How important are emotions when it comes to healing? Could they be the key to total recovery? In his groundbreaking book, The Psychology of Inner Perception, Master Zhen explains how a new branch of psychology can help to clear our emotional states. In this episode, I discuss the principal ideas with Mariana del la Vega. My name is Torsten Lueddecke, and this is the Wisdom Qigong Podcast. To learn more about
the psychology of inner perception, join Master Zhen on one of his upcoming online courses or on his trip to China. You can find more information in the show notes. So, hello everyone. Today, I’ve got Mariana del la Vega with me for the second time. We had an excellent and wonderful podcast a couple of weeks ago. For everyone who hasn’t heard it, please go back to the show notes.
Make sure you listen to Mariana. Mariana, I’m happy to have you back on the show. We have a particular reason why we meet today, because we want to talk about the psychology of inner perception. Now, this is based on a book and training that Master Zhen created many years ago, and it’s hugely successful and popular in the community. For those there who don’t know what it is, we
thought we’d explore it, and maybe we can get an idea of what this concept of ‘psychology of inner perception’ is all about. Hi, I’m so happy to be here. Thank you for inviting me for the second time. It’s always a pleasure to chat with you and with the whole community. Well, the psychology of inner perception. It’s just the culmination of all the experience Teacher Zhen had since he
was in the Huaxia Center. First, I think it’s useful and important to just remember where Zhineng Qigong comes from. It summarizes, also Teacher Pang developed this whole science from the whole tradition of Taoist, Buddhist, and Confucian traditions in China and the whole Chinese medicine tradition. This way of looking at the world, looking at reality as a whole entity. So, it is a well-known practice in Buddhist Chinese tradition
that the way to wisdom is through the heart, the cultivation of the heart. So, Teacher Zhen, while he was in the recovery department at the Huaxia Center, discovered that, for the same illness, for the same symptoms, for the same problem, two people reacted differently to the practice. He was really curious about what was happening. How come both of them practice the same methods at the same time, with
the same intention, and they get different results? Some people quickly recover, and some people, who may not have so severe problems, don’t recover or have only a slight recovery. So, what is happening here? He had the opportunity to talk about this with Dr. Pang and with several other teachers and instructors. He came to the realization that emotional blockages are a very important issue in the recovery process. There
are some physical blockages that respond to Qi therapy, the Hunyuan Qi Therapy. Of course, the energy starts moving those blockages. It can do so much if we don’t realize there is an emotional and mental pattern that created or produced that symptom in the first place. So, the emotional blockages respond in time with the methods, the Zhineng Qigong methods, and the practice. People have to have the clarity, the
clear mind, to understand that the invisible determines or produces the visible. By invisible, you mean the emotions and the thought patterns, right? Yeah. It has been studied in some other traditions and research. What comes first? Is it the emotion, or is it the thought? Information moves really quickly in the universe and, of course, also in the human mind. Master Pang explains this in the Hunyuan Entirety Theory. Hunyuan
Qi has two levels of movement. The first one is so fast, it’s the whole information of the whole universe. We, as humans, as an expression of the universe, are also receptacles of all this information. The human mind cannot consciously be aware of the whole information at the same time. It’s just too much. So, just think for a moment about the information that is moving in each and every
one of the body’s processes. Metabolism, electricity, chemical processes. The whole information of the universe is moving, is expressing through these processes. So, we are not aware of that information. There’s another movement in the mind, which is logical thinking and concepts. We can again only be aware of a part of that. When we say, for example, “universe,” when we say any concept, there’s a lot of information that comes
