Aeran

I found the seated meditations, especially MSW1, would produce strong sensations in the arms, almost like a warm steam rising up off them.

I can't speak for the theory behind it, or Ayurvedic medicine as a whole, but I've taken Ayurvedic herbal treatments from two different sources and been amazed by their effectiveness both times. Of course that's only anecdotal - I suspect the best way to find out would be to explore the field yourself. On a side note, I'd take anything on wikipedia about any kind of alternative, spiritual or metaphysical practice (so basically everything discussed on this board) with a grain of salt, as the contributing/editing team on wikipedia have a well known bias against anything which doesn't fit into the current Western, reductionist materialism scientific canon.

Ok that makes sense - I know this is a really broad follow up question, but loosely speaking, if someone doesn't have a teacher trained in the martial application of Tai Chi currently available, do you think it would be better to start with a "health Tai Chi" teacher until a martial teacher can be found, or would doing so potentially form bad habits which would only have to be undone when a teacher who understands the full martial application is found? Thanks for such an indepth answer - much appreciated

Sifu Terry, When you say they teach poorly, do you mean purely from a martial perspective (ie. what they teach won't result in any martial prowess) or that their training not only does not offer martial prowess, but also won't result in any health benefits?

Really interesting thread. The Greek Orthodox Church seems to have a very strong surviving mystical strain, which if I'm honest I thought was dead in modern Christianity. A family member of mine converted to Greek Orthodox and through her I've encountered some writings about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Paisios_of_Mount_Athos , and he sounds like an amazing and highly realized man if even a fraction of what they've written about him is true - all the more amazing for being a product of the modern era. Even if you don't take into account the healings and other miracles he allegedly performed, the segments of his writings I've read (granted, a fairly small percentage) conveyed some serious spiritual wisdom.

On top of what everyone else has said, I'd highly recommend finding a teacher or some form of formal instruction. Even if it's just basic classes at a local meditation center or buddhist temple or whatnot. Books and internet guides have their places, but having in-person guidance from the very beginning is going to make things much easier for you in a multitude of ways, including if any of the things you're worried about pop up (and those are unlikely unless you start dabbling with practices intended specifically to open you up to those kind of phenomena).

Looks like an intense healing - I hope I'm in such great shape at 91. I've never noticed the FP Chi spilling over into the environment (although I've never practiced it on a mattress), but I have noticed that some of the FP meditations, particularly MHPearl and MSW1, trigger an aftereffect many hours after practicing, when I'm going to sleep or sometimes waking up the next morning, which feels like a blissful, warm, bubbling sensation in the dantien area. Great way to start a day.

My impression is that every different school has a different approach and even further differing terminology (often confused because they'll use the same set of terms, but have them refer to different things). As such, it's pretty hard to assess the validity of these statements except within the context of a specific school of thought. That description might match perfectly to one school, while another school might follow the exact same methodology but use different terminology, and another school still might use different terminology and methodology both and still be equally legitimate (or they might not be - plenty of dodgy systems and teachers out there).

