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I have done fairly exhaustive research on the topic of tea in classical Chinese writings and can say that there are no Daoist writings associated with tea, and that if one were to attempt to attach Cha Jing to Daoism or Buddhism, it would be a real stretch, since that book is mainly about production and preparation of tea, with very little esoteric or spiritual material. Daoism and Buddhism factor hugely into poetry about tea though, and there are many "Pseudo-Daoist" tea poems, such as this one 一碗喉吻潤， The first bowl wets my lips and throat 二碗破孤悶， The second bowl dispels my suffering and loneliness 三碗搜枯腸，惟有文字五千卷。 The third bowl, I wrack my mind to explain... I only have the classic of five thousand words. 四碗發輕汗，平生不平事，盡向毛孔散。 The fourth bowl causes me to break into a light sweat. This is normal in life, but this is not a normal event. It emerges from all of my pours. 五碗肌骨清， The fifth bowl cleans my muscles and marrow. 六碗通仙靈。 The sixth bowl connects me to the spirit of the immortals. 七碗吃不得也，唯覺兩腋習習清風生 The seventh bowl I can't stomach, I feel as though my two arms become habituated to flying on the light breeze. I did a few other translations of similar poems which make the argument for tea as a type of waidan, but we need to take under consideration that Chinese poetry is flowery and exaggerated, so we shouldn't read too much into it. There is a fellow in Taiwan who opened an Ashram where he claims to teach Zen through the art of Cha Dao (a modern Taiwanese tea ceremony, in effect). I have seen some videos from his school and it looks more like a Neo-Theosophist earth goddess cult than any kind of traditional Buddhism or Daoism, but if you are interested in knowing the connection between tea and spirituality, he at least is the main person promoting these ideas. I had a chance to ask in depth questions about Qi cultivation and tea ceremony from Zhou Yu, the founder of modern Taiwanese Cha Dao. He said that tea produces Yuan Qi, but I disagree with him, since entry into the pre heaven state is a requirement for Yuan Qi to be Cultivated and not dormant. Because drinking tea is a conscious activity, there really is not a chance to go to the pre heaven state. I do believe that tea can help create flow of post heaven Qi through the major meridian systems, and Zhou Yu was kind enough to give us a sample of some wild wuyi tea from Pinglin which sent a huge amount of Qi up my du mai meridian and down the yinqiao meridian into my legs and feet. We all broke out sweating after one sip, it was pretty real stuff. I'm working on a course which discusses the relationship between tea and the five elements, but I will immediately own up to the fact that it is based on my own research and ideas, since there is no traditional Chinese literature talking about this subject in depth.

The problem with these terms is that they are basically modern terms *ducks*. Qi Gong is a term created to describe a standardized approach to esoteric energy practices of various Chinese schools from Daoist, Confucian, and medical etc... Qi Gong didn't really become a fashionable term until the mid twentieth century and basically means any type of post heaven exercise which directly works with intention directing Qi in various parts of the body. Nei Gong can mean many things, but usually it is just directed stretching, similar to Dao yin practices. Some people make a big deal out of neigong systems, but really for the most part they are just stretching and many of the systems found in martial arts were developed in the early twentieth century and based on western callesthenics combined with chinese ideas (similar to yoga in india). Shen Gong is usually just a packaging for Qi Gong, same with Yang Sheng Gong. Because Chinese history is so full of different health cultivation methods that involve bending and twisting, and directing the mind to various places, it is really hard to enumerate all of them. That is why bigger blanket definitions like Qi Gong and Nei gong became popular. Generally speaking, Qi gong deals with Qi, Nei gong deals with muscles, and Shen gong, if it is taken in the traditional sense of being the art of cultivating the spirit, relates to meditation. Don't get caught up too much in terminology, it will always take you in the wrong direction. The important thing is being able to discern what practices do and do not work.

Good Meditation is really simple, even Neidan. It isn't the practice which is demanding or complicated, it is the understanding of the results of practice and how to make the best use of them. The map is the complicated part, the territory just is what it is naturally, but if you don't know how to navigate the territory by reading the map correctly, you might fall in a swamp and die.

