kevin_wallbridge

Qigong

You call yourself after the "9 tailed fox" and then conclude that there is no love.... well, DUH!

I trained with Yeung Fook. Super cool guy and even though he was quite an adept he was grounded and down-to-earth.

Sometimes something as simple as a re-framing of the words is a place to start. Perhaps instead of self-love (which does sound like something else) you could consider compassion. If you are cultivating compassion then including compassion for yourself may feel less narcissistic. You don't even need to like yourself to have compassion for your frailties and foibles. Everything alive deserves some compassion just for having to endure the struggle, or so it seems to me.

pftotus Oh I have seen Qigong deviance . The mere belief in distance healing may be a bit harsh for its diagnosis. Its not something I have ever participated in, yet it was something my teachers' teacher used with some regularity. The Qigong world in China is a pretty strange place and full of myth, dysfunction, personality cults and charlatanism. Still there is really good stuff there too. Though my own practice has led me out into the aether from time to time, it doesn't hold any appeal for me. I like it simple and pragmatic. Tm Yes I have heard that too, usually as part of a justification for a narrower methodology than is found in the classics. I have been studying, teaching and creating curriculum around the history of Chinese medicine for 18 years. Western views of its history tend to be largely informed by a myth that the Communists "broke" Chinese medicine and the "real" traditions only exist outside the mainland, which just isn't true. I could give you several clinical examples of where Wuxing is irrelevant to the issue, but that is really another topic altogether. I would just like to leave it here for now. The word 神 Shen, as I mention in the original post, is used in broad and narrow ways. I have been using it in a specific way as I outlined in that post. When the "Five Spirits" are talked about it is actually the 五志 Wuzhi, the "Five Wills." Can Hun be considered Shen from a certain perspective, yes... but these cases are broad sweeps and not attempts to define or delineate. The idea of pre/post-heaven is less explicit in the Neijing itself, it really became a topic of debate 1000 years ago in the Song period. Its hard to find the sources in English, but if you can find something like 張志聰 Zhang Zhicong's 黃帝內經素問集注 Huangdi Neijing Suwen Jizhu (Yellow Emperor's Internal Classic Plain Questions with commentaries) from 1670 much of the debate around the issue is compiled there. Though I doubt it is in translation anywhere.

cat Not so impressive, it just looks good on the resume. Smoke and mirrors really. I just had the good fortune to hear the lesson "mastery is mastery of the basics" relatively early on my journey. I just do the basics and leave mastery to someone who wants to keep score. Taomeow To be honest I don't really understand your disagreement. Except that you seem to feel that the Wuxing is useful in all circumstances. I'm in no way denying its usefulness, however, I believe I must point out that in Chinese medicine as is it practised no model can be applied in all circumstances. This isn't a personal choice option, its the method of the 黃帝內經, 難經, 針灸甲乙經, 伤寒論, 針灸大成 (just a list of books) and so on. Using one model for all circumstances isn't the Chinese medicine of the classics and I for one am cautious about trying to impose modern frames and sensibilities upon it (that is an oblique reference to the approach of JR Worsley). pythagorean... I haven't read it. It seems a bit more anecdotal than most of the clinical materials I look at and I have never come across it.

I'm a medical anthropologist by training and professor of Chinese medicine at the Academy of Classical Oriental Sciences (東方古典科學院) in Nelson, BC, Canada (www.acos.org). I specialize in 清志病 Qing Zhi Bing, disorders of the emotions and will. I've been practising martial arts for nearly 30 years and trained Qigong in China.

Well at least that is a little progress. You may try doing this for a little while every day with a bit more emphasis on the right foot. You may also try using a pen or chopstick held parallel to the ground and pressed firmly on the outside of the shin (try the right first) just under the head of the fibula. Press for a couple of minutes then slowly roll the pen/stick down the outside of the leg with firm pressure to the ankle. As well, you can stimulate 永泉 Yongquan on the sole of the foot buy pressing your bare foot down onto a golf ball (just sit in a chair and roll the ball firmly under your foot making sure to get right at the base of the big toe).

Who cares who the most powerful is? It won't be anyone posting on this thread.... oh crap there goes my chance.

