The World’s Fittest Humans
Chapter 7: Ji Feng (China)
In my training on the most basic level, I use the body as a tool to train the mind so that the mind can gain access to Big mind and then I can directly change the integrity and structure of the energy field. On the other hand, in Western training based on science, the mind is used in an intellectual and conceptual capacity to train the body to adapt to stress in a beneficial way to improve performance. In reality, the only thing that matters is the integrity and structure of the energy field because the body does not exist so there is nothing to physically adapt. The only adaptation, if you care to use that word rather loosely, is an adaptation to the integrity of the energy field — that is all any kind of training can do because any kind of training can only affect what is real, not what is perceived as objects. So, why not use Big mind to change it directly?
— Ji Feng
Ji is standing in a heavily forested area in the Wudang Mountain range located in the easternmost part of Central China just south of Shiyan. He has been in exactly the same position for almost three hours: eyes closed, feet close together, back straight, arms held horizontally out to the sides with a soft elbow and hands held vertically with fingers close together with a slight claw hand posture. Visualize a man pushing two mountains apart and you have the name of this qigong exercise: Pushing the Mountain. His clothes are soaked from sweat even though he has been motionless with the exception of some involuntary shaking. Within his mind he transcended extraordinary aching pain in his arms and legs hours ago. He is visualizing white light from the depth of the universe flowing through his fingertips — the horizontal light beam he sees in his mind has replaced all thought of arms. He has much greater strength now than when he started. This is not possible but is true. He feels energy within and without as acutely as he can see the sky. A famished Siberian tiger would not threaten his existence.
Ji was born in the small town of Songshuya about ten miles southeast of Shiyan. The surrounding area features very rugged terrain at an altitude peaking in the 1800m range. This particular region of China has over 200 Taoist temples, the highest concentration in the world. Very few people have cars or use for cars so everyone walks several hours per day or rides bikes. His father is an illiterate miner. The availability of formal education is sparse. Ji spent most of his childhood in and around the many Taoist temples and was attracted to the way of life espoused by primordial Taoist understandings. Although he was introduced to Buddhism and Taoism with Buddhist leanings, he resonated with the purity of the original texts of Lao Tzu and Chuang Tsu. Religious sects of Taoism had diverged into many different, conflicting belief systems but Ji met Master Li Huang near Songshuya when he was eight years old and learned his philosophy, theory and practices and no other. He learned the classical Chinese language before studying modern Chinese with its Western influences. Ji as a pre-teenager was not exposed to the normal education of Chinese children in the urban megatropolises of Eastern China so he viewed the world and universe through different eyes.
Master Huang taught Ji that the universe is composed of a single energy field whose structure is defined by information. Information is a difference that makes a difference in the frequency of the energy field; the local frequency of the energy and the complex pattern that is created changes the apparent form of the energy field in a given space. Both energy and information are intangible; what is sensed is not energy and information itself but only a perception of a pattern no different than pointing out the constellation “Big Dipper” from some other pattern of stars — there is no entity Big Dipper. The distinctions between a bird, a giraffe, DNA, the Big Dipper and “life” from “non-life” are perceptual distinctions only — the only real differences are the informational content of the energy field in those spaces. The appearance and disappearance of forms from the formless — the Great Mother of 10,000 things — defines creativity sans creator. Forms come and go as Lao Tzu describes in the Tao Teh Ching: “The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth. The named is the mother of ten thousand things”.
Ji learned that he must use his mind to supervene over the illusory world perceived by the five ordinary senses; that he must be aware of the indivisible oneness of all things, not be fooled by things. This is not a belief regarding things — there is no such thing as things. The five senses are a very poor judge of reality and must not be trusted. To train his mind to the reality of the energy-frequency domain of the unified energy field instead of the time-space domain of the the sensed, objective world, Ji learned qigong. Qigong (qi “energy” and gong “cultivation”) is the Chinese Taoist art and technology of inner energy management, a means of balancing and harmonizing the qi energy of the inner energy body. Feng Shui (Feng “wind” and Shui “water”) is the Chinese Taoist art and technology of outer energy management, a means of balancing and harmonizing the energy between you and your surroundings. Collectively, Qigong and Feng Shui compose a vital-energy ecology — the integration of inner and outer energy habitats into a unified qi field that exists in the energy-frequency domain of reality, not in the illusory time-space domain of sensed objects and thought objects. Ji was intrigued by these Taoist philosophies and theories of reality and dedicated his early life to their mastery.
Ji spent six hours a day for many years cultivating energy and increasing his awareness of vital-energy ecology. At first he used his body as a tool to train his mind in a rigorous physical practice such as “Pushing the Mountain” or performing hundreds of wall squats to learn the basics of energy cultivation. As he progressed in the physical practice he realized that using his body to train the mind had limitations: the mind must be able to tap into the entire universe to progress, not just the body. Ji came to an important realization: there is no inside or outside, no inner energy field and outer “out there” environmental energy field; there is just one, unified energy field which equates to Big mind — not his miniscule monkey mind tethered to a feeble body. It is the ego that creates a mental concept of separation between body and not-body and this idea of separation is supported by our senses. But there is no separation; there is only one — not two, three or 10,000 things. The body is like training wheels on a bike — once it serves it’s purpose you must lose the security blanket of the familiar and trust the unknown. Using the body in a physical practice — such as training for a sport — can only take you so far; the key to tapping into infinite energy — Big energy — is using the mind as a conduit to tap into the unified, energy field.
As Ji tamed and subordinated his five ordinary senses a greater sense emerged that previously was dormant and in the mental background; now he could feel energy in all its forms from subtle to gross. This new dominant sense of energy awareness overrode his gross senses — his body and gross senses were all training wheels, bridges to something greater and real but previously hidden behind noisy illusions. His consciousness over the years had gradually shifted from thinking about things or in terms of things to thinking far less while feeling energy. Qigong has a simple purpose: raise your level of consciousness so that you tune into energy and tune out external things “out there” and internal “things” such as thoughts. Feng Shui has a simple purpose: improve your energetic relationship with your habitat. In Feng Shui, sheng chi is positively flowing qi energy such as geographies featuring unadulterated mountains, streams and forests. Si chi is the stagnant energy of which sickly animals and depleted soils are composed. Sha chi is “killing chi”, negative energy that drains your vital energy. Ji became aware of certain people that drained his energy and other people whom he resonated with, that he shared inexplicable “chemistry”. He learned to steer clear of those people that are energy vampires. Whenever he went into a large city he felt the chaos and disharmony; he was surrounded by a high concentration of energy vampires. He quickly realized that there is a predator-prey dynamic in the energy-frequency domain just as there is a predator-prey dynamic in the time-space domain such as a physical ecosystem of wolves, deer and bugs. If you remain in an environment that is a bad-energy black hole, it will cut you down at the knees leaving you sickly and mentally depressed, void of vitality, circling the drain to some dark place that ends cadaverously.