What is it you're hoping to achieve? Different systems are going to have a different balance of martial/medical/mystical focus. Regarding JAJ and Christensen - I've heard good things about JAJ's system, but I believe it's very much something you need personal instruction and initiation into (even moreso than usual), so if you live somewhere near where one of his disciples teach (he no longer teaches publicly, I believe), that would be worth looking into. On the other hand, he used to charge an exorbitant price for instruction when he did teach (that is, a price which would prevent most people from studying with him, not just a high price), which is a bit of a red mark for me. But I don't think I'd recommend trying to practice just using his books. Max Christensen is a very controversial figure from what I've gathered - I personally don't know enough about the various claims being made about the man and what he teaches to comment one way or the other, having missed much of that drama, except to say that I personally don't get a good feeling from his material, and that he's closely connected to individuals who have conducted themselves in a highly questionable manner (or at least, these individuals claim a close connection to him and vouch for the validity of his work). On the flip side, a woman named, if I recall correctly, Sifu Jenny Lamb, apparently teaches at least some of the same material and I've never heard anything but good about her, so that might be a route worth investigating. Now for my thoughts on some other systems which I've engaged with or researched and which are reasonably accessible to the average Westerner, in no particular order (bearing in mind I'm no expert when it comes to Daoist cultivation, so I'm sure I'm missing many excellent systems and teachers). - Damo Mitchell. He's written a series of excellent books on nei gong, nei dan and chinese medicine, probably the best literature I've come across on the subject. He has an immense talent for taking complicated aspects of Daoist philosophy/practice and translating them across the cultural divide from ancient China to the modern West without them losing any of their deeper meaning or purpose, and while I don't practice the specific system laid out in his books, I've gained a lot of knowledge and some excellent supplementary practices which have enhanced my own training and understanding of Daoism immensely. While I wouldn't suggest doing so, I think that if one was determined to try self training in classical Daoist cultivation purely through books, I feel Mitchell's would give them the best chance of succeeding (Damo himself runs the Lotus Nei Gong organization which has branches across the UK and, I believe, Scandinavia, and runs workshops across Europe and in the US). In fact I'd recommend them to anyone with the slightest interest in Daoism. http://www.lotusneigong.org/ http://www.scholarsage.com/ - Sifu Terry Dunn's Flying Phoenix Chi Kung. I've practiced this system on and off (unfortunately - if I could have my time again I would just stick with it full time) for the last two years and have to say it's probably the single best system of Chi Kung I've practiced. It induced incredible effects with just the few months of practice (and noticeable effects even faster), well beyond any of the other generic qigong systems I've tried. The energy it cultivates has a strong healing and profoundly spiritualizing effect (probably moreso, per time practiced, than any other system of energetic meditation I've tried). Sifu Terry has a thread here on daobums where he's been posting for years answering questions about this system and poured a huge amount of his knowledge out to help practitioners free of charge, and he offers personal skype training for students who've advanced beyond the content of the DVD's (he also has DVD's on tai chi, and indepth experience with several other Daoist/kung fu systems), as well as running classes in California. http://taichimania.com/ http://taichimania.com/chikung_catalog.html http://thedaobums.com/topic/12639-flying-phoenix-chi-kung/ - warriorbodybuddhamind.com. I haven't personally practiced their teachings, but I've seen what they have to say on their website and youtube channels and I get the feeling they very much know their stuff when it comes to kung fu and energetic cultivation. As I understand it, a lot of their training come from the same lineage as the Flying Phoenix Chi Kung mentioned above (Grandmaster Doo Wai's Bok Fu Pai), and Sifu Terry has spoken highly of Sifu Hearfield (who has also contributed here on daobums), one of the main teachers on WBBM. They seem to have a fairly balanced martial/medical/mystical approach - possibly leaning slightly towards the martial side of things. http://www.warriorbodybuddhamind.com/wbbm/ Garry Clyman - I don't know a whole lot about the guy, so I'll let those who do fill you in more fully, but he seems to be the real deal if you're interested in taiji backed by a legitimate system of nei gong for the generation of internal power for martial purposes and at least certain specialized forms of healing (something he calls "emotional liposuction," which has a lot of good testimonials floating around). There's also apparently a spiritual element, but I don't know the specifics. The flip side is that he requires a fair bit of money upfront to learn his system (in the 4 figure range, the prices are on his site), so be sure it's what you want before dropping a few grand on one of his classes or DVD's. His personality seems to rub some people the wrong way, but I've never heard of any specific case of abuse/deception/fraud. http://www.chikung.com/ Master Jiang Feng - he's attracted a bit of a weird following online because of the videos of him performing certain flashy energetic feats which are floating around, but from what I've gathered reading accounts of people who've met him, received healing from him and trained under him, he's apparently very much the real deal, a humble man dedicated to using qi gong healing and chinese medicine to help people in suffering. He runs a qi gong hospital in China which is open to training Westerners, and one of his disciples (Aurelian Popa) organizes regular trips over there for those interested, but you'd have to be willing to put down the money to travel to China and quite possibly more money still (several thousand) to pay for the herbal treatments he uses to get people into optimal health prior to training (basically as I understand it, he provides energy healing and training itself for free, but supplements these with expensive herbal treatments which some people require, to various degrees depending on the state of their health, before they can instigate the training). http://masterjiang.com/ http://apricotforesthospital.com/ Off the top of my head, those are the sources which I've either engaged with to some degree or read about in detail which seem to be both very much the real deal in terms of offering a lifetime's worth of training in Daoist-style cultivation and the results to show for it, are readily accessible to the average student (depending on your location and finances) and have solid reputations (ie. there aren't any claims of fraud, abuse or similar). Good luck.

