sillybearhappyhoneyeater

Xingyi and boxing are different. Different power generation, different technique, different everything. There is no bobbing and weaving except in monkey, which is a very small snippet of the style. xingyi is about forward moving, sticking, bridging, overcoming, and pummelling. Unlike boxing, the goal is not to reorient yourself and go in from another angle, it is to change angles directly while pressing a forward attack. boxing was born of a sportive mindset with match fighting in mind. xingyi was born of spear and saber technique and was tested in the battle field (with weapons). I don't hold the internal arts as being any better than kyokushin or sanda for sparring, but in terms of establishing physical control from a close distance, they are very good. The issue of course is that if you are put up against a boxer, for sure you will lose, or have to alter your quan, because xingyi wasn't made to fight under those conditions. almost all northern chinese martial arts have some degree of sticking and following practice that involves close body contact, so that is quite different from boxing arts.

Recently seeing how many people are coming here with the problems they have collected from incorrect practices of many kinds, I have decided to translate a section of "Yinshizi's complete meditation method," in hopes that it can be of help to our friends who are either starting their path of meditation or have been doing it for a long time, but need some help to adjust their practice in the right direction. I am also leaving a few notes below the translation to shed some light on the background of the document. 呼吸的練習 The practice of breath: 上面說到人們的生命寄託於呼吸，呼吸習靜法就在對準呼吸下手，那麼呼吸的練習很是重要，應該詳細談談。 Above I have already said that breathing is requires to live. Breathing is the place from which .meditation method begins. Because breathing is so important, we should discuss it with special attention. 一般人的呼吸往往短而淺，不能盡肺部張縮的力量，因此也不能儘量吸入氧氣吐出炭酸氣，以致血液不清，易致疾病。這裏舉出練習方法如下： 一、呼吸氣息的出入，應該極輕極細，連自己的耳朵也聽不見出入的聲音。 Some people breathe in a shallow and short way, because of this the breath doesn't fully enter the lung and isn't fully converted to carbon dioxide. The blood can't become purified and it is easy to get sick. This is where we need to start the practice from: 1: the way to commence breathing in and out ought to emphasize extremely light and extremely slender breaths. If you listen with you ears, you ought not to hear its sound. 二、氣息應該慢慢的加長，叫它達到小腹；但要純乎自然，不可用力。耐心練習，久後就能夠達到。 The breath should slowly lengthen, directing it toward the lower abdomen. You must focus on being totally natural, you must not use strength. If you are patient, after a long time of practice, you will get it to be sufficient. 三、人們胸中，在肺的下面，胃的上面，有橫膈膜（也叫隔肌）。開始練習呼吸的人，往往會覺得胸中氣悶，這因為沒有推動膈肌的緣故。推動的方法，是吸氣時候 從鼻中徐徐吸進新鮮空氣，使肺底舒張，膈肌下降；呼氣的時候，吐出濁氣，下腹部收縮，使隔肌向上升，這樣一上一下地膈肌的運動就會靈活，於是覺得胸部空 松，一點也不氣悶了。 In the centre of the torso, under the lungs and above the stomach is the diaphragm (also called diaphragmatic muscle). When people start to train the breath, they often feel their breath is blocked off in the centre. This is because they haven't articulated the diaphragm. The method to practice this is to start breathing gently through the nose and let in fresh air, causing the lungs to naturally open to their base. The diaphragm moves down and when you breathe out, when you breathe out the dirty air, the stomach will naturally contract and the diaphragm will naturally move up. When this occurs, the torso will relax and won't even be slightly closed off. 四、腹中的大小腸，最為柔軟，血液容易到此滯留，呼吸的氣，漸漸深而且長，達到小腹，腹部就有彈力，能夠把滯留在腹腔內的鬱血逼出去，達於四肢。 4: in the centre of the belly, the small intestine is the very softest and much blood accumulates there. When you breathe, gradually let it move deeper and let it move to the centre of the abdomen has elastic power and can let the away powerfully from the centre, making it to the four limbs. 五、呼吸的氣，必須從鼻腔出入，不可用口；為什麼呢？因為鼻子是專司呼吸的器官，鼻孔裏有毛，可以阻止灰塵和微生物進入呼吸道，倘呼吸的時候，把嘴張開，一則侵奪鼻子的功用；二則灰塵和微生物容易入口，發生疾病，所以不但靜坐時候要閉口，在平常動作時也以閉口為合宜。 5: when you breathe, you must do it from the nose. You should not use the mouth. Why is this? Because the apperatus of the nose is responsible for breathing. The inner nose has hairs, they can obstruct dust and microorganisms from entering the breathing passage. If you leave the mouth open when you breathe, firstly, it defeats the purpose of breathing through the nose, secondly it it allows dust and microorganisms to enter the mouth, and you can become sick. So when you meditate you should close the mouth and pay attention to how making the movement (breathing) is more comfortable with mouth closed. -jiang weiqiao, 因是子靜坐法正篇 Yin shizi complete meditation method. notes: Jiang Weiqiao was a master of both Daoism and Buddhism and in 1914, when we was 42 years of age, wrote a seminal treatise on meditation and its relationship with the human body. He borrowed from multiple sources including western science and Japanese writings on the subject of modern meditation methods. Jiang applied Daoist and Buddhist ideas to issues as diverse as the flow of blood in the body, the nervous system, cardiac function and much more. His practice is very straight forward and it is easier to understand than ancient Daoist texts, which are written in code usually. If you are just starting out in meditation, Jiang's writings are clear and easy to master. If you have been meditating for a long time and understand the classics, you will find important modern explanations to show why certain aspects of meditation work in the way they do. Jiang obviously wrote his books from the point of view of a person dedicated to the happiness and success of others, so with that intention in mind, I present a portion of it here.

