Back in the day, as I’ve mentioned before, I trained intensively with Nishino Kozo. Three classes per day in Tokyo for some periods - morning, noon and night. He liked doing Tai Ki (energy transfer) with me in front of the whole class, because I had such an entertainingly extreme reaction to his energetic projection. My body would do a crazy Russian-style leaping forward roll onto the hard floor. Much to the delight of the crowd.
Anyway, the Nishino system has contributed an excellent terminology for talking about certain Internal Power (IP) development tools and processes. The most important concept they have is 充足 “juusoku” what I translate as “charging” or “filling”. There’s a series of Jūsoku charging exercises. These are correlated with “元” (gen), which are areas of energy origination, concentration and reflection in the body. In the Nishino system, the categories progress as follows:
Ichigen 充足 (一元, one element/tanden)
Sangen 充足 (三元, three elements/soles of feet + tanden)
Yongen 充足 (四元, four elements/soles of feet + inside hands)
Tagen 充足 (多元, multiple/all cells in body)
(You can see that these mirror the trajectory of my own ARC framework - not a coincidence). For each of the above ‘charging’ orientations, there are particular drills which emphasize the associated ‘gen’. This is really an excellent marriage of theory, terminology, anatomy and practical drills. It’s far more practical and workable than most of the overly complex “Qi” anatomy and theory layouts you see in other systems. You can actually feel the charging effect of the particular drills as they activate the associated ‘gen’ (I will call them ‘surfaces’ from now on). For example, Yongenjuusoku refers to experiencing the inner hand surfaces (palms and facing side of fingers) and soles of the feet — the four limb-ends of the body — as ‘charging surfaces’. This means body areas that are particularly easy to fill with IP, and of which the IP experience is more intense than other body areas.
However, there is one crucial omission in the above system. And I’m going to supply the missing element for you now, in this post. Just so you know, I’m NOT writing this to lard things up and throw more tinsel on the already over-complicated Christmas tree of IP theory. This is crucially important and fully tangible in your practice. It’s news you can use.
