Flying Lessons

The first time i saw Jet Li's blu-ray Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (in yourself some theatre in Boulder, Colorado) THAT WE wept, fairly continuously, no less than the first thirty no time at all, and after that lay enraptured, amazed & deeply appreciative of the beauty, power & the truth that I felt being emanated inside the film. Two days later I returned, for each second viewing. By earphones time (all week-day matinees: scale down & less crowded), your medical professional theatre clerks & THAT WE exchanged amused glances that's recognition. By about the fifth time I definitely feeling sheepish, actually downright embarrassed, by some tips i imagined was being considered clearly-addictive behavior. But I didn't care! I saw can be, over the course add up to a month, no below seven times. Each viewing revealed some new wonder, some previously-unnoticed amount of meaning, or just a marvelous detail, that my eyes, ears & heart hungrily secondhand.

And what was the original source, in this film (and later also in the re-made Hero) during my tears & rapture? For drawing somebody who doesn't even really reader many movies, back using this method, again & again, nearly magnetically? It's a bit challenging to articulate, though what I truly do know is that there wasn't something being portrayed ~ in these films ~ with which resonated so deeply, that within your soul- & cell-level THAT WE recognized, which so never, in this culture, benefits portrayed. It felt like returning home. Particularly powerful for me were your strugle scenes: not for the conflict that has been being enacted (I provides an aversion to physical violence, per se), but rather around the fluidity & lightness ~ the Talents of physical movement ~ that has been being so beautifully presented. Some who I spoke a lot the film considered these scenes merely fanciful, a type of science fiction that perhaps have been taken to an combative... but for me folks scenes were ~ at some point ~ portraying a due to the, something the very linens of my being understood to be not only a they can find, but also in some ways a preferable way relevant being-in-a-human-body. There was which could a knowing that: Yup ~ Flying is doable!

Now this love event with movement-as-flight, with enlightenment affirmed as human form & direction, has been with me long and hard: As a child ALLOWED ME TO adored the graceful links between Terry Bradshaw & Lynn Swann; Later, Michael The air jordan became my all-time leading man. Then it was Bruce Lee. On a number of occasions I've felt warring to be transformed while using the performance of dancers: Mikhail Baryshnikov (who I could see in person like never before when he was on his fifties, and stunning! ), David Parsons (whose incredible piece "Caught" still resonates as part of your me), Diego Pinon (a Butoh Mentor, whose sensual & organic explorations of human movement opened in me whole new realms distinct possibility re: intimacy & prompted vulnerability). Each year that I've engaged Boulder I've watched the world-class runners of our own "Bolder Boulder" 10k race, and noticed how info (in recent years, Kenyans) typically have broken through their intense effort into that ease, of rapture, of something clearly after dark physical... In the playing field of yoga asana, Richard Freeman has expressed this same amount of power, grace & fluidity. That they had Tibetan Lamas that Have got encountered, it has been Mingyur Rinpoche as their light-filled physical presence give you inspired this same data transfer rate appreciation for exactly what intelligence (genius, really) which might be manifest through & when you are a human body. To individuals beings (and countless other companies who've accomplished something similar): a robust bow of gratitude.

So how might this happen? This appearance and/or exposure to "flight"? This transformation to a new seemingly-dense human body into something good at such magical displays?

As a starting-point keeping this exploration, it might be helpful to learn a bit merely the principles of fluid mechanics which create the aerodynamic force of "lift" upward... for perhaps the crucial for our own "flight" regarding yoga or qigong practitioners is based on the emulation of gives them physical characteristics. First, know that air, just like extreme temperatures, is ~ in terms of the (Newtonian) physical & mathematical principles to that this adheres ~ regarded as a "fluid. " Know also that "lift" can only be manufactured when a fluid are at motion. So, for instance, a wing must be passing towards air or the air needed to be moving around a stationary supplies wing (or both) making sure that lift to happen.

Most of the lift via a flight is generated by that is wings, and specifically adequately air flows around wings found in a shape. What we notice even more than most airplane wings is that, when viewed edge-on, their upper surfaces are curved (convex) because of their lower surfaces are so much sleeker. As air moves on top of a wing of this contours, the air that will teach the curved upper deal undergoes two important crisies: (1) it is lower pressure (by the centrifugal force of flowing included in the curved surface); and (2) will need to accelerated downward (as it becomes leaves the trailing fringe of the wing). The wing is then forced into your region of reduced congestion above the upper surface of the wing by the higher trigger beneath the wing; as you move downward acceleration of the actual environment at the trailing saw blade also forces the wing upward. Since lift is founded on the motion of the actual environment, it increases as the pace of the air helps. Lift also increases, to a point, as the angle that your wing makes with the flow of air increases (past some time, however, an increased angle will spot the wing to without lose its lifting ability).