Master Huang was astonished at Ji’s progress in leaving the illusory physical world behind. Ji’s innerstanding of the energy-frequency domain prepared him to acquire a new dimension of fitness. In the West, fitness is a measure of how well a species “fits” into its surroundings. If it has poor fitness and cannot successfully adapt to the ever-changing environment, it will become extinct. If it is highly fit and can adapt, it will thrive. This context of classical Darwinian fitness, of course, is limited to the time-space domain of illusion, thus it is physical fitness. Supraphysical fitness, however, means fitness in domains beyond the physical. In vital-energy ecology, supraphysical fitness is the union of your inner energy body with the energy field of your surroundings. The more “fit” this integrated energy field is, the greater its coherence, integrity and syntropy (“negative entropy”). As your energy field becomes more coherent it also vibrates at higher frequencies which are less vulnerable to loss of coherence from the lower frequency sha chi fields. Primordial Taoism and Master Huang’s qigong are not about pursuit of a phantom afterlife, they are about becoming immortal in the energy-frequency domain by mentally sustaining a powerful and coherent energy field within and without you.
Ji understood the term “coherence” to be when waveforms interact in phase — that means the same frequency or harmonic and the wave troughs and peaks match up in a process called entrainment — they shift toward alignment to “fit”. This is positive interference. If the waveforms do not match up, then there is negative interference (“unfit”). A laser is an example of light waves that are coherent whereas normal light is incoherent, chaotic light waves. Instead of judging fitness by the size of muscles, judge it by the relative coherence of the energy field; phenomic performance will correlate much more closely to the fitness of the energy field than to bodily appearance of illusory physical forms.
Ji’s training shifted from being a human aware of energy to becoming just pure energy of increasing coherence that radiates to infinity. He was like a caterpillar molting into a butterfly; this is transcending physical fitness confined by the prison of the five senses, monkey mind, and a feeble, gross-energy driven body to a state of supraphysical fitness embracing the consciousness of Big mind and coherent energy. Master Huang presented Ji with a thought experiment to help him with the transition of the molting process. A bloodhound has a nose that is one-million times as sensitive as a human nose. Not twice or a hundred times as sensitive, but 1,000,000X. An eagle can see individual ants from the top of a ten story building. A bat can hear a sound up to a frequency of 110,000 Hertz whereas a human is limited to 23,000 Hertz. Migratory birds can navigate for thousands of miles over open ocean using the faint geomagnetic field of the earth. If we had all these sensory powers in addition to the senses we now have, our awareness of the physical world would be qualitatively so vastly different that we would have a completely different understanding of our existence. This massive jump in awareness would open new vistas of choices, alternatives, judgements, values and decisions far beyond our currently perceived limited paradigm. We could sense a plethora of possibilities previously unknown.
Master Huang told him that all of that would be a massively life-changing explosion in perspective but despite how eye-opening the sum of that is, it is still shackled to the illusory interpretative framework of the time-space domain. It still doesn’t deal with the real. Now, in your mind, shift to the energy-frequency domain and imagine increasing your sensitivity and awareness to the big chunk of the unified, single energy field that radiates from the center of the energy-you to as far as your physical eyes can see. Unlike a bloodhound’s sense of smell there is no limit to your sense of awareness, it doesn’t stop at 1,000,000X. And that is just the first step of the process. The next capability shifts from increased awareness of energy to guiding the natural flow of the energy just by using your mind, or, really, being able to increasingly tap into Big mind which is one and the same with Big energy — no duality. How far is Ji willing to take it?
When Ji talked to Westerners, he was puzzled by their obsession with objects, things. Didn’t they know there weren’t any things? Master Huang told him that it is all about how you train perception: perception is trainable, highly trainable. When you are very young and learn English you will think in English. But if you later learn Chinese in your 20s you will still think in English but you will convert English to Chinese and Chinese into English. You never think in Chinese. The same applies to the ground of your perception. If you learn at a very young age about the energy-frequency domain and learn and practice the techniques for feeling and becoming aware of energy, you will over the course of time perceive your life in terms of energy instead of things. You have this sense, this ability; it is hidden but always present. You first learn it conceptually, then develop increased awareness of energy and finally learn how to guide energy directly by the mind. In the time-space domain you strengthen muscles; in the energy-frequency domain you strengthen your latent sense of energy awareness. Just like you can trust yourself to pick up a pencil, you trust yourself to guide energy flow. Advanced practitioners have a highly developed sense of energy in their mental foreground. A Westerner’s perceptual, sensory framework of objectivity supervenes over his stunted or non-existent awareness of energy whereas a highly developed qigong practitioner’s perceptual framework of energy awareness supervenes over his objective, sensory perspective.
This also applies to the relationship between objectivity and subjectivity. The mental foreground and background is reversed between the Westerner’s and qigong practitioner’s views. In the West the perception of the senses, regarded as “being objective”, or empirical observation, is viewed as the truth while in the background is the subjective, qualitative, “ephemeral”, experiential view, whereas in qigong a singular, indivisible energy field is in the foreground and the sensed, illusory, perceived world is in the background akin to a virtual 3D, fabricated image or map overlaid on the energy field.
A major consequence of vastly different perceptual frameworks and the reversal of the importance of objective and subjective perspectives is the role that limits play in human performance endeavors: what is limited? Ji didn’t understand Westerners, he thought they were crazy. He wanted to understand why Westerners believe that sensed objects were real…how could that be?
Master Huang only educated Ji about English and Western thought after Ji became sufficiently advanced innerstanding the energy-frequency domain. He knew that Ji desired to experience the world so he introduced him to a school in a neighboring town that offered a Western curriculum. Ji was puzzled with Western belief systems but enjoyed the learning process and progressed at a rapid pace. His mind was so highly disciplined and focused that he breezed through the equivalent of a junior and senior high school education in just four years. He applied to the University of Hong Kong and was accepted and was offered a partial scholarship. He majored in theoretical physics because of the focus on the interrelationship between energy and matter from a Western scientific perspective. Ji took several classes in biology and was stunned by the beliefs stated as fact about how organisms worked; he often felt he was a space alien visiting from a galaxy far, far away.
He started with the most basic foundation of science — Western philosophy — and specifically the branch of philosophy known as ontology. Ontology is an ancient Greek word, ōn, meaning “which exists” or “that which is”. The ancient Greeks had two competing ideas: “atoms” (Greek atomos meaning “indivisible, uncuttable”) was proposed by Leucippus and his pupil Democritus in the 5th century B.C. and The Five Elements of earth, wind, fire, air and aether. Both of these concepts were about “solid matter”, that something is really there. Ji knew about the Taoist Five Elements of Fire, Earth, Metal, Water and Wood but these are not solid matter but different forms of energy that undergo change — quite a different view! As he studied the history of Western thought he realized that the Greeks introduced a grave error and it snowballed from there to today with different variations of the same defective belief of materiality.
Atomism supplanted the Greek’s Five Elements in the early 17th century in Europe but it was the emergence of atomic physics in the early 20th century that brought forth a more sophisticated atomic model than the ancient Greeks. Building on Lavoisier’s list of indivisible elements in 1789 and then Mendeleev’s periodic table in 1869, Niels Bohr in 1913 introduced the Rutherford–Bohr model of subatomic particles, a tiny world of subatomic dimension where negatively-charged electrons swirl around a nucleus composed of neutrons and positively-charged protons. From that point onward Ji observed that each new breakthrough in subatomic physics was about discovering that which was previously believed to be “elementary particles” actually were not; each new discovery was about a previous “fundamental” particle breaking down into even smaller particles. Muons, tauons, quarks, three different neutrinos, gravitons (particles of gravity), photons (particles of light), eight different gluons (particles of the strong force) and even anti-particles like charm antiquarks…the list of names goes on and on. The Tao Teh Ching captures the essence of elementary particle physics exactly: “The unnamable is the eternally real. Naming is the origin of all particular things.” Over the last 50 years bigger and bigger particle accelerators have been built in the cosmic search for the ever-elusive indivisible, elementary, fundamental particle that would be some kind of god particle.
