sillybearhappyhoneyeater

what is weight qi? if you want to build a root, which is what I'm gathering from your post, you need to follow a few key steps both physical and mental. The first one is that you should not actively move your mind around in the meridian system. Qi movement is natural and although it is possible to focus on certain points to bring qi there, it is better not to try actively to move it around inside your body without some instruction first. If you are standing and you want to get the feeling of being ore rooted, the first thing you need to do is fix your posture. A good posture has several characteristics: 1: upright: the crown of the head should be erect and pulling toward the sky, the body under it should feel upright and comfortable with no folding in the spine, chest, or around the rear end. 2: the feet need to be firmly on the ground and allowed to relax and open, unless you do xingyi or bagua, then you should be grabbing the ground slightly with the toes. 3: the kua and yao and dang need to be relaxed. The kua is the fold of the inner legs near the crotch, the yao is the waist, and although it needs to relax, it also needs to be upright. The dang is the front of your abdominal floor area above your genitals, around your tailbone etc. That area needs to be relaxed, open, upright, and hanging. These three areas are the intgerace betwee your feet, dantian, and upper body. 4: you should make sure your shoulders are free and relaxed, make sure your back isn't being forced into a posture, but rather following the lower body and hanging from the top. in terms of the mind, the very best thing to do is just generally visualize the whole body or the lower dantian, but not to do any speicifc points on the surface of the body, since what you really want to be doing is building spacial awareness. Regardless of whether you are sitting, standing, walking, or lying down, the one exercise I would give to everyone, no matter what activities they are interested in is just to lightly place the mind in the lower dantian and breathe calmly through the nose. That will set the foundation you need to have to help you go farther. temple time now, see ya!~

The world really is a very complicated place and unfortunately it tends to be the case that our media makes it out to be a very simple one. take your side and fight for the one true thing that the media represents to you. This is a bad way of doing things, and in the best situation, the less people who die violently the better. War is a terrible thing, poverty is a terrible thing, government and media propaganda are terrible things. If you can change something without breaking it, that is much preferable to breaking it in order to change it. Life is so precious, how can anyone wish for others to be injured. The ultimate injustice is taking away the life of another simply because you feel uncomfortable. Go for a run, get a girlfriend or boyfriend, read more books, meditate, go for a swim, have a beer on the deck with friends, do good things, help others do good things. That is best.

Traditionally speaking there are three major ways of doing this: the Southern and Middle school of quanzhen Daoism simply generally focus on the lower dantian area while breathing naturally. This is the most natural way to do it. you should learn to do it with your eyes closed while sitting, but eventually you can do it even when you are walking around. The Northern school typically starts by shutting out the five gates: eyes, earns, nose, mouth, and tongue. Ideally, close your eyes, ignore sounds coming to your ears, relax the tongue with it sitting on the roof of the mouth, and breathe naturally, without taking in scents from the room around you. In other words, ignore your major sensory organs. Staying like this long enough will naturally draw the mind to the lower dantian, as well as begin to affect the meridian systems of the body. A modern take on it from Jiang Weiqiao is that you can actually breathe in such as a way that your diaphragm begins to lightly extend downward on the in breath and relaxes on the out. Once you can naturlaly open and close the diaphragm, you can begin to use the same feeling to draw the breath to the dantian. No matter whose school you follow, you should always keep a quiet, peaceful, and empty mindset. Don't force it, but don't forget to set the mind to the work you are taking up. Stay relaxed and calm, forget your body, and join your breath, energy, and mind as one energy.

Turbid Qi may be the term "Zhuo Qi," which is the Yin Qi of the earth. Turbid Qi indicates collecting into the centre and condensing, it is typically the entry point into the Chaos or "Hun Dun" stage of creation, and will result in a deep yin state which has a small dot of yang inside of it. "Qing qi" or clear Qi is the result of turbid qi amassing in the body, and typically is the desired result of self cultivation, at least in regards to Qi. Turbid Qi relates to the Kun trigram and clear Qi relates to the Qian trigram. It is important for you to cultivate both. Typically in regards to Zhan Zhuang practice, it is very important to congeal the Qi in the lower dantian, and if you feel that the mind quiets down, becomes somewhat turbid or unclear, and rests deeply into the Dantian, then you will get the benefit of zhuo qi. When this happens for long enough, the Qi will naturally become clear and you will enter a yang energetic state, which is really ideal. In regards to lengthening muscles and so on, that is usually taken care of by posture and intention (yi). Because gongfu practice requires you to cultivate both inner and outer intention and male and female (hun and po), it takes much longer to accumulate yin and yang qi than in meditation practice, which has a fairly direct method. I would suggest that what your teacher probably means is that you need to master the outer posture first, get your intention aligned with the outer posture, and then later you can bring it inside and concentrate on developing other aspects such as transforming yin and yang. Just some thoughts.

