How I understand ki energy from outside myself

In my last article I was looking at my understanding of the phenomenon of energy (in the eastern chi/ki sense) and how I've come to see it as an (ex)scientist. I described my experiences of feeling waves or rushes, sometimes jolts, of pleasurable sensations travelling through my body during certain yoga or meditation practices, and concluded that these body-felt sensations are what I feel when the electromagnetic field in my body generated by the movement of electric current within my nerves and other cells comes into coherence. The reason why we don't all feel these is due to blockages and restrictions that have built up in our bodies over time (tight muscles, imbalances, etc), and a general lack of sensitivity.

I've been told for many years by various yoga and meditation teachers that it's not only possible to feel this ki energy moving within us, but it’s also possible to feel and even receive ki energy from sources outside yourself. As I said in the previous article, both in traditional Chinese medicine and modern physics, everything can be seen as a form of energy – but things being energy, and being able to receive that energy are two different things. So does this make sense?

Let's consider the chairs we're sitting on right now (assuming you are sitting on one!). The chair is made of solid matter (wood, metal, etc), which, as Einstein showed us, is just a form of energy (remember E=mc^2). Can I feel that energy? Sure I can – just by the mere fact that I'm still sitting on the chair and haven't passed straight through it means that my body is experiencing the physical energetic forces that make the chair solid. But does the fact my chair is really just energy mean there can be an exchange of that energy with me, or that I can feel that energy at a distance?

Well, I don’t have an answer about chairs yet, but as I've been tuning in to these shimmering, pulsing sensations in my body, my teachers have been encouraging me to see whether I can feel ki energy from other things – particularly organic things like people and plants, but also places.

And as crazy as it sounds, I can actually feel something! Trees have been a big source of these sensations.

London Plane tree

At first I would be in the park here in London and I'd try feeling a tree... Being acutely aware of how weird I might appear(!), I would would try approaching a tree surreptitiously when no one was looking and lightly touch the bark. Sure enough, whooff, waves of tingling, pulsing sensations would often (not always) ripple through my body. Some trees do it more than others (generally big old ones are best!). Now, when I really tune in, I can feel these familiar tingling sensations when I just come near a tree, or even stand under its branches – just being in its presence. I can't feel it every time, just when I'm trying to tune in, and I'm feeling particularly open. It happened pretty powerfully a week or two ago when I was standing between four very fine beech trees, and for the first time the other day with just a house plant!

Taoist masters throughout the centuries have observed that trees are tremendously powerful plants. Taoist master Mantak Chia explains how, in the Taoist view, trees are seen to be constantly in meditation and are natural processors of ki energy. The best trees for healing, they say, are big trees, especially pines and those growing near running water. But again, all this is ideas and beliefs. How do you explain it?

It turns out that, like animals, plants too have electrically charged cells (so-called cell action potentials) and use them to rapidly send signals through the plant. This came as a surprise to me. So plants generate their own electromagnetic field as well… (Apparently by attaching electrodes to the leaf and root they be made to sing.) When you think about it, we all know that plants depend on light, which is just electromagnetic energy, for their nourishment. We learn that at school. They photosynthesise the carbon monoxide in the air together with water that they draw up from the earth and the energy from sunlight into sugars and proteins – and oxygen which they expel.

So sensing the bioelectromagnetic field (or ki energy) of a plant doesn’t sound so weird, even when it’s at a distance. And the fact that plants can excite a response in your own bioelectromagnetic field also doesn’t sound so strange. I think of it like a form of induction, like how your electric toothbrush charges or how an induction hob works. Changes in the field of one object influences the field of the other.

My teachers also say that one can feel and receive ki energy from the Earth. In fact one of the first times I felt these strong energy pulses I've mentioned was when doing what my yoga teacher Jonathan Monks calls the root meditation. As he describes it, this is about opening your root (the energetic centre in your pelvic floor) so that you can connect with and receive the energy of the Earth. The sensation was clear enough, but energy in the Earth...?

It's known that the Earth's magnetic field is generated by electric currents moving through the highly conductive layer of molten iron alloys in the planet’s outer core. The currents are formed as the molten iron moves around due to convection. But how this relates to potential ki energy at the surface of our planet is much harder to understand. Some people talk about ley lines being paths of energy in the ground, some people about feng shui and the harmonisation of ki in the wind, water, stars, and earth.

Personally I haven’t found a way of understanding Earth energy yet. I feel it in my root (pelvic floor), in the soles of my feet on the ground, and in my hands when they’re on the ground, but that’s all I can say.

As always, your comments are very welcome - here on the blog, on FB or by e-mail. More on this in the weeks to come...!