More recently string theory came along which says that if you had a special microscope you would find that instead of an electron there is really a tiny oscillating loop that, depending upon how it oscillates, it looks like a photon, or quark or some other particle. In other words, the universe is made of really tiny strings that oscillate. Of course, doesn’t that beg the question that if I had a really, really, really powerful microscope, what would a string be made of? Alas, string theory is akin to witchcraft sans witchcraft’s veracity. Ji thought of Russian matryoshka dolls: each doll layer decomposes into another layer of smaller dolls in a process that is recursive to infinity. There is no fundamental particle: given enough energy any supposed structure of matter can be blasted into more and smaller “particles” with more and more names or, with a more powerful microscope — akin to a desert mirage on the nanoscale — there would be an even smaller particle always receding just out of reach of any magnification. This process will never stop even at 10,000 (itty bitty!) things. Regretfully, the entire edifice of Western science is founded on the existence of some form of matter but there just isn’t anything there — there are no things. Can you imagine number theory without numbers? That is tantamount to science without matter. At the end of the day, science is a belief system: you believe something is there, whether it is an apple on a table or an oscillating string that theoretically exists because an equation says so.
The significance of this may seem to amount to a meaningless footnote at the bottom of the page of some obscure, forgotten, unpublished paper, but it is not. The reason is simple and profound: if there are no particles — no mass, no strings — then there are no atoms and no molecules and no cells and no organisms and no planets and no solar systems and no galaxies. All that exists is a single, unified energy field; objects and mass are perceptions only, not realities. Master Huang told him that long ago and ancient qigong masters knew that over 5,000 years ago but Ji needed to get a college degree in Theoretical Physics to prove to himself that the emperor is naked.
After graduating from the University of Hong Kong, Ji got a job as a lab technician working in the Life Sciences Department at Peking University in Beijing. This was his first exposure to sports and he enjoyed lifting weights and indoor rowing on campus but still maintained a three hour per day qigong practice. Some of his friends were powerlifters so he joined them and to everyone’s surprise but his own he got pretty strong in just two years. Through his eyes he felt energy in all its different qualities and did not know how to impose limits on himself doing anything: limits act on objects but since objects did not compute for him, he never faced the negative psychological impact of conscious or unconscious limitations: even his hidden, unconscious mind harbored no programs running in the background dealing with limitations. In other words, limits can only exist as a function of your belief systems; if someone points a gun at you and you don’t know what a gun is, you will not be afraid. Where other people physically trained with some meager influence from their mind, Ji only knew how to train his mind in terms of energy through forms of energy others would perceive as discrete objects such as “arms”, “legs”, and “barbell”. He tuned-in to commonly perceived material forms as a single energy field; thinking of it in any other way would be like converting from your native language into a foreign language. He understood the reasoning and lack of evidence behind the scientific belief system so he sidestepped it.
When he was almost 24 he saw a video about the Phenomic Games and was intrigued by the idea of a single competition that encompasses all aspects of physical and mental conditioning. He immediately wondered how someone with his supraphysical fitness training background would stack up against the really physically fit. He learned the basics of Olympic lifting on campus from the strength coach and spent quite a bit of time on weekends going outside the city to the Laoshan Mountain Bike Course used for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. Before Turin Phenomic Worlds nobody knew much about Ji but after finishing as the world’s 2nd fittest human people took notice. He did not do well in the Clean and Jerk but was very competitive in the other four events. By the looks of him — 5 foot 8 and 164 pounds — he seemed a little small but maybe that just means he is not composed of quite as many charm quarks, muons and oscillating strings as some of the other specimens at the Games. In the words of Ji: “Looks are deceiving. Perception is not reality”.
China went ballistically viral about Ji; not since Yao Ming — the 7-foot-6 Chinese basketball player that was a star in the NBA in the era of Shaq — did China embrace an athlete with such ebullience. The Chinese government wanted to take over his entire training program but Ji did not want to fully commit to a Western approach to physical conditioning but he knew he needed help with technique and wanted access to training ideas that made sense to him. The Chinese have the best Olympic weightlifting program in the world and that was his weakest area. Being in Beijing, he also had access to the Laoshan Velodrome for learning technique for The Burn. He still would spend at least three hours per day doing qigong and another hour doing flexibility training.
Ji met with Coach Faxin Wang, one of the coaches of the Chinese National weightlifting team. Ji was going to spend a good chunk of his training time at the National Sports Training Center in Beijing. Since Ji did not have to qualify for Whistler, Coach Wang put together a really comprehensive periodized training program, as solid as you can get for a single annual training cycle. It didn’t take long for Coach Wang to find multiple critical errors in Ji’s biomechanics after analyzing the video from last season’s Phenomic Games. But overall, Ji wanted to do everything his own way and his way is always following the Great Way. Everything is about mind; where the mind goes energy follows. No exceptions. Recovery in the energy-frequency domain is about tuning your energy field by very concentrated visualization, or really “feelization” of anatomy, that is, energy anatomy, not the material anatomy of muscles and organs. After you develop the skill it is similar in principle to tuning a piano with a tuning fork. You develop a feel for flat or sour notes and you know precisely what C sharp should sound like. Just like a bloodhound’s sense of smell is 1,000,000X more sensitive than yours, imagine if your feeling sense of energy were 1,000,000X more sensitive and had tuning capability. This is not possible if you believe in objectivity.
The Chinese National rowing squad is near Shanghai which is 810 miles away from Beijing but with the Jinghu High-Speed Railway operating at 185 mph it takes less than 5 hours. Ji met with a coach and did some training there about every 10 days. Ji’s form was already pretty good; it only needed a few tweaks. He got a basic periodized training plan for rowing and wove it into his overall plan. But when it comes to plans, which is a very Western scientific concept, it took a back seat to how he felt in relationship to the environment. He made decisions based on the overall environmental energy flow in relationship to his energy on a day-by-day basis. Yes, he totally understood the biological principles behind a training plan but a training plan cannot accommodate the daily fluctuations in the unified energy field. Ji knew what he was doing, no worries.
Some of the Chinese weightlifters didn’t know what to think of him at first but as they got to know him they liked his very different approach to life. Everyone in China now is educated in the way of the West with the exception of mandatory political curricula. Out of 1.3 billion Chinese, very few had a background similar to Ji. But despite the extreme differences, they couldn’t help but like him. It didn’t take Ji long to understand the physics of Olympic lifting and he improved rapidly. Of the Phenomic 5, it was the Clean and Jerk that was the most difficult to control in terms of energy. He continued to use his mind to master weightlifting. He discovered that mentally it is different to make your own body move in an endurance capacity than it is to move and focus energy on a dense energy form outside of himself. To mentally master this ability it may take many more years. He will intensify his mental practices for the entire year and see what progress he has made by Whistler. In the meantime, he will be training with guys his own age that are some of the strongest people alive pound-for-pound. That is extraordinary energy ecology for moving heavy quarks and obese neutrinos…no strings attached!