My favourite method is called listening to your breath. Listening is done first at the level of the nostril. Is the breath making any noise as it comes and goes? if so, make it softer till it doesn't make noise. The second kind of listening is internal, use your sense of feeling to "listen" to the feeling of the breath coming and going from the lungs, opening and closing the chest and diaphragm. This type of listening is a great way to cultivate calm during meditation, which is really the big basic that you need to master before doing anything else

Wow, propaganda never dies!!! This concept is something I thought we had already disproven in the martial arts community about eight years ago. No, not very many good Qi Gong and Daoist masters fled to Taiwan, most of them stayed in Mainland China. Historically, if you understand that KMT exodus, it would have been very hard for Northern Chinese masters to exit to Taiwan, as the majority of exodus took place from the ports of Fuzhou, Xiamen, and Guangzhou, which are all in the deep south. The only very famous martial arts master to go to Taiwan was Liu Yunqiao, the Baji master. In terms of Qi Gong or Daoism, maybe Jiang Weiqiao, but aside from that there really werent that many. Daoism, Qi Gong and martial arts in Taiwan suck. I've spent lots of time in the community in both Taiwan and China and can say with absolute certainty that if you want to find real material, it is mostly in Mainland China.. In terms of Qi Gong, you could try to study with any left over students of Dr.Peng who invented Zhineng Gong, or the people from Wild Goose Qi Gong. Actually, I'd also like to point out that Qi Gong is a twentieth century invention and was largely popularized by the Chinese Communist party who had to use it in a pinch when hospitals were not supplied with enough medicine. In terms of martial arts, go to Beijing or Shanghai. If you get good at Chinese, you could go to Tianjin or Hebei, but I don't think you will enjoy yourself unless you really know how to eat bitter and be humble. In terms of Daoism, most people who really understand Daoism won't teach you unless you really gain their trust, so you may as well dissuade yourself of this notion unless you want to spend the five or ten years it takes to develop a relationship with a real master. If you do want to study in Taiwan, you need to be very careful of the many pitfalls of Taiwanese religious practice. Things like Qi Gong and meditation in Taiwan aren't wrapped up a nice secular practice like they are here. It tends to be the case that you will be told at first that you are equal with the teacher, but always forced to show absolute loyalty and faith to their school, believe everything they tell you, and essentially become a thought slave to them. Every Daoist or Qi Gong teacher I have met in Taiwan was like this, and most of them are only partially informed on the systems they practice anyway. There is a lot of half information and intentional ignorance in Taiwan about religious stuff. You really have to be careful of this, since it would totally suck to invest years in a system only to find out that it was a waste of time. A quick example: A master I know recently took on a student from Taiwan who had been the first person to organize and Yi Guan Dao temple in Brazil. That man spent his entire life in the yi guan dao cult believing that he was gaining the Dao, and finally when he realized that they only string along their disciples and don't actually teach them anything real. He travelled in Asia for a decade afterward collection Daoist and Buddhist manuscripts, and then finally, after meeting this Mainland Chinese master who had studied at Baiyun Guan, he was able to find someone who could actually teach him the correct methods of Nei Dan. Consider that this guy travelled for ten years and wasn't able to find a teacher. Do you think that Taiwan really has any very skilled practitioners?

I don't want to be too glib here, but Bruce's material is wrong, or at least, it has very little to do with traditional Daoist methods. If you want to learn Daoist meditation, there are basically three major routes: 1) Zuo Wang: sitting and forgetting. This is fairly easy to do and I'm sure the major document "Zuo Wang Lun" has been translated to English. 2: Cun Xiang: visualization. This practice is fairly complex and quite varied by school. You really need a teacher to learn it properly and it can be quite dangerous if you get it wrong. 3: Nei Dan: internal elixir is the best meditation method in Daoism, but again, it is a good idea to have a teacher. Although Neidan practice is really easy, it takes considerable knowledge of theory and really isn't like any other meditation method out there, so knowing other methods won't really help you at first. My suggestion would be to either count your breaths or simply listen to your breath and feel it coming and going from your lungs. the most important basic is to become undifferentiated and empty, so following the breath and then forgetting the breath is a great way to start. I also think that paying attention to Laozi's tenth chapter is a very good way to understand some of the basics of meditation. Basically, quite doing Bruce and Mantak's stuff right away, it is not based in any traditional Daoist ideas and both of them have had a bad track record in regards to hurting students in the past (I personally know people who have been injured by Mantak's methods)