My neck shows me fear

When do you feel most fearful in your life?

When you think about what might be lurking under the bed?

Maybe not any more... As adults, we often build up fears around issues to do with our livelihood (job satisfaction, security, pay), relationships (does she love me? will he want to stay my friend?), our or others' health (will I always have good physical health? I wish he would stop smoking), or our finances (do I have enough money? what if I can't pay the rent/mortgage?).

And these feelings of fear can fall anywhere on the spectrum: from subtle feelings of anxiety that can be hard to even notice, to full-blown panic attacks where we become paralysed by the intensity of emotion.

Almost universally, we're in denial about the amount of fear we carry around. Some fears can be very deep seated, like our in-built human fear of death, or separation from our loved-ones. Sometimes we can get afraid of fear itself!

In our yoga sadhana practice with Jonathan Monks, we've been working on a movement where we roll our head all the way forwards, to the side, all the way back, and to the other side (motivating the movement from the spine). For quite some months we've been concentrating on just the forward movement, allowing the head to fall forwards and the muscles along the back of the neck to lengthen and relax. In this month's workshop we re-visited the rolling movement, and particularly that falling back part.

It's surprising – the simple movement of letting your head fall backwards has an incredible way of bringing you up against fear. Why are my muscles tensing? I know it's safe but I'm scared. What of?

The structure of the neck is incredibly complicated, with muscles, veins, arteries, your throat, larynx, spine, nerves, glands and lymph nodes all neatly arranged in that very small tube. Then there's the weight of your head sitting on top of it. So it's no wonder that you get protective over that area!

For me, that act of letting the head fall back brought up feelings of lack of control, lack of trust, and a protectiveness over my physical body.

So how do we deal with fears like this? We use our skills of mindfulness. We remain present with it, not suppressing it nor acting on it. As Jonathan says, we "listen, feel, and allow". By noticing it and allowing it to be, it's power over us diminishes. By becoming aware of the fear, we have, in effect, stepped back, and with this perspective we can see the fear for what it is – just another emotion. We face it with a friendly, gentle, curious attitude and allow it to soften in its own time. The most important thing is to acknowledge it, and allow it to be there – our unwillingness to see these difficult things causes half the problems!

And this is why this head rolling exercise is so enlightening. We can feel the effects of our fear very physically. The head rolls back and there's the tension in the neck and shoulders, holding, over-protecting. We can be as present as we can with these sensations, noticing and exploring how they feel, and we can literally let the tensions soften when they're ready.


So we don't have to be particularly bendy or strong to experience what yoga practice truly is. It's simply a way of finding out more about ourselves – a practice of learning how to listen, feel, and allow, then learning how to put what we find into action in our daily lives (what Jonathan would call embody and actualise).

I teach Zen yoga and mindfulness at the ZenYoga studio in Camberwell, London. See my website for my class schedule and more details.

I'd love to hear from you

Leave a comment below, join the discussion. 

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Sailing your ship

There's been so much rain recently that there's a chance we might soon just float away! So in that vein I've got a few watery metaphors for practice I wanted to share with you.


The what, how, and why

The first one comes from my yoga teacher Jonathan Monks (YogaMonks). He likes to connect the three main aspects of traditional yoga – Hatha, Raja, and Bhakti – to the different parts of a sailing boat on the sea: the boat, the sails, and the wind.

First a little about what these aspects are:  
The sanskrit word "hatha" means wilful or forceful, sometimes also translated as "ha" meaning sun and "tha" meaning moon. As these two sounds, the word captures both the active (masculine, yang, hot, solar) aspect, and the receptive (feminine, yin, cool, lunar) aspect within all of us. Hatha yoga is a spiritual path that can be traced back to the "Goraksha Samhita" written by Yogi Gorakshanath in the 11th century and the "Hatha Yoga Pradipika" written by Yogi Swatmarama in the 15th century. It is, in the words of Jonathan, "the juxtaposition of two opposing forces to reveal the one (all emcompassing) force beneath and beyond." All physical yoga practices can be classified as hatha yoga.

Raja yoga, meaning "royal yoga" or "royal union" and is concerned principally with the cultivation of mind. The term can be traced back to the "Yoga Sutras" of Patanjali, who described a succession of meditation steps for preparing and building up to complete contemplative absorption (dhyāna, dhyana, samadhi). Basically raja refers to the meditation aspect of yoga.

Bhakti yoga is a spiritual path in Hindu philosophy for fostering love of, faith in, and surrender to oneness (or God). It's the devotional aspect of yoga, and might include practices such as listening/reading the sutras, kirtana (praising or singing), doing service, worshipping, and surrendering the self.