Ji was notified that Dr. John Beasley from the London Herald wanted to interview the world’s second fittest human on Friday. Ji thought that would be a lot of fun and was looking forward to it. He tried to reach Master Huang but he was not available but Coach Wang will be there.
Dr. John Beasley and his cameraman Ralph Towers arrived in Beijing and proceeded to the National Sports Training Center. They met Ji and Coach Wang in front of the Olympic Weightlifting Center.
“Ji, pleasure to meet you, you were so amazing in Turin. You were such a force and nobody knew anything about you.”
“Dr. Beasley, well, we will remedy that today. Let’s move on in to the weightlifting center. We have an area already setup with a good view of the facility.”
“Ralph, you got it covered?”
“I’ll be ready to go in 30 minutes, chief.”
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June 6, 2015
Emailed transcript to the LONDON HERALD for the weekly column:
Portraits of The World’s Fittest Humans: Preparing for The Phenomic Games
Ji Feng, reigning Phenomics World Championship Runner-Up
Dispatch from the National Sports Training Center in Beijing, China
— — — — — —
by Dr. John Beasley, PhD
Scientific Journalist
My mission is to track down the leading contenders for next season’s Phenomic Games World Championship in Whistler, Canada and bring their dreams, beliefs, and training approaches directly to you every Saturday.
Who are the world’s fittest humans?
What do they do to prepare?
Why do they do it?
_________________________________________________________
Ji Feng
Phenomic Human Ranking: 2, (male) 2
Age: 25
Height: 5–8 (1.73m)
Weight: 164 lbs. (74.5kg)
Birthplace: Songshuya, China
Education: University of Hong Kong, B.S., Theoretical Physics
Occupation: Professional Phenomics athlete
Background: 17 years of qigong training under Master Li Huang
Started training for Phenomic Games in 2013
Favorite event: The Climb
Most challenging event: Clean & Jerk
Favorite exercise: Pushing the Mountain
Coaches: Master Li Huang and Faxin Wang
Diet: omnivore
Favorite food: roast duck (Peking style)
Status: single
Current residence: Beijing, China
Nickname: none
Interview
Note: Coach Faxin Wang translated from Chinese by Yu Tian
Dr. John Beasley: Greetings from the National Sports Training Center in Beijing, China. I am here today in the Olympic weightlifting center with Ji Feng and his coach, Faxin Wang. If you recall, Ji finished second place overall at the Phenomic World Championship in Turin, Italy last season. He was quite a mystery to us all, so let’s find out what makes Ji tick. Ji, how would you describe your approach to training?
Ji Feng: My training started when I was eight years old. I met Li Huang, a qigong master, in my hometown of Songshuya in Central China. Qigong is a very ancient approach to life that is about using the mind to increase awareness of the ultimate reality which is that the universe is composed of a single, indivisible energy field. This is a very different understanding than Western science which is based on the premise of an observer that observes objects in time and space, thus “objective” thinking operating in a universe filled with objects which would include you and me.
Dr. John Beasley: So is it fair to say that you are not objective?
Ji Feng: That is correct. From the very beginning I learned that the perceived world of the five common senses is illusion, that reality cannot be known through the senses. By using the mind you can increase awareness of the energy-frequency domain of reality instead of the time-frequency domain of the senses. Over time your perception changes from being sensory-dominant to awareness of energy and then finally evolves toward energy-dominant. The mind, by using the body as a tool — as an agent of the mind — develops an increasingly elaborate and complex sense of energy awareness of not just gross energy but very subtle energies. To the senses the gross energies appear more important and impressive but they are not. The subtle energies are far more powerful. They are less dense and are not perceived as objects by normal human senses. An example of a more subtle energy is the geomagnetic field of the large object we call “earth”. Objects that you can see, like me and the earth, are very dense spaces of the energy field. We can’t sense objects between you and me but there is energy there. I am aware of the earth’s magnetic field and I can sense the energy of people in a room. Wild animals can do this too. Animals can sense a tsunami coming long before it happens.
Dr. John Beasley: I am familiar with the idea of people having heightened senses. When I was in Seattle, I knew some mountaineers that would leave the city and go out into the wilderness for several months at a time. In a few weeks their hearing and smell got much more acute and they could sense danger in terms of strong feelings long before it was obvious.
Ji Feng: In a natural state, out in the indigenous wild, all humans would have a much greater awareness of their surroundings and would naturally pick up on energy. They may not call it that, but they are learning qigong. Qigong literally means “the cultivation of energy”. There is nothing special about that. Why it seems so special or unbelievable is because people live in artificial, urban environments that are wildly out of touch with a natural habitat. People get caught up in their heads focused on their little monkey mind worries about this and that, all while enveloped in very powerful AC [Ed. alternating current, as in electric power] electromagnetic fields which interfere with the subtle energies of nature. Imagine if nature were like a cello player and you can hear very beautiful, quiet, and subtle music and then all of a sudden there are ten air horns blasting randomly. The cello music is still there but the signal-to-noise ratio is flat-lined at zero. That is how most people live their entire lives, cut off from any connection to nature. So, of course, they cannot believe what I say about energy awareness. They cannot relate. But equally, I cannot relate to people that believe objects are real. It is very easy to prove that objects do not exist. Do you want me to show you?
Dr. John Beasley: Of course. Enlighten us! [John moves close to the edge of his seat and leans forward]
Ji Feng: On your left is a huge, super-high definition video monitor showing a life-size Saint Bernard. On your right is what you would call a Saint Bernard. John, is there a “real” Saint Bernard here or not? If there is, which one and why?
Dr. John Beasley: This one is real [points to his right] because it is a real dog and this one isn’t because it is just an image of a dog. If you look real closely it is just millions of tiny pixels that in aggregate look like a dog.
Ji Feng: Ok, but that isn’t quite fair. What happens when you look really, really close at what you called the dog? Let’s look through a magnification of one-million fold, what do you see?
Dr. John Beasley: Well, the dog vanishes and all I can see now is a lot of big molecules.
Ji Feng: At this point you would see over 99% empty space with the remaining 1% being what appears to be funny-looking tiny blobs you call molecules. So was the dog an illusion?
Dr. John Beasley: Well, yes. What I thought was a Saint Bernard is really 99% empty space and 1% molecules.
Ji Feng: Ok, now crank up the magnification another million fold. What’s there now?
Dr. John Beasley: What I thought were molecules are now atoms with swirling electrons and nuclei of protons and neutrons.
Ji Feng: Once again what appeared to be solid molecules are not actually solid but composed of 99% empty space with tiny swirling blobs of electrons and more dense blobs in the center. Looking at the big picture that is now 99.99% empty space. So are the molecules an illusion?
Dr. John Beasley: Yes, again. What I thought were molecules are really 99% empty space and 1% atoms.
Ji Feng: Go another million fold.
Dr. John Beasley: Now I see elementary particles like quarks and neutrinos and photons. These are really small things!
Ji Feng: Ok, now we are at 99% empty space where you thought you saw a proton but now you see quarks. Now, looking at the big picture, that is 99.9999% empty space. So are elementary particles an illusion?
Dr. John Beasley: Yes, again.
Ji Feng: Do it again, John.
Dr. John Beasley: You have reached the limits of physics as we know it. There are oscillating strings. That is the end of the road.
