The Qi of Viruses

[Yasjua]

Chinese medicine, and medicine in general deals with a very profound question: why do people get sick? And the thing is, there are internal and external causes of disease, which is accepted by all medical practitioners as far as I know. Energetic and vitalistic medical practitioners tend to approach the issue of disease from the inside out, sometimes to a fault, while occidental practitioners approach disease from the outside in, sometimes to a fault. Excess in either condition. But of course, many from all total medical affinities approach health and disease holistically, and we applaud them for their wisdom.

 

As I understand it, Chinese medicine deals with energetics, the flow of qi and spiritual essence in the apparently physical bodily manifestation. They use certain concepts like excess/defiency, wind, heat, dampness, stagnation, etc to diagnose and understand disease.

 

I am curious, and I may be stating my question poorly, forgive me... if Chinese medicine is involved with energetics, then why does it not also discern the energetics of viruses like HIV, or the energetic structure of a chemical compound. Why can it not enter the Western medical perspective and enhance the understanding we have of biological and chemical diseases. Shouldn't it be able to work directly with the energetics of viruses? A virus is a 3-dimensional structure with its own 'signature' so to speak. Wouldn't understanding the qi of chemical nature give us the ability to alter, direct, or manipulate it in some manner?

[de_paradise]

I am pretty sure Chinese Medicine practitioners experimented with herbs and acupuncture etc. on HIV patients according to their knowledge about similar problems. Perhaps you give them too much credit in their abilities to discern energy, much less energetic structures, and especially that of microscopic viruses.

[shunka]

We are hosts to a constant bevy of a variety of virii and bacterium . Most people are regularly exposed to any number of diseases but their corpus succesfully disposes of them. Some continue to live on without affecting us.

 

There is a school of thought , that what we classify as disease only occurrs because the body is so far out of balance that it can no longer deal with the little buggy things. It is my limited understanding that Chinese medicine attempts to assist the body in getting back into balance and proper functioning - ie: "clearing channels" , " balancing heat vs cold", " too much yin or yang in a given vessel" etc.

 

Once the body is back in balance the symptoms resolve themselves.

 

So the effort is directed to discerning the imbalances in the bodies energies and re-balancing them.

One would not have a great interest in trying to balance the energy of little buggy things.

 

-or, I could be wrong.

 

yhs

shunka

Edited January 16, 2015 by shunka

[vonkrankenhaus]

Bacteria are very primitive organisms, and are related to similar living (and dormant, and dead) organisms existing throughout the universe. I have read that a large amount of what is considered "space dust" is actually freeze-dried single celled organisms. "Fossils" attributed to single celled organisms have been seen in meteorites, and are postulated to exist on Mars and also in comets and all over the cosmos.

Early in the development of Earth life, the atmosphere was very different from today. It was still clouded with various gases and particles such that the light of the Sun was the only starlight visible. This was the time of single celled organisms. As the atmosphere cleared and the light from other stars became visible, single celled organisms combined together into more complex organisms. Right now, the number of visible stars in the sky is said by some to be roughly equal to the number of cells in our body.

Inside of our guts is like a replica of the primitive world. Similarly, our blood is like a replica of the primordial sea that we carry inside of us since our ancient transition from water to land.

When complex organisms deteriorate, they break down into simpler forms and disband.

The "germ theory" of disease basically sees these simpler forms and calls them the cause of the breakdown.

This is like seeing maggots and flies on piles of manure and concluding that maggots and flies "caused" the piles of manure.

Viruses are something else. They are chemical assemblies which are not strictly "alive", but are used by and interact with living cells. Viruses have been "made" in a lab using off-the-shelf chemicals.

 

Viruses may be an agent of change, particularly environmental change.

 

The attempt to kill viruses may be misguided. Killing all virus activity in the human or animal body, if such a thing could be accomplished, may result in inability to live and evolve.

 

Understanding the energetics of microbes and viruses is possible. One of the best starts in this direction that I have seen in popular circulation is the book by Jeremy Narby "The Cosmic Serpent", which suggests that shamans experiencing contact with "other entities" are actually not tripping "out", but "in", and are actually contacting and experiencing microbial life in their own bodies.

