22 WeiLingBaFang 威靈八方 – Maintain Peace in the Eight Directions

This movement prompts me to think a lot about direction. I practice it side to side. Like, I only do two physical directions. I do actually do eight repetitions (or four, one to each side).

(I don't try to think while doing Qi Gong, but it happens and I don't fight it either.)

The obvious correspondence is the 8 trigrams of the I Ching.

And these probably map to winds or something?

These wind-to-element correspondences are always so site-specific. They probably also hook into Feng Shui, which is... a deep field.

In India, you got the Ashtadikpālas : Hindu guardians of the 8 directions (also corresponding to the 7 planets & luminaries + North Lunar Node) and the 8 limbs of Yoga (Ashtanga).

The directions I think about though occurred to me when I was learning samadhi practice as a way of giving embodiment to the five hindrances:

• sensory desire (chasing the good thing): forward
• ill will (recoiling from the bad thing) : backward
• sloth and torpor (fatigue, laziness, depression): down
• restlessness (excitement, anxiety, mania) : up
• doubt (worry, loss of faith, the fear) : contraction

Giving these directions a physical mapping in the body helped me in adjusting the first four to balance, and maintaining a confident expansiveness.

(Which leaves left and right, which already map into enormous, deep structures of meaning for me. I mean, they already did? And then I read "The Master and His Emissary", which significantly restructured how I think about Left and Right.)

Master Wu emphasizes the outgoing-ness of this move, the moving out into the world in expansive generosity:

One may start Qigong practice with a small personal request, such as to improve your state of health, to release life trauma, or to create power to heal. After a certain length of Qigong practice, one will be aware that Qigong is a method of helping people live in a natural state. We learn how to reach this state by serving others rather than by trying to fulfill personal desires.

This movement represents bringing the benefits of immortality to the universe, not just to one’s personal world. It helps to deepen one’s power of compassion and heartfelt desire to dedicate the practice and energy generated towards the benefit of others and Mother Nature.

To me, "immortality" (probably) does not mean literal physical immortality, but instead life outside of time.

The present is eternal because it is outside of time.

We look around us, forward, back, left, right, up, down.

We remember into the past. We imagine into the future.

But always do this from one point.

One place that is always here.

One time that is always now.