Quantum physics had its 100th anniversary -- and do we know what it actually means any more than 100 years ago? Open question for sure. But part of this exploration is actually inquiring into the effects that a scientific story, scientific knowledge, scientific models have on us. Master Park, who is a physicist as well as a Tai Chi master, always says physics is a story. And so this is not to be dismissive at all of physics to say that. But sometimes physics tends to have this -- and we've kind of danced around this -- a kind of authority that people either buy into or push against. Like there's this sense that physics has it, it is it, right? That physics gives us some way of saying: this, objectively, is what is real. And Master Park talks about how 'objective' really just means it's easier for us to agree. But we're still not touching in on the terrain. Still not.

This session uses the classic double slit experiment -- one of those things about quantum that blows people's minds, progressing through the strangeness of what this fundamental layer might be like. A beam of electrons through two slits creates not the pattern you'd expect from billiard balls -- two clusters right opposite each slit -- but the diffraction interference pattern you'd expect from a wave. And yet each electron arrives as a single ping of detection. One of the ways we torture ourselves is: well, how does it know about the other slit? How does it know?

One possibility we can play with is that quantum -- the 'it's not a particle, not a wave' stuff -- kind of gives us a map in a way. And the map itself is saying: this is not it. It's almost like a transparent map. Where it's like, oh, there's something here, and you kind of see through it to something else, where you know there's something else. Physics is giving us permission, in a way. We don't have to use our imagination. It's an experiment that can be replicated. But the map itself can't say what that layer underneath is...

What is it about quantum that lets us feel like physics gives us permission to view stuff as not just plain old mechanical stuff? One of the limitations that comes up in a body-centered practice is that we can have associations with the body as, you know, "it's just the body" -- and that blocks our fuller feeling of the magic of being a human being. As physicist and tai chi master Wonchull Park says, the map is not the terrain -- but we can use our maps to open more to the terrain as it actually is.

We move from the playfully imaginative through to some genuinely strange territory in physics, and arrive somewhere more ordinary and more immediate. But there's a question underneath it all that's worth sitting with: what is it that's actually shifting when we try on a new story about what we're made of? Is it the physics picture? Or is it a letting go of what we usually tell ourselves? Or some of both?

These six sessions explore that question from the inside out -- using maps, yes, and also learning to see through them, fall through them, and arrive at something that doesn't need a story to justify it. The mystery, it turns out, was never in danger. It's always untouched.

In these six explorations, each with an hour-long guided body-centered practice at its heart, we'll see what it might be like to peel back some of that "oh, I know my physical body, it's just stuff" -- to open to a richness that's already there, beneath what we think we know. No stamp of approval needed from any authority. Permission inherently granted.

Thank you for Being with Being.

beingwithbeing.org

Our perception is a map -- it's always a map -- and it can be informed by our understanding, it can be tinted by our expectations. Some of what this exploration is about is to see what it's like to actually feel what we feel, rather than what we think we feel. And thrown into this whole mix is the way that physics -- especially sometimes quantum physics, quantum mechanics -- is used in spirituality to kind of shake up our expectations, as quantum physics really can get to us that way.

The exploration for this session touches a little bit on the quantum picture -- probably more just high school chemistry level, because that can take us pretty far. The underlying question is: well, what really is shifting? Telling myself a different story about what makes up my body -- does that enable me to feel more, or feel something? And can we come to know it from the inside out, experientially? Maybe not just swallow wholesale that because we have a different scientifically validated map laid over our sense of our body, that it's that we're feeling.

We go back to Rutherford's gold foil experiment -- shooting beams of particles at a very, very, very thin gold sheet, with detectors all the way around, even behind the source. It's like directing a bullet at tissue paper and having the bullet bounce right back. And yet that's what happened, sometimes, very rarely. Most of the time it just went straight through. And that's how we have that sense of: an atom is 99.999% empty space -- I'll put that in scare quotes for now. The nucleus of an atom is like a marble, and the atom is the size of a stadium. And we'll go into our meditation practice and see what it's like to feel our same old same old body in contact with the same old same old surface -- ground, chair, cushion -- with this mapping, this story, that what we think of as just stuff is in a way mostly empty space...