Testicle breathing is a stupid and ridiculous misenterpretation of dan tian breathing. Not many people know this, but the purpose of placing the mind in the lower dantian is in order to allow the lungs to fill and empty more completely. When meditators focus the mind downward, it is a subtle way to bring more oxygen into the lungs, and as such then to expunge more c02. This allows more oxygen to be carried in the blood, thus the feeling of goose down covering the whole body when you meditate. Both Jiang Weiqiao and Chen Yingning wrote about this topic extensively. Centring the mind is also a way to shut up all the self talk that goes on in the brain at all times and therefore a good way to let the mind rest. Placing the mind in the testicles will only make you uncomfortable in the long term and it isn't as pure a method as simply focusing on the lower dantian. It is meant to produce very fast results, but it doesn't have a deep result. Most people aren't willing to take the three or so years of daily practice that it takes to open the MCO, so they try to skip steps. My suggestion would be that you simply focus on the dantian or qi xue and breath in a relaxed manner until you start to gradually build up a resevoir of qi down there. The Qi will first pass through the wei lu and jia ji, and later on will start to pierce the yuzhen area. This can take a long time, but if you don't follow the practice correctly, you will just end up with years of wasted effort and become what Lu Dongbin calls "ghost immortal."

Hi friends, my publiscist over at Tambuli Media (http://www.tambulimedia.com/) and I are working on creating a mailing list to discuss the topics of Cha Dao tea arts and meditation. There will be weekly emails with free ebooks, tutorials, instruction on different kinds of tea and how to appraise them, and lots of information about how to meditate better. Most of the material for the tea information will be taken from Taipei style Cha Dao as invented by Master Zhou Yu and taught to me by Christine He. I will also touch on many issues pertaining to Mainland Chinese tea culture too, so it will be a very full and interesting curriculum. The meditation work will be largely based on modern and old documents in Daoism, and at the start we will probably be working mainly with the theory of Jiang Weiqi and Chen Yingning, with an eye to also researching older Daoist documents. My meditation teacher is Yang Hai, but I've also learned from various teachers in Taiwan and Mainland China. The mailing list will be totally free of charge, but we will also make sure to keep you up to date about new projects and books at Tambuli Media that pertain to the material taught in the free ebooks. If you think you might like to join, please send me a private message with your name and email address. I promise total discretion with your email addresses, and they will only be used in the mainling list with your permission. Keep me informed :) :)

http://daoistmeditation.com/shop/ this is the link to my new online tea shop, dealing with specialty Organic and aged teas from Taiwan and China. Those who know me, know I really care a lot about bringing good tea to the west, and I'm focusing mainly on promoting two really righteous organic farms in Taiwan, one of whom won grand champion at Muzha this year. The site also has some information about my book on neidan and meditation ecourses. Later it will also have tea and Qi Gong ecourses. I'm also planning on gradually introducing some free ebooks about tea, but I'm still developing them :) :)

Thanks everyone for the excellent responses and good words. The whole site is an evolutionary and changing process, so there will be new stuff coming up fairly often. I'm not a tech oriented person, so I'm having to force myself to learn how it works. One step at a time The tea is straight up great though. I had one client recently tell me that the organic Oolong was in the top 10% of oolong he has ever tried, and another tell me that the Alishan high mountain tea has officially replaced meilan dancong as her favourite tea. Just awaiting this winter's north american tea championships results to come out in March. Please keep your fingers crossed for me

oops.

