The Symbolic Life

The illustration above is from Claire Burbridge who captures the mysterious infinite nature of objects in the living forest. Her work is painted or drawn with great detail on large canvases and conveys this feeling of something alive and hidden silently “behind the scene.” Something vital and necessary to life like electricity or breath or oxygen. Something that extends beyond the static form or cage of structure. Life moves and is dynamic. The ancient Chinese would say this movement is Qi. An endless mix and re-mix of Yin Yang unfolding into a myriad of forms and actions. We practice qigong on a daily basis (if possible!) to move, balance and help expand and understand these vital forces. We need to have a direct experience of qi particularly through the felt sense of human body. We gradually move from the invisible, imaginal and symbolic to what is real. Thus, my teacher Master Wang Qingyu in China mentioned that qigong is 20% movement, 20% breath and 60% visualization or imagination.

Carl Jung says it another way-

“Man is in need of a symbolic life… But we have no symbolic life…  Have you got a corner somewhere in your houses where you perform the rites as you can see in India?  Even the very simple houses there have a least a curtained corner where the members of the household can lead the symbolic life, where they can make their new vows or meditation.  We don’t have it… We have no time, no place…  Only the symbolic life can express the need of the soul – the daily need of the soul, mind you!  And because people have no such thing, they can never step out of this mill – this awful, grinding, banal life in which they are “nothing but.”

Jung, C.G. “The Symbolic Life,” Transcript of a lecture given in 1939 from the shorthand notes of Derek Kitchin, London, Guild of the Pastoral Psychology, Guild Lecture No. 80, April 1954.

On one level I practice and teach qigong to help myself and others create flexibility and greater health and well-being in their lives. But more importantly I think is that I practice and teach to “step out of this mill – this awful, grinding, banal life in which we are nothing but.” The Fire Dragon and Tien Dao forms are especially effective in creating a freedom of movement and expression in the body to open the doors to the imaginal, to the symbolic life that seems absent but so desperately needed in these times.