Internal Bridge (Flying Squirrel)

People sometimes feel some mild degree of what I call ‘charge’ (initial stirring of the tangible internal power stream) from doing any number of practices like Qi Gong,Tai Chi, Xing Yi, Ba Gua, Mantis and others. But people still wonder how to connect together those local flashes into a coherent integral unified process. And will they should take interest in that, because you need to link everything up to take it to the next level of intensity.

Basically the power has its (immediate) origin in the feet and legs (the Rebound or ‘R’ phase of the power ARC, see my books) and propagates in a torrent through your torso into your arms. Only this can be called the macro circulation.

But how to facilitiate that? First of all, you must feel it. If you can’t feel it you can’t feed it. But how to begin? Here’s a mind trick for you: mentally/gently guide the power up from your legs along the sides of your torso. And even though we’re talking internal power here, not physicality, but the body does come pre-stocked with a built-in index or channel for situating that process: latissimus dorsi muscles. These are the broad, flat muscles at the sides of the torso which connect to the armpits and upper back.You can use these, in the beginning, as an easier-to-feel substitute for the central spinal energy path, which may be too hard to feel tangibly at first.

So, without tensing or phusically puffing up your lats, make yourself mentally aware of them “as if” you were about to tense them. This is what I’ve labeled as the Flying Squirrel process in my books. At some point you’ll feel and realize that these can be the channels or bridges that stream the power right through, from lower body to arms. The lats can be the bridge. Eventually you will feel this fully tangibly, not as just an image or concept.

Now, one further deep teaching: great as the lat channels are for this connection, that can still be hard to realy feel in the beginning for lots of people. So here’s another clue: the best way to first feel this power effect, and to really begin to understand it, is via the Tai Chi sword form. Keep your hands alive (one working the micro-shifts on the sword grip, the other energized as ‘sword pointer’ shape), but not tense. Then as you go throug the form, feel the power streaming up from your legs and streaming through the lat channels on the sides, Flying Squirrel mode, and blasting out in torrents to and through your arms, hands and fingers. Once you have kind of understood this, once you’ve “got” this effect using the Tai Chi sword form, you can replicate it doing any other kind of practice.