Here are the notes i gave to students at a recent Daoism seminar. I hope that they will be useful to those here. There are a few character mistakes in the section on san guan, please excuse me. Daoism seminar Sep 27 2014: San Yuan, san guan, san gong Daoism theory: Daoist thinking after the time of Laozi (the original Daoist philosopher who wrote the Dao De jing/way of virtue classic) began to evolve a series of descriptive terms which explain how the concept of “qi” (the energy field) works in the world, the universe, and by proxy, people. These key terms include things like Dan (elixir), Jing, Qi, Shen (essence, energy, and spirit), and include ideas about how each interact with the other. First, an explanation of the term qi in both classic and modern Daoist culture: Qi has two major meanings in Daoism – the first 気 is the common character used in modern China to indicate that something contains oxygen or breath – or a certain alive feeling. In early Daoism, this qi is normally related to breath, or natural phenomenon such as emotions. The second Qi in Daoism is slightly different – 炁, it is made up of the characters 無/无 wu and 火 huo. In this case, the first part of the character means emptiness, or not having/existing – the second part means fire. The character for emptiness is placed over the top of fire – and as such, its meaning is a fire burning an empty place. Daoist people after the time of Laozi believed in the idea that longevity could be achieved through alchemy – but in the early stages of Daoism, alchemy was not clearly separated into different schools. For many hundreds of years, there was a search for a pill of youth, which could be derived from metals such as gold and mercury- as these metals even after being melted could return to their original forms. This supported the Daoist idea that people could return to the youthfullness of a child, even when they had become very old. Of course, this type of alchemy caused much suffering, as the ingestion of metals caused various diseases. At the same time, Daoist people also practiced meditation and religion – with these two schools eventually replacing the external alchemy school. Even though the external school came to an end, the terms used in it continued to apply to both religion and meditation. 炁 continued to be used as a way to talk about the alchemical process of tempering metal through fire – but in this case, it began to mean the refining of emptiness into energy. This is an analogy to talk about how a fire creates smoke, which gradually rises from it as if by magically appearing from nowhere. In this case, fire is related to the way the ancient Chinese conceived of the mind – as being something which is active and overpowering. In this case, the mind is hot and palpable, but if it is too hot it will inevitably burn out – this is easy to see when people think too much and cause themselves stress. In Daoism, the lower abdomen is typically considered to be associated with water, and emptiness. So the character 炁 basically means that when the intention of the mind is placed into the lower abdomen, it will create an alchemical reaction such as the one that takes place between fire and water. The steam of the fire will rise and form into a type of energy which may extend into and nourish the body. This Qi usually follows a path called 元気 yuan qi, which is a circular route of energy from the abdomen, up the spine, over the head, down the chest, and back to the abdomen. 元気 also refers to how energy moves in the universe – because Daoists believe that the energy of the universe is essentially eternal and continuous - 元気 as an idea basically amounts to an ongoing type of energy which always occurs both in the body and in the rest of creation. Because Chinese culture usually places people as being between the earth and the sky – this gives rise to the idea of a trinity of energies called 三元 san yuan, which brings us around to the first topic of our seminar. 三元 is a phrase meaning the three levels of existence in the world – the heavens (universe), earth (world), a people (conciousness). The heavens are represented by a purely positive energy which is always moving forward and away – it is creative and contains all things. The world is represented by a feminine energy which is receptive and always moves inward and down. Humanity is considered to be the balance of the heaven and earth – something which is both masculine and feminine at the same time. A balance of yin and yang. 