustain may just manifest.
The Incremental Cultivation of Purpose
I’ve witnessed an expressed assumption by some over the years that other people have a clarity of purpose, if not well-defined identity, that they themselves do not. They assume life is easier for others, and that things would be much easier if they had greater clarity around who they are, and what they’re meant to do.
It may seem odd that this particular assumption is following a qigong adage and the watering of grass, but it’s not. Maybe it’s not a problem of clarity, purpose, or energy. Maybe it’s one of attention, and the energy that follows.
What if purpose isn’t something to be known before the journey?
What if it’s cultivated - the natural outcome of incremental steps aligned by a sense of life-giving attention?
What if it’s not a light switch to be turned on?
What if it’s a ladder?
A ladder that scales so high that you can’t quite see the upper steps, and so are required to repeatedly choose a direction that approximates your greatest passion, the final steps and point of arrival coated by mist. As steps are taken, more are revealed, and in greater and greater clarity.
Attention must be give to the ladder closest to one’s hopes and dreams.
And attention must be paid to those visible steps before you.
Purpose may not lie in what’s visible, just as one cannot see or feel the energy promised in the early stages of qigong. But with attention anchored on something even approximately aligned, clarity, control, and purpose surface.
And therein lies the energy to sustain.
Where attention goes, energy flows.
Regardless whether those first few steps seem daunting, or if you’re three quarters of the way up your ladder and want to accelerate through the mist, The Weightlessness Process facilitates these steps with 360 alignment by helping you reverse engineer your personal vision, and by adding the principles, tools, coaching, and community necessary to sustain the path and to experience a bit of weightlessness along the way.
Reach out if you’re ready to dive in the deep end or accelerate into the unknown. The next 12-week coaching process is just around the corner!
Be Weightless!
Tom Fazio