Creation
Still digesting last week’s stuff… and loving it. One of our amazing lecturers was Yair Maimon from Israel. (http://www.chinese-medicine.org.il/)His talk (or what I’ve managed to get from it so far…) dealt with the connection of Jing and Shen in the body and how this connection creates the friction that in turn creates life. There is another level that I won’t get into just yet, first I’ll try to realize what the basics are and then see if I can grasp the rest.
Jing in chinese medicine is sometimes translated as “essence”. The idea that comes into my mind when I think of jing is the deepest most primal earth energy that is available to humans. It creates our being, it gives us the energy to become. We are given a certain level of it at birth, from our parents, and we use it little by little throughout our lives. It’s preservation is said to lead to a longer, more healthful life. It is said to be attached to the energy of the kidneys and also to be directly related to amount and quality of eggs and sperm. It is our most basic element. It is contracted and dark.
The exact opposite of this is Shen. Shen is loosely translated as “spirit” in english texts. Shen is our connection to the heavens. It is the sense of interconnectedness that exists between humans and animals alike. Shen is the piece of the universal whole that belongs to us during our lifetime. At death, Shen continues. Jing, on the other hand only continues through our offspring. Shen is expansive and clear.
Shen is the energy of the heavens, Jing is the energy of the earth. When they mix, life (Qi) is formed. The definition of Qi has been long debated. Most people give up and just call it “energy”, but it is so much more than that. Qi is the process by which our bodies function. Every organ has it’s own qi, that has it’s own functions. Even if we think about this through the eyes of western medicine, we can see that different organs function differently. Heck, most of them have their own special cells. The heart is the only place in the body to have cardiac muscle. It is not the same substance as the muscles of your arms and legs, nor the same as say, your intestines. The liver is full of hepatocytes which only fuction properly in their own environment, together. The energetic functioning of each part of our body is different and this is Qi. Qi is a process, a function, it’s how something works. So, yes, it is energy.. but varied forms. Electricity and fire are both energy but they are different. We can derive energy from the sun through way of solar panels or through wind or water mills. Each of these differ greatly from the next. We have a source of energy available to us, but we need something to transform that energy into something useful. This process is Qi.
I’ll stop there for now… I’ve got more to process before I can add on… 
September 01 2009 09:14 am | Articles