Fullness and emptiness are two aspects which work together. Say you have a cup of water. You will drink the water, which will lubricate the system and go towards creating energy. This energy can be used to do various things. If you eat food, then it becomes part of your body in various ways. It can be used as energy which you immediately expend, or it can be used to regenerate cells. If you wish to regenerate cells, this takes a lot more time and energy than simply eating and then rushing off somewhere to do an everyday task. this is why various forms of energy healing rarely work in peoples experience, because in todays world they are often expected to rush around from one appointment to the next as if they never run out of energy. Either that or it is as if you just go and get a job done, and then rest if there happens to be time. However, there is never Time unless you see the value of waiting and slowing down from time to time.
When you eat food, it can be delivered to the blood, or stored in the liver. This happens in different proportions according to a persons lifestyle and approach to nutrition. Today it is common for athletes top eat blended food. This is because due to their demanding schedule, they don’t seem to have time to sit down and eat. Digestion takes a lot of time and energy if it is to be done properly. This is why elaborate rituals in the past have been established around eating. For example, in fast food restaurants you sit in an overly stimulated environment and eat sugar and salty foods. this is because the senses have been ramped up to cause a kind of craving, whether you are hungry or not. So for someone who is always stimulating the appetite unnaturally, they want to be full all of the time. This has caused all kinds of health complications. However, if you can find some time to sit and eat quietly, this not only improves digestion but also helps restore normal appetite.
The air you breathe can be used to fuel digestion, or it can simply be used to get through the day in a haphazard manner. You can use it to deeply stimulate the internal organs, or simply breathe in an everyday shallow way. All of these things, nutrition, water intake, lifestyle, and breathing, form a complex interaction which produces various results health. So the more you become conscious of all of these things, the more you can make an informed decision. If they are simply done unconsciously, the body’s processes will function just enough to eat reproduce and sleep. However, this kind of ordinary functioning can be ramped up in various ways. One such way is to become empty. As we have seen fast food environments make you feel empty when in fact you’re full. if you sit quietly, or go for a gently walk in nature for example, you are able to increase digestive functioning so that you are more aware of when you need to eat. You then eat what you need rather than out of some kind of built up compulsion through habit.
If your cup is full, then you must do some work in order to empty the cup. Emptying the cup happens in different ways. You can exert yourself in the gym, or simply sit still and let the food assimilate into the body. Or you can do both in varying degrees. So training in martial arts involves converting food into some sort of output, which shapes the person into a martial artist on the physical level. This is why in martial arts, the clean diet was stressed. By clean we simply mean not too much additive or artificial chemicals. Then you are responding to the food rather than the additional chemicals added into the food. Chemical dependance becomes a problem over time, and it is much more difficult today to find food which doesn’t have artificial elements to it. So a good ways to ensure that you diet is healthy is to not eat food which is as untreated as possible, and according to the body’s needs rather than in response to the taste buds only.
So by filling the cup, you create the conditions for emptying it is you are able to take some simple steps. Filling the cup well becomes part of emptying it properly. Emptying the cup properly happens according to certain patterns of energy which can be built up and experienced. These are the reasons for focusing on the energy meridians and chakras. When you focus on maintaining and upright and relaxed posture, you will increasingly feel these established channels operating. They do not happen at random and are a reliable source of feedback as to whether your energies are functioning well. This is known as the way in martial arts, which is beyond form because it is the basis of creating the form itself.
So when you have experienced emptiness, this creates a different kind of fullness on another level. You become more full or vigour and enthusiasm, rather than lethargic from overeating. This is so even if you don’t eat. At the same time you appetite will increase because you are more able to perform work properly as the demand is there. It is not overeating itself that creates lethargy, it is just that if you try to eat a lot of food and then set yourself down in a lazy inert way, then this energy does not convert particularly well. So there is sitting meditatively, and sitting casually. Whereas if you go for a gentle walk, or sit in an upright relaxed posture, this in itself can be a good way to burn clarions in a slow way. More accurately you are converting calories. So there is fast burning, which uses up quickly, and slow burning which happens as a long term process of transformation. it is not a question of good or bad, but if you overdo the fast burning then the need for slow burning increases due to the level of stress hormone which can build up in the body. This is why athletes are continuously looking for recovery solutions artificially.
many people only sit down in an lethargic manner. They believe that you should sit only when you are exhausted. However, you won’t make the most out of this time if you don’t put any kind of effort into the process. I’m not talking about mental or physical effort, only momentum of energy which requires a different kind of effort. For example, you can sit and perform various breathing exercises, which cause deep pressure on the organs and breathing muscles, which give you a deep core workout without moving the limbs around. This is why people athletes often go to high altitude when they train, to stimulate the core breathing muscles. This then clear the lactic acid away from the body effectively by increasing blood flow and circulation. You are then more effectively able to train even though you have not done much in the way of conditioning exercises. The same thing happens in deep breathing without the need for high altitude. Otherwise various drugs can be the way. So you actually want to be full of energy in order to do perform breathing exercises effectively, rather than just as an afterthought once you are empty in other ways. Eating food stimulates the core for this energy, which requires a certain period of rest before you can engage properly. This is why digestion is so important.
Becoming empty pesters the system into various states of need and demand. This is why people who are always exhausted can still remain active even though in many ways they are empty. They are full of a certain kind of anticipatory agitation, which is a kind of energy spike. Such people can go all out but then often require days to recharge. This kind of expenditure is enough to ensure survival, but because it is unstable requires various other kinds interventions to support. For example, the mind and emotions play a big role in supporting such states of stress, whereas one who has done the necessary preparation can become self supportive because when the energies have built up to a certain level, these energies are never wrong. The mind however can be wrong, just as emotional response can be wrong. But when the energies are driven in a powerful way, the emotions and mental energies follow in their rightful place. This is a kind of intuitive intelligence. It is not a question of better or worse, it is just that when the energy systems are cultivated to a certain extent they are able to see much more of reality than the normal mental and emotional states of energy alone.
So in Martial arts we say that to become full you need to empty the cup. At one level, this means expenditure of energy. At another level, it means conversion of energy. To heal the body after a fight or stressful situation? This obviously takes a large amount of energy if it is to be done quickly. This means that you apportion a certain amount of energy to stretching and breathing exercises for example. There are many such exercises, which can be easily found online so I will not go into detail right here now. Even a small amount of this will have some effect.
To engage in a fight or stressful situation recklessly, this is a certain expenditure of energy in itself, which obviously cannot then be converted into something else. If people thought about it carefully, they would see that massive expenditure has a knock on effect the next day. It is not that you just get though the stress of a situation and then back off and hope for the best. This is a limited approach. If you recognise the toll a situation takes on the energy systems, then it becomes immediately clear when these systems have been compromised because they reflect the tuth of a situation. Mentally you tell yourself you’ll be fine. Emotional, you are involved. There are many deceptions here. However, once the mental, physical and emotional energy shave found their appropriate place in the hierarchy, they will follow the high systems of energy, the energy body, which actually overlaps the other physical and mental bodies, and has an entire reality of its own. This is why the bodies were so called in Indian systems, because they are entire realities of experience rather than just offshoots of the physical body.
