How We Approach Things

Mastery is inversely proportional to the cost of the instructor’s outfit.

Ancient Proverb

This section is often where one finds claims of expertise and authority. That is, you will find something like " Dr. Jones earned her PhD at the early age of 21 and has had a brilliant and distinguished career in research. She has published in prestigious journals and is a frequent lecturer in her field." In Western society, this sort of biographical information establishes Dr. Jones credentials as an expert and an authority who speaks with the force and authorization of her culture. She is someone who knows more than you and someone invoking the power and status of Science as validation of her views. This sort of biography is often accompanied by a photograph of Dr. Jones in a lab coat working in her lab.

In traditional Chinese culture a similar sort of claim to authority might read like this: Master Hu has studied Tai Chi Ch’uan for over fifty years. He began his study as the live-in student of the renowned Grandmaster Hung Twa and became his senior student. Early in his career, Master Hu won first prize in many open martial arts competitions in China. He is a celebrated and venerated Grandmaster and Named Lineage Holder of the Hic Ta style of Tai Chi Ch’uan. In traditional Chinese cultures, this sort of biographical information establishes Grandmaster Hu as a senior Master of his art and someone authorized by his culture to speak with certainty and due veneration and respect. This sort of biography and declaration of lineage is often accompanied by a photograph of Master Hu in traditional costume with a portrait of his Master in the background.

These systems of marking certain people as having status and authority and special knowledge (credentialing) are often useful – in the first instance, a licensed doctor of medicine is probably better able to prescribe medication than the average person. And in the second instance, these sorts of biographical statements establish a person as part of a tradition of knowledge and study that involves many people, often spanning generations.

A ’lineage’ style of credentialing is particularly useful in establishing a person as part of a particular knowledge tradition but is less useful when a new kind of knowing tradition is being created. The Qigong of Interior Awareness is such a work in progress. Bob Iden and Sean Patterson are the founders of this system.

Bob has studied Tai Chi with Grandmaster William C. C. Chen for over 30 years, various Zen meditation traditions, Aikido, and Chinese philosophy. He has also had a strong interest in science and mathematics and was a Physics major as an undergraduate.

Sean has also studied Tai Chi, various other martial arts, meditation, and systems of movement for over 20 years, and is a working scientist with a bunch of academic alphabet soup after his name.

Both men describe themselves as “aggressive generalists” and both have come to understand how the the Practices of these traditions of knowledge can be reworked and combined with our opening understanding of neuroscience to provide a Path, a Way, a Do, leading to a novel approach to, and unique flavor of, self-awareness. This is a very strong statement and need some unpacking.

First, “Path”, “Way”, “Do” are capitalized above to indicate that this system of learning and knowing is a path, a practice, a way of being and becoming in the world. The practices that make-up this system are not something done once but something done on a regular basis, a process of becoming self-aware that is the peeling of the proverbial onion. One layer at a time, a process that can’t be rushed. Often enlightenment is described as something that happens to someone in a flash of insight. Siddhartha Gautama became enlightened while sitting under the bodhi tree. Bang! A flash of light and all is revealed. In Christian lore, Saul is walking down the Damascus road and suddenly is transformed into Paul. This is not that. This is the possibility of a kind of slow discovery of who we are as specific individuals. It does not entail accepting some dogma as Truth but rather coming to know self in an immediate and direct way unlike any other approach. Indeed, creating self as we go.

Second, “unique” or “unlike any other” – how can such a claim be made? How can we know what attainments the peoples of monasteries or other places of contemplation might have achieved in the deeps of time, or in obscure locations? Quite clearly, such knowing is impossible. But whatever they achieved died with them. All that remains is a vague lore of “Enlightenment” attained by great masters.

To claim that this system is a Path to a novel kind of self-awareness is based on the notion that our understandings of how the brain and mind work as revealed in the last 20 years make possible a new kind of knowing of self based on this knowledge. The skills and Practices created in meditation and martial arts movement systems over the last two thousand years can be repurposed as practices of self-awareness informed and modified by this new knowledge of neuroscience (among other fields). This is a unique combination that previously was not possible, as the knowledge simply didn’t exist!

In this sense Qigong for Internal Awareness is an informing of older tools – from several arts – to serve new possibilities revealed in current neuroscience. “Enlightenment” – in the simple sense of “knowing self” here is not some vague, mystical vision, achievable only by following some guru, but rather attainable in various degrees by getting to know our body’s various always-on systems and how they function, what they feel like, how the influence our feelings and behavior. This is the Path of closing the gap between experience and awareness.

And so Bob and Sean are founders and creators of this system. But this system is far from complete and can change as new knowledge becomes available. We have devoted a a rather substantial and still growing part of our lives to this study; in the process bringing together skills from widely divergent practices. In this sense we do know a lot more than the average person and have spent more time in the Practice than others. But we are not Gurus and we ask that that you take nothing on faith. We are not ‘Masters’ in the Chinese sense because there is not yet a fully developed system to be master of. Neither are we acclaimed scientific researchers who claim the authority of Science as a validation of our knowings.

But we have embodied experience of the practice of internal awareness and the rewards that it brings and we hope to share these skills. This article in some measure describes who we are and how we go about this Practice. It is an expression of our approach to authority and knowledge and self-knowledge. We hope that you may be interested in learning more for your own internal awareness.