Thread: Ki Eureka
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Old 01-14-2011, 10:10 PM   #37
Lorel Latorilla
Location: Osaka
Join Date: Jul 2009
Posts: 311
Japan
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Re: Ki Eureka

David,

Very interesting. I've been trying to figure this Ki stuff out when I was exploring 'Ki-ai' and had glimpses of what 'Ki' really meant. Like I'd experiment with my 'Ki' and turning it into a knife shape (I'd do this by inhaling, and put oxygen in my stomach, and ALMOST, on a liminal level, visualize a sword coming out of my my mouth from my hara) and look at people...and wow, it actually worked. People would look away from me, looking somewhat afraid. Your description of 'Ki' woke up my latent interests in ki and has made me realize that there is an unbroken connection between humans, that there is some essence that we are all a part of. It is only language and a sense of being a 'discreet self' (well 'self' comes from language, but I won't get into it now) that gives us the illusion of 'separation'--I won't get into these now. Now, I don't want to sound like a hippy and am all about results.

I work in a rough area in Osaka, and have to teach kids that come from broken homes. I get a lot of verbal abuse from the kids and it makes me want to stay away from the school to say the least. But this Thursday, I was able to connect with the teachers and the students. The lesson plan did not go as smoothly, but amid the chaos of kids not listening to me, not doing the activity, making fun of me, I felt this calm within the chaos. Like I could connect with the kids even in their rebellion. I noticed that the kids who are most fearful, would try to stay away from me--they would do that by hurling abusive words at me, or would ignore me, and not look at me. That is, if the abusive words did not work, they would ignore me. For the other kids that wanted to connect, what were 'abusive' words I perceived as words just to ridicule me in a light way--these kids I would get really physical with and wrestle and give them noogies, etc. It would be a very different feeling if I just focused on my program, focused on my educative ideology, and have it fail, and go away hating the kids. But my experience here has given me some keys on how to 'connect' with people. I'm not an expert at this stuff yet, and still get disturbed when a kid would say nasty things about foreigners, but now I know what I can work on.

Also, I think another exercise to 'condition' ki is to pour cold water on yourself. I learned it from the Russians. They do it for 'health', but now I see how it's good for awareness of 'ki'. When you do it, you will feel your body 'warming' up, like electricity. I think this sensation of physical warmth is the sensation when we are awake to our Ki and to the others of Ki.

Unless stated otherwise, all wisdom, follies, harshness, malice that may spring up from my writing are attributable only to me.
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