Beyond Just Stuff Series: Maps, Mystery & Nature's Flow
What is it about quantum that lets us feel like physics gives us permission to view stuff as not just plain old mechanical stuff? One of the limitations that comes up in a body-centered practice is that we can have associations with the body as, you know, "it's just the body" -- and that blocks our fuller feeling of the magic of being a human being. As physicist and tai chi master Wonchull Park says, the map is not the terrain -- but we can use our maps to open more to the terrain as it actually is.

We move from the playfully imaginative through to some genuinely strange territory in physics, and arrive somewhere more ordinary and more immediate. But there's a question underneath it all that's worth sitting with: what is it that's actually shifting when we try on a new story about what we're made of? Is it the physics picture? Or is it a letting go of what we usually tell ourselves? Or some of both?
These six sessions explore that question from the inside out -- using maps, yes, and also learning to see through them, fall through them, and arrive at something that doesn't need a story to justify it. The mystery, it turns out, was never in danger. It's always untouched.

In these six explorations, each with an hour-long guided body-centered practice at its heart, we'll see what it might be like to peel back some of that "oh, I know my physical body, it's just stuff" -- to open to a richness that's already there, beneath what we think we know. No stamp of approval needed from any authority. Permission inherently granted.

Thank you for Being with Being.

beingwithbeing.org

This series of adventures really comes out of a curiosity of mine that goes back to when I was in grade school. I would love to read these science books -- there was even at this mall a store called the Learning Smith, and that's where I discovered all these books about Richard Feynman and Stephen Hawking and hyperspace. And sometimes you just kind of set them down and look around and be like, whoa. Whether we encountered it when we were children or later on in life, it does tend to spark this awe, this sense of wonder. And this will be something we'll play with -- because there are just so many interesting things about how physics works and how it's used, including in spirituality and self-help.

But before getting into what the authority of science is, and why we might feel like we can get permission for mystery from science -- this first session is about letting ourselves discover, for ourselves, how we are carrying around assumptions and concepts, what we'll just call maps: maps of perception, maps of understanding, that are how we navigate life, how we experience what we experience. The gist is: not having to go on anyone else's say so, but just seeing if we can loosen up some of our assumptions and open more to what our own experience can tell us.

The invitation is opening to the unknown -- not the unknown beyond, but the unknown that's just beneath what we think we know. Sometimes I feel like something like this is a way of... we used to have these things that you could scratch -- I don't even know what they're called -- but you scratch off a layer and then there's maybe a little prize or a little message underneath. So we scratch off one layer of this habitual conceptual map, and there's a richness underneath, a peeling back. And it turns out it doesn't even take imagination to sustain -- just a willingness to ask: what are you, body? Maybe I thought I knew you. But maybe I'm actually just in a process of coming to know even this basic experience of having a body. Maps all the way down. And there's always more we can open to.

Beyond Just Stuff Series: Maps, Mystery & Nature's Flow
What is it about quantum that lets us feel like physics gives us permission to view stuff as not just plain old mechanical stuff? One of the limitations that comes up in a body-centered practice is that we can have associations with the body as, you know, "it's just the body" -- and that blocks our fuller feeling of the magic of being a human being. As physicist and tai chi master Wonchull Park says, the map is not the terrain -- but we can use our maps to open more to the terrain as it actually is.
We move from the playfully imaginative through to some genuinely strange territory in physics, and arrive somewhere more ordinary and more immediate. But there's a question underneath it all that's worth sitting with: what is it that's actually shifting when we try on a new story about what we're made of? Is it the physics picture? Or is it a letting go of what we usually tell ourselves? Or some of both?
These six sessions explore that question from the inside out -- using maps, yes, and also learning to see through them, fall through them, and arrive at something that doesn't need a story to justify it. The mystery, it turns out, was never in danger. It's always untouched.
In these six explorations, each with an hour-long guided body-centered practice at its heart, we'll see what it might be like to peel back some of that "oh, I know my physical body, it's just stuff" -- to open to a richness that's already there, beneath what we think we know. No stamp of approval needed from any authority. Permission inherently granted.