behind that concept, “universe.” But we are not exactly aware of where, or from where, we are expressing the word or the concept “universe.” And we can understand that when you say “universe,” you may mean something different from when I say “universe,” because it also depends on my story, my experiences, my education, etc., etc. But we have come to agree that when I say “universe” and you say “universe,”
we communicate, but you start realizing we’re not talking about the same thing. So this other movement of the mind is the movement which we are practicing. With all the movements, all the methods in Zhineng Qigong, they start to make you conscious and make your mind clear. So you can really observe all these concepts, and these concepts make up a story, and that story produces an emotional reaction. So
emotions, when repeated, start forming patterns. That pattern, in time, becomes your character. So when I say, “I’m a shy person,” or when I say, “I’m emotional or sensitive, or I get angry easily,” what I’m saying is that I have a repeated pattern of emotion. Sometimes that pattern was initiated because of a self-defense mechanism in some part of my life. So it served a purpose, but now I can
see it has no purpose anymore. So I can let it go. Even though the psychology of inner perceptions was derived from the Zhineng Qigong practice, we could say it’s applied Zhineng Qigong. We could use this term. Many people say, “Is it a method of Zhineng Qigong?” Teacher Zhen says it’s not exactly a method taught by Master Pang, by Dr. Pang. It is the application of the theory and
of this experience, working with so many people for over 30 years who were able to recover just by practicing the methods, because there was an emotional blockage that was preventing this recovery from happening. So, is it also fair to say that, by learning the psychology of inner perception and applying these techniques, the actual Zhineng Qigong exercises become far more effective because the blockages are no longer there? If
I understand you correctly, this was the starting point for Master Zhen. He observed that, for some people, the Zhineng Qigong exercises and Hunyuan Qi therapy worked very well. They were successful in the healing, and for others they weren’t. He found out that this was linked to these blocked emotions. So, basically, by using the concepts of ‘psychology of inner perception,’ we are clearing the way for the Zhineng Qigong
exercises, the classic exercises that we all know, to work efficiently. Is that a correct thought that I’m having here? Yeah, it is. It is, in my experience, because I believe Teacher, Master Pang, Dr. Pang created all these methods. All these methods are pointing to the same objective, which is wisdom, which is a clear mind, a stable mind, an awakened mind. So, some of them involve movement, some of
them involve sounds, some of them involve static meditation. At the end of the day, all of them point to the same objective. In this sense, it also works with emotional blockages, especially, for example, the level three methods. You work with the five organs, which are in charge of regulating the emotional Qi, etc. You need a very disciplined practice. What Teacher Zhen also discovered is that many people are
not that disciplined. They don’t have the patience and the commitment to the practice, so they sometimes abandon the practice. This ‘psychology of inner perception’ is based on the fundamental concept of the Shen. You know what the Shen is. We’ve talked about this in many of your podcasts, and on your page, you have a special video explaining what Shen is. Shen is this part of the mind that is
the boss of life. It is the movement of the awakened mind, the Yi Yuan Ti. Every time we bring our whole attention to one thing, that’s Shen. Like you can think about your hand, and it’s only a concept. It’s only a small movement of your attention. When you bring your whole attention, your whole presence to your right hand, for example, that’s the Shen. So that is one of
the key concepts in Hunyuan Entirety Theory—the concept and the explanation of what consciousness is. What I’ve learned, what I’ve experienced with Teacher Zhen is, how do we practice that? It’s really difficult to intellectually understand the whole theory of Shen and Yi Yuan Ti, but in reality, we are already making use of the mind. So how do we bring that to the practice? In Spanish, we say, “Do you
eat that cold or do you eat that hot?” I mean, please explain to me like in daily life. So Teacher Zhen said, “Sometimes the easiest, the simplest practice is the most effective.” When you bring your attention, when you bring your Shen to something, to a blockage, the blockage naturally transforms and disappears. It is your undivided attention, it is your non-judgmental attention, it’s your loving, compassionate attention to something.