Don't know if this has been posted before, but a great test if you believe you do not exist: Get a hammer, place your hand on a table, raise the hammer, smash your hand with it. prove your existence. I ouch therefore I am. ps: please don't do this.

sure, also I made a mistake: the five spirits are: yi (earth), shen (fire), jing (water), hun (wood), po (metal). I think probably Fabrizio's translation of "cantong qi" would be a good place to start. In regard to other translated work, I mostly don't pay attention to it, since the relative quality of translation and annotation is fairly low in the western Daoist academy. I prefer reading them in their original text. I suppose also the Michael Sasso's books must be quite informative, as well as perhaps Komarjthy, although I find their over reliance on religious absolutism to be somewhat problematic. I don't know if Livia has written anything on the subject, but I would say among writers on Daoism in English, Livia is probably historically the most accurate and generally open minded.

Shen is only one aspect of the human mind, it is not the entirety of the mind. Be aware that Shen exists along with the five other aspects of the soul, including Zhi, Jing, Hun, and Po. The Ling spirit also exists and ties it all together. In the context of Daoism, Shen is the last thing to enter the body before birth. Jing is developed first, then Qi, and finally, Shen/consciousness enters the body shortly before birth. To paraphrase Lingbao Jing: first there was great nothingness, then from great nothingness was born great quiet, from great quiet was born great emptiness, and from great emptiness was born its true character. Its true character is like an ovum, and is the "turbid clear" nature of yin and yang. So nothingness first, then quiet, then emptiness, then somethingness in that order

It really depends what you want to do. If you are starting from a base of relative ease, contentment, and privilege, and don't want or need to attain anything else in life, then your goals may just be to do enough to maintain what you already have. If you want to become rich and powerful, you will need very well set out goals, which become more stringent relative to your social position and how much you need to climb in order to achieve your end goal. If you want to cultivate your spirit, you have to have this in mind so that you will be inspired to practice. The best situation is that you don't set a goal in the way that you might with a workout, but rather just enjoy practicing every day and keep going because you love it. I hit the gym a few times every week and because my weight sets are decided by the coach there, I just focus on getting the work done. My main goal is to survive each set and do my best not to fail. If I fail some lifts and eat shit, I don't care that much, but I want to try to the best of my ability to make the lift the next time. Set your goals according to what is realistic, what you want to do, and with the understanding of how you will get to where you want to be. Believe me, most people who claim that having goals is a very attached endeavour are usually people who are very attached to a specific point of view themselves, and typically are not very dynamic in regard to learning new things and fully investigating this wonderful life we have here on earth

I specifically like Daoism because it is less well organized than Buddhism and thus is open to more ideas and possibilities. Because of the Dharma, all Buddhism is tinged by a certain type of benevolent sadness. this type of benevolent sadness is a good thing, because it teaches people to second guess their first response to lash out at others when they are under pressure, and is the root of compassion, but can also be a hindrance, especially in the west, where many people look to Buddhism as an escape route from catholicism, or worse yet, go to Buddhism to die. Daoism is a very dynamic idea, and it isn't easy to pin down as one thing. If you want to make it a philosophy, it can be that, but it is also a religion. It could a philosophy and religion, but it is also a method of self cultivation. Daoism doesn't only work on the mind and original nature like Buddhism does, but it also works on cultivating life, and tremendous joy and happiness. Actually, to be fair, I love Daoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism, and even though most of my practice revolves around Quanzhen Daoism and Nei Dan, I also spend a lot of time reading and studying Confucian and Buddhist works in order to understand their relationship with Daoism and Chinese spiritual ideas

Can anyone point me toward a traditional Chinese source on condensed breathing either from classical or modern documents?

