"Inhaling Makes You Heavy…"

Most of us have heard by now that, “inhaling makes you heavy, and exhaling makes you light.” How many of us have had the time and/or the inclination to gain some understanding of why that is, and what it means?
If I asked one of our tai chi classes, “When inhaling makes you heavy, is it because you are becoming more yin, or more yang?”, I’m sure that most students would correctly answer, “More yin.” But if I asked the same class to give me a basic understanding of kan and li, I’m guessing I’d be met with a lot of blank stares.

Kan and li are, literally, water and fire. Things that are li, or fire, are things that cause an addition of yang; things that are kan, or water, cause an addition of yin. This is not to say that li equals yang, and kan equals yin. Kan and li are causes; yin and yang are the results.

Inhaling is kan. Inhaling causes an addition of yin. Exhaling is li, causing an addition of yang. Inhaling draws qi inward, to the marrow and internal organs. Exhaling pushes qi outward to muscles and tendons and the surface of the body, to the qi wells in your palms (laogong at Pericardium 8), your feet (yongchuan at Kidney 1), and the top of your head (baihui at Governing Vessel, or Du, 20).

Perfect health is the balance of yin and yang, and we strive achieve that balance through the application of kan and li techniques. In general, we are all too yang. We are excitable, anxious, nervous, scattered. We spook easily, talk quickly, and are unable to sit still or truly relax. So we practice tai chi and qigong to add yin energy, to calm us, to slow us down, to give us relief from our jumpy irritability. Yoga is very similar. At the beginning of his yoga sutras, Patanjali gives the definition of yoga as the ability to direct the mind with singular and sustained attention, or the shutting down of the chattering monkey that is the excited mind. This is the aim of asana practice, and is one of the main purposes of tai chi and qigong.

Neither tai chi or qigong (or yoga for that matter) are completely kan techniques. Each contains elements of both kan and li. But I think that it’s the addition of any kan techniques that is so helpful to us. We are immersed in a li culture. All around us we are exhorted to action, to fear, to fight or flight. There’s very little kan in our lives, very little urging us toward calm and contemplation, toward acceptance and surrender. Just the word surrender has such negative connotations in our world that we are loathe to ever practice even the smallest acts of surrender. But we need this in our lives; we need kan to balance all the li. When we hold the ball, when we sit with the discomfort and accept it, surrender to it instead of fighting against it, this is bringing us toward a balance of yin and yang. When we move slowly, with deliberate care and concentration, we are countering the deleterious effects of our daily lives on our health. So even if our tai chi and qigong practices are not completely kan – and they aren’t – the kan aspects are enough, relative to the rest of our lives, that their positive effects are quite powerful indeed.