 

-VonKrankenhaus

[Brian]

Chinese medicine, and medicine in general deals with a very profound question: why do people get sick? And the thing is, there are internal and external causes of disease, which is accepted by all medical practitioners as far as I know. Energetic and vitalistic medical practitioners tend to approach the issue of disease from the inside out, sometimes to a fault, while occidental practitioners approach disease from the outside in, sometimes to a fault. Excess in either condition. But of course, many from all total medical affinities approach health and disease holistically, and we applaud them for their wisdom.

 

As I understand it, Chinese medicine deals with energetics, the flow of qi and spiritual essence in the apparently physical bodily manifestation. They use certain concepts like excess/defiency, wind, heat, dampness, stagnation, etc to diagnose and understand disease.

 

I am curious, and I may be stating my question poorly, forgive me... if Chinese medicine is involved with energetics, then why does it not also discern the energetics of viruses like HIV, or the energetic structure of a chemical compound. Why can it not enter the Western medical perspective and enhance the understanding we have of biological and chemical diseases. Shouldn't it be able to work directly with the energetics of viruses? A virus is a 3-dimensional structure with its own 'signature' so to speak. Wouldn't understanding the qi of chemical nature give us the ability to alter, direct, or manipulate it in some manner?

It would be incorrect to assume that no energetic healers work with the energetics of viruses. It may not be strictly part of the canon of TCM but energetic healing is not strictly limited to the canon of TCM, either -- not even Chinese energy healing.

[Zhongyongdaoist]

Some quick points:

First: in China and some other countries they do practice with Western medical agents and use them along with traditional treatments, integrating them into their medical practice. In the West this is not done for a variety of reasons, none of them really good ones having to do with effective medical treatment. Here is just one example of a Chinese textbook integrating the two approaches:

Chinese and Western Medicine Integration

 

Second: If you study the side effects of Western medicines and know enough about the energetic causes of the those symptoms, you can judge the energetic imbalances that might arise and compensate for them. I am assuming that this is part of what the Chinese are doing. Also the Chinese have been using ingredients that are "poisonous", such as cinnabar and realgar, in some of their medicines for centuries, and are expert at working around the possible bad effects of them taken in therapeutic doses. The Chinese would consider "poisonous" effects as being energetic imbalances and would control them with the other ingredients, they are probably applying this experience to Western medicine.

 

Third: TCM has a traditional distinction between types of diseases that does seem to pretty much correspond to the difference between bacterial and viral infections.

 

Finally: Having strong Weiqi and good energy functioning of the internal organs, which can be acquired through taking the right herbs, Qigong, meditation, etc. can protect against either, but one should still be prudent. For example, I used to get cold/flu types of syndromes three to five times a year for several decades. I have had at most only 6 such episodes between 2000 and 2006 and none since 2006.

[freeform]

An interesting perspective from a very talented meditator and teacher:

(Long quote coming up...)

 

"Over the years I have come to notice a common trend during the winter retreat I hold each January. Invariably one or two people arrive suffering with winter flu. Sitting together in a close environment, by the end of the second day, up to half of the group may be snivelling and sneezing. And yet by day four there is not a sneeze or sniff to be heard all day long, as everyone settles into their meditation and begins to deepen their concentration and mindfulness.

 

So how is it that such a change can come about in such a short time?

 

Mindfulness is quite simply awareness. Or even more simply it is paying attention.

 

Each of us has a certain amount of mindfulness as part of our everyday consciousness. In some it is naturally well developed in others the mind is scattered and restless, wandering around here there and everywhere but seldom resting within the body in a state of simply being present. The meditation I teach beginners to is to learn to settle their attention within the body. It serves to establish concentration while bringing a degree of coherence back to the otherwise disorganised energies in the body.

 

When I check each persons meditation, one of the things I am checking is the awareness , or mindfulness levels within their own bodies. This mindfulness is one of the key players in determining a persons resistance to sickness or their tendency to ill health.

 

Lets take the virus as an example to illustrate this point.

 

I use a scale which I measure against my own body to assess a persons physical awareness levels. At an energetic level the correlation between this mindfulness level and the integrity of their immune system is considerable.

 

The average persons level of mindfulness (on my arbitrary scale ) is around 90 ( with 300 being the highest level. A virus has more the characteristic of consciousness than matter, unlike a bacteria which is predominantly a material entity with limited awareness levels.