Nice diagnosis based on the symptoms, I nearly sprayed tea out my nose. Flolfolil, try massaging your feet, especially the spaces between your big toe and second toe, as well as, the space between your little toe and your 4th toe. Massage between those tarsal bones paying particular attention to the top of the foot. If you find spots that are more tender then press them for a few minutes (try using a blunt object like a rounded chopstick). If you can, also press directly down with a blunt object on the top of the muscle between the point of your shoulder and your neck. It sounds like you have too much up and no down. Try changing your practice to simple observation of nature for a while and remind your head there is a planet down there. Put the Qigong down, walk away from the meditation bench, and go to the park.

Ah, going right to the deeper end of the spectrum. Lets consider the relationship of the Hun and the Shen. Throughout one's life how much discord has developed between the innate aspirations, drives and the unique pressures forward in what we may call 命 Ming (often rendered as destiny, but in this case not pre-destination, more a "most positive potential outcome.") and internal mythology of the self that we manufactured through conscious and unconscious experience? Some of us are easy going and adaptable, not being so deeply scarred by the insults we receive so that we can freely manifest our destiny, so to speak. Others of us struggle against the wounds and have to make war with our own lives to advance into spirituality, often surrendering to the damage and becoming our coping mechanisms instead. In an ideal world where the Shen is a brilliant shining reflection of the deep grounding of the Hun, that aspect of the Hun from which compassion and empathy spring illuminates the things in the world that best match the particular speed direction and pressure that our pre-Heaven gives us. The things we fall in love with are the things that are "for" us, because we are already connected to them at the pre-Heaven level. This is rarely the case. More often, that drive to connect and express compassion and empathy gets side-tracked to a greater of lesser degree by the needs arising from the wounds and injuries and the striving of the self to re-balance and heal. Lets say a person has had a childhood experience of abandonment, loss of a parent through death or divorce. This may give them a predisposition towards fear of abandonment and result in trust issues. This is a distortion of the cognitive process at the level of the 志 (here we mean in terms of the nature of experience 意志思慮智). When they are experiencing empathy and emotional connection they get a bit side tracked as they compare the experience of the other to the self. When memory influences them, usually at a subconscious level, their doubt and fear can creep in. They may begin to question and second-guess the feelings. They may have, and so express, an unconscious need to test the other's motives in the connection, thereby undermining the budding relationship and therefore self-fulfilling the fear of abandonment. This is not just a matter of the mind, as the self is a spectrum from meat to spirit. Anyone who is manifesting this kind of deep seated disorder that affects the 志 Zhi is also going to be manifesting some kind of Kidney Qi issues. Not necessarily severe symptoms, yet the physiological signs will be there. It will certainly show up as a curiosity in their pulse. For most us we fall between scenarios like this. Some level of deep inspiration moves us and some level of scar tissue puts a perturbation into our unfolding spiral of existence. Some things and folks once found are with us forever. Sometimes it is just a crossing point and the root of the empathic connection cannot survive the the pressure. Sometimes we bump into each other for a while before we recognize what the Hun knows from the beginning and love grows between us. Sometimes we mistake our need for our inspiration and as a result we break into a thousand pieces. The more the Shen is aligned to the Hun the less distortion and damage distorts the perception, and the deeper and more real the connections we form can be. I'm not sure that gets directly at the question.

Do you have any weakness or aching in your low back or knees? Do you ever feel a fullness around the base of your ribs? Do you sigh much? What does your tongue look like? Is it reddish with a scanty coat? Are the sides reddish or pale? How old are you?

That is exactly what the original post is about. Grasping the nature of our experience so that we can look at where we unconsciously distort our perceptions. When we go through the 意志思慮智 model we can apply it to our own process to allow ourselves a mirror to reflect upon the ways and places where our own cognitive tendencies may show signs of excess or deficiency. Being able to see one's own process one can see one's own myths about one's self. The acquired mind 神 is never what it thinks itself to be, its always just the best guess. The 魂 Hun, being pre-Heaven and so the actual primordial substrate upon which the acquired personality is based, is always more real than the 神 Shen. Yet the 神 Shen can be 調和 regulated and harmonized so that its distortions to the lens of perception can be minimized to allow the innate aspirations of the 魂 Hun to come through.

You might look for the work of Elisabeth Rochat de la Vallee. She has a book on the 五行 5 phases (I may be called "The 5 Elements"). Its from the Monkey Press out of Paris. I think they have a Belgian distributor.

Please don't switch to PM, I'm enjoying this.