Thank you for Being with Being.

beingwithbeing.org

For me to be speaking right now, for me to make a gesture with my hand, for me to click the mouse button and fix my tech at the beginning of this session — all of that is coming from this integrity of this loop that includes both feeling and doing. From the fullness of our being.

We might see this whole series as kind of unpacking the richness of all of this being, and then relaxing into the integrity of: it's simply all together, and it's already going on. There's something about a loop that perceptually we feel as a whole. It wouldn't be a loop if it wasn't one interconnected whole. And our feeling and our doing are also a loop. Feeling and doing not as separate, but as two parts of that loop that are ever going on in our experience. The doing is not in competition with feeling. 

So we'll unpack the richness one more time, and then I'll bring out a sponge and a dish. Literally. Because this is a practice, too: picking up any object, going through the motions of cleaning it, and while letting this loop linger: While feeling, doing. A simple reminder phrase from Master Park’s Nowflow Breath Movement & Mind that can encompass the many aspects of this exploration we've been on. 

Taoist Alchemy in Nature's Flow Series: Circulation without Trying to Flow

It's flows all the way down. However stuck something may seem—an emotion, a sensation, a sense of being top-heavy in our head—there's no coarse grain size to nature's flow. No end to the fineness. And that same practically infinite free flow that we feel in the breath, in our fingers, in the subtle cascade of the body with each outbreath—that same fineness is also a gateway into the 3 Treasures: jing, qi, and shen. We can practice “circulation meditations,” like the small heavenly circuit. We can speak of what Taoist alchemy is “refining.” Except it was never not there. Except it was never not flowing. 

In these hour-long sessions, we spend the first 30 minutes touching in on these qualities of presence as immediately and evidently as we can. Then we go on an adventure. Drawing from physicist and Tai Chi Master Wonchull Park's teachings on nowflow, these in-depth practices explore Qigong and Taoist meditation not as special techniques to master but as guidance for uncovering our nature by doing less.

Thank you for Being with Being.

beingwithbeing.org

It can kind of feel experientially like we're free-falling. Free-falling into the unknown. Because there's no limit to how finely we can feel this fine free flow of our body, even just our physical body.

On this next in-breath, in this next nostril — there's a finer flow yet to be felt, ever, by you. And you can open to it. That thing we call a thumb, that we think we know what it feels like — actually, maybe we don't. Maybe we've only begun to scratch the surface. Setting aside the label, there's just this piece of space. Sending signals. Full of a beingness. Full of presence. And letting ourselves feel that piece of space filled to the brim with the presence of being.

It’s a kind of alchemy in a way. In Taoist alchemy, there is a process of lian jing, lian qi, lian shen he dao — refine essence, refine qi, refine spirit, connect with the Tao. The view here is that our jing, our qi, our shen are all these flows of nature — and it's just a spectrum. As we open more to the fineness and fineness and fineness of flow, we can go more along that spectrum, more to qi, more to shen. But it was always there as that spectrum. We're not really making more of it, or “refining it.” It was just there. We're just uncovering it.

And this is also an important note about safety: As practices become more refined, the thing we're working with is itself so refined and so sensitive to any push, any trying so that even a very subtle trying can have a detrimental effect. So it's supportive to keep in mind that these practices here are about doing less — uncovering what already is by doing less.