 

Viruses respond directly to consciousness, even mutating and changing characteristics with the conscious environment in which they reside. The average flu virus has an awareness level similar to that of most of us, around 90. The important difference to our own mindfulness is that a virus produces a left handed spin in matter while our own wholesome states of consciousness (ie mindfulness) produce a right handed spin. It is the left-handed spin that has the disorganising effect that opposes the organising effect that our own mindfulness has on your system. Put six people in a room for a few hours and bring in someone with the flu and the next day some of them will begin to display the flu symptoms, while others wont. Yet all of them will have been exposed to the virus in that time. In those whose mindfulness levels are over 90 the flu symptoms will not develop. Those who might be tired or run down, and with mindfulness levels below 90 will invariably develop the flu. To understand this we need to understand that it is not the virus that causes the sickness, but the bodys reaction to it. If there is enough mindfulness in the body there will not be a reaction to contact with the virus and so the body will not produce a supporting environment for it to proliferate.

 

When we meditate, most people are able to raise their mindfulness levels to over 100 within a couple of days of sustained practice. At this level the virus stops producing the reaction in the body that supports it and the flu symptoms will. Even at a physical level we can see the changes in the system. Under dark field microscope we can observe a significant increase in the mobilisation of the white blood cells witch the body uses to combat a virus after only three days of sustained meditation.

 

If we already have a resting level of mindfulness within our body of over 100 we are unlikely to develop flu at all.

 

Lets take the hepatitis virus as another example. This virus has a mindfulness level of around 120. This is higher than most peoples resting state mindfulness and so nearly everyone exposed to the Hep B virus will develop the symptoms. The virus produces a hot energy in the liver, and the lack of sufficient mindfulness causes the liver to react. The liver itself becomes hot and over time dry and stiff producing the cirrhosis.

 

Many of the people coming on meditation retreat have managed to raise their mindfulness levels up high enough to reverse the damage in the liver and allow the cells to correct themselves. Robbed of a supportive environment the virus no longer survives in the body. Some people have successfully achieved such results with a week long meditation retreat.

 

The HIV virus poses an even more challenging threat. It has an awareness level of 220. Now this is extremely high. Many advanced yogis have not reached this level of mindfulness in their own bodies. In fact the only person I have perceived to have a natural mindfulness level as high as this is the famous chess player Kasparov. I am not saying that if exposed to the HIV virus he would not develop symptoms but his chances of resisting the virus would be good. Some years ago I did an experiment with my teacher on a group of meditators who all carried the HIV virus. They were trained extensively and spent many months diligently practicing. Eight of them were able over time to achieve such levels of mindfulness. All of their symptoms disappeared and when tested of the virus it had all but disappeared from the blood, with almost undetectable levels remaining.

 

Every year, millions of us go down within the flu. Until only there is no medicine that can treat the flu virus, we can only take medication or supplements to support the bodys resistance to it. This is because all medicine is nutriment. It is indeed possible to treat bacterial infection with nutriment, but not a virus. This is because the vibrational bandwidth of viruses is more akin to consciousness than nutriment of any kind. Medicine, being nutriment in nature, miss match with the viruss energetic signature. However our consciousness interacts directly with viruses. A mind that is restless, stressed or scattered will react to and support the proliferation of viral infection in the body. But a mind that is well organised, concentrated and mindful will not. This year, why not try for yourself. Learn a basic meditation practice that takes the body as the object of concentration. Practice daily to raise your bodys mindfulness levels and see if you can be one of those who can sail through the winter without falling prey to the dreaded flu.

 

In the next episode I will discuss the role our mind plays in developing allergies and food intollerences, and how they might be over come"

Edited January 17, 2015 by freeform

[Ya Mu]

Virus do look different that regular sick qi when a practitioner of wai qi liao fa works on a client - when the qi projection displaces it out of the body it looks like small lightning bolts or shooting stars. We had an instance of this is one of the workshops this past season. I was doing a simple demo session on a client when all of a sudden I jumped back a bit to avoid a virus that was displaced. I looked at one of my senior students who was standing next to me and asked "Did you see that?" His eyes were big around as saucers cause this was his first time in seeing one of these as he shouted "YES!". Then he asked how it was possible that I moved that fast...heck, I didn't want the virus.