三元 therefore is a way of understanding that people must try to achieve both the active quality of heaven, and the passive quality of earth. Heaven and earth are both extreme phenomenon which can not be controlled, but because they meet in the centre as sentient creatures, these creatures are given the ability to work with both of their energies in order to thrive and develop over the course of their lives. It is therefore imperative in the Daoist framework of thought for people to recognize that they are part of a natural phenomenon which can be harnessed by them in order to improve the quality of their lives. One of the great goals of Daoism is to do saintly deeds in the world in order to lessen the suffering of other beings – as such, the concept of 三元 is to teach people to work to achieve balance between the positive and the negative – becoming neutral and peaceful. This is simply another way to talk about creating the balance of Yin and Yang. Another meaning of 三元 in Daoist thinking is in relationship with three gods – one being the earth god, one being the god of heaven, and the other being the god of the water. These gods in Daoism have a relationship with the other deities, and are considered to be eternal and ephemeral. These gods are not extremely improtant to the basic study of meditation or philosophy, so we will for the time being ignore them and go on to the concept of 三宫 san gong – or three palaces. These three palaces are three places in the universe which contain energy – again these things accord with the trinity concept of yin and yang being poles which meet in the middle and create an alchemical process which causes the world to work and take form. In this case, it also refers to three energy centres in the human body known as the 丹田 dan tian. These are places where 丹 dan, or elixir is contained in the body. This elixir is a type of energy which is related to Qi and nourishes the body and organs. It is also considered as a type of spiritual energy that works on three levels - 精 炁 神 jing, qi, shen – or essence, energy, and spirit. The essence energy is located in the lower abdomen, above the genitals and below the kidneys – energy is considered as being located in the chest and related to blood and breath flow being controlled by the lungs and heart – spirit is considered as being the thing which animates the mind and allows people to have perception and know their own existence. 三 关 is therefore mainly a concept about how energy is stored in the body – and about how different types of energy live in different areas. The upper dantian in the head is the palace of the spirit, the middle dantian is the palace where the energy is stored and circulated by the blood and breath, and the lower dantian in the abdomen is the palace where the basic essence of the body is stored and distributed by the glands associated with digestion and sexuality. The three palace theory therefore relates to the idea that the body has three sacred places which accord with the yin of the earth, the yang of the heavens, and the balance of life (as represented by the heaviness of essence, the substantial nature of blood and breath, and the ephemeral nature of the spirit). These three palaces must be balanced according the the fundamental idea that gravity moves all things toward the earth – so again, the idea that the creation of qi works by moving the mind downward to the abdomen is the central principle which allows the energy and later spirit to be regulated by the rising steam coming from the alchemical reaction of the spirit (mind/fire) and essence (emptiness/water). Because both energy and spirit arise from the basic element of the earth – the basic energetic principle of 三宫 is that which moves down must move up. This theory thus ties in closely with 三官 san guan – three gates. 三关 this is the idea that there are three vital gates that energy moves through in the human body. The three gates begin at the bottom of the spine in the ming men, go above the kidneys to the jia ji, and end in the space from the neck to the back of the head in the yuzhen. These gates work in cooperation with the three dantian in the front of the body in order to allow energy to recirculate after it has moved successfully through the front. These three gates, unlike the dantian, can not be autonomously controlled- they are simply a natural route by which energy moves when provoked by using the fire of the mind to create energy in the lower abdomen. 三 官 another character pronounced as guan, also refers to three types of god in Daoism who regulate the universe in various ways – but this idea is esoteric and of less value than their meaning when applied to the movement of energy and spirit in the body. In closing, it should be noted that daoism attempts to follow a reverse course in life – viewing the direct course of life as the route to fate – and preferring instead to attempt to bring the body back to the suppleness of a child. Therefore, the three cycles, three palaces, and three gates of Daoism are treated as a way to counteract the bad movement and stagnation of energy in the human body , in order to create a healthier and happier life. There are a whole array of exercises in Daoist practice to harmonize these three things in the body – with Taijiquan and Qigong being two of the most common and easy to learn ways of cultivating these qualities in active people. Daoism also uses a meditation method called nei dan, which is the practice of cultivating the great medicine of energy in order to lengthen life and achieve enlightenment. Although this seminar only touched on the theory of sanyuan, san gong, and san guan – all of this information is applicable to the intelligent practitioner of any type of meditation or martial art/qigong practice.

