Tarmander

This is a good question and I will share my experience on it. I think the easiest example is food, where brown rice is in the middle, and all other foods fall along that spectrum as either more yang or more yin. Why is rice in the middle? Well over thousands of years of experimenting, rice was shown to have the least impact on the yin yang of the body and is therefore considered neutral. I think back in the day, yin and yang definitely were "real" in the sense that people thought they were real things. But I think these days, it is basically a tool to describe duality which our existence is full of. So for food, we can say lamb is more yang then rice, and will have yangifying properties on the body, and in the olden days, we would stop there. But these days we could go further and explain it by saying the zinc-copper balance in lamb is such that is promotes masculinity, where as if copper were higher, it would promote femininity. In the olden days, hot peppers would make you sweat and cool you down, therefore they were yin compared to rice. Very simple, cooling=yin. These days we can identify the exact compound that stimulates the body to open the vessels and capillaries, bringing blood to the surface, away from the organs, where it is cooled by sweat drying and the air temperature. We can still call it Yin for simplicity sake, but we have a more complex explanation as well that has less duality around it. I have done a lot of research around food, and yin/yang have been immensely helpful. But they are really only the surface if you want more explanations. Dr. Larry Wilson has done a lot of research on the minerals, and written down their properties and how they affect foods yin/yang balance if you are interested. Here are a couple of his articles: http://drlwilson.com/Articles/ZINC.htm http://drlwilson.com/Articles/copper_toxicity_syndrome.htm http://drlwilson.com/ARTICLES/MAGNESIUM.htm He even talks about many of the toxic metals, like Lead: http://drlwilson.com/ARTICLES/LEAD.htm For example, Uranium is a very yang element. It is one of the heaviest elements occurring naturally. Everything about it says Yang. However the radiation it puts off is very yin. This is very interesting for Uranium miners, who on one hand become very yang while simultaneously have their body ripped apart from the yin radiation. This causes those people to have odd food cravings (wanting lots of heavy foods despite being very large), and makes it very hard to lose weight. Imagine if you were chelating uranium, you are losing your yang, and feeling weaker, yet also feeling stronger and less yin. I find it very interesting. If you want to read more from that guy, he has hundreds of articles and in many of them he incorporates yin and yang. He has lifestyle recommendations and food plans, etc. I have not found use with all of it, and he tends to be very western in his religious and spiritual views, but there are definite gems. Don't let his tone scare you off, good info there.

I always liked that Buddhist definition of method: using a thorn to remove another thorn from your skin

I think this was the whole issue. The only yang meditations are apart of the super secret club O.o

I remember when I used to do mantra meditation (not strictly taoist) I would have thoughts that would slowly get quieter and quieter until I was in this lull zone. I think that is what dawai meant...you aren't asleep, there is consciousness there, but it is barely there. Almost like you are asleep but aware of it in a small way. Maybe trance is a good word I'm not sure. Sometimes that was the whole meditation...but once in a while it explodes in your head and your awareness goes from a 1.8 to an 11 and everything seems super real with no thought and all that jazz. I remember I used to think that the whole point of going into that trance was to have that increased awareness afterwards.

Good stuff, that really resonates with me

Oh and I loved that story malikshreds. Have any more like that?

Thank you for your response. You are correct, I have found balance and have cultivated much more yang in my lifestyle and thinking. The post really is kind of anti meditation, although I did not mean it to be. I think you definitely have it nailed with all those practices being too yin. I definitely felt more yin at the time. I thought I could get away with it, but eventually what is flawed must break. I have read the website http://www.all-dao.com, at least everything I could get without signing up. I have some...criticisms...I hope you will not take them personally. Here is the thing. When you say do a lot of research and find your master, your method, etc...I get that. I have tried so many different practices, so many different masters over the years. I have been on this path for AWHILE. Which makes it very hard to believe that this school in Russia has the super secret practice that actually works. That all the other practices have all got it wrong, and if I had just found the exact right combination in ten thousand practices, I would be floating around on abundant chi and glowing rainbows. Almost like, if instead of breathing through my nostrils, as I reached for my toes, I had breathed through my mouth, then the heavens would open up. I would really love to believe that you have that practice; that when you start doing the JIUYANGSHENGONG, things just start opening up like magic. But there are a lot of red flags that I have learned to listen to. •Like an organization denouncing all other methods as inferior yet not giving an accessible alternative. •Or offering a very nice carrot that can only be received through them and their super secret process.(I am not counting the few other schools you mentioned that seemed super obscure). •Or the apparent contradiction of emphasizing a master's meticulous guiding hand while also making students into teachers after "training" them in what I assume is a very short period of time (while the lineage may be long, the school opened in 2007). So while I love your explanation of things, and it really has helped me understand what I went through, I do not think you have this Ming method. In fact, until I have seen otherwise, I do not think there is such a method that is capable of giving you all that you have described. And If i flew to Russia, learned Russian, and took this class, I am guessing I would feel about the same as I have of all those other practices that I have left behind. That doesn't mean it isn't possible to have all those great things you described, just that there is something missing when you think that a method will give you those things. That somehow, you can figure out a set of steps and practices that in x amount of time will give you the most rarefied thing on this planet. Hell, there isn't even a method for a successful marriage; maybe some guidelines, but you have to take it day by day. I might be wrong and maybe in a few years you will show up on these forums and be a glowing ball of bliss in which case I will bow down, kiss your feet, and beg you to teach me. I am always ready to be shown the way, so please, if you do have THE way, show me. Be upfront and show me.