That part of the mind. It’s a very subtle, fine Qi that transforms the blockage, which is a Qi that is vibrating in a lower frequency. What is really interesting about this is that it is also a very good realization of what we really are. When we are identified with the blockage, when we are identified with the emotion, with the problem, we become anger. We become fear. We become
sadness. We become anxiousness, anxiety. When you observe, when you make this distance, when you really observe and pay attention to what is happening, you can see that this is only a movement of energy. The emotion is something that is just happening. It’s not good. It’s not bad. It’s just happening. The first effect, the first result, the first benefit is that you can let this energy just be. In
letting it be, it transforms and becomes something else, disappears. We have a way you can discover Qigong. At the Zhineng Qigong Student Hub, we know that understanding Qigong is very important, and also that Zhineng Qigong in itself has various nuances that people can’t easily comprehend. We’ve approached it in the style of a video game. On this page, Discover Qigong, you can select your character. So you can either
be a beginner, a practitioner, a holistic healer, or a self-healer, and you click on your character, which takes you to these different sections. In these sections, you can explore the nuances. When you click on a card, all of the resources pop up. We’ve made it really fun, and not many people know about it. If you are interested, have a look and discover Qigong. Let me just see whether
I understand that correctly. So what you’re suggesting here is that if I have blocked emotions, I cannot be my true self because they are in the way. I start to define myself through them because they kind of control how I go through life and how I act in everyday situations. You’re suggesting that through the act of observation, and through the act of bringing your awareness into this emotion
or towards this emotion, staying with it while observing, it will disappear. Is that correct? Because I think this is really good news for a lot of us who are afraid of dealing with our emotions. Often, these emotions stem from some kind of traumatic experience or something we don’t want to look at, which is why it’s a blocked emotion—because we haven’t really gone through it. In conventional therapy, you
would probably be encouraged to relive it, to go through the emotion in order to release it. That can be scary for many people. What you’re suggesting here is that the act of observation does the job, so there’s no need to actually feel the pain or experience all of whatever the emotion might be. The mere act of bringing your awareness there and observing it is enough to resolve it.
I’m saying this because I totally get it, and I completely share this experience. I know it is working because it’s also working for me. The metaphor I always have in mind is this: For me, it’s like a fog. When you wake up in the morning and see that it’s all foggy outside, and then the sun starts to shine, it’s like the sun is observing the fog, and through
that, it disappears. The fog disappears. I know that physically it’s a different concept, but this is the image that comes up for me when I think of the power of observation. If I may add to that, in my own experience, it’s also true for many problems. There’s one thing: if I have a problem, I can try to use my intellectual mind to think about it and come up
with solutions, which is very hard sometimes and often doesn’t work. Or I can just keep observing the problem, and then the problem kind of dissolves. It’s funny that this technique is not just working for blocked emotions. I personally think you can also use it for other areas of your life as well. In summary, I did say correctly now how you are working in the psychology of inner perception
with blocked emotions and how you let them disappear. Right. The word Teacher Zhen came up with. I’m going to also share the word I use for my own practice. He said, “We’re not really observing because that’s a word frequently used in Buddhist practices, and some people have trouble understanding.” What should I observe? What should I expect from observing? Should I see something? He says, “Okay, don’t think about
observing, just think about sensing.” Sensing is different from feeling. Let’s say you have a cup with some liquid in it. When you feel, you bring your hand towards the cup, and you try touching it. If it’s hot, you’re going to get burned. So, when you feel, you really get too close, and then you can identify with what you’re feeling. But when you sense, you only come close but
always keep a distance. Just sense, sense what is happening. Over the years, because I’ve been practicing with him for several years now, I’ve come up with the phrase “just be with it.” Just accompany it. The example I like using when I explain this method is: If you have a two-year-old infant, a two-year-old girl or boy, and he’s having a tantrum. He wants something, and you’re not giving it.
He’s throwing a tantrum and really lost control. If you try explaining the problem or what’s happening, he won’t be able to listen. If you try forcing him to stay calm, it will make things worse. But if you sit with him and wait, and just be with him—be with the boy, be with the tantrum—it will pass. It will surely pass. You will lovingly accompany this child in his process.
In a sense, emotions are a tantrum that we are throwing. When we sit with them lovingly—no judgment, no intention, not even the desire to transform it—just accept it, allow it. Then the emotion has not only the space of the heart to express itself, it has the whole universe. You’re giving it permission to express itself. What happens is that it transforms and disappears. Also, a very important thing—this is
a phrase I recently read in a post: Therapy, psychological therapies help you. We, let’s say, all live in a prison—a prison of our mind, a prison of our reference frameworks, our beliefs, our experiences. It’s like a prison. We feel we’re not able to move from that prison. It is what is governing our lives. You said earlier that your emotions are deciding your life. So we all live in
this prison. When you go to therapy, the therapist sometimes helps you react. Rearrange the furniture within the prison. So you’re uncomfortable in the bed. Okay, let’s try rearranging it, and what if we put this sofa over here? Would you feel more comfortable? Okay, let’s just rearrange the furniture. But meditation, deep heart cultivation lets you see that the door is always open—that you can decide to let go of
the prison. It is open all the time. The other thing that I like very much about this method is that you don’t have to retell the story. You don’t have to relive the whole story, the whole trauma. Because we are dealing with the heart at two levels. The physical heart. So you only concentrate on your physical sensations. You sense those sensations. You accompany them. You let them be,
you accept them. Just the physical sensations, they have no story. You feel your heart as if it is being pressured. Or you feel a tingling. Or you feel some pain in some part. Or you feel like an electric charge. Or you feel like a sword is going through the heart. Whatever you feel, just be with it. There is no story behind the physical sensations. Then we work on
the other level, the emotional, spiritual heart. The spiritual heart works with emotions. You don’t have to know the story behind that emotion. Maybe it was something with your mother. Maybe it was something with your father. When the image, the story, the picture comes to your mind, we always redirect our attention just to the emotional feeling. It doesn’t matter where it comes from. You just let it be. Right?