Do you have a subluxation (partial dislocation) of the head of the fibula? The fact that your discomfort is all below the knee and not felt most of the time makes me think of this. As well, the rotation of the leg in Lotus will pull on the fibula. This subluxation can happen when you take a high step over the height of your knee (something that can happen on a strenuous hike) while wearing even a light pack. If you hold the side of your knee while you do a slow deep squat you may feel it slip. I live in the Canadian mountains and see this often enough. A Chiro may be able to help you or someone with bone-setting training, if this is what you have.

Hahahahaha

I've always loved "The Razor's Edge" by S. Maugham.

Close, not quite 衛兵 wei bing, but its related to what I'm talking about. 韋 Wei is tanned leather, this character is based on an ancient image of two people stretching something between them, probably the stretching rack. In some of its earliest usages are things like 韎 mei an archaic word that describes the particular type of leather buckskin used by light infantry troops, or 韜 tao which once meant the leather of a scabbard and later tactics or military acumen. There are also several words used about archers that are no longer used at all. So when 韋 is placed between 行 it doesn't mean the soldiers who walk around in leather, it means the job that they are doing. 衛兵 may refer to those soldiers, but 衛 is their function. Do you see the difference? When we consider function there are aspects that are like the immune system though much more of the biomedically defined immune response would fall into the realm of the 營 Ying. Surface barriers would fall into the realm of 衛 but the humoral, chemical barriers and natural killer cells are more the realm of 營. This brings us back to the point that 營衛 form a pair of interrelated aspects of the Qi. Interesting, don't you think?

Greetings SonOfTheGods (wow, sounds like a line from a movie!). Just say hello to a couple of other people here in the lobby and the door to the rest of the forum will open.

Oh and ChiDragon, just pulling on the Dragon's tail there. I don't actually want to hurt your feelings. It may have come across harsher than I really wanted it to be.

Hi Taomeow, yes I'm familiar with looking at the Wuxing those ways, but I'm actually talking about something else. I'm not dismissing the usefulness of the model, yet there a problem with how it gets used. One of the keys to applying Chinese medicine in a clinical context is to recognize that not all of the tools need to be used all of the time. The problem comes when one cannot bear to put the Wuxing down and the failure to realize that it does not need to be accounted for all of the time. Sometimes its a meridian problem and the six divisions will be the lens that will make the situation clearer. Trying to make a 6 meridian problem fit into a 5 phase pigeon hole can lead to over thinking and convolutions in the treatment principle that does absolutely no service to the patient. Chinese medicine is a series of overlapping perspectives and not every one of these viewpoints can account for every disease circumstance. Just as you can take a close-up photo with a telephoto lens or a zoom into a distant object with a macro, each lens can be used to do the job. Its just that you can also select the most appropriate tool and not try to apply the whole kit every time. In my experience, while the Wuxing is a great model for explaining many aspects of the acquired constitution, it really falls flat in terms giving clarity to the pre-Heaven. Yin-Yang is the model that provides the clearest and most succinct picture. I personally would not distinguish between 陽志 Yang Zhi and 陰志 Yin Zhi, as I see them as the head and tail of the same snake. We can certainly see Yin characteristics and qualities as well as Yang characteristics and qualities, yet I would not go so far as create a cognitive separation between them. I think it serves us to recognize that Yin-Yang is not dualism; not an either/or situation. Rather it is Yin until it is Yang, and then Yang until it is Yin. That being said keep in mind that it is Chinese medicine that informs my alchemy, not the other way around, so I have a bias. I have seen a great deal of strange folk-modelling within the alchemical world and when it differs from my experience in Chinese medicine my bias falls to clinical experience. I have heard many things said in the Qigong world that demonstrably wrong from the experience of Chinese medicine, but my own experience has been that the knowledge derived from the constant testing that Chinese medicine undergoes in clinical circumstances serves to deepen clarity in the practice. In no way do I want to convey the impression that I have exclusive rights to knowledge or perception. Only that my perspective is grounded in a study of a specific set of medical classics that are a part of a living tradition that is far better documented and far more transparent than any alchemical lineage that I know of. I may come across as a mister know-it-all, but I don't want to give the impression I am closed to other ideas. Its just that I have tested a lot of my understanding in hands-on clinical circumstances. If my understanding was very wrong I do not believe that I would get the clinical results that I do.

