Flagstaff, AZ USA
A qi-based mechanism with no physical structure, only existing at the qi level.
Controls both:
The flow and quality of qi.
The absorption of qi into the body.
Divided into two parts:
Valley of the Shen – intellectual component (linked to willpower).
Heart’s Residence – emotional component (overlaps with the physical heart and hormonal system).
The Valley of the Shen is associated with intellectual control, akin to willpower.
The Heart’s Residence is linked to emotional energy and hormonal regulation.
Strong movements of qi require emotional compulsion and resonance.
Emotional response (tears, happiness, awe) often occurs during strong qi flow.
Western cultural suppression of emotion (especially in WASP heritage) can hinder effective qi gong.
Drama = emotional motion + presence.
Even in static poses, postures must carry dramatic intent to engage the Shen.
Example given: Mexican or Korean soap operas — powerful emotional expression.
Western cultures often view emotional expression with suspicion.
Modern Confucian culture also suppresses emotion, unlike earlier Chinese traditions.
Early Chinese thought saw emotional display as a strength, not a weakness.
Allow drama into your movements — even small or still gestures should be emotionally charged.
Don’t be alarmed if you feel deeply emotional during practice — it’s a sign of strong qi movement.
Overcoming cultural conditioning is key to deeper, more powerful qi gong.
The Shen is an energetic control mechanism that governs the flow and quality of qi. It consists of the Heart's Residence and the Valley of the Shen, influencing emotional and intellectual aspects of energy movement.
Emotion activates the Shen and drives powerful qi movement. Without emotional presence, particularly dramatic expression, Qi Gong healing is diminished.
Yes. Emotional resonance and dramatic intent stimulate large qi flows. Suppressing emotion—common in Western and Confucian norms—blocks true energetic transformation.
Hello. This is Qi Gong Master Mikel Steenrod of Water Mountain Virtual.
For today’s qi gong talk, let’s take a look at qi and emotion, specifically through the control structure known as the shen.
So the shen is a qi-based mechanism that controls the overall flow and quality of the qi within the body, and also strongly influences the absorption of the qi into the body.
It doesn’t have a physical tissue structure, but instead exists only at the level of the qi.
It has two parts to it:
One is called the Valley of the Shen.
The other is called the Heart’s Residence.
The Valley of the Shen passes through here, back to the midbrain.
The Heart’s Residence overlaps in part with the physical heart, hence the word, “Heart’s Residence,” and sinks back into the torso.
The Valley of the Shen provides the intellectual component of the qi control system — what we would oftentimes call willpower.
The Heart’s Residence provides the emotional component of the qi control system — what we oftentimes regard as being our hormonal system.
The hormonal system and the emotional component of the qi system do overlap a great deal.
They are different things, but there is a significant overlap in their function and in their behavior within the qi system.
One of the things that is lacking within the western approach to qi gong is the need for the emotional component to function strongly.
All great movements of qi have an emotional compulsion behind them, and an emotional resonance.
It’s motivated by the emotion, and it has an emotional feel to it.
In fact, if you are moving large quantities of qi, it’s not uncommon to be:
Emotionally moved to tears, or to happiness
Sitting back in a sense of splendor
Feeling the great splendor of the universe
So you’re emotionally struck by the process of controlling large amounts of qi.
It’s very typical, and it’s typical to have fluctuations within there.
With American culture, we have an inheritance from our WASP legacy, which comes from our original colonial formation.
That’s the White Anglo Saxon Protestant formation, which was strongly suppressive of emotion and regarded it, the display of it, with a great deal of suspicion.
The problem is that this approach interrupts or suppresses emotional movement, regarding it as being:
Foreign
An outside influence
Something that can lead you astray
But with qi gong, we need that for the large, powerful movements of the qi.
To put it in a nutshell — because we’re talking about a complex process which, in a video, even an explainer video, I can only touch upon. I can’t adequately summarize years of training.
What we need is drama.
We need:
Dramatic emotion
Motion
Presence of drama within a given move
Even if that move is static, it must be struck in such a way that it is dramatic.
That drama conveys emotion through the maneuver and helps to stimulate the Shen to move a large quantity of qi into that particular posture.
If you’re an American, ask yourself, “What is the actual implication of that?”
The best parallel I can give you is:
Mexican soap operas
Korean soap operas
They have a very strong — from the American perspective, overwhelming — dramatic component to them.
However, we want that type of drama brought into the qi gong.
When it is lacking — and that’s usually done through a Confucian approach:
The modern Confucian approach is very suppressive of emotion.
Earlier Chinese culture considered the inability to display emotion as a serious human weakness.
Over time, Confucianism became more integrated into politics and political displays.
That changed — it became more about suppressing, much in the same way the WASP movement suppressed human behavior.
Confucian movements suppressed human behavior rather than having a proper regard of what it meant to be human.
What you want to do in order to create a strong movement of qi is to allow the drama to emerge within the qi gong.
That, in turn, will stimulate the flow of emotion within the system.
But don’t be surprised if you are, in fact, emotionally moved while you’re doing your qi gong.
Ok, I hope you enjoyed this talk.
Thank you very much.
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One Response
I really feel like I’ve been raised the way Mikel, teaches. I was singled out for emoting too much and I found it was a basic human need. Perhaps I had found the GIFT OF EMOTING when I had chosen this beautiful gift of becoming an RN . I began as
a nurses aid with a course before I was married. Then my life took more direction. I questioned for myself what more ,what deeper . So my life experience was saying “Open Up and Receive MORE and be equipped to give more. “We Chose the direction of the West. I was driven with EMOTION at that time by a song . Then in Flagstaff, AZ I found in the local newspaper Qi Gong healing being practiced . In or out of our qi gong classes, healing is happening with qi. It’s perhaps emoting qi in our shen that mobilizes our choices.