Ji Feng: No, not really. It is only the end of the road for existing Western theory on what matter really is. If you keep magnifying in iterations of one-million fold there will just be 99.999999% empty space and some tiny object that you are going to name like, say, a Beasley thingon. Wouldn’t it be nice to know that the universe is composed of eponymous objects called Beasley thingons, the ultimate god particle?
Dr. John Beasley: Point taken. There is no limit to magnifying the tiniest known sub-sub-sub-atomic particle without finding out it is really 99% empty space with something even tinier just at the limit of our ability to observe. There is nothing there, 100% empty space. Matter is an illusion.
Ji Feng: This thought experiment is not over. What about the video image of the dog? You said that wasn’t a real dog. What is it then?
Dr. John Beasley: The image is not a dog but isn’t pixels either. It would be the same reductionist process applied to pixels: molecules, atoms, quarks, strings, Beasley thingons. There is nothing there. The two dogs are same.
Ji Feng: No, they aren’t the same at all! In the Western scientific paradigm they both will disappear to the point that you cannot discern any difference at all between the totally decomposed pair of dogs. When you take this thought experiment to its logical conclusion, meaning, if taken to infinity — the vanishing point — they are identical, precisely identical. If that were not so, you could tell them apart but you cannot. You can only tell them apart if you use some instrument that measures some form of energy like infrared or the magnetic field. You can’t tell them apart by matter, only by energy.
So, where there are vast differences is in the two energy fields that occupy the space of the video monitor and what we call the Saint Bernard. The structure of the energy fields, meaning the information that defines the frequency of the waveforms, is starkly different. I can feel the differences whereas science at its limits cannot tell a difference which is tantamount to a failure to measure, the most important principle in science.
Dr. John Beasley: Yes, in science if you cannot measure it, it doesn’t exist. Only in theory, or, in this case mathematically, would strings or Beasley thingons exist. We are forced to believe they exist because we can not observe them. But it is belief, not fact.
Ji Feng: Another point is that, yes, the regions of space occupying the locations of the two dogs have different energy fields but in the bigger picture we must realize that there is just a single, unified energy field whereas our perception “sees” two dogs but in reality there are just different frequencies of energy just like everything else, from your heart to the moon to Pluto and to a galaxy a million light-years beyond our awareness. And it is always changing, forms come and go, there are no permanent structures of energy. As the Tao Teh Ching says, “The ten thousand things rise and fall without cease”. The frequencies are always changing, vibrating.
So now for my major point of this thought experiment. In qigong, I don’t possess the idea of me being separated from the rest of the universe; there just is energy everywhere. If I can totally lose my false sense of self then my monkey mind is supplanted by Big mind and I am Awareness — meaning it is not me that is aware but Awareness itself and what was once “me” is now me-less. When you have this state of mind — meaning Big mind — it is like the instruments you used to measure different properties of energy between the two dogs but Big mind is much more powerful because it has no limits to sensitivities, even the most subtle wave can be felt just as easily as the most powerful wave. This is what Big mind is, don’t confuse the real one and only Big mind with the concept of the “mind” being produced by the brain. Remember, there is no brain because there is no matter, only energy exists! Do not let science slip through the back door and say that the region where the brain is located is somehow separate; all that does is objectify what cannot be objectifiable: energy. it is just a bunch of frequencies in that spot on the big energy field. Energy can never be an object because that implies it is separate and that would mean energy is divisible. It is only separate conceptually, not in reality. Energy can never be made into an object; that is purely an abstract idea.
This leads up to the following: perception forms the basis for all of our behavior, thought, decision making and value systems even though a thorough, deep understanding of ontology, of what is actually real, like in the fateful analysis of the two dogs, proves that matter does not exist. In other words, perception supervenes on understanding and knowledge. Proof of this is that two seconds after you agree that matter does not exist you are going over there and petting the Saint Bernard even though it doesn’t exist, yes?
Dr. John Beasley: Ji, that is right. Even though I absolutely know that there is no dog there my senses tell me there is so I pet the sensed image of the dog that is fabricated by perception.
Ji Feng: That, John, is the mesmerizing power of perception. The only way to overthrow perception is to change perception itself and that is what qigong is about, a powerful, highly developed technique to change perception from the default perception of the erroneous time-space domain to the real, energy-frequency domain. The ultimate purpose of your life is to change your perception so that a new perception of previously hidden reality supervenes on sensory perception of the illusory. Once you do that, everything about your life is altered: behavior, values, thought, everything. Now, instead of a separate “you” walking over to pet the separate “Saint Bernard” there is a massive perceptual shift of awareness of energy all around with no separateness between anything your eyes discern as objects. Yes, you still see “objects” but your behavior and decision making is strictly based on operating in a single energy field. Einstein said there was no empty space, no space without a field — and went on further to say that space and time do not exist on their own, that they are only qualities of this single field. Most science is based on the false assumption that space and time are given as the primary grounds of reality whereas — that is, actually — they are only derivative, secondary properties of the energy field. He in the 1950s said that particles — matter — only appear as limited regions in space in which the field strength or the energy density are particularly high, your senses perceive something “there” but it is only a useful illusion. Your eyes detect regions of high density energy such as the Saint Bernard but don’t detect the energy occupying the region of space between you and the Saint Bernard. If you were aware of all the energy you would know that it is impossible to say the dog ends here and I begin there. Resultantly, you perceive the dog as a separate object than you but in reality you and the dog and Venus are just energy forms in a single energy field that come and go. Does this make sense?
Dr. John Beasley: Yes, but it doesn’t get around the “perception is reality” problem. Science is an 800-pound Saint Bernard that is too difficult to just ignore.
Ji Feng: Yes, you are right. As long as your perception is locked into objectivity you will be limited in what you can do. So let me define the problem clearly so we can take the blinders off. There are three aspects to understanding this and what it means: ontology, science and perception.
Ontology is the branch of philosophy that deals with what is, that which exists. I am using the more narrow definition of ontology in regards to whether things, matter — that is, physical objects — exist or not, and not a wider metaphysical definition. Given this, on a global, historical scale, there are two major schools of thought on ontology; materialism and some form of non-materialistic energetics. Materialism states that there are fundamental elements composed of matter. The Greeks, for example, proposed two different concepts based on materialism: atoms and the Five Fundamental elements of air, earth, fire, water and aether. Energetics originated independently by early Chinese qigong masters, Taoists and by Indian yoga masters. Qigong means “cultivate energy” and yoga means “to join” or, in its Tibetan interpretation, means “joining to the fundamental nature of reality”. Both qigong and yoga use the body as a vehicle to become aware of energy; in qigong energy is “qi” or “chi” and in yoga it is called “prana”. In qigong you have different training forms like Pushing the Mountain where the mind is using the body as a vehicle to increase awareness of the energy-frequency domain. In yoga you have asana poses like Downward Dog or Crane Pose to accomplish the same thing. Asana are not just “stretches” as Westerners think; Westerners see the body in a stretching-like movement and miss the entire point of it being primarily mental training. Both systems have non-material, inner energy bodies with qigong and tai chi having meridians and yoga having chakras and nadis. Both systems are medical systems and have practices to increase awareness of energy as being the essence of the universe. Szent-Györgi, Nobel prize winner and the discoverer of vitamin C, said, “In every culture and in every medical tradition before ours, healing was accomplished by moving energy”. All of these systems are directed at both becoming aware of the fundamental nature of energy and also to the perceptual imprisonment and falsity of the sensed world.