Taoist Alchemy in Nature's Flow Series: Circulation without Trying to Flow

It's flows all the way down. However stuck something may seem—an emotion, a sensation, a sense of being top-heavy in our head—there's no coarse grain size to nature's flow. No end to the fineness. And that same practically infinite free flow that we feel in the breath, in our fingers, in the subtle cascade of the body with each outbreath—that same fineness is also a gateway into the 3 Treasures: jing, qi, and shen. We can practice “circulation meditations,” like the small heavenly circuit. We can speak of what Taoist alchemy is “refining.” Except it was never not there. Except it was never not flowing. 

In these hour-long sessions, we spend the first 30 minutes touching in on these qualities of presence as immediately and evidently as we can. Then we go on an adventure. Drawing from physicist and Tai Chi Master Wonchull Park's teachings on nowflow, these in-depth practices explore Qigong and Taoist meditation not as special techniques to master but as guidance for uncovering our nature by doing less.

Thank you for Being with Being.

beingwithbeing.org

It's probably helpful just to introduce some terms here — not as another thing to learn, but as holding places. These words can become holding places that we then associate with a certain level of fine feeling, nuanced feeling within ourselves.

Jing is the physicality of our body — centered at the lower dantian, our center of mass. Qi is something finer, a finer inner flow — sometimes Master Wonchull Park calls this almost like an inner message wind, connecting body and mind. It's that fineness of flow that begins to have that magic where something is flowing within us, and at the same time it contains messages of perception, feeling, experience. And there's something quite magical that these flows of nature can carry all of that. Qi is centered at the middle dantian, the heart area. And then shen — awareness. One could say consciousness, or could say spirit. Maybe we'll just say awareness. And yi is intention. And so this loop forms in Master Park’s teaching: jing qi shen yi qi jing. A “minor” miracle that covers so much of what we experience as a human being.

I'll guide you through the small heavenly circuit — hopping on that inner message wind and riding it, lightly, like 20% attention, letting it become fainter and fainter until you really have no sense of whether you're practicing anything at all. At any time, if any of this makes you feel like too much is going on, sitting like a mountain is always there to come back to. 

One participant shared afterward: I became completely identified with the subtlest flow. The concept of my body was absent. 
Question: Were you also a mountain?
Answer:  Yes. I was the mountain. 

All of it gets to come. Nothing is left behind. We can be the mountain and the subtlest flow as flows of nature.

Taoist Alchemy in Nature's Flow Series: Circulation without Trying to Flow

It's flows all the way down. However stuck something may seem—an emotion, a sensation, a sense of being top-heavy in our head—there's no coarse grain size to nature's flow. No end to the fineness. And that same practically infinite free flow that we feel in the breath, in our fingers, in the subtle cascade of the body with each outbreath—that same fineness is also a gateway into the 3 Treasures: jing, qi, and shen. We can practice “circulation meditations,” like the small heavenly circuit. We can speak of what Taoist alchemy is “refining.” Except it was never not there. Except it was never not flowing. 

In these hour-long sessions, we spend the first 30 minutes touching in on these qualities of presence as immediately and evidently as we can. Then we go on an adventure. Drawing from physicist and Tai Chi Master Wonchull Park's teachings on nowflow, these in-depth practices explore Qigong and Taoist meditation not as special techniques to master but as guidance for uncovering our nature by doing less.

Thank you for Being with Being.

beingwithbeing.org

I was not personally struck by lightning — glad I gave the forewarning. I did lose internet, I did lose power, and now I'm back and we can practice together. This is truly one of the favorite parts of my day, so I didn't want to miss it.

Some of the Taoist meditation circulation practices can feel more natural and intuitive — less of a trying and more of an effortless revealing — when we approach them with this context: that we are simply feeling ourselves with these qualities of presence that we already automatically have. And that's what we'll be building toward today.

We've been feeling the sense of settling down — laying down our weight, giving it to the earth. And now we'll also begin to feel a rising. A supportive, energizing rising. The force of support from the ground propagates up every vertebra of your spine and reaches all the way to the top of your head in one unbroken seam of force connection. Just at the level of physics, the level of action-reaction. The ground is giving you something that goes all the way to your head. It's already going on.