So it’s a very compassionate practice in that sense. I think the metaphor you gave with a kid throwing a tantrum is perfect. Because, I think everybody understands that there is no point in trying to come up with good arguments to convince the kid not to throw a tantrum. Everybody understands there’s no point in trying to force the kid to stop screaming. We know it’s not working, but still,
we are applying the same techniques in our own life against ourselves. While you’re suggesting staying with this, being with the emotion or being with the sensation, just sensing it, I’d like to emphasize one point that you mentioned. I think we can’t mention that, or we can’t emphasize that enough. It is the fact that when you do that, there is no motive behind it. You don’t do it with
the goal to dissolve it. Right? Because the moment you do that, you are applying pressure, and you’re no longer just watching it, you’re no longer just being with it. You come with a motive, and then it’s not going to work. It’s really about being completely non-judgmental. It’s really about just being with it, sensing it, staying with it. I use the words “observing” or “observing it,” but it doesn’t
matter which word we use because everybody will have their own way of expressing that. But the point is, you have no motive, you have no judgment. You just stay with it, and that is how it resolves. As you reconfirmed, it means you don’t have to go through the drama. You don’t have to go through the story. I think it’s even counterproductive with this technique to do that. That
is why you let that go, and you go back and put your focus into awareness, onto the actual feeling or onto the actual sensation. It was important for me to make this point about the non-judgment and no motive when you’re doing that. So I thought I’d come back to that point. Yeah, that’s one of the most beautiful parts of this technique, of this practice. I learned this from
another teacher. It’s like saying to the emotion, “It is okay if you’re here with me my whole life, I’m okay with this.” So, like I said, it’s a very compassionate practice. It’s a very loving practice because we keep fighting this battle with our emotions. I don’t want to feel this. I don’t want to feel this. I have to do something so this is no longer in my life.
So this constant battle, constant struggle only leads to making it worse, making it deeper into your subconscious. It will keep deciding your life, the way you look at reality. So, there are many scientific facts behind this. Also, the heart in traditional Chinese medicine is called the emperor of the body. The heart decides the state of the whole body. If you think about it, the whole body needs blood
to survive, and it’s the heart that is in charge of that. To do that, to bring blood even to the fingertips, to the whole body, it needs energy. It needs some power, and this power is understood scientifically. The heart emits much more electricity than the brain, and it also has a special communication with the brain. So, when you let go of the emotional blockages in your heart, you’re
also influencing the way you think, the way your mind works, the way your brain works. Because the brain is always overreacting, overworking. When the heart says, “get still,” the brain follows the heart. This is a great point, Mariana, because we all know how important it is to have a quiet mind, to have a peaceful mind, to have positive, constructive thoughts. And yet, many people struggle so much with
it. There’s always all these noises all the time, and they’re shouting at each other and screaming, making all kinds of nonsense, which obviously is in the way of achieving any kind of awareness or consciousness, or getting anywhere in your life. A lot of people then try to force the mind to be quiet or look for some kind of techniques to work with the mind to get quiet, which
might work for some people. But the alternative you’re offering here is actually to work via the heart. Because you said, if I can work with my heart and sense the heart, and achieve that these blocked emotions are released, it has an effect on my mind. Then I don’t have to work with my mind anymore because it’s automatically. If my emotions are clear and I don’t have these issues,
then why would all these voices be in my head? There’s no need for them anymore, so they quiet down and they disappear. I think this is a beautiful way and also a great idea for people that struggle to come from the mind, trying to calm the mind, and they feel it’s not working. This is another way and maybe a very intelligent way to approach it. It is effective.
