Exercises for the Five Bodies
Level One: The First Five (of fifteen)
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In this series, practicable exercises will be presented in order to familiarize the reader-practicer with the ‘Five bodies’ concept at a theoretical and experiential level. The material is directly applicable to neijia practices such as taijiquan but can also be useful to anyone who wishes to deepen self understanding and develop greater capacity for integrated experience and expression.
There are fifteen exercises as part of the Level One study of the Five bodies. Three SubStack offerings like this one will each present five exercises—one for each ‘body.’ The articles and the exercises are progressive in nature and meant to be practiced and reflected upon. Explanatory material will deepen as material is presented.
‘Exercises for the Five Bodies’ will be presented in an expanded form in a three-session online ZOOM course called ‘Fifteen Exercises for the Five Bodies’ November and December of this year by the author. These three SubStack articles can serve as preparation for the course as well as reference material.
The Five Bodies
In commonly-received physical education—which is mainly to say sport and other structured physical activities—much of the focus is on the performance of skills or the undertaking of tasks. Little attention is given to understanding or experiencing the ‘vehicle’ that carries out the actions. Of course, this poses no real problem if the intent of the venture is to simply pass time with physical activities or even to master basic and recognizable skills.
With internal-arts activities, however, one is confronted almost immediately with problems related to how one is meant to categorize instruction. For example, if the teacher instructs, “Sink your energy,” the student is left wondering at which ‘level’ the sinking is meant to take place. Does this mean ‘Bend my knees?’ ‘Relax my mind (somehow)?’ ‘Do something with my ‘qi’ (whatever that means)?’ To follow such an instruction one must be able to identify and operate in any of these—‘these what?’—areas? modes? domains? It is at this level of quandary that the use of the term ‘bodies,’ in the way described below, can be helpfully applied.
Let’s begin with an analogy. By now, most people are familiar with computer programs that allow selective layering of the human body in order to allow users to strip away, add to, or overlay various anatomical systems—skeletal, muscular, nervous, blood vessel, lymphatic, etc.—in an interactive three-dimensional space. These wonderful tools give the navigator an inside look at every aspect of the features of human anatomy and physiology. In a similar way, one can learn to identify, overlay, and strip away five distinct but interconnected experiential systems—or ‘bodies.’
To characterize the five bodies as ‘experiential’ provides no comment on whether or how they exist (or do not exist) objectively. Nor does it seek to explain how these experiences arise from what might objectively exist to be experienced. Five-bodies study, at least at its earliest stages of exercise, is meant only to identify and refine experience itself in a way that is useful in internal-arts practices and in daily life.
The five bodies are: the ‘solid’ body, the ‘liquid’ body, the ‘energetic’ body, the ‘heat’ body, and the ‘imaginative’ body.
• The solid body: A ‘corporeal’ or ‘physical’ experience of body is especially tangible during environmental interaction and movement. A sense of heaviness, mass, weight, and spacial location are characteristic of the experience set of the solid body. In internal arts or ‘neijia,’ this body is centred around the ‘lower dantian.’
• The liquid body: Blood and other bio-fluids in a liquid-plasma state become tangible with secretion, discharge, absorption, and containment of fluids from within and without. Most functions of the liquid body do not rise to conscious experience and can only be felt by intentional stimulation.
• The energetic body: Bioelectrical activity is subtle but its presence becomes tangible with practices involving sensation and mobilization. The energetic body closely relates to the liquid body and is experienced through various tingling, vibration, magnetic, and warmth sensations. In activities such as taijiquan or qigong this is known as qi (氣).
• The heat body: Inner sensations such as those described as ‘emotion,’ ‘human warmth,’ or ‘soul’ begin as undefinable ‘heat’ and become tangible and expressible through human and biological interaction. In internal arts or ‘neijia,’ this body is centred around the ‘middle dantian.’
• The imaginative body: The capacity for conscious interiority, metaphoric experience, and the ‘I’ becomes tangible through activities of thought and the narrative-making of language. In internal arts or ‘neijia,’ this body is centred around the ‘upper dantian.’
The Five Bodies Exercises
The Five-bodies exercises are meant to provide the exerciser with an experience of the ‘body’ being focused on. Each exercise need not take more than a minute or two but this is at the discretion of the practicer. Bear in mind that as more exercises are added the time needed will increase. Also, this is not ‘form’ to get through. If you wish to take more time or skim over an exercise, especially if you feel you are already ‘in the zone’ of what a perticular exercise offers, you can adjust accordingly.
General preparation: Before getting into the five-bodies exercises, it is a good idea to spend some time with the ‘Five Words of Self Composure.’ This practice can be helpful in bringing the practicer into a suitable state of mind and body for the exercises to follow. With each instalment in this series something more will said about the Five Words of Self Composure. For now, this overview of the 5-words’ progressive interaction is offered.