yeah, I never went to narcanon or aa or anything, I just did it myself. It was pretty crazy, but I forced myself because I was afraid for my life. I think to really quit, you do have to be kind of afraid for your life, otherwise it is just too tempting to go back. I had friends who went to narcaonon and it worked out for them, but I always felt that those type of groups were a little too hardcore for my personality. I'm a pretty soft person and somewhat shy, especially around intense people. I have a really suppotive family though, and they saved my ass. Anyway, you need community, and it needs to be clean and supportive.

Coming from a background that has some relationship with the one you are talking about, and being on the other side, I have lots to say, but I'll try to keep it as brief as possible: Substance abuse can be really hard to kick if you don't have the right environment. what that means is that you may need to ditch drug user friends, or even change the places you choose to hang out. You should form new bonds with clean people. This can be really hard without a community, and of course there are many communities such as narcanon that you can join. Beyond that, you should look into social hobbies with healthy people. When I was fixing myself, I spent a lot of time with local Qi Gong and Taijiquan groups. The members of those classes were mostly old folks, and were very compassionate, understanding and caring. That launched me into what would ultimately become a passion for learning Daoism and the culture surrounding it. I would advise you to spend more time doing physical things, martial arts, yoga, running, or other sports can help you rebalance your pysiology and ease your psychological situation. In short, serious exercise can release large amounts of Endorphine, which in the short term can serve as a fix for the empty space that not taking drugs can leave in your life. Meditation is really good, but you need to be mature enough not to rush it. rushing meditation practice and trying to get obvious results is just about as bad as taking drugs. The negative effects are just slower. If you are mature and ready to meditate, I suggest finidng a teacher. No teacher, you practice. I can't stress this enough! You need to find a good teacher who really understands what meditation is. Don't mess around by yourself, as it will certainly lead to bad results. I've seen lots of recovering people get too hard into freaky meditaiton stuff and get totally weirded out. If you want to quit drugs for real, you need to have the determination not to go back. This is deadly serious, and you should understand that your life isn't a light subject that can be toyed with. You might also want to quit drinking alcohol if you do that. After about 8 years of being clean, I went back to being able to have a casual glass of wine, and I think it is possible, but I would suggest that again, it requires a lot of maturity. Remember that your life is important, and being alive is a good thing. Please respect yourself and start acting on that respect and love now.

This is a very good post and outlines the yin yang nature of Daoism which many people in North America and Europe misunderstand. true Yang comes from yin, true yin comes from yang. You can't build genuine yang energy without beginning from a state of deep yin energy and vice versa. This is very important!

The reason people become too "yin," when they do Qi gong is usually because they are doing it improperly. Qi gong should have no big changing effect on your personality, although many people who already have "soft" personalities or personal problems tend to veer toward qi gong, and often bring along their illness with them to class. I'm not saying this is you, but in an environment where there are surely many people like this, there is no way you would not be affected. If you want to man up, just do things that make you feel invigorated. Go for a run, don't ejaculate for a few days, eat some beef, have a sparring match, swing kettle bells, do kung fu, get in an argument with someone, take opera lessons (really good for breathing technique btw). Qi gong shouldn't make you feel happy and tired, it should make you feel replenished and energetic. If you walk away from Qi gong or taiji practice feeling sleepy and happy, it means you are doing "kong zhuan he che," or "empty ciruclation of the microcosmic orbit." This is the result of not having built up enough qi in the lower dantian, and basically still circulating the mind around the MCO. This kind of practice isn't terrible for your health, but it also isn't good for your health, and certainly it falls under the category of things that will make you feel sleepy and as if you took a low dose of mdma. If you want a qi gong specific exercise that can help you deal with this, I suggest pole standing (zhan zhuang) while focusing on the lower dantian and breathing naturally. you can do it with eyes open or closed, but make sure that you bend your knees deeply enough that you have to support yourself with your quads and abdominal basin. If you can stand like this until you stop shaking, you will get quite a bit of benefit in terms of balancing your energy. Or you could learn Nei dan and exhuast your yin energy while maximizing your yang energy!! :) :)

I just realized that maybe the OP also had previously heard of the Confucian idea of "gui shen," which means ghost and spirit. That model is also aligned somewhat with Daoism, since Zhu Xi suggested the Confucian Gui shen model could be used as a way to talk about the relationship between yin and yang in the yijing. That depends on if you believe the yijing is a Daoist book or not though. When we look at these ideas, we have to be aware that the period of time between when Lv Dongbin, Zhang Boduan, and Zhu Xi were not so far apart, and also that many common Chinese ideas such as ghost and spirit, xian, five elements, yijing, yin and yang, heavenly stems and earthly branches, and so on and so forth all made it into their writings, regardless of which school they belonged to. That makes the relationship between these theories much more transitory than we might otherwise imagine them to be. Sorry if this is too much of a diversion from the original topic :) :)

Open Dao is correct about the meaning of the document. One of the key points in both Zhong Lv documents and Zhang Boduan's writings was to correct misunderstandings about how people practiced back to that time. When Zhong and Lv talk about five types of immortals, they are talking about incorrect and correct ways to practice. Just like how at the start of Wu Zhen, it says " 學仙須是學天仙、 惟有金丹最的端" to study immortality, must study heaven immortality. Only Jin Dan is the best method. Zhang is commenting on Zhong Lv's five immortals concept and supporting their assertion. Even though maybe some people don't agree that the work is meant to be completely literal, and not figurative, it does indeed say exactly what Open dao translated it as. Back to Lv Dongbin's time, he was involved in correcting many problems of old Daoism, so for sure he had to talk about what people were doing wrong. Incidentally, the ghost immortal level of practice is very similar in concept to how hippy new age culture has taken up fad meditation but only gets to a poor level of achievement because they don't know how to practice, and study too many fake things, too fast. This problem is ongoing in the spiritual traditions :) :)

to summarize, post birth Qi is "dao ji," or the trace of the Dao. it is how we know that the process of meditation has had an effect.