Meditation has two big problems associated with it. The first is that the mind wanders. When we meditate, regardless of tradition, the number one thing we don't want is to become distracted. Becoming distracted during meditation is not better than just thinking with your eyes closed. In order to stop the mind from being distracted, it is a good idea to find something to draw it away from thinking. There are several very easy methods by which to do this, the easiest one by far is simply to count the breaths from 1 to 10 and then repeat. This is a way to focus the mind on something other than random thought, but of course, has the problem of still creating some vocalization in the mind. Another way is to observe the breath coming and going from the body. This way is very good for cultivating the basic feeling of qi, and can help us relax. One step further than this is keeping the mind set on the lower abdomen while observing the breath. These are three ways to stop the mind from thinking too much. The other problem of meditation is to become tired and fall asleep. If we feel like we are going to fall asleep in meditation, usually there are two reasons: 1) we are tired. 2) we lose focus. Because we want to cultivate clarity and emptiness, but not lose consciousness (Huang yuanji calls thing "forget the movement of the mind, but don't forget the illuminate the mind), we can set our mind to illuminating the centre of the body. Some traditions use the image of the sun inside the body, but for those of us who understand Daoist theory a bit more closely, it is actually better to use a somewhat more pale and less clear visualization. Rather than imagining the sun, it is better just to set the mind in the lower abdomen and observe the mind there. This will naturally begin to create a feeling of pale illumination which is referred to in the book "da cheng jie yao," as "true yang is born in the centre of the moon." Just as the moon lights up an otherwise dark and empty sky, the mind illuminates the dantian which shines light on an otherwise dark and empty internal feeling of the body. Keeping the mind focused softly on the dantian is how to both become relaxed enough that qi begins to nourish the lower dantian, and also how to stop ourselves from going to sleep. If you find yourself becoming tired, you can increase the level of power which you use to illuminate the area, although it should always feel natural and never intense or forced. staying like this for a long time can have great benefits on the body and is much better than purposefully cycling the mind through the body. when the qi is full enough, it will move by itself.

Thanks, I was wondering if it was Chen's writing. He focused on female practices quite a lot in Xian Xue and also showed ways they could be of value to men. I really respect Chen, he left many good things behind him.

any chance you can point me toward the Chinese language original?

typically, instead of using the moon or sun, it is better to just illuminate the mind in the lower abdomen. this will cause a natural brightness which is somewhat like the light of the pale moon. Visualization is another type of practice, and typically is both less beneficial than nei dan and also more dangerous. I'm not surprised you have a hard experience using the visualization of the sun. Way too much to visualize in the minds eye, and can easily tire your nervous system. meditating and focusing the mind in a very relaxed and natural way will actually eventually cause a feeling of big illumination all over the body. Great Yin changes to real Yang energy and creates a very wonderful effect, but we need to be patient with it and not try to force it.

Please don't do this kind of practice, it doesn't produce any positive long term results, and can lead to many negative side effects. What you are describing is broadly defined in Daoism as "kong zhuan he che," or "empty cycling of the microcosmic orbit. The point of the microcosmic orbit is not to simply more the intention around in it, it is to build Qi in the lower dantian to the point at which it spills over into the du and ren mai meridians. If you practice seriously, it takes at least a year to open, but for most people it takes much longer. Generally speaking, most Qi Gong methods focus on indirectly leading Qi to places where it affects and strengthens the microcosmic orbit, but methods which directly cycle the mind in the area without having first built up a buffer of qi are just wrong. If you do blockage dissolving visualizations, such as feeling as though a mist is coming down from the top of your head, through your body, to your feet, you should take your time to feel each individual aspect of the exercise. Don't try to force it to conform the MCO, but instead let the process be natural and let your body decide for itself how fast you make progress. In my opinion, most people would be better served by frequently exercising the four limbs (running, walking fast, martial arts or whatever) while simply focusing on the lower dantian. This would provide faster and better results in terms of post heaven qi circulation in the body than channelling the mind around the MCO ever could. Real Qi Gong and real Nei Dan are very strong modalities, but they require huge amounts of patience and research. Snake oil types who write books about how to do all kinds of crazy mind tricks are dishonest, poorly researched, and need to be criticised.

http://www.teachampionship.com/tc16/Public/Content.aspx?ID=1063831 my company Chayo tea friends just won second place in the baked and aged Oolong category for the north American tea championships with our honey tieguanyin from Muzha Taiwan. Last year we won first place with a coal baked tieguanyin under our old label "the tea kings," and I'm glad we were able to get a good placement again this year. :) Just wanted to share, since this is really great news for me :)

If I were willing to pay the $5000 to get a booth at the Tea Festival held by the same organization as the event, I would be able to give you samples. Just come to Toronto and drink tea with me there!! Pu'er, Oolong, its all good!!