Daoism has three tracks and they are not related to your energetic field. The top track is someone who upon learning the right way to immediately dedicates themselves to it and achieves it. The middle track is someone who can sometimes grasp it and sometimes forgets. The low track is someone who although professing to practice the way, in fact uses his skill for nefarious purposes. Qing Jing Jing Tu Zhu by Hun Ranzi and Shui Jingzi has a good section on this subject which essentially says that a high level practitioner does not need to argue with others and is able to successfully change yin to yang energy, becoming a "junzi dao zhang" (gentleman Daoist). A low level master, although loving to study the Dao, is unable to cultivate yang energy because he likes to fight and dispute, so he will enter yin and be a "Xiao ren dao zhang." (small man Daoist). I personally believe that as we gain insight and compassion for the plight of others, we can develop wisdom, which will advance our cause in cultivating the dao. I wrote an article in Chinese recently which I'll translate here briefly: self cultivation has three levels, the first is the highest level, the second is the middle level, the third is the low level. Laozi said in the Dao De Jing "the high level master hears the Dao and works hard to grasp it. the middle level master hears the dao and sometimes holds it and sometimes forgets. The low level master hears the Dao and laughs outright. without this laugh, how could it be valued as the way?" from this we can see the basic arrangement of the three levels. actually, the low level isn't someone who doesn't study the Dao, it is someone who has a narrow and shallow root. it isnt that these people don't believe in the dao, it just means his belief isn't mature. so this is true of many people who have just recently begun to study, and they can certainly make progress and achieve the middle level of achievement. the danger of the low level is that if you don't use "bitter training" and "cleanse the heart" to advance, you can move backward and become a "petty Daoist." Qing Jing Jing Tu Zhu says: the top level master seems to enter into yang. he is the gentleman daoist. The low level master seems to enter yin, he is a petty daoist." so the low level person hasn't yet "exhuasted yin and completed yang." They also still carry with them the diseases of yin and haven't abdandoned them yet. It isn't that he can't, it is just that he has yet to. the middle level is "sometimes grasp it sometimes forget it," and is already a good achievement. Many people can't even get to this level. This way of practice usually involves the person already knowing how to "sit upright and look within. forget the interior environment of the room." "sometimes grasping" means that the person can enter the pre heaven state, but "sometimes forgetting" means that when they aren't practicing seated meditation, they can't hold on to the clear and quiet state they achieved during practice. if this type of person works hard, they can advance to the high level stage, but if they don't, then they will stay in the stage of "cultivating life, and living for a long time before growing old." The higher level of practice is a "absolute oneness" state of the mind. It really isn't very many people who can do this. So why is it the high level? it is because all of our lives are filled with the experience of pressure. How do we interact with other people without experiencing conflict? Qing jing Jing says: "the high level master doesn't argue. The low level master loves to argue" This is really true! If people wish to attain the highest level of achievement, they really can't love to fight with others. They can't love to be angry, and they can't decide the difference between good and bad all in one moment. Although this ability isn't the highest level, it is the basic requirement to achieve such a practice. If you can't achieve this basic, there won't be a chance to "long enter the Dao." People who don't love to argue will gradually become quiet and still. Still and quiet can become clear and quiet and enter the pre heaven state. gradually and with time they will become natural, so how difficult can it really be? Naturally doing all things is the highest level. having to struggle to do things is the lowest level. low, middle, and high are all different levels, but they are transitive. You can advance upon your current level, just make sure you believe that the Dao is your original nature and your original mind is the Dao." I used mostly DDJ, qingjing Jing, and QJJ Tu Zhu for my source material for this. Hope it helps illustrate that achievement in Daoism is not just about Qi and emptiness, but also about virtue and relationships with others.