The mind in Daoism is spread into five parts: Shen: the mind of the heart, the fire element. It is a combination of two full lines on the outside and one broken line inside. This represents that the fire can be controlled by cooling it with its inner yin energy. Jing: Jing is the latent energy of the kidneys, it is a combination of two broken outside lines and a solid inside line, and represents the water element. Jing is fluid and smooth, but it has yang energy hidden inside of it, so it has a subtle use in providing the body with essence needed to move as Qi in the blood. Hun: Hun is the masculine spirit in the liver. Hun is what gives the mind its ability to become more vibrant or violent. Po: po is the female spirit of the lungs, it is the wood element and the female, quiet, and latent aspect of the mind. Yi: yi is the mind of intention in the spleen. It is represented by earth, and represents out ability to concentrate on things. It can channel hun and it can be controlled by po. The Yi can become realized by placing po in the heart, thus giving it the ability to focus softly and constantly, rather than jumping around everywhere and causing the Hun to try to leave the body. The Yi is represented as two halves of the earth element: Xu and Ji, which represent both pre and post birth states of mind (non conscious and conscious). The goal is to use the subconscious yi in order to pair the fire of the heart with the water of the kidneys and cause it to create the alchemy of Qi. Pre birth Jing qi and shen are only accessible indirectly, as opposed to post birth jing qi and shen which can be obviously felt. That is why Zhang Boduan said "Xu and Ji are the beautiful matchmaker." because the cultivation of the pre birth state has a direct effect on the post birth state and cultivates the post birth jing qi and shen to make the body stronger and better. :) :) :) :)

This thread is just to quickly discuss the nature of the jing, qi, and shen that we use in neidan practice, as opposed to Qigong. The Jing, Qi, and Shen that we use in Qigong are considered mostly as post heaven energies which can in some way to controlled by the mind. The yuan jing qi and shen that we practice in Neidan are pre heaven energies and can only be indirectly activated by the mind. They are not able to be led around like yi, qi, and li etc... can be. Here is a short section from 金 丹 四 百 字 golden elixir 400 words. 精神魂魄意，相与混融，化之一气，不可见闻，亦名无状，故曰虚无。炼精者，炼元精，非淫泆之精。 jing, shen, hun, po, and yi should mutually mix and melt together. transforming to one qi, it can't be heard, and it's name has no form, so it is considered quiet and empty. the jing which can be refined is refined yuan jing, not the jing of carnal indulgence. 　　（淫泆所感之精，是漏精，非元精。） commentary: the jing of carnal indulegence is the jing which can be felt. it is the jing which can leak, not yuan jing. 　　炼气者，炼元气，非口鼻呼吸之气。 the qi which is refined is the refined yuan qi, it isn't the qi which is breathed through the mouth and nose. 　　（口鼻呼吸之气，是漏气，非元气。） the qi which can be breathed through mouth and nose is leaking qi, no yuan qi. 　　炼神者，炼元神、非心意念虑之神。 the shen that can be refined is refined yuan shen, not the heart and mind, feeling and thinking shen. 　　（心意念虑之神，是漏神，非元神。） commentary: the heart mind, feeling, thinking shen is leaking shen, not yuan shen. 　　故此气神精者，与天地同其根，与万物同其体，得之则生，失之则死。 this qi, shen and jing meet and connect with the root of heaven and earth, meet and conncet with the bodies of all beings. achieving it will enable life, losing it will enable death. So as we can see, the jing, qi, and shen used here are very different from the ones which we commonly attribute as being physically palpable and lead by the mind and breathing. This type of material exists in what can't be seen or felt clearly. Laozi said 視之不足見，聽之不足聞，用之不足既。 looking at it isn't enough to see it, hearing it isn't enough to register it, using it isn't enough to exhaust it. This is the reason why many meditation practices require the meditator to "not look, not hear, not listen, not speak, and not move." In my opinion, this practice is the real treasure which can help us transform our current situation into something better. Qi gong, nei gong and jing gong are great ways to protect what we have already achieved through this beautiful silent meditation. Feel free to add to this thread

Although this is Confucian, I really strongly feel that Zeng zi's three daily checks are something that we can all benefit from in our practice. They are: "were my intententions toward others not loyal? when I spoke with my friends, was I not honest? did I fail to follow the teachings of my master?" I have long felt that Confucianism and Daoism can act as supporting frames for each other and that the mindfulness of the observance of Li (propriety) is also a method to cultivate the upright way in ones self.

