Palpating the Fluids: Follow-Up Answers from May 8th’s Online Study Group
by Rayén Antón
Since early April, Engaging Vitality has been holding online study groups to support practitioners currently unable to practice due to the stay-at-home orders put in place in response to COVID-19. On May 8th, Felix De Haas and Rayén Antón held an online study group on the topic of the Fluids and Qi Jing Ba Mai (Extraordinary Vessels).
Below you will find a generous follow-up written by Rayén Antón, an Engaging Vitality teacher based in Barcelona, in response to participant questions. This response by Rayén further elaborates on core concepts taught in the Engaging Vitality Module 3 training, as well as the intermediate course Ba Mai + Fluids: Explorations in the Morphology and Inherent Movement Palpation.
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Question #1: Could you review at what point during the course of a treatment is it useful to discern some diagnostic information from the fluids? I remember in previous courses that we needed to depart from an initial state of quiescence (SSIO or Neutral) in the system to be able to better palpate the Fluid Body. For example, would it be useful to think about listening to and feeling for the "texture" and "viscosity" of the fluids once we have departed or moved on from the initial state of SSIO/neutral?
Answer: - Whenever you’re allowed to.
There’s no rule of thumb when it would be more useful to start paying attention to the Fluids or to the Ba Mai, it of course depends on the individual case. Having that in mind, we can use as a framework the notion that Fluids in general might be regarded as the interface between the primal qi and the qi of everyday manifestations. If some of the more discrete manifestations of qi are very unbalanced (a Liver qi very constrained, a shoulder with a very restricted Yang Rhythm), it might be easier for the system to start the conversation asking from us some help to clear that out of the way. It could be then that in a next step when the whole system is more at ease, the conversation shifts to a broader field of influence, such as the Fluids or the Ba Mai.
During our Q&A session my wording was something as - in a way, it is as if we’re approaching from the outer layers, towards the inside, peeling off gross manifestations and maybe at some point we find that we can even interact with the midspace, the empty space at the core, that connects with most primal inner and outer qi, at the same time. More or less this is what I’ve mentioned and as Dan pointed out, the idea of approaching from the outside towards the inside could be a little misleading, since there’s not really “outer/superficial” layers versus “inner/deep” layers of engagement. What I do believe holds true is that as the system becomes more at ease, it allows the manifestation of less discrete and more overarching fields of influence. At ease is another way to say Tong (通)…
So, at ease could be right at the very beginning of a treatment, or not even at the very end. Neutral (SSIO) is a description of a situation, of an event, where you can track how at ease, how tong, the system is; it is a tool to help us discern when it is more likely that if we turn our antenna to a broader field, we might get readings from the field itself, not from the many discrete aspects also inhabiting it.
So in a way you can think about it as going in reverse in the Lao Zi 42, in which we read: The Dao gives birth to the 1, the one gives birth to the 2, the 2 gives birth to the 3 and the 3 to the 10.000 things. So, if we walk in reverse, we start by engaging (or at least listening and acknowledging) the 10.000 things, and we work our way back with our first needle/moxa/etc… Then the system “tongs” (opens, connects, communicates) and when we re-check we don’t find 10.000 symptoms, maybe we’re now at the 3, or the 2, or the 1. At these stages probably we’re listening at more field-like expressions of the qi (the fluid body, and maybe the Ba Mai morphology in it, the fluid tide, the fluid wave, etc.). Bear in mind I’m just using Lao Zi as an image, I’m not making a philosophical statement.
A marker for me that I probably should shift into listening to the Fluids to start tying up loose ends is when my initial listenings or markers are solved, but I somehow don’t feel the system is ready to close the session and go out into the outside world.
Another scenario would be when I feel all my markers are improved, and it feels as if there’s nothing else to do (in this case I would use them to cross reference all the other markers: if I feel something very distinct on the fluids, such as a particular viscosity, texture, obstruction in the tide or difference in a layer pointing out to a Ba Mai in the morphology, then I should reconsider if I’m not misreading at least one of my other markers).
In many instances I work with long-term patients who know me already, and somehow feel my practice as a safe place; in these cases, the fluids tend to be apparent from the start, so I simply take them as one of my initial markers, and pay special attention to them if I find something more distinct in them than in the other listenings or findings. Most of the times in these cases, actually we’re working simultaneously in the more discrete manifestations and the interface where the ordering pattern (the Shen 神, the primal qi, etc.) starts to solidify and take form. Again, this is possible because the system (the patient and the practitioner) is at that moment with a certain degree of Tong.
Question #2: Could you review the relationship between the Fluid Body and the Fluid Tide? Does the Fluid Tide become more apparent in relation to how open and homogenized the Fluid Body becomes in the course of treatment?
Answer: The Fluids in general, as a substance and as a quality, have different ways to manifest, while being aspects of the same thing. In a way we could say the Fluid Body would speak to us more about the state, and the Tide about its dynamic. Most of the time you can listen to the Fluid Body (the “bag”), and ask the questions about fullness/emptiness, superficial/deep, fluid or lively/solid or stuck, grain, etc. This is pretty similar to how we tune into the qi and ask about how is it in terms of being Settled, Supple, Integrated and Open. One outstanding finding when we do this comparison systematically in our patients is how many times we find the information on the Shape of Qi to be very different to what we find on the Fluid Body - and that’s a good marker to understand we still have work to do!
The Fluid Tide is about motion, it shows a dynamic. Because it is a motion and has a rhythm, we can learn about interactions. As it goes through the body, we can feel how it bumps into obstacles (we call this listening through the fluids, and it’s a form of General Listening), or that it feels thicker in one leg or the other, one side than the other, etc. All these specifics, we usually pick them up by following the tidal movement, not so much at listening to the bag as a whole. We can of course pick up the general viscosity, or the grain, or some other quality of the Fluids in general while we’re tuned into the tidal movement.
Again, to interact we usually need some degree of ease (tong again!) so tends to be the case that the Fluid Body (the bag) is more or less palpable with a minimum of tong in the system, and then the Fluid Tide comes into play a little later during the treatment, when the system is already at ease and open enough to have space to freely manifest (more or less freely at least) some range of movement.
But then again, it is an interaction, so if the patient and the practitioner have already built a relationship where the system feels safe enough to manifest and interact, and the practitioner knows how to place herself in that stance from the beginning, then the Tide might be palpable from the very start.