And here's what becomes interesting: when we really feel both, the distinctions between down and up begin to not make so much sense anymore. It is not down and then up. It is the yin and yang that is inseparable. One interaction. One seamless whole. This is what we can feel right now — before we ever attempt to circulate anything — as a gentler way in.

Taoist Alchemy in Nature's Flow Series: Circulation without Trying to Flow

It's flows all the way down. However stuck something may seem—an emotion, a sensation, a sense of being top-heavy in our head—there's no coarse grain size to nature's flow. No end to the fineness. And that same practically infinite free flow that we feel in the breath, in our fingers, in the subtle cascade of the body with each outbreath—that same fineness is also a gateway into the 3 Treasures: jing, qi, and shen. We can practice “circulation meditations,” like the small heavenly circuit. We can speak of what Taoist alchemy is “refining.” Except it was never not there. Except it was never not flowing. 

In these hour-long sessions, we spend the first 30 minutes touching in on these qualities of presence as immediately and evidently as we can. Then we go on an adventure. Drawing from physicist and Tai Chi Master Wonchull Park's teachings on nowflow, these in-depth practices explore Qigong and Taoist meditation not as special techniques to master but as guidance for uncovering our nature by doing less.

Thank you for Being with Being.

beingwithbeing.org

When we're more activated, even just thinking really hard, there can be this sense of being more in our head — more kind of bunched up. There's usually plenty, plenty up there already, and instead we lack feeling that presence includes all of our body, all the way to our feet, all the way to our fingertips.

This is what Qigong calls coarse qi — and what's interesting is that even positive emotions can feel coarse and jittery. Today we go on an adventure into qi down: giving that coarse qi to the earth, and finding what it's like to feel the fineness of free flow more fully throughout the entirety of our presence.

I'll guide you through finding the taste of it. A tangible taste of immediate flowing connection. Not trying anything in particular — just savoring that taste of togetherness and letting it nourish us, like we might savor nourishing mouthfuls of food. As we settle into that, we begin to feel what it's like to sit like a mountain: a wide base of presence connected with the earth, that is also — and this is what presence is actually like, against our expectations — as free-flowing and refined as the gentlest breeze. All together at once.

And then we'll play with something that can further the sense of qi down in a very immediate way. What if we took the observer — maybe hanging out between our eyes — out of the equation for just a moment? Not looking down at the lower dantian from headquarters in the head. Actually being there. Right in the middle of you. From within your lower dantian, what is it like to witness the soles of your feet shifting, spreading, laying down, receiving support? It's not "I am weight shifting" — it's my lower dantian is going for this amazing ride through space. A whole world of ever-shifting experiences, savored right in place.

Taoist Alchemy in Nature's Flow Series: Circulation without Trying to Flow

It's flows all the way down. However stuck something may seem—an emotion, a sensation, a sense of being top-heavy in our head—there's no coarse grain size to nature's flow. No end to the fineness. And that same practically infinite free flow that we feel in the breath, in our fingers, in the subtle cascade of the body with each outbreath—that same fineness is also a gateway into the 3 Treasures: jing, qi, and shen. We can practice “circulation meditations,” like the small heavenly circuit. We can speak of what Taoist alchemy is “refining.” Except it was never not there. Except it was never not flowing. 

In these hour-long sessions, we spend the first 30 minutes touching in on these qualities of presence as immediately and evidently as we can. Then we go on an adventure. Drawing from physicist and Tai Chi Master Wonchull Park's teachings on nowflow, these in-depth practices explore Qigong and Taoist meditation not as special techniques to master but as guidance for uncovering our nature by doing less.

Thank you for Being with Being.

beingwithbeing.org

Full disclosure: I have some emotional release happening in my diaphragm as I come on today. So this is just what I need. And it's not necessary that you have any strong emotion in your system at the moment — but this will give us a way of seeing how we could practice if we did.

