Week 6: Vibrations/Resonance/Qi

Are all vibrations "good."

I would have to say No to this question. How many times have I entered a situation where the vibration or energy feels distraught, void, or threatening? How many people have I met in which I felt a "bad" vibration emanating from them? The answer is many a time, unfortunately. It seems to me that there are vibrations to almost anything and everything. There are "good" or bad" vibrations to different organs when they are healthy, ill, or tired. There is a vibration to one's spirit, if one could call it that, when I tap into their Qi. Machines, computers, waves, particles, all have a vibration.

The mere existence of "good" vibrations means that there will be "bad" vibrations, just as there is Yin and yang because yin and yang are rooted in each other. They are interdependent. The concept of "good" exists because there is the notion of "bad" and vice versa. They depend on one another for definition. In Chinese medicine an imbalance of yin will naturally cause a disparity of yang and vice versa. For example, high blood pressure due to excess yang can be caused by an underlying deficiency of yin. The yin keeps the yang rooted. It is similar with the paradigm of "good" and "bad" anything, vibrations or otherwise.

In motion it separates
In stillness they fuse.
It is not excessive or deficient
Accordingly when it bends
It then strengthens.

Resonance in my world?

"Resonance is always a large vibration." "Resonance occurs when two interconnected objects share the same vibrational frequency." "When one object is vibrating, it forces the second object into vibrational motion." This makes me think about dancing, even though I realize that the two aren't linearly connected. Whenever an individual plays an instrument they are essentially putting energy into it just by mere contact. The instrument is then forced into motion. As a dancer, I always have felt that the energy of the music infuses into my body causing movement. In this way I feel as though I am resonating with the music, the vibration, the energy of the music. I have been set into motion. I am vibrating at the same frequency as the music and so is every fiber in my body.


Connections I can make between Energy and Oi?

Oi can be difined as air, breath, temperament, disposition, spirit, or vital principal. It is thought to interact with the environment, having a significant effect on people's behavior. In my opinion, defining Qi is challengin. Qi is such a profound and important concept that to conceptualize it is to limit its true meaning. Qi is fundamental to Chinese thinking, yet no Enlgish word or phrase can adequately capture its meaning. One could say Qi is energy. One could also say that everything in the universe, organic, and inorganic, is composed of and defined by its Qi. Perhaps one could think of Qi as matter on the verge of becoming energy or energy at the point of materializing into matter. None of these definitions encompasses Qi in its entirety. Rather than try and apply Western thought to a Chinese "concept," boxing up the idea of Qi I feel its easier to perceive Qi finctionally by what is does. In this way, Qi can be defined in terms of whether or not its deficient or excess, blocked and stagnent, overflowing and abundant, or weak and thin.