Wu means non, Ji means extreme, so the literal translation of wuji is non extreme. I think you will find that throughout Daoist history, there is not one common understanding of Wuji. Early texts like Ling Bao Jing said that Wuji is the emptiness before the beginning of the world, and certainly the Neo Confucian scholar Zhu Xi agrees with this point. In later Daoism, for instance the book qing jing jing tu zhu (the mapped explanation of the quiet tranquility classic) it says that Wuji is the state when yin and yang are not polarized, so in every year it is the period from October to December and every day it is between six and ten pm or so. The same book also says that Wuji is hun dun, or the chaos state and that Wuji is the real Dao. Of course I can't attest for the correctness of any philosophical statement, but I do think that Tu Zhu presents a fascinating evolution of the concept of non polarity. Quanzhen Daoism tends to view wuji as a state between the absolute stillness of tai yin and the movement of yang energy from its depth. Wuji in a sense is that "mystery gate subtle portal" that huang yuanji talks about in Dao De Jing Chan Wei. This is as you can see a reasonably complex subject and isn't something that can be just given one answer to, unless of course your school happens to follow a specific criteria for wuji and you want to define it as such.

So obviously because Daoism happened in an era before ecological activism was a thing, there are no Daoist texts about saving the environment. One thing is for sure though, the Daoist use of things is thrifty, which is written right into Dao De Jing, Wu Zhen Pian, and almost every other Daoist text that advises people not to be greedy. If you always think there is a surplus, there will actually be a deficit. If you always act as though there is a deficit, you are more likely to always have enough. Knowing how much is enough is a great way to protect the natural environment around us.

I don't have any specific understanding of how long it is possible to live, but one fascinating argument I heard on a Richard Dawkins interview is that the body selects certain genes that have positive effect early in life but predispose the body to failing in old age. Anyone familiar with that?

Wang Chongyang said that people of his day chased after immortality of body but were misguided. It was better to practice cultivating xing and ming and then although the physical body still remained on earth, the spirit existed in the yu qing realm. His point is that the body will die either way, so it is better to cultivate the spirit.

Hi friends, This is just a quick post to talk about achieving the hun yuan, pre birth state while walking. At least since the time of Wang Chongyang, there have been writings advising that "moving, standing, sitting and lying down" you should practice all the time. Jiang Weiqiao said in his 1952 book Shi Yinzi's seated meditation health cultivation discussion, that seated posture is the easiest one to achieve proper meditation, because while lying down it is easy to sleep, and while standing and walking it is hard to fix the mind on one location, which is required in order to meditate properly. This doesn't mean it is impossible though,and i want to share some personal thoughts about achieving the Hun Yuan state while moving. firstly: achieving oneness in the pre heaven state means that there is only one mind present, no thought, not intention, only one mind, not separated by anything. This means that technically it is not possible to completely achieve the pre heaven state while moving, but it is possible to work on reducing the intention to the absolute minimum required to carry out what you are doing. In seated meditation, usually this chaotic holding as one is brought about by focusing on the lower dantian and breathing to that area without concentrating on anything else. After a certain amount of time, the mind just naturally congeals into the area and the body seems to become one undefined thing which is not separated into parts or separate from the outside world. Secondly: if you want to achieve this state while you are moving, you need also to be mindful that you don't get run over by a car. This means that it isn't good to close the eyes or otherwise dumb down your senses. thirdly: I have found that the two best ways to get the mind to congeal into one while walking is to first focus on not giving mind to the five major senses (vision, hearing, smell, taste, voice). This doesn't mean that you turn yourself off, but just that you dont give any mind to sensory input that isn't important right now. The second way I've found is that it helps to put the mind generally in the whole body. Some people might say to focus on the lower dantian, which is also good, but when moving it tends to be much harder to focus purely on the LDT than it is in meditation, so if you put your mind on the whole body as one and just breathe naturally as you would in meditation, I think you can get a better result. If you are really experienced, than you should be able to have a sense of your LDT and whole body at the same time. Remember that the pre heaven state is mixed and turbid and is just one piece, with jing, qi, and shen collecting by themselves and without your assistance, so it is important not to value any specific mechinism of the body outside of the ones you need to keep moving in the direction you want, no falling over, and not getting creamed by a bus. What is the value of this: you will likely find that after a long time of doing it, your body starts to relax and you feel very loose and comfortable. the mind will naturally quit chattering so much, and you will feel much more at one with the world. hope this is of value to you :) :)

Wang Chongyang said that you should find the correct balance between stillness and movement and then move within that space.

