The Living Neijing method is based on the idea that the world view of the Neijing is accessible and useful to anyone and everyone. There is no need to be a Chinese medicine professional or an academic expert in ancient China. All that is required is an interest in exploring how the world around us works through our own senses and first hand experience.
SCHOLARSHIP
- Text reading, which means not just reading a translation or even reading through a passage in classical Chinese once or twice, it means slowly building up understandings of the key terminology and concepts, the imagery and the poetry, of the Neijing’s usage until the many layered, over lapping, nested and networked meaning begins to appear.
- Text reading is developed along a number of pathways, commentary, character studies, history and research all of which are in an open learning format, with an active membership you have access to all published material and are able to explore where your interest pulls you. This models the experience of reading the Neijing directly.
- Develop an understanding of current scholarship in history, anthropology, linguistics, sociaology, archeology and related disciplines that inform our understanding of the Neijing and related texts.
CULTIVATION
- Cultivation, putting ideas into practice first and foremost with in ourselves. Slowly building up experiences of life through the filters of the Neijing teaching, confirming first hand with our own senses weather the world appears as the Neijing says it will.
- Cultivation is also developed along a number of pathways, the essential Jingluo Qigong as well as many neigong, qigong, daoyin, moving and seated practices. Unlike the text reading sections these lessons are controlled with access to new lessons opened weekly. This models the experience of learning physical culture from a teacher face to face, time is needed to integrate lessons and experiences.
- To bring the Neijing text to life it is necessary follow the instructions recorded there in practice and to put the theories to test against our personal experience and observation.
STORY TELLING
- The Neijing is a conversation in which we are invited to participate. Our classes are designed to continue the conversation begun 2000 years ago by the Yellow Emperor, his teachers and his students.
- The story of the Neijing is one that needs to be told step by step, idea by idea, image by image, we are inviting you to join us in this exploration.
- The story will be told in short episodes that lay foundations of complex Neijing thought in a progressive fashion.
- Ideas will circle and spiral slowly building up a body of commentary and dialogue that can explored in multiple ways according to the students own interests.
- It is best to think of the Neijing as a great ecological city, we will be guiding you down its forested boulevards, into its great buildings and famous sites, to visit its observatories, river banks, market places and laboratories, it’s working canals and its natural streams, along its back alleys and into its workshops and gardens. Along the way we will introduce you to all manner of its inhabitants both rich and poor famous and unknown. The Neijing is that kind of book, it makes your eyes open and the world become marvelous.
SCHOLARSHIP
Neijing scholarship is something everyone can engage with, all that is really required is a genuine interest and a willingness to let the images and ideas work on your heart and allow it to enable a new and beautiful way to see the world.
The specialized and rigorous scholarship as done in universities provides important and necessary foundations for our ability to understand the text. However without a bridge from the academic world to the mundane and practical these foundations can not be said to be truly alive. One of our primary goals is to make the text accessible to people who otherwise have no time or inclination for such things as learning classical Chinese or delving through doctoral thesis’.
In this way, as more people find practical inspiration and application through engaging with the text we feel it will become more and more alive and dynamic in the modern world, bringing a stream of ancient and time tested wisdom to bear on the challenges of living today.
Our scholarship programs are designed to on the one hand translate the Neijing into everyday language presenting its ideas and images in a way that is accessible to all while on the other hand bringing together as much of the current academic work as possible allowing those with interest to easily pursue further studies into their areas of interest.
故陰陽四時者，萬物之終始也，死生之本也，逆之則災害生，從之則苛疾不起，是謂得道。道者，聖人行之，愚者佩之。
素問 2
Thus yin yang and the four seasons, ends and beginnings of the ten thousand beings, roots of death and life, going against it brings calamity and injures life, following with it cruel illnesses cannot arise, this is called attaining the Dao. The Dao! Wise people practice it, the ignorant hang it from their person like a jewelled pendent.
Suwen 2
CULTIVATION
Beginning with ourselves we use physical culture as a path, a Dao. We use it to understand our body and our mind, to develop a clear and stable energy and mentality with which it observe the world around us.
We have our existing lineage technologies of physical culture, our systems of gongfu, neigong and qigong, all of which have been crafted over generations, have been tested and re-tested and based entirely on Neijing theory. Using these systems as a foundation we research and explore both the ways of the ancients and the ways these pre-modern systems interface with modern science.
We are interested in how the ancients developed the perceptions that allowed them to have the insights they recorded in the Neijing and especially are interested in the feed back loops between the physical culture they developed, their perceptive abilities and their over arching theory of life the universe and everything.
In the wider world we use the study of natural science and philosophy to practice using these cultivated perspetive skills to study the patterns of movement through all things and the ever changing breath of yin yang driving change and transformation. We look for applications of the principles and laws of yin yang in medicine and in other fields.
STORY TELLING
The Neijing is far more than a simple technical manual, it offers us a beautiful and compelling story about the interconnectedness of life on our planet earth and beyond. Our programs are designed to retell the Neijing story for modern listeners in a way that first and foremost captures this beauty and puts each of us front and center in our own experience of the multiple inter-twining threads that bring us all together into one Dao.
We believe this story holds particular power today when more then ever we need to find ways to bridge differences and bring people together, to protect the poorest and most suffering among us, to transition to sustainable economic and ecological systems. The Neijing offers insight towards the solutions to all these problems.
Join us as we walk this path, cultivating the sight to see, the ears to hear and the words to tell one of the ancient worlds greatest stories.
Four tiers of study
Text reading and theory
Examine the primary text by following along with our direct translation and studying theory through commentary, interpretation and discussion.
Self cultivation
Follow in the footsteps of the the Neijing authors in applying Neijing theory to physical culture to building robust health while developing direct perception of the Dao in ourselves and the environment.
Explore the Neijing in the modern world
Compare Neijing theory with modern research in fields such as botany, agriculture, astronomy and physics.
Application
Test theory and understanding with challenges in the real world through the practice of Chinese medicine in any of it’s many forms and by applying Neijing principles to any real world endeavor.