Illiteracy In Biology&Anatomy

[Marblehead]

bump

 

It wouldn't let me vote again. Darn!

 

Happy Trails!

[NeiChuan]

Matters if you want both sides of information..

 

If you dont but you want to learn.. Its just another science.. Totally different language (metaphorically) so it should'nt matter unless your trying to bridge the gap between 2 or more sciences.

 

If you dont just carry on.. You'll learn what you need anyway.

[Sloppy Zhang]

bump

 

I'm gonna say it again, especially since my last post I've made contact with a few more science-y people:

 

SCIENCE ROCKS.

 

It's on a near daily basis when one of my science major friends explain something to me, and I just think..... "wow, it's just like what I discovered through meditation/contemplation....."

 

I really don't like this "science vs. mysticism" thing that everyone tries to make. Both of them are about discovering "truth", whatever you think it is, in the universe. They both follow the processes of experimentation, they require a great deal of devotion, hard work, etc etc.

 

My calculus teacher once told me that math could explain the secrets of the universe, I was like, no way, I'm going to study philosophy, literature, and do some meditation..... and now and again I look back and facepalm myself

 

You don't have to attend lectures at a local university. You don't have to get the hardest to understand textbook there is. But I highly encourage everyone to get at least an introductory book on science, ANY science, biology and anatomy, sure, but even chemistry, physics. Psychology is great stuff too.

 

It's all about becoming more aware, and the more you go after it and the more venues you pursue it, the faster you will learn things, and it's fun

[sheng zhen]

I have tried to write an intelligent answer here many times today, but it seems Im not intelligent today so I'll just say: Yes.

 

And I agree with Sloppy: SCIENCE ROCKS!

[宁]

[atena]

..

Edited December 20, 2009 by atena

[steve]

I missed this thread the first time around - thanks for bumping it, Little1.

In my professional life, all of the sciences you mention are of critical significance and that is my primary paradigm.

 

One the other hand, I voted not very important.

I believe that the paradigm of TCM, IMA, and Daoist practices is sufficiently self-contained and independent of the Western scientific paradigm, that a knowledge of the sciences you list is not necessary and may even be a hinderance to the student. Yup, I am a scientist and I said that.

 

In my own practice, I find my knowledge of anatomy and physiology has been, at times, a hinderance. The "organs" of TCM and the major meridians and so forth do not correspond to anatomic structures or physiologic processes on the whole. Certainly we could sit down and find parallels and work out a system of how they each enhance our understanding of the underlying truth but they are very different. As a result, I have often found myself forcing a suspension of disbelief when trying to internalize certain ideas or practices. I find myself doubting some of my teacher's explanations and assurances, and so on. I won't go into specifics for the sake of time but it really is a pervasive experience for me.

 

On the other hand, over the years I have developed the ability to have a foot in each camp, as it were. And although it was a struggle, it was absolutely worth it. I now feel that my knowledge and experience in the two paradigms has been more than the sum of the two parts. I am completely comfortable in the Western scientific world and yet I see it's weaknesses and failings, in part due to my Eastern training. I am very comfortable in the Eastern paradigm and yet I can easily see where it often exceeds its boundaries with gratuitous assertions and explanations that are acceptable to the mind in this paradigm due to a host of factors, such as - the Eastern student is much less likely to question or challenge the teacher than a Westerner, the mind that is accustomed to an experiential and empiric approach is much more open to accepting certain explanations without "proof" compared to the Western mind influenced by the scientific method, and so forth.

 

In the end, I'm very lucky to have had good training in Western and Eastern methods and I feel that the combination is extremely valuable and greater than the sum of its parts. But to answer the original question - I do not think that the scientific knowledge is necessary or even especially valuable in the beginning and intermediate student of Eastern methods. In the martial arts world, I feel that it is easier and more advantageous for the student to focus on one discipline until a level of proficiency is reached before adding other, disparate influences. Similarly, I think it is "better" for the student of Eastern methods to develop a substantial proficiency before confusing themselves with an entirely different paradigm. Once a certain level of expertise is reached, then I think it's very valuable to "cross train" in anatomic and physiologic knowledge.

 

Then again - it's probably fine to learn both from the beginning.

 

And I agree with Sloppy...

Science rocks!

 

And Daoists roll!

[宁]

@atena: if the senses were pure and natural, i would agree with you

 

@stevef: i'm not thinking paradigms here, but tools. why throw away something that's familliar to us, and help us in our search, for something that we are not familliar with, exotic and we lack the means to check if it really works or not... - and that is the major part. we need pragmatism...

