Bearded Dragon

Physical structure for stance training just gets you in the door. When you can point all your joints you can stand however you want. Therefore 1 stance is all you need, which is the stance that best brings out your internal structure. That slightly differs between arts.

Nothing in particular. I mostly work with physical blockages and I just try and constantly keep with the idea of relaxing no matter what I'm doing. That being said I do the same with quietening the mind, but nothing as formal as meditation. It never happened again. I can feel a constant steady progress now so I'll just stick with what I'm doing.

It seems like these things happen when the flood gates open rather than releasing blockages gradually. I had a blockage just below my left shoulder blade. Anyone who does internal martial arts would probably be aware of the spot because force always seems to get stuck there. That one side released without me even doing much and the bad chi could be distinctly felt in a large radius around there. It was ok having the energy just sitting there. What I SHOULD have done is some tai chi to ground the energy, but what I did instead was raise the energy up to circulate it around. BAD idea. I felt dizzy and thought I was going to throw up. Word of advice. If you have a major release send it all down if you can.

You don't gather potential. You merely borrow it by being in the right place at the right time. You could be a bad person in your town, but all of a sudden you go to jail and look like a saint in comparison to everyone there. This is a good example of potential difference. Energetically you are no different. In order to use potential you just have to be aware of it. In other words when you say "gathering potential" it's just about increasing your awareness.

Can you see any point to anything in the universe? It seems unfathomable, which is OK for no reason other than to keep the ride interesting. There is the whole thing about spiritual immortality which i know nothing about, but that also seems like another one of those "so what?" topics.

They will open up when the area relaxes enough such that energy can flow through your sinuses properly. Relax behind your eyes and along the lines that come down from there. It actually makes me sneeze sometimes if above is open but below is not. It seems like the energy wells up in my sinuses and explodes into a sneeze. It works for me sometimes. I'm not particularly good at it. Perhaps have a play with it and see if it does you any good.

I sense a bit of hostility there. There's nothing wrong with anything that you described. Everything is valid in the universe. If you see a problem it's actually with you not with anyone else. Food for thought. Merry Xmas.

Hah, mai wei indeed stosh. Mai (3rd tone) = buy. It's modern society through and through.

Ah, nice. It's interesting that you mentioned the MCO. I've been trying to work on that sort of stuff separately for martial arts with limited effect. I'll just also mention, for those who are interested, that looking from the back of the eyes doesn't feel the same as allowing yourself to look from the back of the eyes passively and without so much as a thought of trying to do it. Its the finger and the moon again. Just in case someone likes this idea and tries to replicate it I want to be clear that trying to replicate it won't get you anywhere as far as I'm concerned. Allowing your vision to relax and do its own thing without controlling it is what I'm talking about.

I was driving home last night and I stopped looking out but rather let everything come to me. It felt like I was still and everything else was just going by and doing its own thing. It was very normal in terms of what I could see to be honest, but more like my mind shrunk to a point where it could look on things more externally. You could possibly compare it to one of those time-lapse videos where the observer is slow and you have traffic which is fast (merely in terms of how it felt I guess), but rather than a difference of speed it was a difference of perspective where there is still a connection to the environment but you are just merely observing rather than being thrown in the middle of it. Then it went away and I started looking for it which was never going to work. Hah! Such is life. The idea that it is not the sense organ is helpful. Concentration on external stimulus is a form of doing, which I neglected to notice until reading this. When I let go of that I feel a distinct release of energy and a change of perspective. Kind of seems like I'm looking from the back of my eyes also, but that's probably irrelevant. The only thing I was a bit worried about was focus. I was just as aware of things as I normally was, but it was more like my awareness was spread out. Kind of like when you look using peripheral vision and you don't have the same ability to deal with things right in front of you. It wasn't the same as this, but more like my awareness was spread and not so much my vision (although I think there was a little bit of that also). I guess I may have snapped out of it because I lost focus on straight ahead which is clearly a bad thing while driving. Perhaps it's not so bad. I used to phase out while driving which in hindsight seems 100x worse. I don't really have any questions but if you think you could add anything helpful then I'm all ears .