In this analogy, Jonathan likens the 'hatha' aspect to the boat. It's our vessel for travelling on the often stormy seas of life, and our regular physical practice helps to make sure our boat is seaworthy.

If hatha and our boat is the 'what', then the raja aspect is the 'how'. He associates this 'how' with the sails – for the boat to gather speed and follow the right course the sails have to be in good clean condition and properly rigged. The mind has to be properly cultivated in order for it to perceive clearly the winds of life, and catch them most wisely.

That leaves the bhakti aspect, the 'why'. Why do we do any of this practice in the first place? Something has to motivate us – if not God, then the wonder of life, or to become one with 'the way', or perhaps simply the wish to help others. In this analogy, bhakti refers to the wind. It's what powers us along, fills our sails and drives along our vessel.

And the water? It's life itself, with all it's waves of up and down. And what are waves? Just temporary patterns of energy on the surface of the ocean of emptiness.

Jonathan Monks's yoga analogy - drawing by Carol from our sadhana course

Rowing out of the marina

The second little metaphor is from my Zen teacher Daizan Skinner (ZenWays.org), and relates to the stages of practice.

Let's imagine we've got a little sailing dinghy at its berth in the harbour. In order to get it out of the sheltered marina and onto the open water, we need to row it out (or I guess these days you'd most likely start up the outboard motor). As you row out, you have to be careful for obstacles and other boats, and it's slow going. But in the busy marina without any wind it's the only way.

Once you're out on the open water with a good stiff breeze, you can hoist your sails and let the wind push you forward.

Now, as we've said, it's no good hoisting the sails in the port – they would get in the way, flapping about and blocking your view. But equally, there's no use in rowing when you're out of port and the sails are up catching the wind. At best it simply doesn't help, and at worst it actually gets in the way, hindering your progress.

So you need both the oars and the sails, but for different circumstances. They need to be used wisely.

Using our oars is like putting in the effort when it's needed, like doing something on a recommendation until you start seeing the benefits. We need to row ourselves out to a place where the wind can take over and can blow us forward – doing our practice until the practice does us! The wisdom then comes in knowing when to stop rowing...


Course changes

So we've got a seaworthy boat, we know why we want to practice, and we've managed to row out of the marina into the open sea. We're up and going, cutting through the waves with the wind filling our sails. Now the course we take becomes important – are we heading to a tropical island hideaway for silence and no distractions, or to a disaster zone to help out?

Something a friend of mine very wisely said on a retreat recently: a tiny course correction right now makes a massive difference to your destination over a long journey. A half-degree course change could put you 100s of miles away from where you were originally headed. That's why setting your course is so important. 

But it doesn't mean you shouldn't be flexible and change course when needed – sometimes a dramatic and unanticipated change is needed when a storm unexpectedly brews, or you realise that you're needed more at home than at the latest war zone.

Do small changes in navigation matter?

Water and ice

The final metaphor comes from Zen Master Hakuin (1685-1768). Hakuin taught that Buddhas (not just The Buddha – he's referring to any enlightened being) are like water and ordinary people are like ice. We're all made of the same stuff. There's no difference, except they are in different states. 

Mindful attention is like sunlight, melting away the frozen places in the body-mind. As things free up on the physical level, things open up on the emotional level. As things start to let go in our body and hearts, then our mind begins to open up and we become able to slip more and more easily into that wonderful flow of life.


Got any more? Add them in the comments below – I'd love to hear them. 

The art of being a teacher

A while back, my teacher Jonathan Monks read out a quote from Yogi Manmoyanand in one of our sadhana course sessions. It relates to being a teacher. Because it was in a book about yoga, I guess he was talking about being a yoga teacher, but it's absolutely relevant to being any kind of teacher.

It's beautiful - I keep on thinking about it and re-reading it. As Jonathan said at the time, there's a great deal to chew on. How much of this can we put into practice in our daily teaching? Is it possible to be fully as he says in the Western world?

I'm not going to attempt to paraphrase - just read it.

"No matter how good or bad, wise or dumb the teacher may be, he always remains respectable in the eyes of the student.
A teacher never makes the student; it is always the student who makes a teacher.
A teacher is only a teacher for the purpose of the student.
A teacher does not claim himself as such; rather it is the student who recognises him as a teacher.

The answers from a student only reflect his recollection capacity, while his questions reveal the way he thinks, and this is precisely what the teacher is looking for.
The mode of questioning of a student always helps the teacher to modify his teaching, and thus allows the teacher to remain completely aware of the student's questioning pulse.
A teacher is never satisfied with the correct answers provided by the student; rather he looks for the correct questions from the student.