When I'm working with an emotion that feels kind of stuck — when I just want it to flow, I want it to change, I want it to basically just go away — one of the ways I use this practice, and especially the free flow quality, is this: however stuck it may seem, it's flow all the way down. It’s finer flows within flows. And so in this practice we experientially discover that it’s practically infinite fine flows, all the way, and we connect to the subtlest flows that we could possibly imagine. That itself can connect to experiences like qi flow, or even the flow of awareness. There's no end to its refinement.

I'll guide you through feeling the space between the hearts of your hands — and what happens when we stop focusing so effortfully on the labels of "hands, my body, my fingers" and just feel a space. Sometimes it can feel like suddenly there's almost an explosion of the feeling of our hands. So vibrant. They were all along. It's actually the efforting of our perception that blocks it out.

In this meditation, we're not trying to use a special technique to generate more qi, or move it in a particular way. We are opening, appreciating, coming more to perceive these qualities that can allow for a greater sense of subtle flow. This is where the adventure begins.

Taoist Alchemy in Nature's Flow Series: Circulation without Trying to Flow

It's flows all the way down. However stuck something may seem—an emotion, a sensation, a sense of being top-heavy in our head—there's no coarse grain size to nature's flow. No end to the fineness. And that same practically infinite free flow that we feel in the breath, in our fingers, in the subtle cascade of the body with each outbreath—that same fineness is also a gateway into the 3 Treasures: jing, qi, and shen. We can practice “circulation meditations,” like the small heavenly circuit. We can speak of what Taoist alchemy is “refining.” Except it was never not there. Except it was never not flowing. 

In these hour-long sessions, we spend the first 30 minutes touching in on these qualities of presence as immediately and evidently as we can. Then we go on an adventure. Drawing from physicist and Tai Chi Master Wonchull Park's teachings on nowflow, these in-depth practices explore Qigong and Taoist meditation not as special techniques to master but as guidance for uncovering our nature by doing less.

Thank you for Being with Being.

beingwithbeing.org

In this exploration, we'll be feeling these three qualities of nature's flow in a way that helps us feel them more all together. We'll be feeling a sense of long—long in space, so that there is a sense of the whole flow quality. And we'll be discovering how any length in our body is comprised of all these very fine flows, another quality of nature, and that they all are arising, interacting mutually together.

I'll guide you through opportunities to feel your arms and begin to feel what we might mean by this finely long flow. Like a fractal that keeps opening into finer, richer detail, we may feel as though we're falling into the practical infinity that is between any two points in our body. You might discover how that cascading wave down the front body is fundamentally as free-flowing as air, as water, comprised of flows within flows, all mutually connected in this way. We're not trying to grasp anything; we're opening to how finely we can feel these flows of nature that are themselves comprised of flows within flows, together.

This is an integration session—we're shifting from accessing qualities separately to feeling them as aspects of “one and the same.” Length can be used as a kind of "cheat" to help feel wholeness; it's easier to feel one-dimensional length before expanding to fuller awareness of three-dimensional space. Through this practice, you might find how freedom and connection comprise a length in space, from your fingertips to your shoulders, all at once the length of your arm, and, all at once, the intrinsic flow of change.

Some possible takeaways from today's practice:

• Discovering the fractal-like feeling of finer flows within flows
• Learning how to integrate the three qualities into one experience of finely long
• Understanding how length helps us access wholeness as a doorway
• Experiencing the subtlest shifts caused by breath throughout your entire arm
• Finding how all this togetherness at once happens through the subtlest, finest flows

The Body as Nature's Flow Series:

In these hour-long sessions, we explore the three qualities of presence—mutual flow, free flow, and whole flow—through direct, felt experience in the body. Each session begins with 30 minutes touching in on these foundational qualities, then goes on an adventure exploring different ways to feel into presence through our immediate, physical experience. Drawing from physicist and Tai Chi Master Wonchull Park's teachings on nowflow, these in-depth practices help us recognize how we too are part of nature's flow.

Thank you for Being with Being.

beingwithbeing.org