Another in the ongoing little series of posts about cultivating Qi. Many people in the Chinese health art community are not very clear about the relationship between pre and post heaven Qi, and tend to mix them up quite badly together. One of the reasons for this is because during the Republican period (1911-1949), martial artists began to write about how the pre heaven arrangement of the bagua applied to their arts, and thus suggested that martial arts were capable to cultivating pre heaven jing qi and shen just as neidan does. Technically, this is not possible, at least not to the same extent as neidan. Chen Yingning specifically said in Xian xue Bi Cheng that Taiji Gongfu could be used to change jing to qi, but it would be very hard to change qi to shen, and impossible to change shen to emptiness. Jiang Weiqiao said that in the physical realm, pre heaven is associated with some involuntary reflexes, but that any kind of learned reflex is post heaven, so again, physical exercise such as the martial arts are classified as post heaven rather than the pre heaven training of nei dan. Having said that, martial arts and Qi gong can be used to "Xing ming shuang xiu," or "cultivate xing and ming simultaneously," and therefore have a direct and positive effect on our practice. When you do martial arts, there are three major things occurring with your Qi. The first is that when you do any type of movement, blood gets moves around to the four limbs, meaning that circulation is improved greatly. the second thing is that the breath is improved dramatically when you exercise, so this also improves the quality of oxygen in the red blood, and helps you expunge more carbon dioxide on the out breath. Finally, when you do martial arts, because you focus on the Dantian and being stable in your centre, you are in effect pushing breath more deeply into the lungs, therefore you are able to get more use from the oxygen entering your body. Martial arts, Qi gong, and other physical energy cultivation exercises fall under the category of "ren yuan," which is the space in the sancai between heaven and earth. ren yuan represents the power of people, and while the emptiness of the heavens and the essence of the earth give rise to life, people are what drives life. Because Tian Yuan (meditation) is based on attaining the state of Yuanshi Tianzun, and Diyuan is meant to use earth medicines to fortify the body, ren yuan is the third and major important part of good Daoist practice. If you were simply to sit in meditation and do waidan all the time, your body would deteriorate. One of the special features of Quanzhen Daoism, and 20th century daoism especially is that there is a focus on doing physical practices in order to fortify the spiritual. The relationship between pre and post heaven Qi in this sense is that the pre heaven supplies the post heaven, but the post heaven protects the pre heaven, meaning that when you meditate and cultivate pre heaven energy, you are giving yourself more energy to work with in your day to day life. when you cultivate post heaven energy in physical practice, you are making the blood stronger, and therefore feeding the organs more efficiently so that they don't have to rely so much on pre heaven energy, and don't become damaged over time. Much of this theory can be found in the martial arts classics as well as 20th century Daoism research books, especially Hu Haiya's xian xue yang sheng wenji, which I highly recommend to anyone interested in secular Daoist practices. As always, I hope that this is useful, and if anyone has anything to offer, or corrections in places where I might have missed something, please feel free to chime in.

In regards to energy which is palpable in the body, there are really only two kinds that concern meditation, one is Qi that is related to breathing, the other is qi that is related to oxygen. Breathing of course has two Qi, one being the fresh oxygen taken in on the in breath, one being the dirty air let out on the out breath (this is called "Zhuo Qi" or turbid energy). Any ancilary sensations you have are either manifestations of something related either to blood circulation (oxygen- co2 exchange, stagnancy, levels of oxygen in the blood and so on) or qi caused by the alchemy of water and fire. Generally speaking, when you start working on alchemy practice, you will often find that your energy may become sluggish or non reactive, and this can lead to a "turbid" feeling, but that will eventually decrease as energy movement in your meridians increases. in terms of feelings of lightness, cleanness, or other good feelings, as long as they are not too exciting, generally are a good thing. Don't get too caught up on replicating experiences, but rather just let them occur. Some experiences you do have to control, so if you experience something like a deep state of quiet followed by a sudden flash of white light, you should direct your mind back to the dantian and keep it there for as long as possible, even if you feel tired. There are lots of symptoms of meditation on the consciousness, and some of them are more important than others. This is why it is important to find a teacher who can guide you through them.