If you go to Taiwan, look up a group on facebook called Xian Dao (in Chinese obviously). The teacher is based on Taizhong and knows how to teach Danfa. Mainland China is a piece of shit when it comes to learning spiritual disciplines. There are so few genuine teachers that are willing to talk to foreigners, and so many false teachers who would love to take your money and lead you astray. If you read Chinese, don't wait, start reading the classics right now. Start with Chen Yingning's Xian Xue and Jiang Weiqiao's various works (shi yinzi jing zuo yang sheng pian is the best one). you can study driectly from Jiang's document, and Chen Yingning's work is not too hard to understand. Finding a teacher might be really difficult, although you could do that standard thing and go to Wudang and hope someone who knows what they are doing takes pity on you.

It is likely just a reaction of your subconscious mind to your new method of sitting, but there is also a phenomenon called Dan Xiang, which is a specific smell that emerges from the bodies of people who practice Dan to a very high level. I doubt this is happening to you, but it may be that you have made yourself more sensitive to hormonal smells and so on. Also, what you are describing sounds like good tea!

Hi Michael, I want to just jump in here about the pills, because I think that in some cases they are really beneficial and valuable. For my condition, if I hadn't had anti psychotics, the first few years would have been much worse than they were (it was already bad enough). It took me about five years of being on the pills and when I was confident enough, i was able to quit them. There was a horrible withdrawal for months, but in the long run, I'm thankful that I had those pills to keep my mind in order when I was too messed up to handle it on my own. Having said that, it is distressing that doctors prescribe pill even for minor problems like normal sadness, grief, and anxiety that could be dealt with in other ways. I'm also very disturbed at the level to which young boys are given stimulants in order to help them study, it is as if we want to raise a generation of meth heads. I guess what I'm trying to say is that there are time when these medications are very useful to people, so I hope you won't discount them altogether. I have some friends who would be in the hospital or on the street if it weren't for being medicated. What do you think?

Be careful about miraculous cures, often they come with strings attached (money, allegiance and so on). As someone who has healed himself of a serious mental health issue (substance abuse and associated psychosis) I would like to encourage you that the biggest factor in healing is maintaining a healthy and balanced lifestyle. One of the key criteria to this is setting healthy sleeping and eating patterns. That is to say, set one time every night when you go to sleep and another time every morning when you wake up. Try to establish at least 7-8 hours of sleep every night set according to that plan. Keep going with it and don't break it if at all possible. For eating patterns, you should figure out what times you need to eat in order to keep your blood sugar levels balanced. Usually most people eat directly after waking up, and then again sometime between 11:30 AM and 1 PM.and then again after 6 PM. What you eat is also very important, you need to adjust your diet to fit with the type of lifestyle you live. If you do heavy exercise all the time, you should eat foods that are higher in protein, but also make sure to get lots of green leafy vegetables, fruits and so on. Try to avoid foods that alter the chemistry of the brain such as sugar or caffeine, at least until you have the symptoms of your bi polar disorder under better control. You should also adjust a schedule for physical exercise every day.. Whether it is doing a set of Qi gong, or just going for a long walk in the fresh air, make sure you exercise at the same time every day. Usually the two best times to exercise are in the early morning, or around 6 in the evening. The early morning reason is because not many people are out and the weather will be cooler in the summer months. 6 in the evening is because the blood pressure is at its highest between 3-5 PM, so technically those are the best times to get heavy exercise, but most people work until five and need some downtime or a commute home. Exercising around six pm is a very good time because the blood pressure hasn't started dropping yet. Between seven and nine you should set yourself to having dinner and engaging in some sort of quiet activity such as reading, meditating, or spending time with family. I think most people are well served by going to bed before midnight, I usually sleep between 10:30 to 11:00 PM and rarely later. If you can set your life according to a schedule like this (obviously you will change it to suit your needs), then you will have already broken one of the stems of mental illness, which is based on the mind not being focused. another very valuable practice to do is begin to focus on breathing softly through the nose at all times. If you are not exerting yourself, the breath should be soft enough that you can't hear it, but strong enough that you get enough air. Begin to be mindful of the breath coming and going from the lungs and the relationship of the breath and the lower section of the torso. It often helps to focus the mind on the lower abdomen, below the navel and above the genitals, about two inches inside of the body. Gradually focus on the breathing and day by day let it break up some of the self talk going on in your consciousness. You should always focus on not carrying on long monologues with yourself, since these are pointless and waste energy, as well as making you excited. Remember that a long self talk is usually about a problem that could be better solved with a pen and paper. I personally believe that self talk happens on three major levels: 1: involved conversation: this is bad, it should be avoided as it doesn't have any specific use and is usually about trivial things that destabilize the consciousness. 2: intruding thoughts: these are the thoughts that come up whether you want them to or not. They seem to pop up out of nowhere and are very hard to control. The best thing to do with these is just don't follow them and they will naturally go away. Let them come and go, even if they seem to mean something, it s better just to let them do what they want to do and then go away. 3: semi conscious and random words: this is the self talk that basically goes on in the back of our minds at all times. It is very hard to quiet and even though it seems audible when you listen to it, it usually actually isn't words, it is typically just the feeling of thinking. Sometimes it manifests as random words or half sentences. this is the most difficult type of thought to quiet and takes many years of practice. Although mental illness has a nervous and hormonal component, you can do a lot for yourself by controlling your lifestyle and your thoughts. Qi Gong and meditaton, at least the aspects of those arts concerned with the mind, are mainly about learning to control yourself at the start. The other stuff comes later when you have mastered your own mental processes. It took me eight years to recover fully from my mental health issues, but I have been healthy for seven years since then and feel better every year Good luck with your journey and I hope you feel better and better