Confucius said, how can you be proficient in the things that are not physical, if you can't even be proficient in things that are visible...

How can we be proficient at exotic complex meditations deviced thru millenia, when we are not able to navigate within our own scientific western culture?

One more thing: the oriental practicioners actually intensely use scientific discoveries to boost up their practice... to levels incomprehensible to us...

Meanwhile we cherish illiteracy and idolize an eastern science that they are not ready nor willing to share openly with us. We know next to nothing, we will soon have a proof of that, if i'm guessing right...

[Taomeow]

I voted "very important."

 

It is a well-publicized fact that people consciously use less than 5% of thier brain; it is a less known fact that most of the brain is comprized of representations from the organs of the body, and most of one's mind communicates with one's own body rather than with anything on the outside. If all of this communication is happening on the level of the unconscious, that's the extent of conscious mind one has: close to none at all! The neocortex concocts stories, but without these stories connecting consciously to the stories the body is telling, they are just a bunch of fairy tales. Reality lies within.

 

Wang Liping (from whom I learned a wuxing practice aimed at clearly discerning and qi-moving one's inner organs as the first step to any energy manipulations) says that in most modern people, their own inner organs are beyond clear perception and are sort of lumped together into an indistinct blob, everything stuck together. An inner mess instead of a beautiful and meaningful universe. He demonstrated some martial advantages of having a distinct picture and voluntary control of this universe by asking one of his students to punch him in the liver, as hard as he could. He pushed his liver out to make it clearly visible under the rib cage, and the student aimed a fast hard punch there, but by the time of the contact, WLP had moved his liver up all the way into his armpit and hid it there, so the punch landed where there were no organs to damage, just an empty space. He showed it a few times, with his liver and his kidneys. He moves them the way you and I move a hand -- consciously and with precise control. Which means he can strike with the liver or with a kidney in a martial situation too -- that's the true meaning of the taiji maxim "the whole body is a hand," i.e. you can't make contact with a vulnerable spot that won't strike back anywhere on the body. Or of Laozi's "death can't penetrate anywhere, because they're empty." These are not empty words -- applied to MA, they are instructions... for learning what your body is and what it is capable of.

 

I have a strong aversion to any and all philosophies and religions that promulgate disdain for the body, whether openly or implicitly. In fact, to me it's a huge red flag, an indicator of these systems' origin in the agenda of the exploiting overlords: if the masses are taught that their bodies don't matter, it's a prerequisite for breeding slaves who will gladly embrace slavery on religious or philosophical grounds. Which is exactly what happened, historically speaking.

[atena]

(deleted )

Edited December 21, 2009 by atena

[宁]

tell david i said hi

[steve]

@atena: if the senses were pure and natural, i would agree with you

 

@stevef: i'm not thinking paradigms here, but tools. why throw away something that's familliar to us, and help us in our search, for something that we are not familliar with, exotic and we lack the means to check if it really works or not... - and that is the major part. we need pragmatism...

Confucius said, how can you be proficient in the things that are not physical, if you can't even be proficient in things that are visible...

How can we be proficient at exotic complex meditations deviced thru millenia, when we are not able to navigate within our own scientific western culture?

One more thing: the oriental practicioners actually intensely use scientific discoveries to boost up their practice... to levels incomprehensible to us...

Meanwhile we cherish illiteracy and idolize an eastern science that they are not ready nor willing to share openly with us. We know next to nothing, we will soon have a proof of that, if i'm guessing right...

All good points. I do not disagree with any of them.

[steve]

but by the time of the contact, WLP had moved his liver up all the way into his armpit and hid it there, so the punch landed where there were no organs to damage, just an empty space. He showed it a few times, with his liver and his kidneys. He moves them the way you and I move a hand -- consciously and with precise control.

With all due respect (and I do respect you a great deal Taomeow), the liver cannot physically move up into the armpit during life. This is exactly one of the values of a knowledge of anatomy as Little1 advocates and one of the points I tried to make in my wordy post - it is one thing I know fairly well.

 

The liver can't move more than a few inches without tearing the hepatic plexus, bile duct, and portal vein which would be quickly fatal. The right lung is not capable of collapsing far enough for the liver to move up that far into the chest and the diaphragm is not flexible enough to allow that. Nearly all of the liver is hidden by the rib cage and it extends well into the back. It takes a lot of abdominal relaxation and a deep breath for a physician to even feel the edge of the liver in a patient (unless its swollen by disease or the patient is cachectic). So he only has to relax the diaphragm and tighten the abdominal muscles to suck the liver back and up a bit where you can't feel it at all. But no where near the armpit.