The teacher should never be jealous and protective about his teachings and should never attempt. To give his teachings a concrete shape in the mind of the student.
The teaching has to be perfectly fluid and flexible. Creating a rigid and concrete block in the mind of a student causes more damage then any long term benefit. Such kind of teaching is less teaching, more brain-washing. Hence, all attempts to create a solid 'belief' in the mind of a student must be avoided.

The teacher should bear in mind that he is only a passing phase in the student's life, and any attempt to hold onto that phase will only prove disastrous for the student.
A teacher has no right over the future of his student.
The teacher should be willing to pass away from the memory of his student.

The teaching is never judged on the basis of how much knowledge was imparted, but on the basis of how much knowledge was demanded.
A teacher can expect nothing from his students, though he deserves and is entitled to a 'tuition fee' from his students, which he can ask for only at the end of the teaching - not on the basis of how much he has given, but on the basis of how much the student has taken.
Greed and expectation always spoil and dilute the teacher-student relationship.
As long as the teacher has not embodied the correct mindset of teaching, he should not commence teaching." 

Sivananda Buried Yoga; Yogi Manmoyanand; O Books; 2008

What is your fifth limb?

The classical yoga of Patañjali comprises of eight so-called "limbs" (stages/practices). Ashtanga, by the way, means eight limbs (ashta=eight, anga=limb). In his system the fifth limb is Pratyahara, often translated as 'withdrawal of the senses'. But that's not the 5th limb I want to talk about here.

I want to talk about your fifth anatomical limb - your spine. My teacher Jonathan Monks defines Hatha Yoga as the liberation of the fifth limb. But what does liberation mean, and why would you want to do that to your spine?? Liberation means the act of setting free, or being free from limits. Do you see your spine being limited? About 8 in 10 people in the western world have one or more bouts of lower back pain in their lives. It's also the most common reason for absence from work and having to go to the doctor. So developing increased flexibility, strength, and awareness in the spine is absolutely crucial for living a healthy life - especially as you get older.

Your spine is the major trunk road connecting everything in your physical body (and energetic and spiritual body, but let's not get too technical). Your legs extend downwards from it forming, together with your pelvic floor, your roots. The very important psoas muscle connects the inside of your thighs to your spine, and its flexibility combined with that of your sacroiliac joint (SI joint) and your lower few vertebrae affect how your hips and pelvis move, your gait, and your posture. The SI joint is in fact a firm favourite for discussion in the yoga literature (see this excellent article) as it can end up hurting as a result of incorrect yoga practice. In the Japanese tradition, your hara - your central engine or energy battery - sits in front of the spine, in your belly.

Your shoulders also hang off your spine. Maybe you often feel tension up here too. One of the main causes of those painful muscle knots often stem from our sedentary lifestyle containing short bursts of activity or sustained holding from a hunched or forward-head posture.

So you can see why liberating the spine is so important. In the YogaMonks practice that I've been studying this last few years, it's an absolute focus. The practice Jonathan sets for us (mere beginners) is all about opening our root - bringing physical freedom of movement to the lower spine and pelvis, awareness to our perineum (pelvic floor), softness to the belly (and hara), and an increased (energetic) connection to the ground.

And as our spines start to move more and more independently of our other limbs, many wonderful things start to happen! As this lovely article puts it, our "hips are the body's junk drawer - they hold emotional stressors when you’re not sure where else to put them, yet you're not entirely ready to release them." So increased flexibility in the hips and pelvis can have a serious effect on our emotional body, releasing stuff that might've been stored there for years.

A loose and relaxed upper spine allows your breathing to become free and easy. Eventually (so Jonathan says) pranayama starts to happen spontaneously. Pranayama is the conscious direction or movement of energy around the body, usually through the breath.

Ultimately, a liberated spine will allow you to sit comfortably in padmasana (full lotus), the body stable, solid and connected to the ground, and the mind quiet, alert, and inquisitive. And that's all we want - the rest of it just happens in it's own time.

I am a member of the Zenways sangha led by Zen master Daizan Roshi, and I teach meditation, mindfulness and yoga at the ZenYoga studio in Camberwell, London. See my website for further details.

I'd love to hear from you

What's your relationship to your 5th limb? What have you found that helps develop this relationship? Leave a comment below, join the discussion.

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Fly practice

As I mentioned in last week's post, I was in Spain for a yoga retreat with Jonathan Monks and his lovely assistant / top student Beth. In the mornings, Jonathan would always go out to a particular place in the garden and do his own practice between about 7-11am. That's certainly a very dedicated personal practice - and yet he still complained there wasn't enough time to fit everything in!!

