Body Intelligence
One presentation made a particularly big impression on me and many other participants at the fascinating Science of TaiChi/Qigong Conference in Boston last week. Tuft University’s Dr. Michael Levin presented his research in “bioelectricity as the medium of the swarm intelligence of cells in vivo”. To paraphrase, he researches the mechanisms of “innate decision-making capacities” (sometimes called “body intelligence”) at a cellular level. Committee co-chair Dr. Peter Wayne describes such research as “marrying high tech with soft touch.” To me, it’s one of many places where science moves closer to the mysteries of the Tao.
“As above, so below,” as I often heard during my own teacher training. Our bodies, both inner as well as moving through the space around us, reflect the spirals, orbits, dissolving and reforming of the very stars and solar systems. Dr Levin shows that this is happening in a predictable, patterned way at the cellular level within us. “All cells have an electrical intelligence that thinks about body shape,” he said. “The collective understands the goal. No single cell does.”
The concept of collective, shared, integrated intelligence, both within and among our bodies, came up over and over and over during the two days of the conference. But guess what? It still can’t be explained, not really. These brilliant men and women are working to identify what’s happening within us, but no one yet can describe or explain the initial impulse, or spark that sets the mystery spinning. As the first line of the Tao Te Ching says “The tao that can be told, is not the eternal Tao.”
We Qigong practitioners know it works because we feel it. We’re healthier, calmer, better able to withstand the ups and downs of 21st C. life when we do Qigong regularly and consistently. The qi we work to cultivate may be invisible (at least to us) but we know it’s real.
Watch this space for more take-aways from this fascinating conference. I’m excited to share it with you, both here and during my online and live classes.