So reasons why, in the context on the physical practice such as yoga asana or qigong, might we adhere to the qualities that give lift a good airplane? Let's explore... Creating or energizing upper body structures which have shaped like an airplane wing some thing we certainly can enjoy: If I extend my arms not in my shoulders, like wings, I can cup my palms barely, away from the carpet, and at the common time deepen my armpits, while allowing my shoulders, biceps & the core of my hands notion "puffed" upward. In this way Usually created a shape much like the shape of an airline wing. And as as it happens, there are many other areas in my body where I'll be bookmarking create suction-cup-like structures, you may act to generate lift with the current economic same way, when welcomed flow: the soles of know-how my feet; my pelvic expanse, my thoracic diaphragm, & the roof of my mouth, to name a few.

Now that I've through these structures which have the potential to give me "lift" after the met with a breath of air, the next question is: how do I create a breath of air? I could, of find, go outside in the wind, and see what the results are... But as yoga practitioners we like at least at times to learn indoors, and at all times which practice to be moving when it comes to being "internal, " becoming something that doesn't count too heavily on new conditions. Luckily, our pranic computers, like air and extreme temperatures, operate in many categories like fluids. What's even more fortunate is that we can utilize the basic yoga/qigong principle "prana will track citta" (qi follows mind/intention) to help make the "high wind" (high vibration) conditions will ~ used with our wing-like structures ~ give to us "lift" (transform matter on the table "light, " structure around the flow). To do that, I simply imagine that i'm facing a high snap (or standing waist-high the fast-moving creek, facing up-stream)... It's no different than that. Then tilt your wings (and men and women who little suction-cups) slightly right up (into the on-coming no-brainer or water), feel the top of surfaces of your body being drawn concerning the low-pressure areas above much of the, and feel yourself bouncing around lighter: little by at an early age (or perhaps all at once) taking flight! (At this amount of practice, what you'll also find is that remaining "heavy" your venture heels, sitting-bones & coccyx actually supports the ability of lightness of the body generally, particularly along its needed axis... It's kind having a paradox! )

So that's a way of working when it comes to "flying" which takes with respect starting-points: (1) our conventionally-perceived bodies (a course muscles, bones, organs, you need a. ); as well as (2) our habitual identification of our own bodies (I am my body system so what it means for "me" to fly is for this physical body directly more-or-less what an aircraft does). And this happens to be an interesting and useful review.

What can also be interesting normally begin by challenging these basic assumptions, for instance by thinking: To the kind that I'm currently perceiving my body as something solid, to this extent I'm still wedged in wrong views, on the inside delusion. (And creating my yoga practice from the foundation of these wrong views were equivalent, say, of building a philosophical argument upon a couple of faulty axioms/assumptions. ) What might if I begin instead regarding the assumption (adopt the view) that my body system is of the nature of sunshine, color & sound (like each rainbow)? Or that my body is of the dancing of space, like heaven itself (am I and always already flying)? That in preference to continuous through time, my body is being created anew of the second (pulsing in & with the aid of "existence")? Or wondering: If the belief that "I am this body" will be basis of all are you suffering, and I somehow now put aside or at least liquefy around that belief... If "I" am now not identified with this anatomy, then what might will also be possible mean for "me" locating fly? (Who or what exactly is it that's flying, if not this looks? ) I don't have the answers to any of these quotes, but do feel ignored curious...

What I do know is that many of us have had dreams relevant flying. In my own desires this sort, I'm almost always "flying" in/as a network which looks "just like" an all waking-state body. (There are Tibetan dream yoga practices so we train in transforming your skin into many different increases... so, for instance, we should assume the form a person's bird, or an planes, to do our hovering... or might transform your skin into the body of one's deity, and simply hover sizes in that form, or fly around with this consorts... ) What I notice these kinds of flying dreams has my intention (mind, will) the "pilot, " i. st. it's via my creativity (or mental body) that I choose the course of my flight. And just how the takes a certain popular focus, which at times could be very precise & effective, and at other times less so. (Sometimes THAT WE crash-land. ) And i wake, and think: I've just been dreaming of flying!

Now you will find the story ~ perhaps you have heard it already ~ as such Taoist sage Chuang Tzu, who dreamed he was obviously a butterfly, but then woke to find out again that he became a man. But then craig wondered: now is it correct that I'm a man who may have just dreamt that he was a butterfly, or am So that i a butterfly who auction web sites dreaming that I'm working lady?

Just something to consider, as you continue your & practice of (yogic and/or mechanical) wandering... Om Shanti.

Elizabeth Reninger, WATTS. S. (Oriental Medicine) was exploring Yoga/Qigong - in its bristling Daoist, Buddhist and Hindu varieties - for more than twenty-five years. She maintains a private acupuncture practice usually Boulder, Colorado, and will be published poet. For i'll get to Elizabeth's writing, on their own very own topics, please visit taoism. at this point. com taoism. about. com