No need to believe anything, just keep researching and discovering new things, do your best to find out as much as possible about the things you are interested before the universe tosses you away into the great infinity of non existence. If you want to know about Daoism and how Daoist energy practices work, this is not the ideal forum for it. While there are a number of people who deeply understand Daoism here, there are also many who are quite far off the correct track. If you want to learn Daoism, be it religious, or secular, you must find a teacher. If you don't want to be involved in religion, and don't want to take a leap of faith, then just find a teacher who can show you how to do Daoist stuff without religious belief implicated. There are some teachers who do this and it is possible to find them, although there are lots of quality problems (like the MCO stuff you mentioned in your first post). Daoism certainly has the best handle on the energy anatomy of the body of any of the currently popular arts. Energy stuff may not be where you need to go though, and you might also consider other avenues of self cultivation. There are so many rewarding ways to become a more well developed person, inside or outside of the spiritual traditions. Most people get badly bogged down in superstition, even people in the secular community. This type of superstition assumes that there are greater answers that are driving ones spiritual experience, and that some particular experiences that one may have had somehow infer there being greater truths that guide them toward some sort of ephemeral, and unclear state of mystical enlightenment. I want to assuage you of this ideology, because it gets in the way of rational spiritual practice. If you cultivate yourself and become enlightened, you are pretty badass, because most of us just get a little way down the track before the inevitable. Another problem is bringing along lots of ideas from the new age community, which are almost always incorrect and based on weird and incomplete research. This is very dangerous, since almost all of the practices of new age meditation are without a traditional root, and tend to be highly harmful. this includes a great deal of what is called "Daoism," in western countries. I strongly urge you to directly avoid this stuff and be careful when researching.