I am new to these forums, but I have read this thread and think I can add an experience that may help move the topic along. What perked my interest in this thread was the discussion of xing vs ming. I am still new to Taoism, so I will perhaps use part of the lingo wrong, hopefully it will be understandable. About four and a half years ago I was introduced to an organization that taught certain breathing exercises and meditation classes. They are all around the world, and you can probably find a teacher near you if it interests you (it is called Art of Living and is based on hindu/Indian practices). I was looking for something to get involved in, some practice to adopt, some way to get to a higher place (THAT desire if you know what i mean). So I started attending these classes and volunteering regularly. They taught breathing exercises like bhastrika, holding locks with breath, cyclical breathing, and pranayama. The meditation they taught used mantras and focusing on the heart region. The guided meditations often had you moving your focus to different points on the body, all usually in the MCO although no chi movement was taught. And of course, everything started off with yoga, usually very gentle. There were also ample talks by the guru and knowledge points. I think most very public organizations like this follow this pattern in some form or another (TM comes to mind, AYP probably too). Now my experience with this was great at first, We were always "purifying" and "cleansing" ourselves. The diet was vegetarian with all the new age nutrition add ons. I came from eating meat and drinking alcohol, so when I dropped those I felt so much better, almost ethereal. I remember commenting that when I gave up meat and started these practices, I felt lighter, freer, and not as tied down. I was on the way to liberation! As the years went by though, cracks began to appear. I would take these long meditation courses and would feel amazing during them. I would have all these spiritual experiences of seeing colors or light, feeling a presence within, etc...I am sure you have all had some variation on these. When I came back from the course though, I would not feel good. I would be tired, run down, and usually have some type of sore throat or cold thing. I found that I just wanted to get back to meditating, to breathing, to being one with my inner being. I also was having trouble sleeping. I would have a restless body at night and would just shake uncontrollably, sometimes for a couple hours. I noticed other people who had been with the organization for a long time display some of these characteristics too. They would be very sensitive to foods, the air, and the energy of where they were at. Some were very skinny and hypoglycemic while others were very large and had dark circles under their eyes. What confused me the most was that these unhealthy people were about helping others and spreading joy and love to the world. It was like seeing a beautiful picture with ugly paint. To wrap this up, I eventually went to India to study with the master for two months. It was amazing, I loved it, it changed my life, etc. However my health had never been worse. I was constantly sick, gained weight in my mid section, had blood sugar fluctuations, and never got enough sleep. It was always "detoxing" and "purifying." When I came back, I kept practicing until my health nose dived. I got to a point where I lost so much weight that I was the same weight as when I was in high school. I looked like a skeleton. I couldn't sleep, I had energy coursing through me at all times. My eyes moved way too fast, I was constantly super focused, and I felt like I had a clenched fist in my brain. I gave up my practices, started eating meat, and in the last year my health has come back quite a lot. The shakes have calmed down, and I sleep better. To bring this back to the conversation, I am wondering if this would be something along the lines of the Xing method (focusing on the heart region, yoga, etc). When Opendao talks about Xing and Ming, my experience tells me that what most big organizations are offering is something along what I have detailed, and is the Xing approach first. It is hard to describe unless you have done it. You use energy to have experiences that are amazing but these drain you in some vital way. So what would be the Ming approach? That is what I am wondering. It seems like it would be cooking food daily, eating quietly, walking my dog and touching the trees. Very grounding things that I do daily that do not seem to require energy in the same way that the practices used to. They have a feeling of not being forced, of stillness, of peace. However in the practices, there were times of peace, effortlessness, and some stillness. So it is not an easy distinction to make. Perhaps those things I do daily are not forced, and yet any of the practices I have done all seem to be forced in some way. I do not know if I am making sense, but I wanted to contribute this because in this whole thread there has been a lot of arguing but not much of what it actually feels like. It seems like Xing and Ming are the same thing, and yet they are different in some way. Once you see it, you can feel it as soon as you walk into a room full of people doing some type of practice. It is like, "ahh, this is not grounded, this is not natural in some way, this practice is an illusion." What I really want to know is whether there are practices that are Ming because I have not been able to find any. I am going to try some qigong here next weekend, but I fear I will find the same thing after reading this thread. Is there a practice that is natural and that helps move chi in the MCO without actually moving the chi yourself or practicing? Is there a practice that isn't a practice?

Hello everyone, I am new to Taoist alchemy but have a lot of experience with Indian yoga and meditation. I stumbled upon this forum looking for new methods. I dropped my old methods after 3 years when I started suffering severe energy imbalances, insomnia, and all the other common kundalini-esque symptoms. I am not so much looking for practices anymore, but lifestyle changes that will heal some of the damage and continue to reveal truth. Well see how it goes