Mudfoot

Cultivating the mind might lead to realization/awakening, but you might never reach this goal. Instead you become calmer and more resilient to the hardships of life. Cultivating the energy body might lead to an indestructible yang shen (you can find the same in buddhist tantric traditions), but you might never reach this goal. Instead you become healthier and more resilient to the hardships of life.

Decoding the Dao, by Tom Bisio. This book is an excellent introduction to daoist qigong and basic daoist meditation techniques. It also have a chapter on the Nei Jing Tu. I have written this before. Please, dear future authors (this goes out to Ian Robertson Duncan); 1) Look at the picture. 2) Read the text right to it. 3) The XiuZhenTu is actually useful. 4) Do not use sources of information that miss all the above. 5) It is very useful to have a personal practice that actually works with the processes in the Nei Jing Tu. Be aware of the fact that there are other ways to work with your energetic system, your method might not be congruent with the NJT. 6) Pretty please with sugar on top, DO NOT MAKE THINGS UP! A square peg do not fit in a round hole. On the other hand, I did enhance my understanding of some of the symbols used by Nei Dan classics.

And why would I expect that? Because Matsumoto/Birch put it into a book? No, because that is how I experience it in the wuxing quan that is part of my tradition. The phase I am working with dominates the exercise, but the rest are there as well. And for me, this would be a pure post Heaven method, which means that even if you do them in the order of "Reversal", I doubt it has a great impact on immortality.

Every phase then divides in five, they are drawn as smaller versions of the same phase, which is surprising. I would have expected this : p

Down, Water Resting, Earth Up, Fire Right and left for Wood and Metal.

Probably a wuxing thing. To be interpreted in any which way.

Resource Holding Potential is a mating factor in many species. It is not the same as aggression though. That was why the? ended the sentence, not an !.

To impress women?

I belive some systems advocate not allowing the white nectar go down to the navel, because it might dry up and become a poison. Any comment on that position?

She is an official Universal Tao instructor.

I like my pudding, but fear to share it lest it be put down by someone else....

Everybody thinks their pudding tastes great...... Yet we wonder.

During the years I have been here at TDB, most who have given some kind of examples of their practices have subsequently been accused of only knowing post Heaven qigong methods. It is safer to stick with the metaphores

False

Be nice You have written a number of posts where you do not hide behind an abstract term that might mean anything. But if you by this state that it is impossible to describe anything that has to do with entering the Mystery gate, or impossible to feel and try to explain any transformations, well that in itself would have been a good explanation. Although it leads to the next question, how do you know that it has happened if you have no describable sensation of it? Nor a describable manifestation?

So you disagree with the quote of some unnamed classic that Wu Ming Jen made in the secret door thread, where the center of the LDT is named the secret gate. But isn't there a classical commentary (Liu I Ming?) which names all centers along the central channel except the yellow court, and states that they are not the secret gate? Your notion that the central channel is the gate is in line with what other teachers describe, sometimes using a different terminology. Keep this line of discussion going, interesting things come up.

Don't hold your breath, waiting for a clear and useful explanation....

I popped that question because there are other similar threads where practitioners claim that some of these things relating to Nei Dan cannot be felt. Which by all means is cool 😎, although my teacher told me that if I could not feel it there was a very big chance it didn't happen to any useful degree. Maybe the rules are different in the supreme daoist art of Nei Dan, the art that many write about but noone seems to care to describe it in plain language which makes it difficult to compare to other traditions.

Do you learn to consciously feel how these are used and what they do, or do you take for granted that they do something while you are sitting in oblivion?

And the answer you are searching can be found behind door no 3 (or in the moderation logs).

No, probably not. But correct breathing might pave the way. Or not, depending on the beliefs of your choosen tradition.

Joe, the fact that the really slow breathing you are talking about disconnects the brains control over the heart and allow the heart intrinsic neural network to take control is probably not significant to everybody. But it truly sounds like it could have an interesting daoist interpretation. And that is only one of the major shifts in your nervous system that occurs when you hit one breath per minute. Or as Bruce Frantzis once said: Breathing is sort of important in Daoist meditation.

Why should not the change in lifestyle. mentality and the physiological changes that come with the above that are associated with Nei Dan cause a change in how our genes express themselves? Cause and effect. And then you might argue if this is the most important aspect or not, which science would retort with "no data available".

Would that be DSM 5 crazy or would you prefere another standard based on, well, weak foundations?