Anyway, in the first couple of days I was there he talked about the challenge of dealing with all the flies buzzing around in the garden. He said how difficult it was to be ok with them buzzing around, landing on you and crawling around. It was pretty hot, even at 8 in the morning, and the flies were fresh from a good night's sleep…

When I arrived on Sunday I set my intention of doing an hours sitting each day of the retreat. Naturally I sat inside the studio to avoid distractions. However, after hearing about Jonathan's experience with the flies, I thought I'd give it a go too.

So on Wed, Thurs and Fri I sat in the morning 2x30mins outside by the pool.

It was ok at first, no flies came. Then there was one on my arm. And one on my face. The one on my arm flew up to my ear. Then there was one on my nose trying to crawl up my nostril. Meanwhile the one on my face had crawled over my lips and was heading up to my eye. Then there was another on my other eye. And another on my ear. Bzzz, and it landed on my ear again. Goosebumps rippled down my left side. The ones on my eyes seemed particularly attracted to the corners (where I guess they could find some food… euww).

During the sitting, they would come, buzz around a bit, take off and re-land, then go. One or two would stay, feasting on the gunk in the corners of my eyes or around my nostrils. When they were still for some time I could feel the cold dabbing of their "tongue" on my skin. Around the back of my neck it was tickley, on my ears I got goosebumps, and on my eyes it was just weird.

Initially it was all about mindfulness of sensations. My whole awareness was filled with flies. It was a practice of letting go of the distraction, the annoyance and irritation, letting them be, getting on with their business of feeding. The important thing, I noticed, was the knowledge that they weren't doing any harm (if they were mosquitos the situation would have been very different!). It was actually fascinating to really tune in to all the sensations they produced.

On the second day of sitting outside, it became much easier to let them get on with it, and I started being able to come back to following the breath. Gradually I started feeling a detachment from the body and its sensations. My body is not me, these sensations are not me. Just accept things as they are and observe the moments passing without wanting them to be different. I found the 'not wanting' started releasing the tension and allowed quite deep relaxation.

Try it sometime…!

Foundations of mindfulness

The Buddha taught that there are four foundations of mindfulness:

   * mindfulness of the body
   * mindfulness of feelings (or sensations)
   * mindfulness of the mind (or consciousness)
   * mindfulness of mental phenomena (or mental objects - basically your thoughts)

He said that directing your 100% attention and practice towards any one of those four aspects of mindfulness has the potential of leading all the way to full awakening/enlightenment. This shows the power of simple mindfulness...

Although, of course, all four of these aspects are present in Zen meditation, once your body is still and you are comfortable in your sitting position, the first two become less prominent. It's the mindfulness of your mind and thoughts that are emphasised through practices such as Zen Master Bankei's unborn or working with a koan.

Mindfulness of the body includes practices like following the breath, and mindfulness of sensations includes being aware and present with pain or discomfort. However, if Zen emphasises the mind-and-thoughts aspects, then it's (physical/hatha) yoga that emphasises the body-and-sensations side of things.

Last weekend was our last yoga sadhana weekend with Jonathan Monks (month 10 of 10), and he asked us to discuss what we've learnt, what we've gained, what has changed, what are we unsure of, and what do we need to do next. In answering the first two questions it became very clear to me that over the last almost-year (261 days of practice - minus one or two that I missed!) Jonathan had very skilfully encouraged us to explore these aspects of mindfulness of the body and sensations.

Physical yoga work is indeed only one "limb" of the eight described in the classical texts (internal and external moral codes of conduct, physical movement, energy work/pranayama, withdrawal of senses, concentration, meditation and union/oneness/emptiness), so you might expect it to lead towards deeper understanding, insights, awakening. But to be quite honest, I've not always had the clearest understanding of how moving and stretching the body can lead to insights into our true nature.

And maybe most yoga that you get out there doesn't lead towards knowing your true nature. And that's what sets Jonathan apart. Movements that leave you with a quiet mind, sequences that lead to "ahh, oh my god! - what happened there?!"; no contraction, no isolation, the body moving in union - that's the YogaMonks method. It's a wonderful balance to the Zen practice. Open the physical body and the mental/emotional bodies open - open the mental/emotional bodies and the physical body opens.

My courses in mindfulness cover all four of the aspects of mindfulness, introducing practical ways to work with them and exploring what effects they have. But if you don't want to wait until the next course starts, come to one of my yoga classes and practice mindfulness of your body and sensations (and the mind and thoughts, but sshhh, that's a secret!).

Sadhana practice with Jonathan Monks. New courses starting next year.