The Realization that matter and objects do not really exist is the first, major milestone of qigong and yoga practitioners because only then do you have the wherewithal to use Big mind to alter the structure of energy. Qigong and kundalini yoga are examples of two very different systems that use Big mind to become aware of and to change energy structure. In Zen Buddhism, a satori is a profound Awakening to a radically different way of perception, a perception that has gained access to the hidden energy-frequency domain — you see the illusion of things for what they are for the first time, an escape from the bondage of the senses. A satori can only be experienced, it cannot be taught. Many Zen koans point toward states of mind that may trigger such an Awakening. Similarly, in the Tao Teh Ching, much of the paradoxical nature disappears if you interpret it with full awareness of the energy-frequency domain instead of the time-space domain. In other words, Zen koans and the Tao Teh Ching are straightforward if you are aware of ultimate reality; they only seem odd if viewed through the false beliefs of materialistic ontology. In fact, they were written for the purpose of helping people see the true, hidden reality for the first time; if you don’t know that then they will forever remain esoteric texts. In the West, such an Awakening experience is called an illumination or cosmic consciousness, a sudden Awareness of a radically different perception that transcends perception of the five senses. These experiences have many different degrees of profundity. Native Indians from the Amazon basin, north through the American plains, southwest, and Pacific northwest up into Alaska and Siberia with the Inuits indigenous to the Arctic Circle all have stories of using their mind to tap into Big energy, usually referenced by some kind of spiritual name in a native tongue. None of this is any different than qigong, tai chi, yoga and Zen at the level of the ontology of the energy-frequency domain. At their root they are all identical, an Awakening to the falsity of five-sensed perception. Science, however, cannot believe any of this because it transgresses their materialistic ontology: “it is not possible…”. But what is really, absolutely false is the existence of the Saint Bernard!
Dr. John Beasley: I think I see your perspective more deeply now. How does this apply to fitness?
Ji Feng: John, besides these different systems to achieving Awareness of the energy-frequency domain of reality, there are accounts of athletes having breakthroughs of inexplicable performance. For example, an endurance athlete may just seem to have energy come out of nowhere to achieve an outcome unaccountable by physiological understanding. Someone may survive in the wilderness beyond what is humanly possible. When your mind goes to that place where it connects to an energy outside of yourself and when performance is inexplicable in the context of mortals, this is an intuitive glimpse into the one true reality, the oneness of Big mind and Big energy. These performances are cases of gaining access to the energy-frequency domain and tapping into energy outside the body. But “outside the body” is only bizarre in a scientific model of objectivity whereas, in reality, there is no “body” to be “outside of” in the energy-frequency domain — there is only a single, unified energy field! None of these fantastic stories impress me or anyone familiar with qigong or similar approaches to life. They would be the rule — not the exception — if people became aware of the energy-frequency domain. Of course, none of this will ever be “scientific” because to be so means a Saint Bernard really exists.
Dr. John Beasley: Ji, this is fascinating, you are really unifying so many seemingly disparate experiences and belief systems into a common ontology, but doesn’t all this venture into the religious or spiritual realms?
Ji Feng: Most of the time people hear these topics they think “religion” and then it both alienates and divides them and at the same time they place it outside the world of science, essentially writing it off as crap. What I am presenting in broad strokes is a focus on true reality which is about ontology and its real-world applications, a subject matter not addressed in Western educational curricula. I am not discussing religion, deities, afterlifes, miracles and scriptural dogma. I am strictly drawing the ontologically stark distinction between the two major, historical ontologies: materialism and its time-space domain and energetics and its energy-frequency domain. When I use the word “science” I am referring to Western science which is based on the existence of matter and energy in a framework of observer and observed both in Newtonian and Einsteinian paradigms. Do not confuse the utility of science in the perceived realm of the time-space domain with the reality of the energy-frequency domain; the scientific utility is a function of the predictability of a theoretical model that, at best, serves as a proxy for reality whereas with the Mind you can work directly with reality itself: the unified, single energy field. The difference is directly working with energy or indirectly with a perception of an illusory, false belief of reality. Most people are totally unaware of this choice. If you are unaware of this choice the default is to believe your senses and, therefore, you pet the Saint Bernard and you even give her a name!
The error that Westerners make and now Easterners as well, is that they assume objectivity and science is reality whereas it is only a very good model for reality in many contexts but it is not based on reality, it is only a proxy for reality. Furthermore, the educational system promotes objectivity as reality further buttressing this false belief. I am a product of an educational system based on an energetic ontology but I also understand the scientific model of ontology and so I can tell you the difference and how best to apply science and when not to. But make no mistake, there is only one true ontology. We went through the Saint Bernard exercise to clearly prove which ontology is dead wrong. Yoga, qigong, tai chi, and Zen are approaches to breaking through the imprisonment of the sensed world of objects to a new, deeper Awareness of true reality.
Dr. John Beasley: So, where does science fit into all this?
Ji Feng: Let me answer that this way. To have a valid approach to life and training you need to align three layers: philosophy, theory, and practice. What, why, and how. What you believe in, why you believe it, and how you do it. How you do it — your tools and methods for their use — should connect to the theory behind their use and then that links to your life philosophy, your approach to life, what you are trying to big-picture accomplish. Now, if why you believe it is truly wrong, then what you believe in doesn’t matter and you are only going to do it because you are satisfied with the outcome. Otherwise, you move on. Now let’s apply that to our discussion.
In East versus West, the Eastern philosophy and theory are correct and the West is incorrect. I easily exposed its tragic flaws earlier — there is no St. Bernard! Therefore, if you what you do is based on Western theory then you better be doing it for pragmatic reasons only because ultimately reality does not stand behind it. A Western approach always terminates in a long plateau followed by an inevitable performance decay.
Ok, let’s address the merits of science and get back to the heart of my discussion of ontology, science and perception. I am not saying to abandon science. I am saying to be aware that the scientific model of reality is only valid under certain conditions and when you violate those conditions it breaks down and can break down catastrophically. Eventually your progress will stop if you exclusively use the scientific approach. Assuming that science and objective thinking is reality is a very dangerous thing to do and is fraught with hidden risks: understand that assumptions are black swan eggs that — once hatched — can come to roost when you least expect.
There are two major approaches to mental training: small mind and Big mind. If you assume matter exists then you are using small mind. Unfortunately, scientific utility is poor when it comes to mental training using small mind because it cannot directly influence objects since they do not exist. You are wasting time and energy focused on a mirage. With physical training you do have an effect on the underlying real energy field but using small mind in this capacity only slightly benefits overall results. At best, it is terribly inefficient on improving performance. If you approach your training believing that objects exist then the door to Big mind is locked. It is unimaginable to me that people do this.
A major goal of your life should be to develop your mind so that you become Aware of the energy-frequency domain and then amplify your ability to master energy using Big mind. You want to know why Big mind succeeds and small mind fails? Because Big mind is only for tuning into energy — not objects that do not exist. What I am saying is that if your mental training is thoughts or visualizations in terms of perceived objects you are only using small mind and not even scratching the surface of the utility of Big mind. Yes, physical training in terms of sets, reps, volume, mileage, heart rate, power output can take you a long way before it permanently plateaus but mental training in terms of perceived physical objects is extremely poor compared to accessing Big mind to train the inner energy body and then — eventually — gain access to Big energy directly.