I just finished writing a short article in Chinese (on my phone, but I'll try to send the original text over a bit later on) on the topic of the San Qing Xian and the human body. Here is a general synopsis of the article: Heaven earth and man: San Cai is a term used to describe the three most important aspects of creation, heaven, earth, and man. Heaven and earth are the original yin and yang of creation and humanity is at their centre, being composed of half heaven and half earth. These three also refer to the yuan jing, yuan shen, and yuan qi of the world and people. The san cai exist in both the cosmic sense and also the physical sense in humanity, so yuan jing, yuan shen, and yuan qi are both cosmic and rational terms. San Qing: The San Qing are the three most important gods in Daoism, they are: Yuanshi Tianzun, Lingbao tianzun, Daode Laojun, and they also represent yuan jing (yuanshi tianzun), yuan shen (lingbao tianzun), and yuan qi (dao de lao jun) on a cosmic and physical level. Yuanshi tianzun is the real seed from which all things are born. He is the pre birth original essence from which the heavens, earth, and all beings come. Lingbao Tianzun is the original spirit, or yuan shen of the cosmos and people. Dao De Lao Jun is the yuan qi, or the primary/original Qi of the universe and all living things. These three gods represent phenomenon in the universe but also in people. They are the same meaning as "dao gives birth to one, one gives birth to two, two gives birth to three, and three gives birth to all things," from the Dao De Jing. When we invoke these gods, we needn't look outside ourselves, because they already exist in our bodies. At the time we were conceived, we were a combination of the jing of our fathers and the ova of our mothers, these went on to form one being, which at the first trimester of pregnancy is considered to be yuan jing. During the second trimester, the foetus gains its yuan qi, and before it is born, it gains yuan shen. These three spirits are with us from before our birth, so they are a small reflection of the great cosmic event that the san qing gods represent. Because these three gods exist in the pre heaven state, we can't ask for them in the post heaven state. Asking for them in the post heaven state is silly and superstitious. The highest method to meet with immortals is to quiet the mind, focus on non action, action without action, and non being. Gradually you will enter the pre heaven environment and realize that immortality is not gained by praying to live forever and not die, but by recognizing the essential, forever lasting, nature of nature. This is the best path to meet with immortality and is a great mercy! I hope this has made sense, I'll work on getting the original up a little later

