Understanding Qi and Shen: The Second and Third Treasures

Shen embodies our purpose, radiating light and consciousness through the interconnected treasures of Jing and Qi.

### Understanding the Three Treasures: Jing, Qi, and Shen
* 🕯 In this video, the focus shifts to **Qi and Shen**, the second and third treasures, following the previous discussion on **Jing**.
* 🔥 The analogy of a candle is used to illustrate these concepts, where **Jing** represents the **wax and wick**, **Qi** symbolizes the **flame**, and **Shen** embodies the **light and heat emitted**.
* 🌬 ️ Qi serves as the body's **basic life energy**, akin to the candle's flame, and can be absorbed through food, air, and the environment, emphasizing that **energy isn't solely derived from food**.
* 🌳 Environments rich in Qi, like forests, **enhance energy levels**, while poor environments can lead to **fatigue**, illustrating the importance of **fresh air and energy-rich spaces**.
* 🧘 Breathing exercises, such as yoga and Qigong, play a crucial role in **energy regulation and overall physiology**, highlighting the **lungs and spleen** as key organs in this process.
* 💖 Shen represents our mental, emotional, and spiritual aspects, often linked to the **heart**, and is crucial for achieving **higher consciousness and purpose in life**.
* 🌱 Shen tonics, like reishi and holy basil, can help **alleviate stress and enhance emotional well-being**, allowing individuals to **remain calm and present amidst life's challenges**.
* ✨ Strengthening Jing and Qi naturally enhances Shen, leading to **improved clarity, creativity, and overall effectiveness** in achieving one's purpose and higher virtues.

In the previous video, I talked about Jing, which is the first of the three treasures. In this video, I'm going to talk about Qi and Shen, which are the second and third of the three treasures. Now, if you missed that first video, it'll probably be over on the right or the

left, or you can just type it in and look up Jing, and it'll come up, and you can find out where we started with this conversation. So to start off where we left off before, the analogy of the candle to illustrate the three treasures is what I use to really

illustrate this concept so that you can see it and really understand it in a tangible way. So to recap, you know, we have a candle which is made up of the dense physical substance, the wax and the wick, when we have the flame, and then we

have the heat or the light that's put off by the flame. In other words, we have the purpose of the candle. The purpose of the candle isn't the wax or the wick. The purpose of the candle isn't to sit there. The purpose of the candle was to have a

big, bright flame that puts off a lot of heat and a lot of light. Likewise, Shen in our being is our purpose. It's our capacity to put off light into the world, to radiate light, to receive light, to perceive light. So Jing, of course, is the first treasure and it

would be the dense physical substance of the candle, the wax and the wick, the dense physical aspect of the candle that determines the quality and the quantity of its lifespan. The Qi would be the actual flame, which will determine, you know, the light that it's able to put off.

and the he that Sable put off the bigger the flame the better the light and the the flame is actually how the energy of the candle is moving how they how the candle is, you know, spending its energy, it's actually the kind of like the

metabolic functions of the candle and in the same in the same realm in the same vein Chi in our body is associated with the metabolic functions, the basic life energy, the metabolic functions, the mobilizing electrical force that moves our body and we're able to absorb Chi

from the food we eat from the air we breathe and also from the environment so you'll notice people that eat a pretty bad diet tend to have low energy people that barely breathe and use their full capacity tend to have low energy when you're going to say like

a big store or hospital and office building and the environments terrible it's air conditioning there's no fresh air there's tons of EMF pollution there's fluorescent lights and you just get in there and you just get really tired and kind of like want to just go

right to sleep that's because there's no Chi in the environment the air is basically dead it's been recirculated who knows how many times but you go out into the woods you have by waterfall you got somewhere very nice and pristine and you can

breathe better you're just more awake you're more calm and more present you're more aware because there's more energy in the environment now most people think you know food is the only place to get energy and energy is solely associated with food but honestly that's a very

small portion because if you do exercises like chi gong or tai chi or yoga or any kind of breathing exercise, you know that you can get so much more energy from just breathing, and you can just get such a charge and you can really regulate and balance your energy.

your metabolic functions, your overall physiology through your breath, and that's really the secret of all yoga's and meditative disciplines, yoga's, Qigong, everything. It comes back to the breath, so the organ that's associated with the Chi would be like the lungs because we

breathe, and also the spleen because that's, you know, what's transforming our food. So if we're having, you know, damp spleen or depressed digestion or a decreased metabolic fire, digestive fire, our energy is gonna suffer as well. We're

not gonna have very good energy. Likewise, if we're our breathing is very shallow, we don't use, you know, our full diaphragm, you know, breathe them into our belly and use our full capacity, our energy is gonna be low, and we're gonna

have, you know, some optimal functioning. So that's Shen, the third treasure, which is really the point of the other two treasures. The point of building the other two treasures because like in the candle, the point of the candle is the light and the heat that's

put off by the candle, likewise the Shen is our mental, emotional, spiritual aspects to our being, associated with our psyche and our spirit. And Shen is often directly translated as spirit and is said to be stored in the heart because in Chinese medicine each organ stores a different

aspect of our psyche, of our being, and this is how this whole mind-body connection thing in my mind is a total joke and is a farce. And it's just the product of a mind that's still fragmented and still sees reality as little bits and bytes whereas it's not