 

The kidneys are similarly restricted in how far their vascular and neurological pedicles will allow them to move.

His feat was not quite as dramatic as you describe though I don't doubt that he has a level of physical control that most folks will never enjoy. I guess I just disproved my own point!

 

 

 

[Taomeow]

With all due respect (and I do respect you a great deal Taomeow), the liver cannot physically move up into the armpit during life. This is exactly one of the values of a knowledge of anatomy as Little1 advocates and one of the points I tried to make in my wordy post - it is one thing I know fairly well.

 

The liver can't move more than a few inches without tearing the hepatic plexus, bile duct, and portal vein which would be quickly fatal. The right lung is not capable of collapsing far enough for the liver to move up that far into the chest and the diaphragm is not flexible enough to allow that. Nearly all of the liver is hidden by the rib cage and it extends well into the back. It takes a lot of abdominal relaxation and a deep breath for a physician to even feel the edge of the liver in a patient (unless its swollen by disease or the patient is cachectic). So he only has to relax the diaphragm and tighten the abdominal muscles to suck the liver back and up a bit where you can't feel it at all. But no where near the armpit.

 

The kidneys are similarly restricted in how far their vascular and neurological pedicles will allow them to move.

His feat was not quite as dramatic as you describe though I don't doubt that he has a level of physical control that most folks will never enjoy. I guess I just disproved my own point!

I'm talking about something I saw with my own eyes, not something I heard or read in a book. WLP is not an ordinary person, but what you read in anatomy books doesn't apply even to an ordinary cultivator of some experience. E.g., they tell you an adult can't voluntarily move the muscles between the ribs. I can. They tell you the skull bones are fused together in an adult. They aren't in a healthy one -- the fusing-together is pathological. They used to write in all medical books that mercury is a natural constituent of human bones -- for hundreds of years -- well that's because mercury-based Calomel was as often given to patients by physicians since Paracelsus as aspirin today. And so on. Everything in our anatomy books is the outcome of our "life sciences" having been studied exclusively on corpses and dead tissues, on static parts separated from the dynamic whole and from the process of living.

 

Don't trust them. They are experts who, as Alan Watts put it, "study birdsong from a collection of stuffed nightingales."

Edited December 20, 2009 by Taomeow

[Non]

it IS important. It's quite important. But one has to understand that most education in these days is also regulated by government, and most of the time the government isn't for your best interests, and might want to keep you down, and in the dark, always struggling, always incomplete. So take what you can, and work with it. Take what's useful and leave the rest, from all aspects.

 

Especially in western society. Especially in eastern society. Especially everywhere there might be an imbalance between the "physical/external/material" and the "spiritual/causal/metaphysical/wahtever" aspects of education.

 

Also there might be a conspiracy, politically and exopolitically if you know what I mean. Planet Earth may not be as it seems...

 

Balance, is key.

Edited December 21, 2009 by Non

[steve]

I'm talking about something I saw with my own eyes, not something I heard or read in a book. WLP is not an ordinary person, but what you read in anatomy books doesn't apply even to an ordinary cultivator of some experience.

Me too - I'm a surgeon. I routinely deal with human insides. A human's liver cannot move that far, period. It's that simple. I don't care how much or what they cultivate. You simply made an assumption based on available information but your conclusion is inaccurate. Once the liver edge has retracted under the lower ribs, there is nothing about it that can be seen with the eyes or even felt with the hands but, believe me or not, it can't move very far into the chest.

 

The rest of your observations are correct - the cranial sutures are fibrous, not bone, but they don't move much.

The intercostal muscles are skeletal muscle and all skeletal muscle is under voluntary control. We use them actively with every deep breath we take. With proper training, I imagine they could be controlled quite expertly.

[Taomeow]

Me too - I'm a surgeon. I routinely deal with human insides. A human's liver cannot move that far, period. It's that simple. I don't care how much or what they cultivate. You simply made an assumption based on available information but your conclusion is inaccurate. Once the liver edge has retracted under the lower ribs, there is nothing about it that can be seen with the eyes or even felt with the hands but, believe me or not, it can't move very far into the chest.

 

The rest of your observations are correct - the cranial sutures are fibrous, not bone, but they don't move much.

The intercostal muscles are skeletal muscle and all skeletal muscle is under voluntary control. We use them actively with every deep breath we take. With proper training, I imagine they could be controlled quite expertly.

Well, I don't want to argue too much about what's possible on the inside of a taoist immortal, and besides I wasn't being literal when I said "under the armpit" -- I should have specified he moved his liver up and all the way away from its 'anatomically correct' location but the armpit was added for fun, I have no clue where he moved it in relation to the armpit.

