Month: December 2011

Element, thanks for the link on autogenic training:

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autogenic_training)

Some great history there. I didn’t use the “warm” patter but I sure used the “arm is heavy”, etc. bit, for self-hypnosis in high school!

Bloke, yer right, well-put, Nishijima doesn’t elaborate on how his understanding can be applied. Then again, we know that it’s not really possible to apply any understanding in practice; as the ancestor put it, it’s not that there’s no practice, it’s that practice is undefiled, meaning to me there can be no intent.

Having said which, I wonder if the use of “warm” in autogenic training is intended to engage SNS- I read that SNS can constrict blood vessels, which would affect warm/cold- whereas the “arm is heavy” in autogenic training is to engage PNS (PNS is responsible for “rest and digest” activities)?

I have mentioned before that the mainstay of my practice, when such exists, is reciprocal innervation of agonist/antagonist muscle pairs through activity associated with the occurrence of consciousness. Consciousness occurs in connection with sense organ and sense object, that is the Gautamid’s teaching (and the continuity of consciousness is illusory). There is impact associated with consciousness, and as a result of impact feeling, that’s also the Gautamid’s teaching. When the pleasant and painful enter back into the place of occurrence of consciousness, then the hypnogogic state becomes sufficient to sustain an awareness of reciprocal innervation- that’s the best explanation I have.

I put it this way, with regard to Dogen’s “One sage clarified True Mind (Reality) when he saw peach blossoms and another realized the Way when he heard the sound of tile hitting a bamboo”- is it not consciousness, impact, and feeling that breathes at the sight of blossoms?

That would be the two aspects of the autonomic nervous system attaining balance right there, impact and breath, through the place of occurrence of consciousness (with respect to the senses).

I still think the ankh represents the cranial-sacral rhythm. The “ankh purification” (second illustration) is a beautiful depiction of how the cranial-sacral rhythm is controlled by the nerves on the sagittal suture, and extends fluidly throughout the body. Thank you for that.

The Egyptians seem to have understood that connection between the cranial-sacral rhythm and the movement of breath:

and the relationship between ligaments of the sacrum (Isis Nephthys, first illustration), the cranial-sacral rhythm, and the free movement of consciousness. Also, as I understand from my friend John, the importance of the hypnogogic states. They had the most amazing depictions of the relationship between human kinesthesiology, the cranial-sacral rhythm, the pulmonary rhythm, and consciousness; most folks find it anathema to associate the spirit with the body, and look for some other explanation. I love that quote in Gospel of Thomas about being amazed at the riches in such poverty, to me that’s what it means:

“(29) Jesus said: If the flesh came into existence because of the spirit, it is a marvel. But if the spirit (came into existence) because of the body, it is a marvel of marvels. But as for me, I wonder at this, how this great wealth made its home in this poverty.”

(Gospel of Thomas saying 29)

I notice piriformis highlighted on that last set of illustrations.

For me, accumulation of chi in the tan-t’ien is a reference to the consciousness that occurs naturally in the vicinity of the tan-t’ien, and sometimes that consciousness almost seems like it’s continuously at the tan-t’ien but I don’t believe it is just that. It’s an inclusive thing, around the tan-t’ien. Reciprocal innervation of the piriformis muscles, from the femur to the sacrum on either side, results from the “hammocking” of the hips from the pelvis described in Calais-Germain’s “Anatomy in Movement”, which in turn stretches the ligaments associated with the piriformis muscles and generates piriformis activity. I think that activity also comes out of the stretch of the ilio-tuberous ligaments from the sacrum to the front sides of the pelvis, in the motion of yaw at the sacrum.

Anyway, the piriformis rotates the sacrum around the vertical axis, and I believe generates activity in the extensors up the back of the spine in three sets to the temporal bones and the parietals. The movement of the parietals affects the nerves that control the volume of cranial-sacral fluid in the skull and down the spine into the sacrum. The changes in the fluid volume cause flexion and extension of the sacrum, and of the sphenoid bone in the skull, in the middle of which sits the pineal gland.

But as to how consciousness or the heart-mind occurs naturally in the vicinity of the tan-tien, that is falling down while waking up or falling asleep, and never hitting the ground; the action of being upright is generated in the stretches engendered in falling down, directly. Does awareness at the tan-t’ien seem more natural and come more often to me now in the lotus? Yes, but storing this depends on the natural attractiveness of a state of absorption in the body, not on something I do. Has to be something I just can’t help because it is my own wellness that I’m feeling, no?