Spine, Mind & Energy

One of the features of natural structure – fractal structure – is that parts mirror the whole, and mirror each other. So, my body maps onto each hand, each foot, the head, the spine, each limb, etc. One mapping that Tai Chi and much meditation makes use of is the spine onto the brain. The top of the spine corresponds to the front of the brain and the base of the spine – sacrum and coccyx – to the back of the brain. Heart – mid-spine – is mid-brain, the natural place of rest for a healthy (unneurotic) mind. So, “Heart and mind together” – that famous Tibetan instruction – means thinking has largely ceased, the mind rests mid-brain, and the feelings and awareness rest in the heart. Now in Tai Chi we work on the mind physically – through the body: we pull the mind away from thinking – front-brain – by working on the base of the spine – slowly awakening it with exercise and awareness, and sinking and extending it into the Earth through the supporting leg and heel. When this is achieved then the back-brain similarly awakens and connects to its true source of power – the unconscious, and in particular a mass of primal energy/awareness that resides largely behind us, but which is ours if we have the wit to claim it. Once the back-brain has started to waken then the front-brain can relax into its natural non-thinking capacity which is a divine one: a front-brain tempered and balanced by a weighty awareness in the back-brain stops thinking and opens into a pure vibrant light that sees deeply and affects deeply whatever it sees. The hands are then healing instruments rather than technological ones, and the head receives sensory input into a mind that swells and floods into those senses: the sensory channels become two-way, giving as much as they receive.