Being with Being

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
mackenziehawkins.substack.com

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
mackenziehawkins.substack.com

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
mackenziehawkins.substack.com

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
mackenziehawkins.substack.com

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
mackenziehawkins.substack.com

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
mackenziehawkins.substack.com

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
mackenziehawkins.substack.com

In this exploration, we'll be playing with our perception—the *how* of how we are sensing and feeling our body. This is called “ting” in tai chi or listening, and we'll actually be using the sounds around us. If you would like to kind of create a bit of a soundscape in your space—you'd like to play a little music, open a window and even hear some sounds from nature or your neighbors, run the fan—all these can be sounds that will be of service to you in the second half of our practice.

I'll guide you through letting the sounds of your environment wash over you, noticing if some sounds are washing more into one ear or the other as these sounds come effortlessly to us, as we receive the sound. Then we'll explore: what if we could listen to our body, the sensations of our body, and even the space of our body, like we're listening to sound? What might that be like?

You might discover how each fingertip is sending its own signal of sensation that wafts over you, that effortlessly flows in your experience—listening to the feelingscape of your ten fingers. Since the fingers are themselves illuminated with body-mind flow, there's no need of a flashlight going down to them; they're the ones sending the signal. Illuminated. Like they have their own sunshine. 

Through this practice, you might find how listening is a wonderful example where we neither go to it, nor does it have to be “sucked up into our head.” Observer and observed can both be right where each is, and together. Master Wonchull Park teaches how our subjective experience distributes sensory information in space—we can say we're feeling our toe because we have some sensation of our toe that “can be left” in some place there in space. Terabytes of signals are coursing through us at any given moment in the vastness of our subconscious feeling and our feelingscape. It’s quite a symphony. 

Some possible takeaways from today's practice:

• Learning the practice of ting—listening to the body
• Feeling how bodily sensations send signals rather than us “going to get them”
• Understanding why experience is organized spatially to manage vast amounts of information
• Experiencing the shift from effortful reaching to effortless receiving
• Finding how the feelingscape is just there around us, like a soundscape

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
mackenziehawkins.substack.com

In this exploration, we'll be using what's called the external harmonies in Tai Chi—the way that there's this natural correspondence between shoulders and hips, elbows and knees, wrists and ankles, hands and feet, and even all the way to our fingers and our toes. We'll especially allow ourselves more to feel our lower body and the presence of our lower bodies, first of all, because we have a lower body full of presence—it is presence.

And also as we feel more the presence of our lower body, it can provide this feeling of ballast. For example, when we get more caught up in our head and our emotions get more reactive, usually there's a tendency to have a rising energy and to feel like our identity, who we take ourselves to be, is more concentrated around our head. By feeling our lower body, even all the way to our very toes, that can be a way that we feel what’s sometimes called “qi down”—and can even feel a more distributed sense of our identity can be the ballast in the stormy seas of our own inner experience and living this crazy thing called life.

I'll guide you through discovering the “fingers of the feet” as someone asked about here—that's exactly what they are! We call them toes, but they're really the fingers of the feet. In the Taoist tradition and philosophy, there's that sense of humble, right? And even that sense of how water always goes to the lowest of the low places. And the toes and the soles of our feet are the lowest of the low place in our body. Through this practice, you might find how feeling those toes can give us more access to a sense of presence in the entire lower body—and can offer another way of working with a busy mind, heightened emotions, even having trouble falling asleep. If you ever have a hard time falling asleep, you can practice counting toes instead of counting sheep.

Some possible takeaways from today's practice:

• Learning the external harmonies—correspondence between upper and lower body
• Discovering the “fingers of the feet” and how to feel them individually
• Understanding a practical way to feel more humble, like water 
• Finding the ballast of presence in the lower body for “getting out of our heads”
• Experiencing how there's more to our experience than just what we tend to focus on

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
mackenziehawkins.substack.com

In this exploration, we'll be using the whole flow quality—the third quality of Nature’s flow—to experientially stumble upon an experience of the now that may feel a little more allowing, just the way it is. We can get a lot of messages about how it's better for us to live in the moment, be here now. And even quite subtly, we can tend to associate now as something more kind of like the present, like it's wedged in between the past and the future, and we gotta find ourselves right in the now. Like it's this slit in time. Instead of starting with time, what about starting with space?

I'll guide you through feeling the space between your fingers, making those spaces smaller and wider, discovering how we know it's a smaller distance because we feel it—we feel the distance, we feel the space between. Then we'll expand to feeling the space between the center of your heart and your front body, and that sense of the space in front of you in the room you're in, all the way to the wall of the room that you're in.

The approach of this practice, coming from the teachings of Master Wonchull Park, is very non-conceptual in practice. We just see what we can feel and understand most evidently in our immediate experience, just the experience of even our body. Through this practice, you might discover what it's like to let all of those spaces be simultaneously there in your awareness—space of the room, space of the body, space of your heart, all at once. They are already one whole space, together. In another word, now. 

Some possible takeaways from today's practice:

• Understanding how "now" is not a slit wedged between past and future
• Learning to feel space as negative space—what artists use to get over concepts and perceive what’s there
• Finding how lying down helps reduce trying because this practice is about letting ourselves feel what's already always in our experience
• Experiencing your heart center surrounded on all sides by this one whole space
• Discovering the all-at-once-ness of nature's unfolding

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
mackenziehawkins.substack.com