‘breath’ ⟹ ‘calm.’ Conscious breathing soothes the system and brings about ‘calm.’
‘calm’ ⟹ ‘centre.’ Calmness allows the musculature to relax and align with gravity, thereby bringing the body to its ‘centre’ and its ‘centreline.’
‘centre’ ⟹ ‘root.’ A centred body stands directly above the base of support causing a stronger connection with the ground or ‘root.’
‘root’ ⟹ ‘energy.’ A strong, rooted stance provides the foundation for the release of ‘energy’ and for mobilization and movement.
The Five Words of Self-Composure: ‘breath,’ ‘calm,’ ‘centre,’ ‘root,’ and ‘energy.’
Exercise one for the solid body:
Solid-body exercise preparation: For ten or so seconds, feel the pressure at your support surface. If you are standing, this will be between the bottom of the feet and the ground. If you are sitting, feel the pressure between the sitting bones and the sitting surface.
Exercise one: Feel your lower dantian location as your physical centre of gravity. Observe the felt-sense quality in and around the dantian. Feel the relationship with the base of support as either more-aligned or less-aligned. Time for exercise: a few minutes.
Comments: To get a sense of what is meant by ‘centre of gravity’ (CoG), lift any (not -easily-breakable) object and balance it on your hand or finger trying to sense the exact spot (the CoG) that must be supported for the object to remain in balance. The term ‘solid body’ is much like the term ‘physical body’—or just ‘body—however, we use ‘solid’ here in this way to contrast its qualities with those of the ‘liquid’ and other bodies. You can learn more about the lower dantian here.
Exercise one for the liquid body:
Liquid-body exercise preparation: 1. Blink your eyes in two ways. First, start with eyes open and then alternatively blink them open to shut. Second, start with eyes shut and then alternatively blink them shut to shut to open. Observe the liquid from the tear ducts. 2. Run your tongue around inside your mouth in order to churn up saliva. Observe which spots do this best.
Exercise one: Part 1. Mouth: ‘Swallow and spit.’ Saliva that is tasty and sweet can be swallowed. Saliva that contains mucosa or is distasteful spit out. Part 2. Nose: ‘Sniff and snort.’ Vigorously inhale through the nose in a ‘sniffing’ fashion, as if trying to identify the quality or location of an odour. Snort out (into a tissue, perhaps) any mucous build up in the nasal passage. Time for exercise: a few minutes.
Comments: These actions can be related to the mysterious Chinese words ‘heng and ha’ which sound similar to English nasal and oral debris-expulsion words such as ‘hack,’ ‘hock,’ and ‘hork.’ Working at this level can seem (comically) repulsive at first.
Exercise one for the energetic body:
Energetic-body exercise preparation: Pay attention throughout your body listening for tingling, tickling, shivering, and trembling sensations. Observe movement in these.
Exercise one: Identify and observe a place in the body that feels ‘stuck’ or ‘blocked.’ Try to affect ‘flow’ and increase sensation in these areas by a combination of gentle focused movement and willfully produced tingling, tickling, shivering, and trembling in the bound region. Time for exercise: a few minutes.
Comments: Working with the bioelectric or energetic body is, in some ways, subtler than working with the the energetic and liquid bodies. It is at this level that the term ‘mobilization’ can be used in contradistinction to ‘movement.’
Exercise one for the heat body:
Heat-body exercise preparation: Breathe deeply into the lungs. Pay attention to what the region ‘feels like’ as compared to sensations felt in the belly-abdominal region. Observe the heart’s rhythmic beating in the chest as a direct sensation.
Exercises one: Feel your middle dantian location by seeking your centre of ‘emotion.’ Observe the felt-sense quality in and around this dantian. Feel the movement of your awareness toward of this centre as getting ‘cooler’ or ‘warmer’ in the same way one does when playing ‘hide-and'-seek.’ Time for exercise: a few minutes.
Comments: Emotional qualities and human sentiment—‘heartful’ versus ‘heartless’—are often described in terms of ‘warmth,’ or ‘coldness.’ Learning to ‘take the temperature’ of things with this body is at a similar level of subtlety as with the energetic body. You can learn more about the middle dantian here.
Exercise one for the imaginative body:
Imaginative-body exercise preparation: Recall how the last hour or several hours brought you to this moment of practicing today. Consider how your day tomorrow needs to unfold. Think of an impossible animal.
Exercise one: Try to identify the upper dantian location. Observe how the place you are looking for and the place you are looking from are close—or even the same. Observe how ‘thinking’ can seem like sounds or pictures. Time for exercise: a few minutes.
Comments: Conceptual experiences such as memory, self-oriented narratives, and pure imagination seem to live in a very different body than the solid body even if ‘housed’ within it. You can learn more about the upper dantian here.