Ok, so, John, at the beginning of this interview you asked me how would I describe my approach to training. I am now ready to answer that. Are you ready?
Dr. John Beasley: Certainly. Tee it up.
Ji Feng: In my training on the most basic level, I use the body as a tool to train the mind so that the mind can gain access to Big mind and then I can directly change the integrity and structure of the energy field. On the other hand, in Western training based on science, the mind is used in an intellectual and conceptual capacity to train the body to adapt to stress in a beneficial way to improve performance. In reality, the only thing that matters is the integrity and structure of the energy field because the body does not exist so there is nothing to physically adapt. The only adaptation, if you care to use that word rather loosely, is an adaptation to the integrity of the energy field — that is all any kind of training can do because any kind of training can only affect what is real, not what is perceived as objects. So, why not use Big mind to change it directly?
Dr. John Beasley: Yes, I can see that. What you are saying is you can go out and do a two hour run and that will change the energy field in some way. It doesn’t really increase fat metabolism and trigger gene expression because there is no fat, metabolism or genes. Western training is a model overlaid on what is real — the energy field — and the energy field does change as a result of doing a run. It is just a question of how much.
Ji Feng: Yes, that is correct. But science, meaning physiology and biochemistry in this case, are limited models. You are doing and thinking about a run and how that will change muscles and nerve recruitment but none of that is happening because it cannot happen. You will encounter a limit because at some point any science-based training approach will fail to change the structure of the energy field in a constructive way. And, as I said earlier, your mental training is in terms of structures that do not exist. At least going on a run is engaging the energy field and so it will change as a result, positively for a long while but then will plateau or go negative meaning a loss of coherence. This is because you become out of balance with nature from over-reaching at the extreme. “Oversharpen a blade and it will become dull” is a universal truth. It just seems so hard and strange to transform your life’s focus from doing more to undoing more while doing less. The Taoist term wu wei comes to mind, which means “action through non-action”. This is only a paradox in the time-space domain; if you have access to the energy-frequency domain you can perceive energy flow and you align with this flow — there is no striving when you go with the flow. But to do this without effort means you must let go; to “let go” means to let go of the self, the ego, small mind. It is impossible to have a sense of self — an illusory identity — and be one with the flow of nature. This is a choice you must make. The self is baggage that shackles you to the Potemkin façade of the illusory time-space domain of sensed perception. You are limited — impoverished is a better word — to exist there because in reality, the unseen controls the seen. Science is of the seen, qigong is of the unseen. What you can grasp is illusion, what you cannot grasp is real. It is as simple as that.
Dr. John Beasley: What about limits? I mean what are the differences between limits in a scientific framework and a pure energy framework?
Ji Feng: In the energy-frequency domain there are no limits, if so, what is limited? Energy has no limits. In a Western training approach, your mind creates limits because it frames everything in terms of objects: muscles, nerves, cells, barbells, weight, glycogen, ATP. Mentally, I never think about limits or have awareness of limits. Never. I only tap into Big mind so I can tap into Big energy. That defines my training approach simply and totally. Doing anything else is grossly inefficient and limited. Do you get that, or not?
Dr. John Beasley: You are really rattling my cage and forcing me to think outside the box…
Ji Feng: John, there is no box to think out of! Free your mind, there are no limits except the ones created by your mind. It is erroneous sensory perception that imprisons the mind inside the box.
Dr. John Beasley: Ok, of the two ontologies, why did materialism and Western science win?
Ji Feng: It didn’t win. Truth is not democratic. One person can know the truth and be surrounded by a billion people who believe a great deception. As Saul Bellow said, “A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep”. With science, because of the combination of utility and reasonable predictability, it is easy for someone to get good results with a modicum of effort following a cookie-cutter approach. The relationship between performance and effort is an asymptotic diminishing returns curve; this means you get all the results upfront and then it plateaus forever despite extremely large inputs of effort beyond a certain threshold. With qigong, however, the curve is like bamboo’s growth curve: very little happens for a long time and then out of nowhere it grows rapidly and without limit. Also, there are very few people qualified to teach the principles and practices of authentic qigong. Given the Western mindset of instant gratification, such a movement will never take root in a Western culture dominated by quick fixes and cutting corners as means to an end. The returns on ΔP for the inputs of time and energy is much too slow — in psychological, neurobiological, and even economical terms, qigong suffers from an extremely high decay or discount rate which reveals the relationship of perceived value as a function of time. It’s ugly, I’m afraid. Whenever in your mind you are assessing whether something is worth it or not, the discounting-rate process is going on in your head.
Dr. John Beasley: Sadly, I must agree. The Westerner’s value system — with its high-tech overlord and magical, nanosecond expectations — puts it in the doghouse. Let’s move on to your training plan. In Turin you showed us an incredible display of backend prowess but you were weak on the frontend, particularly the clean and jerk. Ji, what’s your approach for Whistler?
Ji Feng: Coach Wang has been patiently quiet for a long time. He has the master plan for my frontend program.
Coach Faxin Wang: Ji, I know that we have talked many times but I appreciate you explaining about science, mass, energy and the use of the mind in such splendid detail. Even though I am Chinese, I did not grow up exposed to qigong or tai chi training. I learned about weightlifting theory and methodology from sources from Russia and old USSR satellite states like Kazakhstan, and, of course, Bulgaria. From there, we just evolved our own principles and methods based on those foundations. Now that we have gained experience, we use our experience on a case by case basis to address the weaknesses in our lifters as they move up the ranks from local to provincial to national and international level. After meeting Ji and having seen his videos from Turin, I had a good feeling of what course he needed to take.
Ji Feng: Hey, Coach Wang thought I was some kind of a court jester with how I clowned around with the National team athletes…so serious they are!
Coach Faxin Wang: Ah, not quite, but close enough! Ji has a lighter side that took us by storm! Even though Ji had done some powerlifting, by my standards his absolute strength in the three primary muscle groups for our sport — quadriceps, glutes and trapezius — were weak. Until strength is increased there, it is impossible to develop the explosive strength to be successful in the clean and jerk. But his technique was deficient as well. So what we did from day one was work on his technique just with a bamboo pole for two hours a day for a month before even going to the empty bar. At the same time we worked on front and back squats, heavy hyperextensions, glute-ham raises, high pulls and shrugs. We didn’t approach the mechanics of the classic lifts with significant weight until month four. At that point we backed off on the volume of strength work but still kept a steady volume of doubles and triples three times a week going on the squats and back work. But the focus shifted to learning proper technique with very light loads in the snatch, clean and various types of jerks.
Ji Feng: As with everything including life in general, I practice qigong at all times. The bamboo pole I used as a daily two hour qigong training session. It was just a new form I created that used the pole and then the bar. The same thing happened with the serious lifting: just more qigong using the equipment to better train the mind. The weights and my body are just energy, part of the indivisible, unified energy field.
Dr. John Beasley: Coach, did you see good progress given how Ji approaches training, that is, mind-first?