Thelerner: yeah, I agree, actually we could use the term "immortal," but again, we would have to differentiate that these are not humans that have become immortal, but rather ongoing and permanent metaphysical aspects of the universe. In the Chinese version I used the term "Xian." This article was actually written for a few Taiwanese friends who are interested in contacting a more practical Daoism than is commonly taught there. Just thought I'd make a synopsis and share it here too, since it might be useful for some

Holy crap! Stop what you are doing for goodness sake! The energy circulation of the body is not controlled by the testicles!!!! If you want to open the macrocosmic orbit, it is going to take you several years of dedicated practice and deep research. This is not something you can do just by cycling your mind around your body, it is a very detailed process which you have to actually understand before undertaking. My suggestion (to everyone) is that at least for now, before you do anything else, get good at "sitting and forgetting," as well as learning to breathe properly and setting your attention on the lower dantian. For now, forget the orbits, the techniques, and everything that terrible man from Thailand has ever written! If you want to open the micro and macrocosmic orbits for real without hurting yourself, first find a qualified teacher in the Quanzhen tradition of Daoism. Practice with that person long enough to get their trust, and then begin to gradually study the correct method of opening the body. Empty orbiting around the body with the mind is just a type of energetic masturbation and should be avoided.

It all comes down to what you want to do in life. If you want to enjoy philosophy from an intellectual perspective, reading books will fill your days with happiness. If you want to get a six pack abdomen and sweet pecs, frequently going to the gym and lifting weights is wonderful. If you want to learn to breathe better, and sense some physical energetic feeling, while improving blood flow and regulating your hormones, Qi gong is a great art. If you want to cultivate consciousness to a high level, I suggest meditation. You should try to achieve your goals, but first you should be clear about your goals. Know what you want, make a plan, and do it.

Emptiness is the true centre, so no matter whether it is Buddhism or Daoism, or even Confucianism, emptiness is, as Zhang Sanfeng says "the opening in the opening of the centre." Daoism says "the mystery of mysteries," Buddhism says "the empty centre" Confucianism says "the utmost centre," all the same meaning. this is worth researching deeply.

I have a blanket statement that I make to pretty much all of these, but it is really important so I'm going to make it here too. If you want to do anything with Qi Gong of meditation, you need a teacher to guide you for at least three years. The teacher must be qualified, must clearly be able to explain to you how the energy body works, and the differences between various aspects of the mind in relation to health and wellbeing. If you want to just do some basic stretching and feel blood flow around your body, you don't need qi gong. If you want to get the real benefit of the practice, you need to find someone who can help you learn it properly, otherwise you will just waste your time on doing empty exercises that have no deep benefit.

If you can't find some kind of empirical way to discuss your spiritual beliefs, it means you are superstitious. My girlfriend hates meditation, her grandfather was a Daoist and tried to make her meditate as a child, but she would only fall asleep. She likes normal things like art, culture, food, and money. It is very grounding for me to be with such a person, since it forces me to attend to the realities of life and anchors me so I don't fly away into the clouds under the false belief that I've achieved something profound. In short, the food has to make it to the table before you can eat, so be practical.

The fire and water dichotomy is silly and you should gradually learn not to think in extremes. I'm aware that a couple of the used car salesmen of the new age Daoist world have used it to sell their products, but it is just wrong. The only good path of self cultivation is the centre, one where you learn to strike a balance between effort and rest. If I hit the gym five days a week, but at the weekend I rest for two days in order to reset my body. Is that a fire method or a water method? If I sit for two hours every morning and every night, I put my attention on my lower dantian and my mind becomes empty and quiet, but energy moves through all the meridians of my body, is that a water or fire method? People often think in terms of being lazy and then trying to make up for it by rushing around putting out fires. That is the worst way to live. It is much better to look at your situation, make a plan, know how to proceed, and then simply follow the steps to success. I also went through a psychological crisis, and although I know it isn't easy and the entire medical community wants to help you victimize yourself with never ending prescriptions and so on, it is also important to recognize that in your current state, you are not perfect, and you have a lot of work to do to get better. There is not better time to continue that work than now :) Also, when people talk about how high pressure the west is, it makes me laugh, since the west is pretty much the least pressure, and least shame based culture on earth. Anyone who has every lived in Asia will understand that western people are very privileged to be allowed to be as lazy as they are. :) :)