Last class I continued the conversation we had started on Monday night about Yi (intention). I devised a bit of a game where we pair off and basically jammed a yoga ball to our partner’s space. The receiver was to respond naturally but I asked the receivers to try to be aware of any internal physical responses rather than the mental response of self-preservation or the external response of touching the ball.

When we did the exercise again without the receiver touching the ball I asked if anyone was aware of the bodily feeling associated with the purely mental experience (there was no contact at this point in the game). And some were aware enough to have felt and catalogued the feeling.

Some said there was a tingling in the hands; one said it felt like resistance, one said it felt like energy going into the arms. All were correct.

Yi is like the ghost in the machine. It is the force that drives the motion. After one has thoroughly committed a taiji set to the mind/body memory and one has trained the Yi for a time, then ones small “s” consciousness can start to just follow the Yi while practicing, and the “forms” will shape themselves. (Peng is usually first)

After much training, our small “s” consciousness will make way for the large “S” consciousness and the role of the “witness” is revealed. This out of body experience is the same as that of the Sufi dancers (sometimes called the “whirling dervishes”) it is the same experience as can be induced with deep meditation or deep yogic practice. We are all exploring the same mountain. We have just decided to take the taijiquan path.


Note
Small “s” consciousness refers to our individual ego self-consciousness, the individualized drop of consciousness that thinks it is alone in the universe
Large “S” consciousness refers to the our true Self-consciousness, the ocean of consciousness that all drops eventually return to