The best thing you can do at the beginning is to be clear about the difference between things and what exactly you want to achieve. I want to make this as easy for as many people as possible, so I'll give a brief summary that I wish I had when I was starting out. Arts associated with Daoism and what they do: Religious aspects: Daoism is a religion, although religion may not be the perfect word to describe it, so far in English it is the best we have. The religious aspect of Daoism is very important to consider when you are going ahead, even just because so much of the terminology of Daoism comes from religious practice. If you don't want to subscribe to religious ideology, you don't have to, even my own teacher chose early on not to follow religious teachings, instead preferring to cultivate himself in the principles of Daoism and master Neidan, as well as the aspects of the Daoist canon related to self cultivation. Whether you believe in the religious side of Daoism or not is your choice, but if you want to master the Daoist arts, you have to at least have an understanding of what makes the religion work. Philosophical aspects: Daoism is deeply attached to the Chinese world view, and the philosophical ideas of ancient China. Daoist philosophy is very different from western philosophy in one specific way, that is that it is based on practice. Even just by reading Laozi in a careful and contextual way, you can already see the basics of Daoist practice laid out before your eyes. Keep this in mind when you read old classical documents. Look for the meanings hidden in the words. Practical aspects: This is a huge part of Daoism and where people tend to get the most confused. Daoist practice is very vast but all conforms to the central principles of Dao and De. Some of the many practices involved in Daoism are: meditation: meditation has three major methods which are, Zuo Wang (sitting and forgetting), Cun Xiang (visualization), and Nei Dan (internal elixir cultivation). Zuo Wang is the easiest practice, but does require instruction, since much of its method is related to breathing correctly. Cun Xiang is the most difficult to understand technique in Daoism, and also yields results which are less good than Zuo Wang and Nei Dan. If you don't have a really masterful teacher, don't even bother with visualization practices, you will just hurt yourself. Nei Dan is the best meditation method in Daoism, but again, requires a skillful and patient teacher, as well as lots of work on your part. Daoism also has other arts such as (but not limited to): face reading, palm reading, Qi gong, martial arts (a relatively recent, but very important addition to Daoism), painting, calligraphy, and some Daoist schools even claim to have tea ceremony arts, although in my opinion this is mainly an advertising technique and not actually historically connected to Daoism in any deep way. To put it bluntly, most of the Daoist arts, even things like Feng Shui, are practiced at a very low level even in China, and the chance that you will find a truly great Daoist arts teacher is less than being able to find a good meditation teacher, so be aware of this. Things like face reading, although they are very practical, almost always tend to get caught up in superstition and fortune telling. If you want to do well in your journey in Daoism, I would suggest staying away from people who claim to be able to predict destiny, at least until you have a general understanding of what Daoism is and isn't. Daoist literature: This is an extremely important aspect of Daoism, if not the most important. If you want to learn the thing well, you should learn to read classical Chinese. This is not as easy as going to a community college, or even a university sinology program. Daoism is full of coded language, and if you don't have a teacher to help you study this, it is almost impossible to learn. Anyone can get the basic benefit of Daoist practice just by learning to breathe well, but to really get the art deeply in your bones and get the full benefit, you will have a big challenge ahead of you. If you want it, and you want to really deeply understand the thing, don't waste time, start learning Chinese now, and work hard to find a teacher who knows not only how to read and interpret the classics, but also how to teach you to do the same. Although all of these things are part of Daoism, they should be approached one by one. Most Americans and Europeans prefer to start out by learning Qi gong and the internal martial arts, which are a wonderful way to get a taste of what the Daoist arts do. You should be careful to approach these things with the knowledge that they are not the complete package and that their relationship to Daoism is mainly theoretical rather than historical (although it can be argued that Qi gong practice comes from earlier Cun Xiang methods). The best situation is that you find a teacher who understands Daoist theory and can teach you martial arts from a Daoist perspective. If you have time to travel to see a teacher, I would recommend Yang Hai in Montreal. He not only studied martial arts, qi gong, and Chinese medicine, but also studied directly with Cao Zhenyang and the white cloud temple, as well as with masters in Sanfeng pai Daoism, and many other schools. I have been learning with him for years, and although I can't guarantee that he will agree to teach you everything right away, he is a wonderful and caring teacher who can share the benefit he has gleaned from many years of correct practice. There are a few other teachers like this in North America too, so keep your eyes and ears open and maybe you will find one in your area. I would strongly advise that you avoid teachers in lineages which make big claims about what you will achieve through practice. Most of these claims are hocus pocus. At the risk of sounding angry and glib all at the same time, most of the teachers who teach "Daoist energetic practices," (read between the lines), are bullshitting and have virtually no achievement in Daoism. It would be much more practical to learn something like Peter Ralston's Cheng Hsin, which is his own amalgamated and very powerful meditation art, than to waste your efforts on a half baked so called lineage disciple of such and such fake master in Taiwan, Thailand, or whatever other funny place. one of the biggest problems with Daoist practice, be it in the west or China is that 90% of it is bogus, so you really need to spend time developing a good eye and looking out for bad characters in the meditation world. Remember that you need to be clear about your goals too, and so you need to know if what you want to do is simply to improve your health and learn something new and enjoyable, or to become a spiritually realized individual and break the shell of mortality. Most of us just want improved health and a better life, but I do respect that there are a few people who are absolutely driven to cast away the mortal shell and become saints, so I won't discount the possibility that you are one of them. Depending how far you want to go, you will have to plan and act accordingly. Chen Yingning said that in the first year of meditation, it is fine just to practice randomly when you have time, but every year you should be adding more and more time. If you really want to reach the climax of the art, not only will you have to have the right technique, you also have to practice a lot. For most of us, especially those of us with families, this may not be realistic, so make sure you understand your own life and what you need before you take practice up in a serious way. I hope this post helped, and if you find yourself needing advice about how to go ahead, please feel free to contact me, or ask here. There are many kind people here and some of them have very high levels of achievement, so I think you can find much good on this site just by asking the right questions. :)

Aligator steak sounds wonderful! The secret is knowing that you are allowed to engage in enjoyable behaviour, but at the same time, being able to control it. Laozi never said you aren't allowed to have fun and do new things, he was just giving a word of caution that there is such a thing as too much of a good thing.