 

Surgeons know more than non-surgeons about human insides, sure thing, yet they too deal with a static moment (an unhealthy one at that) in a human life, and that's still a bit of a stuffed nightingale. When I was 6, a surgeon told me I would always have trouble tying my shoe laces and such because of three complicated fractures in my elbow joint and shoulder. I distinctly remember a passionate "no way" arising from my -- I'd have to say kidneys! -- in response to that prognosis. I was doing competitive gymnastics two years later.

 

No one ever noticed there's something amiss with my left arm since I was, like, 10 -- until my taiji teacher started telling me that the flow of qi is all wrong in my left arm during certain taiji moves. I told him why and told him I'm still working on it... There's absolutely nothing physically wrong there by now, and yet there's an invisible obstacle to the flow of qi no surgeon would notice, something a taiji pro did... Weird, huh?

 

Likewise, there's invisible obstacles of an individual AND a more universal kind all over an average human body, and true cultivation addresses them on all levels -- physical and subtle alike -- which makes lots of seeming impossibilities mere normal function. (Our current idea of "normal" has undergone such extreme inflation, what passes for normal is actually severely stifled...)

 

Oh, and about the muscles between the ribs -- I don't mean move with breathing, cut me some slack there! (No, not with the scalpel, please! ) I mean move like a snake, to locomote without using one's extremities, as well as change the shape of one's chest like an octupus. (Well, almost... the octopus has an additional benefit of having no bones of course.)

Edited December 21, 2009 by Taomeow

[Sundragon]

I voted for...Of Little Importance and I mean that broadly speaking.

 

Every system comes with its own particular idiosyncratic map of the energetic system of the body. You need to know the psychopsysiology insofar as the system you are working with is concerned. If someone is working with Qigong cultivation methods they will work from one set of assumption. If someone is working with a Kundalini yoga perspective then they will work from those assumptions. If someone is working from a Hermetic perspective then they will work with those assumptions.

 

I believe that anyone who believes that it ultimately doesn't boil down to intentionality within the boundaries of a given set of symbols and metaphors is mistaken and is mistaking the map for the terrain so to speak. I may be working with a system that holds that one's liver houses anger (for an example) but I do not really believe that the liver houses anger. I believe that the unconscious mind, due to one's dedicated use of a set of given symbols, translates one's intention into the desired result via the use of the symbols it has at hand. Thus, one can work with Taoist, Hindu, or Hermetic symbolism/energetic maps and get similar or even the same results due to the fact that one's understanding of a set of symbols will govern one's intention behind using them and that in turn will govern the movement of energy and other various and sundry effects.

 

Broadly speaking I believe it is little importance until finally settles into working within a given system. Once one chooses a given system of cultivation/practice one should assume the correct attribution of the system in question. This assumption should continue until such time as one's own wisdom/intuition governs that personally relevant corrections/changes should be made. However, one must know the rules before one can safely break the rules.

 

I think it is important to remember that we are dealing with etheric/energetic realities here and not purely physical realities. The energetic can and will leave evidence of its process upon the physical body but it is not ultimately rooted there as a fundamental reality. There is correspondence of course but my heart isn't really my heart chakra, my pituitary gland isn't really my 7th chakra and so on.

 

 

Sundragon

Edited December 21, 2009 by Sundragon

[Non]

I voted for...Of Little Importance and I mean that broadly speaking.

 

Every system comes with its own particular idiosyncratic map of the energetic system of the body. You need to know the psychopsysiology insofar as the system you are working with is concerned. If someone is working with Qigong cultivation methods they will work from one set of assumption. If someone is working with a Kundalini yoga perspective then they will work from those assumptions. If someone is working from a Hermetic perspective then they will work with those assumptions.

 

I believe that anyone who believes that it ultimately doesn't boil down to intentionality within the boundaries of a given set of symbols and metaphors is mistaken and is mistaking the map for the terrain so to speak. I may be working with a system that holds that one's liver houses anger (for an example) but I do not really believe that the liver houses anger. I believe that the unconscious mind, due to one's dedicated use of a set of given symbols, translates one's intention into the desired result via the use of the symbols it has at hand. Thus, one can work with Taoist, Hindu, or Hermetic symbolism/energetic maps and get similar or even the same results due to the fact that one's understanding of a set of symbols will govern one's intention behind using them and that in turn will govern the movement of energy and other various and sundry effects.