It is a deep, profound practice, but it’s also very simple. You just have to bring your attention to the sensations in your heart. Earlier, we were talking about what Shen is, and it’s this part of the mind. It’s the functioning of the conscious mind. So, in Chinese tradition, they say Shen’s home is the heart. The brain is just the office, but the home is to bring it back
to the heart. So that is why, in Buddhist tradition, they stress this so much. The way to wisdom, the way to your true self, is the heart—the cultivation of the heart. So, I was explaining earlier, like, the first effect is that you make this distance. And you say, “Okay, if I can observe, if I can sense, if I can perceive these emotions, it means I am not the
emotion.” That would be like the second effect, which is a very deep consciousness, true self practice. The first thing is to detach yourself from the feeling and just observe it. But the second one is: “Okay, if I am able to observe my experience. If I am able to observe feelings, emotions, thoughts, perceptions, it means there’s an observer and something that is observed.” Then you can redirect your attention
to the observer, so who is observing. In that way, you start nourishing and strengthening the Shen function. You start returning to yourself. It looks simple. It is easy to practice, but it’s really deep, what we’re doing. It has really changed the way I practice Zhineng Qigong because I’ve observed many people. Most people start practicing Zhineng Qigong because they have a physical illness and they are really interested in
healing the body. But we cannot stress enough that Zhineng Qigong’s objective is the realization of the mind, of the spirit. So the physical healing is just an effect. It’s just one of the benefits, but it’s not the main goal. It’s not what we’re aiming at. So when you start noticing the role that thoughts, feelings, sensations, emotions have played in your life, they have been the boss all this
time. They have been deciding what you do, what road to take, what kind of food you eat. Everything in our lives is decided by our emotions, our emotional and mental patterns, which become, like I said, a prison. But when you return the leadership, the role of the boss, to the Shen, to the clear mind, everything else falls into place. Thank you very much, Mariana, for explaining this concept
to us in a beautiful language and in a very straightforward way. I think this is great. And to anybody who’s interested, I think it’s totally worth it to listen to this episode twice or three times to get all the ideas, because then it can sink in. In essence, although the concept is very deep, the practice itself and how to apply it is very simple. The effects are huge.
I’d like to take this opportunity as well to mention that for those of our listeners that would like to practice more, there are two upcoming workshops of Master Zhen in January and February, I think. Then there’s also a very exciting China trip where you can join Master Zhen for four weeks. It starts with an international conference on ‘the psychology of inner perception’ in Beijing. Then there are two
weeks of traveling through some of the most amazing places in China, and then there’s two weeks of practice about how to free yourself from these emotions. So this is obviously a wonderful thing happening next year. We are putting the links to these events in the show notes. So for any listener who thinks this is great, you can either join the online workshops in January or February, or look
at your budget and time schedule and just join Master Zhen in China. Because this is going to be the trip of a lifetime, and it’s going to be a beautiful experience. But now, let me thank you, Mariana. I think you’re also joining the trip, aren’t you? Yes, I will be there, in China. It’s going to be a beautiful retreat. We’re going to visit some sacred, special places for
the Taoist and Buddhist tradition in China. So these are places full of good information, a very strong Qi field. Then we’re going to practice. Intensive practice with this methodology and also superabilities, because when you start sensing your own heart, you start developing that clear mind that starts receiving paranormal information. So you’re able to sense other people’s hearts and guide them to release and let go of emotional blockages.
So it’s a beautiful, beautiful practice. So for everyone for whom all these reasons are not enough and all the beauty of China is not enough, the mere fact that Mariana will be on this trip, a very inspiring companion, should give you the final push to say, we’re going to join this trip. Thank you very, very much, Mariana. Thank you for inviting me. I look forward to our next
episode one day soon. Me too. Thank you. We trust you enjoyed this conversation and we invite you to subscribe to our podcast, so we can stay in touch and notify you of future episodes. We will end today’s episode with the Eight Verses Meditation performed by Zhineng Qigong teacher Katrien Hendrickx. Enjoy. To get your free eBook on the Eight Verses Meditation, please check the show notes below.
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