that the mind and body are connected. In this view, it's that it's all one thing. Meaning if your liver is out of whack or one organ is out of whack, that part of your psyche is gonna be out of whack, and you balance that psyche, balance the

organ vice versa. So taking herbs is a great way to help to build the shin and help to, you know, raise your consciousness, to help to deal with nervous system disorders, to help to deal with mental, emotional disorders, depression, anxiety, stress, fear, all these things are called shin disturbances and

you know, bad dreams would also be a shin disturbance. So herbs like reishi and holy basil are great, what are called shin tonics, meaning they have physical benefits but they work on more of the non-physical aspect of our being, helping

us be less detached or less attached to stress, less attached to anxiety, able to kind of restart, give life from a higher perspective, to gain an insight into ourselves and to see our habits, to see how we're operating and how we're creating the situations that we're

running into on a daily basis. And shin tonics can really help us get unstuck because the way these tend to work is let's say you go through a stressful situation, because let's face it, stress is a part of life and there's really no

way to escape it and we're gonna we're gonna have situations that are going to test us and stress us out it's just part of the game but what these shen tonics allow you to do is remain calm and a bit detached to where you still feel the

stress you still register all the emotional responses you're able to have a little bit of detachment you're able to be rooted in a calm present awareness to observe what's happening and to not be so caught up in the drama all the time now obviously this is a

process that takes time and the herbs work on you as much as you work on yourself so if you're rigid and you're not going to change your thoughts you're not going to change your habits or beliefs anything then the herbs are only going to get you so far

if you're open to change if you're already changing trying to change trying to move in that direction it's just gonna aid that process and make it much easier and more effective now when I'm saying the word spirit let's not confuse

it with more of the Western Judeo-Christian, you know, idea of a spirit or Holy Spirit it's much different from that it's just for whatever reason that's how the Chinese word Shen was translated into English because unfortunately most of these

texts were translated by white males who were raised in a Newtonian Aristotelian, you know, physical paradigm from, you know, 18th 19th century science plus a whole Judeo-Christian worldview so they just took all that put it on this Chinese

medicine, and that's what we have now. Now, of course, some of the things are changing because people are, you know, bringing new information into the conversation, seeing things in different contexts. So I just wanted to throw that in as a disclaimer. Now, I think ways to build Shen obviously

taking herbs, writing goals, running affirmations, doing meditation, doing things that are, you know, calming and relaxing and help you feel more peaceful, yoga and meditation, all these things, Qigong are great for helping to build the Shen. And when you strengthen the

Jing and you strengthen the Chi, you automatically strengthen the Shen, meaning your thinking can get more clear, the creativity can be stimulated, your memory can improve, your intelligence can improve, the focus can improve, your level of consciousness can go higher and higher and higher because think about

this: if you have a candle and you make the wax thicker and longer, you make the flame thicker and longer, or you make the wick, the wick thicker and longer, you're going to have a better flame that's going to burn longer, last longer, and put off

more light. You likewise, you build these treasures in our body, the Jing and the Qi, we're going to put off more light, we're going to last longer, we're going to see more, we're going to have a higher consciousness, we're going to be just much more effective at doing

whatever it is that we want to do, and we're going to be much more likely to achieve our purpose because just like flames' purpose is to put off light, the Shen is our purpose, as well as something that we have, something that we need to

discover and bring forth into the world because why it's stored in the heart and which is why the heart is always associated with higher consciousness, higher virtues and, you know, Dharma if you want to call it that or one's purpose or mission in life. So those are the second two

treasures of course in the previous video I talked about Jing, you can see that I'll post a link to it below or you'll see it in the related videos. Qi again is the metabolic functions, that everyday, day-to-day energy that we have. Shen is of course these higher functions

of our being, our mental, emotional, spiritual aspects of our psyche

What Is Chi and Shen Energy

Brandon Gilbert

Introduction to Qi and Shen, the second and third treasures.

Recap of the previous video on Jing, the first treasure.

Candle analogy to illustrate the three treasures: wax and wick (Jing), flame (Qi), light and heat (Shen).

Jing as the physical substance determining lifespan.

Qi as the flame, representing metabolic functions and energy flow.

Qi: Sources and Importance of Metabolic Functions.

Qi obtained from food, air, and environment; impact of diet and environment on energy levels.

Breathing exercises (Qigong, Tai Chi, Yoga) as significant sources of energy.

Lungs and spleen as organs associated with Qi.

Impact of poor digestion and shallow breathing on energy levels.

Shen: Mental, Emotional, and Spiritual Aspects.

Shen as the purpose of Jing and Qi, representing mental, emotional, and spiritual aspects.

Shen stored in the heart; mind-body connection.

Herbs (Reishi, Holy Basil) as Shen tonics to address mental and emotional disorders.

Shen tonics help manage stress and promote self-awareness.

The role of personal change and openness in maximizing the effectiveness of Shen tonics.

Methods for building Shen: herbs, goal setting, affirmations, meditation, yoga, Qigong.

Strengthening Jing and Qi automatically strengthens Shen.

Benefits of strengthening Shen: improved clarity, creativity, memory, intelligence, focus, and consciousness.

Shen as one's purpose and connection to higher consciousness.

Recap of Jing, Qi, and Shen and their respective functions.