light liberating layers

light liberating layers: general #537

One of the important reasons why a profound traditional Chinese nei-kung practice is truly enriching, and of particular relevance for people actively engaged in working externally for the natural environment (against pollution, for preserving biodiversity, steps against the climate crisis, …), in social justice, fair economies, de-growth, antifascist pro-democracy movements, … is that, in a profound nei-kung practice, in internal work, you experience the issues you are conceptually dealing with externally, within your own bodymind. You physically, mentally, and emotionally directly feel their effects on yourself, and you then do the positive work you are doing externally, internally as well. Both ways of activism are mutually reinforcing each other.

Everything that is stored inside of you, all the past experiences that have become you, are representative of one approach or another. You might have gotten physically, mentally, and emotionally polluted in all kinds of ways—or maybe less so—through your food intake, the ways you were socialized, your social interactions, by your thoughts, your inner dialogues, by what you read, listen to, and watch regularly, your consumption patterns. A nei-kung practice is a complex cleansing process, physically, mentally, and emotionally. Energetically it continually integrates the individual into the whole, lets the individual feel and experience that it is part of the whole. There is no consumerism, no favoritism of the individual at the cost of the whole at play here.

Or in doing pro-democracy work, how much do you ignore or neglect your own bodymind? To what degree do all the different voices inside decide upon the paths to take? The structures your bodymind is built on, the patterns it is operating in might represent more democratic, or more autocratic approaches. Do you, for instance, force your will on your body no matter what feedback you are getting from your body, or are you in continuous multilogues interacting with all the voices inside and outside your bodymind? Important questions in a profound nei-kung practice are: How do you organize movements? How are micro-movements within movements organized? In a profound Taoist bodymind practice, movements do not get centrally initiated and organized in an autocratic fashion by will and consciousness. Movements are collaborative endeavors on different levels, spreading across conscious, subconscious, and unconscious spheres, involving every single piece of your being.

In explorations into your own bodymind—past, presence, and future—you focus on all kinds of diverse, collaborative, democratic, inclusive, generally constructive, internal patterns. Bodymind practices that are designed to holistically foster well-being internally and externally, again, very well complement the wish to support the well-being of all the diverse members of a society—no matter the sex, cultural or religious backgrounds.