Meditation to Alchemy
The Fusion of the Five Elements exercises are the door way from internal meditation to internal alchemy. Fusion I is described as emotional alchemy. I think of alchemy as taking something of lesser value and transferring into something of greater value. In this level of practice, it is recycling the energy of negative emotions into positive emotions and virtues.
It is Fusion of the Five Elements because we‘re bringing in the five energies, five phases, five elements that relate to the five emotions in the body. In the Taoist system, these are water, Wood, Fire, earth, and metal. If we think of the heart as the fire energy, the kidneys are like the water energy, the liver’s like wood, the lungs and large intestine are like a metal energy. In Fusion 1, we’re bringing all of those energies into the center, or the earth – which relates to the spleen and stomach – bringing those all together in the center.
The action of learning to merge the different energies in the center neutralizes the polarities, or polishes the rough edges. This is like bringing everything home to rest, so we’re creating a strong anchored energy in the center, the lower abdomen, called the lower Tan Tien.
Once we have recycled negative energy into neutral and positive energy, it can nourish our bodies.