That's 4 minutes of my life I'll never get back. I think it's misleading to say that he's showing the external aspects. Anyone who is reading this and is wondering if that is externally what tai chi is, please know that everything he was showing is wrong. Ward off is not a movement where you block in the most inefficient way and blindside yourself. Far out. Aaaanyway, in response to the poll I would just say that the only thing not real about chi is some crazy definitions that people make up in their heads. I tend to think of it as the energy that allows other things to happen, because you tend to not feel chi but rather the side effects of flowing it such as expansion, pulsing, etc.

Don't read too much into it. Heel breathing is just whole body breathing. Turtle breathing is just when your breath becomes really long like that of a turtle. Spare yourself the details and just keep practicing. You can't expect to jump straight to these things.

No. Intuition and dreams usually follow something grounded in reality. There is nothing that creates energy other than the Tao and we have a fat chance making a Tao machine. As was mentioned (which I didn't explain properly) you cannot create or lose energy, only transform it. Perpetual motion within the environment of the earth would require energy to perpetuate, or in other words it would have to create energy from nothing in order to perpetuate. Perpetual motion in a vacuum would only require an initial stimulus and it would go forever, but to create a vacuum on earth requires a tremendous amount of energy which is hardly within the definition of perpetuation.

There is no such thing as perpetual motion. It defies the laws of physics. You can approach perpetual motion which is what any so called perpetual motion machine actually is. A better name would be a "highly efficient motor". There is the idea of using magnets, but the magnetic field of a magnet decays. It ends up just being another depletable fuel. Interestingly Venus had a magnetic field but it decayed and destroyed the planet. Impermanence. The issue is that when you DO something, you lose energy. This is the same whether we're talking about motors or whether we're talking about meditation.

Sounds like a fraud. It's not in line with any ideas from any style of internal martial arts that I have ever heard of. You can do stuff like deep tissue massage which helps, but that's hardly the same as bruising someone's arms. In fact the big blockages are never in the arms. I would stay away from that.

The raising of energy up the spine allows the back muscles to drop and the dropping of energy down the front combined with the raising up the spine allows the front to physically lift slightly. Going in reverse helps with the physical part as you aren't going against it. That doesn't mean that you are actually energetically going in reverse. If I think of my hand then it suddenly appears there but I didn't create it. It's just the awareness that you feel. Either that or tension. I've found that most of the time if I think I'm feeling chi it's actually not chi at all. Awareness or creating a flow of microtension.

I didn't mean they were the same thing. I meant that they remain the same as they previously were. Not combined together, but as they were. Separate, but working together. United by intent. “These energies are opposites; they can never meet." You quoted that.

I think I know what you mean. These do seem to integrate closer and closer. It's more like the intent becomes one but the energies are still fundamentally the same. It's more to do with your own body as a reference point. The yin is when you are receptive (let go, be passive) which does result in a certain gravitational feeling. The yang is the projection of whatever. Yin/yang in terms of this thread is a much larger topic and the reference point changes which makes it a lot more dynamic. That reference moves from yourself to any particular person that you might choose. Probably another good thing to take note of. There is no yin or yang without a reference point.

Just look at it like Dorian explained. They're relative terms. You cannot merge a difference in potential. Think about it for a while.

You can do semi internal just by trying to relax and refining your body alignments and structure. That's pretty much the start of internal training anyway, but you can apply it physically and it will make you stronger just because you carry force on your structure better. When you get hit and you relax more than the other person it effects THEM not you. Play around with it.

That's starting to sound more buddhist than taoist. If you look fundamentally in terms of the interplay of yin and yang I don't see that any change is better or worse. Of course certain changes are better/worse in terms of localised human existence, and I realise that we are killing the planet, but purely in terms of fundamental changes it doesn't matter if the planet dies prematurely or not. Planets die. Such is the nature of the universe. We are just one of many functions that effect the lifespan of the planet.

Jazz/Metal http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOfs8tjN_QM When Metal hits its level cap http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vbLTqtfL9w Avant Garde-ish

Same stuff, reorganised in a different form. Both are within the course of nature.

Is it possible to interrupt the course of nature?

Makes sense either way if it's a continuum. In any case I pulled the wu wei wu term from Bruce Frantzis. He describes it sort of like spontaneity. Like you're constantly in a state of emptiness and you come out of it to act and then go straight back into it. I think it's a much better way of explaining wu wei. The whole non-action thing never made any sense to be honest.