 

Broadly speaking I believe it is little importance until finally settles into working within a given system. Once one chooses a given system of cultivation/practice one should assume the correct attribution of the system in question. This assumption should continue until such time as one's own wisdom/intuition governs that personally relevant corrections/changes should be made. However, one must know the rules before one can safely break the rules.

 

I think it is important to remember that we are dealing with etheric/energetic realities here and not purely physical realities. The energetic can and will leave evidence of its process upon the physical body but it is not ultimately rooted there as a fundamental reality. There is correspondence of course but my heart isn't really my heart chakra, my pituitary gland isn't really my 7th chakra and so on.

Sundragon

 

 

Science is science. Physiology on the other hand, the physical locations of aspects of the body should be looked at and taken into consideration.

[Sundragon]

Science is science. Physiology on the other hand, the physical locations of aspects of the body should be looked at and taken into consideration.

 

We aren't discussing the hard sciences here of physical biology or physics. If we were actually dealing with issues of hard science there would be one practical and effective means of doing energy work and all others would be incorrect and ineffective but this is not the case. Hard science would require an energetic body that is, outside of slight individual deviations, fundamentally the same across the board for all people at all times in the same manner that human beings have always had, since the dawn of mankind and all of our vertabrate ancestors, a heart and lungs.

 

I have worked with qabalistic standing meditation and have built the Tree of Life in my aura and have felt its effects. The attributions of the qabalistic Tree of Life are quite different from either Taoist or Yogic attributions. The number of energy centers is different, color attributions are different, the divine names invoked are different, the path the energy takes is different but I have felt the palpable effects of the practice and even achieved an out of body experience (unintentional) via such techniques. Qabalistic energy meditation works just like qigong works and just like kundalini yoga works.

 

If we were dealing in hard wired, fundamentally physical realities that could be seen scientifically then there would not be multiple effective systems. No one can claim that there is a hard science, physical, testable and repeatable reality to their energy work because in doing so they are implying that others systems are incorrect. Also, the very fact that energetic work is fundamentally an intention based practice also takes it outside of the hard sciences. No matter what my intention, if I jump off a 1000ft cliff I am dead..that is physics and that is hard science.

 

There can be scientific measurements of the effect of a given system perhaps but not of the energetic map proposed by the system(s) in question.

 

 

 

Sundragon

[宁]

I voted "very important."

 

It is a well-publicized fact that people consciously use less than 5% of thier brain; it is a less known fact that most of the brain is comprized of representations from the organs of the body, and most of one's mind communicates with one's own body rather than with anything on the outside. If all of this communication is happening on the level of the unconscious, that's the extent of conscious mind one has: close to none at all! The neocortex concocts stories, but without these stories connecting consciously to the stories the body is telling, they are just a bunch of fairy tales. Reality lies within.

 

Wang Liping (from whom I learned a wuxing practice aimed at clearly discerning and qi-moving one's inner organs as the first step to any energy manipulations) says that in most modern people, their own inner organs are beyond clear perception and are sort of lumped together into an indistinct blob, everything stuck together. An inner mess instead of a beautiful and meaningful universe. He demonstrated some martial advantages of having a distinct picture and voluntary control of this universe by asking one of his students to punch him in the liver, as hard as he could. He pushed his liver out to make it clearly visible under the rib cage, and the student aimed a fast hard punch there, but by the time of the contact, WLP had moved his liver up all the way into his armpit and hid it there, so the punch landed where there were no organs to damage, just an empty space. He showed it a few times, with his liver and his kidneys. He moves them the way you and I move a hand -- consciously and with precise control. Which means he can strike with the liver or with a kidney in a martial situation too -- that's the true meaning of the taiji maxim "the whole body is a hand," i.e. you can't make contact with a vulnerable spot that won't strike back anywhere on the body. Or of Laozi's "death can't penetrate anywhere, because they're empty." These are not empty words -- applied to MA, they are instructions... for learning what your body is and what it is capable of.

 

I have a strong aversion to any and all philosophies and religions that promulgate disdain for the body, whether openly or implicitly. In fact, to me it's a huge red flag, an indicator of these systems' origin in the agenda of the exploiting overlords: if the masses are taught that their bodies don't matter, it's a prerequisite for breeding slaves who will gladly embrace slavery on religious or philosophical grounds. Which is exactly what happened, historically speaking.

 

I very much agree with your view!

[steve]

Oh, and about the muscles between the ribs -- I don't mean move with breathing, cut me some slack there!

I knew what you meant

Just making the point that there is enormous untapped potential in the human body.

We all control our intercostals every day of our lives but with proper training, we can learn to do amazing things!

I think we agree more than we disagree.

 

I really enjoyed both of your posts Sundragon.

[宁]

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