This thread went south in a very unexpected way.

When we do MCO or He Che training, we need to be aware of its relationship with pre natal jing qi and shen. Remember that in the Dao De Jing, Laozi uses the terms xi, yi, and wei to describe something very subtle, something minute and hard to sense, and something that exists but is so subtle it can't be noticed. Many early Daoist texts such as Ling Bao Jing used the idea of xi yi and wei to talk about jing qi and shen, and the is especially applicable to the pre natal state, which is very hard to sense in a tangible way. When our MCO opens, we want it to happen naturally, and not by force of intention. If you just randomly cycle your intention through the MCO, it is usually called "Kong Zhuan He Che," or "empty circulation of the MCO." I made another thread about this a while ago, so you can check it if you need reference. The correct way to work with the MCO is subtle, and can be achieved by entering the pre heaven state. While I am aware that there is some disagreement here about what the pre heaven state is, I think that a very good description for it is summed up in various Daoist classics (including Ling Bao jing, and yuan shi tian zun liao shen jing) as "not see, not hear, not listen, not speak," (bu shi, bu wen, bu ting, bu yan). this means that when you enter the pre heaven state you will be in "Hun Dun," or the chaotic state and you will forget your sense of self (Chen Yingning called this "Wu wo," or "no me."). This sense of losing self has two important stages: - the mind becomes calm and you stop paying attention to your thoughts, - the mind enters a turbid, distant, and chaotic state where it is no longer aware of the pressence of the body (Chen called this "forgetting the meat body"). This is when xi, yi, and wei are doing their work, or another way of saying it is this is the time that the pre birth jing qi and shen are being cultivated subtly and without the interference of your post heaven mind. Zhang Boduan said "the three familes meet to see the baby... the baby is one genuine yuan qi," so when pre heaven jing qi and shen meet, then the mind naturally cultivates yuan qi, or the genuine qi. This goes much deeper, but basically, when this process is ocurring, you may not notice very much, actually it may seem like something has been taken away. The way to guage this is what Laozi called "Dao ji," or "the trace of the Dao," which in the context of opening your energy body is the feeling of post heaven qi moving through the various meridians. This movement of Qi often manifests first in the du mai and later ren mai meridians up the back and down the front of the body. It can also occur in the central meridian, yin qiao, or anywhere else, but what we usually refer to as MCO or He Che is the connection of du and ren mai. Having said all this, this type of practice is not Qi gong, and the Qi gong approach to cultivating the MCO is radically different. Many qi Gong styles such as Zhineng Gong will ignore the complete rotation of He Che in favour of gradually opening it by indirectly working with other parts of the energy anatomy such as accupoints in the appendages, and the external energy field around the body. While I recognize that different schools contextualize this practice slightly differently, they moslty point to the same concepts, which are that getting the mind to enter the pre heaven state is how to give birth to useful post heaven energy, and that the conncetion of the MCO is something which shouldn't be done through active visualization ("Cun Xiang"). I hope this is useful, and naturally, all are welcome to chime in and correct me if you think I made some mistakes :) :)

What you are talking about is very different from what Zhu Xi and Wang Yangming were doing. I mean if you want to really look for early Confucian self clutivation material, you need look no farther than Liji, which has tonnes of the following: 若夫，坐如尸，立如齊。 the cultivated person sould sit as if a corpse, upright and even. 禮從宜，使從俗。 propriety comes from what is correct, action comes from custom. But the thing is that early Confucian ideas about self cultivation are based on establishment of propriety and to some extent ceremony. Those kinds of ceremony existed well before the time of Confucius himself, but can't be considered in the same category of Laozi's Dao De Jing in terms of actually providing materials through which to gain enlightenment. Mencius certainly advanced Confuciuses idea, but Confucianism into the medieval era was mainly concerned with using propriety and ceremony as a way to instill moral character. We can't find anything even marginally close to Yu Huang Tai Xi Jing in early confucian history. Also, the phrases Neo Confucian and Neo Daoist are words applied by English language scholars, not Chinese. The term Neo Daoism to describe Wang Bi is just a way for people to claim that Wang Bi wasn't a Daoist, because it doesn't fit in with the currently accepted model that only religious Daoism has proprietorial rights to the Daoism system. The same is true of Neo Confucianism. Actually,even withing Zhu Xi, he never suggests seated meditation, he simply provides materials by which his disciples developed a type of meditation. We have to be very careful about not Confusing Confucian and Daoist methods, since they were and are very different. I think the easiest way to understand it is to recognize that confucians use the idea of "Li," (propriety) while Daoists use "De," (observation) as central methods of practice. The Confucian is not explicitly trying to cultivate emptiness, they are trying to cultivate "Hao Ran Zheng Qi," the upright energy of the universe. This is a dramtically different approach.