Thanks ChiDragon that's very.... passive-aggressive of you ---------------------------------------------- Hi cat, yes of course mastery is mastery of the basics The whole thing can perhaps be best approached by getting into the differences between 先天後天 pre- and post-Heaven. When we examine them in medicine we see the 先天 pre-Heaven as the true nature of a being. It is not something that can be treated clinically. Its a bit like congenital issues from a biomedical perspective. Say Down's syndrome, this can be seen as a genetic disorder as the extra chromosome is problematic causing major and obvious health and cognitive issues. Yet at another level the Down's syndrome is merely the truth of that person. You can have Down's syndrome, but are not really sick with it, it is simply your actual nature. For that person the extra chromosome is simply their truth. They have issues that affect the expression of their acquired self, but that is 後天 post-Heaven. This perspective is a useful one for getting at 魂魄 Hun Po and the role they can play in cultivation; whether that is 養生, 氣功, 導引, 內功 Yangsheng, Qigong, Daoyin, Neigong or whatever. Whenever we consider the 先天 pre-Heaven we can look at it as the truth of who and what you are. It cannot truly be disordered, it cannot truly be damaged, it cannot be really be manipulated and cultivated because it already is fully what it is. Whenever we see discussion of disorders of the 魂魄 Hun Po we are looking at a slight parsing error where disordered expression has been confused for disordered substrate. Those disorders are actually in the 精神 essence and spirit, the 後天. This is a good example of the parsing error. The 魂魄 are fully integrated, the easiest clinical check for this is "are you alive?" Any disorder of the meeting of the two is at the moment of death, so nothing about their relationship needs to be fixed. When we say in Chinese medicine "death is the separation of 陰陽 Yin Yang," it is exactly this relationship we are talking about. Even the person about to leave is alive until they are not. While we say it colloquially, there is no such thing as half-dead. The organism is alive until it is not. That being said, there can be huge issues in the way this relationship gets expressed in the 後天 post-Heaven and that can look like a problem in the 魂魄 relationship. I would say the process is more on the order of getting the distortions of the acquired constitution (精) and the acquired personality (神) out of the way to allow the true nature to be expressed. The actual practice is the same, only the perspective on it is different. As for the 魄 Po being grief in the lungs... well you see there is problem with the 五行 5 phase theory. Its so neat and compelling that it dominates some of the dialogue around the self because of the 五臟六腑 5 organ 6 viscera model. If the only tool you have is the 五行 soon every problem starts to look like a pentagram. In the initial essay I alluded to the problem of associating the 魄 to the lung. Its arbitrary and only makes sense from a very narrow perspective. The association to lung is more clearly seen in the manifestation of 宗氣 Zong Qi, the first differentiation of the 氣 in metabolism, when we consider its role in setting the rythmicity of the breath (cue huge digression into breath as a tool for understanding the truth of yourself and the basis of your whole physicality). Its relationship to grief is clearer the further you back in time. Perhaps we need to discuss the 七魄? That will take us into the realm of demonology and possession.

There is nothing intrinsic to the terms that requires them to be stated together or in any particular order. Certainly in colloquial Chinese they sound better the other way, but last I checked I wasn't writing in colloquial Chinese. We say "hot and cold running water" in English and so "cold and hot running water" sounds funny to the ear. Still there is no change of meaning or any reason other than habit to say it so, same thing here. Saying 魂魄 does not convey any more sense of their profound connection than writing it the other way. I consciously chose to reverse the normal order because 魄 was the subject of the discussion and knowing that I was not writing the rest of the paragraph in Chinese I knew it really didn't matter.

魄 Po is a bit of a tough one to get at. If we consider 魄魂 Po Hun as the pre-Heaven we can look at them as the nature of the self (as opposed to the nurture). Your Po is no more changeable than your genetics. In medical journalism you will often hear about this or that thing that "change your genes," but that thinking is nonsense. Different stressors can change gene expression and protein synthesis, but the genes themselves don't change. Po Hun are the same way. There are influences that can change how they express, but they as they are when you were conceived. So Po doesn't really "fall into deepest Yin," our acquired self can, but the Po is already there. Comas provide us with a glimpse into this. It is a well documented phenomenon that people in comas often recall upon awakening conversations, sounds and music. Even in an unresponsive state (the deepest Yin of the mind), they are still in the world. This is an effect of the Po (underlying sense experience). There is more to the Po to be found in some very ancient documents that discuss the 三魂七魄 3 Hun 7 Po, where the Po had diverse locations in the body and demon names.