Coach Faxin Wang: Extremely so. One problem I have noticed with some of our best lifters, even world record holders, is that their biggest weakness is their mind, not their muscles. It becomes hard for them to face 100% loads for as many sets as required. With Ji this will never happen. I can see now that his mind is not attached to his body but is plugged into a bigger source of juice, I don’t know where it comes from but it is bottomless. His focus is pegged and unwavering, no gaps. Always on.
Ji Feng: John, if you recall what I said about the difference between how limits are perceived in the two ontologies, if your mind is focused on “barbell” and “body”, meaning in terms of objects, there is a limit on how much your mind can deal with such forbidding, formidable thoughts. There is a mental fatigue — an abstract wall — that grinds you to a halt. In a very real sense, facing these phantom limits drains you in very real ways. With me, I never have this problem because my mind is only tuning into energy. There are no heavy barbells. Yes, physically I feel the resistance when I pull but, no, my mind is operating in a totally different capacity. My mind is not taxed in any way. And it has nothing to do with being tough or having iron will; it is because my mind is in a different space altogether. My mind is not focused on the weight, my mind and the energy of the weight are one. On the one hand I feel the resistance of weight and on the other I feel the energy. One is the normal perception of sensation of heaviness and the other is a perception of energy. I need for the perception of energy to increase and then become dominant.
Dr. John Beasley: Ji, just when you said that — what your mind is doing compared to normal minds — I get what you mean. You truly are focused on the energy situation and not on producing or conjuring up some superhuman, other worldly effort. But if this is so, why can’t you clean and jerk 500 or 1,000kg?
Ji Feng: I would approach any load with the same mental approach: gain access to Big mind. It is just that my mental access is not good enough yet for big loads. A way to think of this is I fail to lift 500kg not because the weight is too heavy, it is because my mind is too light. Being — not just having — deep energy awareness is instrumental in my future progress. My fundamental principles of mind are, in fact, the opposite of mental training of Western origin. The best way to frame the starkly different energy paradigms is that in the West energy is believed to come from you whereas in the East energy flows through you. I am an energy conduit, not a source of energy. The question is how big of an energy pipe I am and that is determined by my mind. Most people are conditioned to develop tough minds and think in terms of herculean effort. Yes, you can produce great effort but not for long. Your body and mind are taxed doing that. High winds cannot last all morning. With me, if I sense I need great effort — if I strive — it means I am not in tune with the energy-frequency realm but am, instead, dealing with the illusory perceived world of objects with false impressions about the meaning of those objects. Former memories of failed efforts with those objects are working against you in the nonconscious mind. You are defeated before you start. Your biggest enemy is your mind in that case.
Dr. John Beasley: And you don’t have those enemies?
Ji Feng: I have no enemies of any kind. An enemy can only be some form of object and cannot be real. All enemies are like the Saint Bernard. There is appearance and there is reality. Which do you choose to encounter? This is a choice and if you aren’t aware it is a choice then, by default, you have enemies and they will drain your vital energy like energy vampires.
Coach Faxin Wang: There is great wisdom in that. I wish I could get all my lifters to see the world with that reference frame.
Dr. John Beasley: I know there is much thought in the global strength community about limit strength, the pulling the car off the baby scenario. Ji, are you saying you are on a different wavelength than that?
Ji Feng: Totally different wavelength. Limit strength is still attached to a perceptual, objective frame of reference. It connects to survival instincts, kill or be killed. Even though that works if you are able to harness it, that isn’t what I do at all. There is no overlap. With me, there is no emotional reptilian brain thing going on. I do the opposite: I become perfectly still and selfless; only then do I have total clarity and access to the energy field. I will be able to lift more as I gain better access to Big energy. Right now I am not developed enough. That is what I am training on now. That and technique.
Dr. John Beasley: Coach, do you think Ji will be a good lifter someday?
Coach Faxin Wang: I know that he will improve and be much improved by Whistler. He has enough time to reach another level but it will take several years to reach his potential. He sometimes is training with us twice a day and can maintain a high volume of maximal lifts and he recovers very well. I can see him clean and jerk 135kg (297 lb.) or perhaps a little more in Whistler. His technique has come a long way but still has a lot of upside. In China we have simple principles for Olympic lifting: keep the bar’s flight path close to the body, move the bar and body as fast as you can, have the mobility and awareness to position your body low as opposed to having to lift the weight higher, and keep the bar and body so that the physics of that system are in balance. If you execute those four things and build substantial absolute strength in the basic lifts, you will perform at a level close to your potential.
Dr. John Beasley: Coach, the world record for women by Kim Un-ju of North Korea is 164kg (361 lbs.) at Ji’s bodyweight. She would have a specific strength of 2.19 in The Phenomic Games. Only Ivan last year was close to that at 2.14. Do you think that Ji has the potential to achieve such a strength level and have a formidable backend?
Coach Faxin Wang: I saw her do that at the Asian Games last year. It is a competitive weight class. We have two young women coming up that will rival that by the 2016 Olympics in Brazil. I can see Ji conservatively doing 145kg (319 lbs.) in a year or two. He may do more. I am familiar with the challenges of improving when a strength athlete gets close to their potential but I have no guidance to offer with the awesome obstacle of simultaneously improving endurance performance. That is what makes prediction so difficult for Phenomic Games.
Ji Feng: As my mind opens more I will be able to overcome the difficulties. The shortcomings are only mental weakness. Numbers carry no weight in my mind.
Dr. John Beasley: How about training for The Burn and The Erg?
Ji Feng: I have been doing technique work at the Laoshan Velodrome here in Beijing and am loving it. The track is so much fun! My weight training is helping out quite a bit to develop a more explosive start. My rowing is coming along well. I spend time in Shanghai with the Chinese National team to get my technique work but do most of the other rowing training here. I have made some nice improvements. I am pleased.
Dr. John Beasley: Well, Ji, you really blow me away. Not sure what to say. You give all your fans a lot to think about. I am certain Phenomic Worlds is going to be something very special to watch. See you in Whistler!
<end transcript>
The World’s Fittest Humans ©2015 James Autio. All rights reserved.
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Next up is Jōtara, the Phenomic prodigy from Japan…
John leaves China and heads south on his way to visit Jōtara, the world’s second fittest female. She lives and trains in Kyoto, Japan, formerly the Imperial capital for many centuries and features over 2,000 religious places — 1,600 Buddhist temples and 400 Shinto shrines. It was also the center of gravity of medieval Samurai culture and governance by the shōguns. Jōtara has trained in bushidō (“the way of the Samurai”) in the Kashima Shinden Jikishinkage-ryū lineage for 16 years under a gifted sensei. We will see the process of building the invincible Samurai mind that is imperturbable in the face of any adversity while being capable of tapping into ki, universal energy. In light of Jōtara being a strategy prodigy, she adapts her mental prowess and methods to the Phenomic 5 to overcome obstacles insurmountable to lesser beings.
Jōtara understands and has the means to integrate the best the West has to offer in physical training and she brings East and West together in her creation she calls Jōtara’s Theory of Training Strategy, the blueprint to elevate her game to a standard never witnessed. Being only 23 years old going into Phenomic Worlds at Whistler, she has a lot of room to grow her awesomeness and John will discover how she intends to pull it off. Is possibility limited only by imagination?
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PHENOMIC GAMES and PHENOMIC 5 are trademarks of James Autio.
James Autio | doctorgo@gmail.com
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