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How walking connects you to the universal Dao
The Walking Dao-Roots of physical culture in Suwen 5 – or “How walking connects you to the universal Dao”
In Suwen Chapter five we find a beautiful example of how we can find simple straight forward applications of fundamental theory hidden in plane sight.
Suwen five, called 陰陽應象大論 Yīnyáng Yìng Xiàng Dà Lùn, The Great Treatise on the Resonance and Images of Yinyang, is one of the most famous of the Neijing treatises.
It deals with the understanding of the universe as a resonant phenomenon, A great humming, vibrating echo, the ripples of which produce the connections of the systematic correspondences at the heart of the Neijing world view around which Chinese medical theory is built.
The construction of our physical reality on a series of interlocking, cyclical frequencies is difficult to conceive and for some people hard to believe. Yet it seems modern physics points us back to the same ideas in the realm of pure theory and when we put the observations of the ancient Neijing researchers to the test we find their conclusions play out very well against practical everyday experiences.
The task of the Great Treatise on the Resonance and Images of Yinyang is to open our eyes to the way in which our lives and our experiences of being alive are created and governed by unseen forces enveloping us in a fabric of connections. It is a truly mind boggling and beautiful vision of the oneness of creation.
Stashed away among all of this we find a simple statement,
天地者，萬物之上下也；
Tiāndì zhě, wànwù zhī shàngxià yě;
Heaven and Earth, the above and below of the ten thousand things;
陰陽者，血氣之男女也；
yīnyáng zhě, xuèqì zhī nánnǚ yě;
Yinyang, the male and female of blood qi;
左右者，陰陽之道路也
zuǒyòu zhě, yīnyáng zhī dào lù yě
Left and right, the method and path of Yinyang
Looking at this Heaven and Earth, Yin and Yang seem fairly straight forward, but what did they mean, “left and right, the method and path of Yinyang”?
When you go looking elsewhere for statements about left and right in the the Neijing we find quite a few, mostly to do with how upper and lower, left and right must mutually correspond and support each other and that if there are problems then 調 tiáo, tuning or harmonizing, left and right is the place to begin fixing them.
The specific statement about heaven and earth, yin and yang, left and right is repeated in the chapters called Dà Lùn, great treatises which discuss the five movements and six qi which govern climactic cycles and their influences on human life. In these chapters there is no doubt that the left and right being discussed is the movements of constellations and planets across the celestial firmament.
Yet when we come back to Great Treatise on the Resonances and Images of Yinyang we equally have no doubt the left and right here is with in out bodies. And this is the beauty of it, the sweeping of the innumerable stars across the night sky, the sweeping of trillions of cells through our blood stream are spoken of the same, they are the method and pathways of Yinyang. Outside this method and knowledge of the pathways allows a person to predict and understand happenings in the world around us, inside this method and knowledge allows a person to know themselves and others.
Within ourselves the pathways of Yinyang are the channel system of Chinese medicine, these models of the controlled chaos of our metabolism’s burning.
The method of Yinyang is the knowledge of how to tune the channels and this begins simply enough with the art of walking. Unlike all other mammals we need to learn to walk. We mistakenly think we mastered walking long ago when we first began strutting about as toddlers. But in reality we require a life long engagement with consciously directed movement to live optimally and the most basic pattern we need to master and continually remaster is the act of walking.
The transfer of weight from left to right with rhythmic regularity. The rising and falling within the field of gravity, the mutual support of the minds eye, peripheral vision and centers of gravity, the swinging of arms and legs, all of this is the basic method of tuning and harmonizing the Yinyang of our bodies.
Walking comes naturally to us and everyone recognizes it’s benefits. Add to this the refined understandings of a physical culture attuned to the idea of Yinyang and channel theory and the benefits multiple. The basics of neigong, directing intention into dantian, raising the back, engaging the 虛靈頂勁 xū líng dǐng jìn, releasing tensions downwards into the feet all directly benefit the skill of walking and turn it into a consciously driven act of harmonization.
Applying our neigong to a simple walk around the block, a stroll in the park or a hiking trip connects us, weather we know it or not to the fundamental forces driving life on our planet and the cosmic dance in which we are embedded.
The arts of xingyi quan, bagua zhang and taiji quan take this a step further and base their cultivation methods on detailed and rigorous study of the dynamics of walking and being upright in the space between heaven and earth and here we find not only the health benefits both physical and mental but also a place we can study and research the theories of Yinyang put forth in the Chinese classics in a way that we can bring them into living reality. Through these arts we can cultivate a lived experience of the images and correspondences of Yinyang laid out for us in the Great Treatise of Suwen chapter five.
For me at least it is the way in which the Neijing is able to connect the smallest and simplest acts of everyday life to the greatest awe of being alive that keeps me coming back to it’s pages.