Daoism views the mind as having five major sensory functions, these are associated with specific organs and energy conduits in the body. They are: heart: shen/consciousness, tongue, ren mai meridian. kidneys: jing/essence and zhi/will, ears, du mai meridian. liver: hun/male soul, eyes, yin qiao meridian. lungs: po/female soul, nose, lungs, , water channel mouth: yi/mind/intention, stomach/spleen, chong mai meridian. any time that you engage in excessive use of one or more of the sensory organs, you diminish the energy associated with that organ. Five colours make the eyes blind doesn't mean that colour literally makes you blind, it means that if you spend too much time looking around at thing, or spend too much energy on the search for beautiful things, you will injure your ability to perceive things in a visual sense. It also means that you will jade yourself to beauty, and also that you will confuse the Hun soul and the yinqiao will become closed off. five sounds make people's ears deaf means that if you engage too much in the pursuit of listening to music, or enjoying loud talk and so on, then you will damage your jing, and make it difficult to enjoy the natural sounds of the world. In effect, you will be deaf to nature's beauty. five tastes make the mouth numb can relate both to the tongue and the mouth, the heart and the spleen, the ren mai and the chong mai. the five tastes are sweet, sour, spicy, bitter, and pungent, and if you engage in too much of any one of them, you will unbalance your organs. people who eat too much sweet tend to get fat, people who eat too much spicy tend to injure their stomachs, people who eat too much salty get heart conditions and so on. galloping in the fields hunting makes your make a person's heart violent means that if you put too much of your intention on doing violent things, you will become evil and violent yourself. hard to obtain items hinder a person's actions is related to desire and can make it hard to settle the po spirit, meaning that you always get drawn away from reality in favour of scheming about how to obtain newer and better things. The way to deal with all this is simply by getting what you need and not what you want. Eating healthy tasty, natural food, engaging in normal and respectful behaviour, not chasing after riches and glory, and staying focused on practicality, happiness, and kindness are the basic method by which you can balance these things and stay healthy. This is one of my favourite chapters of laozi, and one that I think most of us can learn a lot from.

This is another in my ongoing little series of public service announcements for people who might be able to use some help sorting out their practices: even though it is very in vogue to talk about MCO, the three dantian, and chackras (I don't know why it isn't in vogue to talk about yinqiao, yang qiao, chong mai, sanguan and so on, but that is for another thread), there is one big piece of work which all aspiring meditators should do before any of that. namely, you need to fill your dantian until it has enough qi to pour over into the rest of the body. now, I know that there are several people on this board who actually know what they are doing, so this thread is not directed at you guys, except perhaps to add comments if need be. to everyone else, The lower dantian is the largest reservoir of energy in the entire body, and many of the very most important functions of the digestive system, excretory organs, autonaumic nervous system and so on are all located there. The lower dantian is also right around your body's centre of balance, and the area connects your lower and upper body together. It is really important! As such, the one basic of meditation that everyone should practice every day is just to direct the mind to the dantian while breathing naturally through the nose. This really isn't very complicated, and you all have some basic idea of how to do it, but many people who do qi gong or some people even who believe they are doing Daoist meditation (they usually aren't, but thats another story), often kind of skip over this part. you should keep doing this for much longer, dare I say, most of your practice. It is the easiest thing, just sit down, close your eyes lightly, touch the tongue to the roof of the mouth, breathe in and out through the nostrils in a way that is full enough that you get oxygen, but quiet enough that you can't hear it. Stay like this and gradually become calm, forgetting the improtance of the narrative in your mind. Don't worry about moving Qi around, don't worry about becoming enlightened, just stay in this dim and dark place as your mind disappears. This practice does something very important, which is to gradually cause the energy in your lower abdomen to become stronger. After a long enough time doing this type of very simply foundational exercise, you will intrinsically see its benefit. This extremely easy exercise is much more powerful than all the guided MCO visualizations existing in the world. It is the basis for beginning to actually really have some Qi to work with and not just empty loops created by the mind. I feel very disturbed by how many bad MCO threads with wrong information I see everywhere, so I want to make these little public benefit statements to help convince people to invest the time in doing the right practice, the boring, standard practice that helps you, not the exciting one that hurts you. hope you get some value out of this.

If you really want to open the MCO and not just circle your mind around and around, you have a lot of research and hopefully the good luck to finding a competant teacher ahead of you