I think it is related to Chinese medicine to be honest. Confucianism never had meditation until Zhu Xi, which was at the end of the Song, as you say. Zhu Xi's idea of using Confucian documents to meditate was discredited in Confucian circles, since it was basically taken verbotten from Daoist practice and has no historical merit in Confucianism. It wasn't until Yang Ming that Confucianism got a practice that took hold (xin xue). The use of the terms Jing Qi Shen in Daoism must be as old as the Tang dynasty, if not even older. Many early documents use those terms, actually, so does Laozi, but he uses them differently, and not together. Actually, DDJ He shang gong uses those terms. It talks about the five organs and their spiritual relationship, with shen being the heart, jing the kidneys, zhi/yi the spleen, hun the liver, and po as the lungs, although there is also a reverse order of that where zhen po is the heart and so on. Kind of complicated. Remember that Qi is the product of jing and shen mixing. But also, in the medieval period, it was believed that shen was the last part of the body to be received before birth. Foestuses start out as jing, later receive qi, and then before they are born, receive a mind (shen). That goes back to well before Zhang San Feng, although the textual citation I'm thinking of is from sanfeng wenji.

That is the main one in Dao De jing, but you can go to other texts too, especially ling Bao Jing, Yu Huang Xin Miao Jing, Lie Zi, and many many more. They all have very similar ideas. Yi, Xi, Hui is a very common idea in early Daoism, but sometime in the medieval period, the terms got changed to jing qi and shen. most people believe these terms to be totally interchangeable with each other, although in my opinion, yi, xi, and hui are much more beautiful linguistically.

視之不見，名曰夷； shi bu jian, ming yue yi, see and not notice, its name is yi (razed) 聽之不聞，名曰希； ting bu wen, ming yue xi, listen and don't hear, its name is xi (subtle) 搏之不得，名曰微。 bo bu de, ming yue wei, grasp but can't hold, its name is wei (minute) 此三者不可致詰，故混而為一。 ci san zhe bu ke zhi jie, gu hun er wei yi, these three things can't be separated, they are mixed as one. 其上不皦，其下不昧。 qi shang bu jiao, qi xia bu mei, its rise is not bright, its fall is not murky. 繩繩不可名，復歸於無物。 sheng sheng bu ke ming, fu gui yu wu wu, tied down it cannot be named, it returns to a state of emptiness. 是謂無狀之狀，無物之象，是謂惚恍。 shi wei wu zhuang zhi zhuang, wu wu zhi xiang, shi we hu huang, it is known as the shape without shape, the image of empty nature, it is remote and distant. 迎之不見其首，隨之不見其後。 ying zhi bu jian qi shou, sui zhi bu jian qi hou, at its front, not meeting the head, following and not meeting its back. 執古之道，以御今之有。 zhi gu zhi dao, yi yu jin zhi you. grasping this ancient Dao, you can govern today. 能知古始，是謂道紀。 neng zhi gu shi, shi wei dao ji. if you can know the ancient way, it is the trace of the Dao.

Recently in Canada there has been a flurry of media accusations of cultural appropriation surrounding the Yoga world. A popular free class at an Ottowa university was recently cancelled because a student complained that Indian culture was being misrepresented in the class, which was aimed at helping disabled students find themselves in exercise. This is an extremely important issue for any of us who study or teach Asian healing arts such as Daoism. It is important to recognize that the good that our arts do for the world is bigger than any small political movement or affiliation. It is very important right now for all of us to consider how to combat potential politicized attacks against all of our diverse communities, and how to present a good face in an impending culture war. I want to also point out a few important things: The practices of modern Assana based Yoga are deeply influenced by Danish exercises from the 1800s called "primitive exercise," and as such are not purely Indian in origin. There seems also to be some historical relationship with another program called Harmonial exercise, which was an American women's meditative stretching practice popular in the 1800s. Much as is the case with empty handed martial arts practice in China, the genuine emergence of a well organized nationalist yogic exercise in India did not happen until the 20th century. We need to make ourselves more and more aware of these things and do our best to present the history of our arts as multi cultural, rather than having one finalized and decided source which has never changed throughout human history. Just some thoughts and I hope others will chime in.