– taken from Ron Timm’s talk, workshop in Gdańsk, September 2024 –
If you do Qi Gong you have to learn to guide and lead. Guide and lead what? Everything - if you can. Or as much as possible in your attempts. Obviously, while doing the exercises we guide and lead the body: the upper extremity of the arm, for example. But there is much more to this, in Qi Gong 'to guide and lead' is an underlying principle. It is not about the arms.
The nature of Qi Gong work
Qi Gong is not about the physical. It's not about physical motion either. Then it wouldn't be called Qi Gong: where ‘Qi’ is the energy and ‘Gong’, the practice. We work with energy: in order to move the energy, you move something, you do something. But it is about what you do with the energy, not what you do with your arm.
The thing is: your arm, as the material thing, is inexistent on the level that we work at in Qi Gong. Your arm is the Qi. Most of the time people have a certain idea of Qi Gong. In many classes I see this: they move their arm and then they imagine something, mainly the Qi that is moved. But your arm is Qi! And because most people don't see and recognize that their arm is Qi, then they look somewhere else where it might be found, but they don't see where it is already. This way you surely don't find it. It's like when you have the glasses on and you look for them. It's very difficult to find them. You never will.
The aspects of practice
Therefore: what we start with is the body and body movement. You can guide and lead your arm. That is easy and a good beginning. At the same time you want to guide and lead your breath as you practice. This is why in class I say: breathe! Breathe, because if you stop breathing, it means you are not in control, you do not guide and lead your breath anymore. You also want to guide and lead your mind as well, which, for Western people, is a surprise. But it is possible, you can, and you should, guide and lead your mind.
How do you do that?
Try raising your hand. Now, take the index finger and bring it down. You can do that, right? So, as you guide and lead your index finger, the same way you can guide and lead your mind. Have you practiced using your fingers before? Yes, you have. Can you be better or not so good at it? Yes. Some people play the piano, some people can't, but potentially everybody could. You can guide and lead when it comes to what you do with your hands and fingers. And the same can be applied to your mind. It is all Qi.
Working with emotions
There is just one situation where it becomes more tricky, that is when it comes to emotions.
If I say: you can guide and lead your emotions, that is a total taboo in the West. It is almost as if you should not guide and lead your emotions. If you feel bad, you should just feel bad, and most likely you should really express that to everybody. However, in Chinese tradition emotions are described as expressions of Qi. Anger is not anger, it is named ‘the Qi is rising’, ‘shooting Qi' or something similar. It signifies a certain movement- upwards- and there is a certain quality that comes with that.
Therefore, if you do Qi Gong, if you practice to move Qi, then guiding and leading is what you do. It has nothing to do with suppressing emotions, which is the next thing we think of in the West. There is no need to suppress anything, you just guide and lead. That's one of the reasons why in China the most important thing is not to lose face. Which again, for Western people, is a ridiculous concept. But this approach assures the stability of the collective, it assures a steady and smooth connection between people. And yes, it depends on your skills. But the idea was not that something is being suppressed.
Being in the driver’s seat
The idea was that you can navigate through emotional states. I mean, as an example: a car is a wonderful thing. We all have cars or want to have one. Or perhaps by now we are beginning to see that it is not ideal, but there was a time when cars were all wonderful. You could go from here to there whenever you wanted and if you decided halfway not to go there, but to go somewhere else instead, you could do that. It is indeed wonderful, right? But just if you can guide and lead.
Imagine you get into your car and suddenly it starts driving from your house to somewhere random. If that would be how a car works. It could be a wonderful thing: it could take you to unknown places. But there would be nothing you can do about it. You enter the car and off it goes. And you could say: wow, that's great, that's a nice surprise. Maybe, but you can end up in the worst places. You can end up on a tree. You can end up in a ditch. You can end up going down the cliff. Nobody would ever drive a car if it was like this. You want to be able to steer.
You want to sit in the driver's seat. You want to guide and lead. Where do you want to go? It doesn't mean you always go where the sunshine is. Because the car doesn't just take you where the sunshine is. But you need to guide and lead, otherwise you would be crazy to drive into the eye of a hurricane. This is what it is about. I mean, we are human beings and we have that power, so we don't have to be overruled by our thoughts and emotions.
Learning to guide and lead
It could take you years and years of practice to get these skills. Because one thing is you can guide and lead with your finger. One thing is you can do this with your arm and with your feet. These are the skills we use in every beginners' class. But another thing is you can do this with your breath. Another, that you can do this with your emotions. And yet another, that you can do this with your mind. Sounds good? Yes, but it also gives you all the responsibility.
The responsibility means you cannot blame anybody else. Not the government. Not your family. You sit in the driver's seat, you guide and lead. This is the aim, this is what we strive towards. But nobody says it is easy. It requires time, work and dedication. It is a process and it is gradual and slow. If you got there in the end you would probably be a Buddha. And as you can see there are not too many Buddhas hanging around. Even if they say that everybody could become one.