I've actually recently severed contact with a school I was studying with (although for only 2 years, so nowhere near as long!) for many of the same reasons (although also many different ones). Your experiences mirror my own in many respects - it's hard being set adrift after having a very specific spiritual path laid out in front of you, it's hard re-evaluating your goals and spiritual future after having a very specific idea of where you're going and how you're getting there, and it's especially hard looking back on people you admired and realizing they weren't exactly what you thought they were, having to deal with that doubt and disappointment. I'm not really sure I have any advice, but I wanted to say that I've been through a similar experience and so have many others, and that I'm sure you'll find something moving forward. I try to look at it as having learned all I had to learn from those teachers, and so having to go through the subsequent learning process of that realization and bringing myself to act on it (and I did learn a lot - not only regarding spiritual practice and philosophy, but also about what it means to be on the spiritual path and the pitfalls which lie along it, and I imagine you feel the same). You could think of the process of recognizing that it wasn't right for you anymore and moving on as a kind of graduation. So you're not alone I've also found it very freeing, which is nice but also a little overwhelming. Nice because it's opened up a lot of doors I thought were closed to me, overwhelming because it's hard to make a decision about where to take my practice next. I decided to get back to basics for a bit and see where the universe leads, instead of focusing on grand, lifelong goals. I would disagree strenuously with that first part. I think passing on teachings to a student creates a bond of responsibility, on many levels. I also think that someone who doesn't know their so-called 'students' personally, let alone keep track of progress, has no right to claim to be a teacher. The attitude you described in Lama Lena sounds far more appropriate. As for the latter, I found that for me it was a battle of my gut telling me to leave and my head telling me to stay, and my gut ended up being very much in the right (surprisingly so, when certain details revealed that things I had suspicions about were not only true, but far worse than I had thought possible). I think when something "doesn't feel quite right," that's the subconscious acknowledging the things your conscious isn't ready to accept just yet. I found the best way to come to terms with my disappointment in the teachers was to recognize that they were just human beings like everyone else, people who make mistakes, make bad decisions which they think are good ones, do the wrong thing when they think they are doing the right thing, suffer from ignorance and self-deception. To look at them as people and at their life situation and how they had come to be who they were, the good and the bad, and see their actions and as a result of that chain of events. I also had pointed out to me quite wisely that they too were on the spiritual path and so had to suffer and make mistakes to grow and learn, and that by taking on the role of teachers those mistakes were correspondingly larger and so would be the eventual lesson they would have to learn. So by being a part of their school, realizing that there were major problems stemming from how it was being run and bringing myself to leave for my own good, I was also contributing in some small way to the growth process of the teachers and the other students, who would have to realize the same things from their own perspective, at some point in eventuality.

Why is he the "original qigong master"? Why not just call him Chunyi Lin?

Who is this '"original qigong master" you keep referencing?

Thanks - and your English seems fine to me (a lot better than my Dutch )

If you don't mind my asking, after practicing them, what do you feel the connection between the Flying Phoenix Heavenly Sword forms and the Flying Phoenix Chi Kung is? Do the sword forms feel like they tap into the same energy as the the FPCK does? I assume the matching names aren't a coincidence.

That's a pretty massive assumption. Unless you've practiced different systems, experienced and studied the effects of the energies they utilize, there's really no way to know.

Interesting speculation, but you're making a large amount of assumptions about the nature of Chi with nothing to back them up. According to what? Your own experience? A book you read? Something someone said on the internet? I agree that there are fascinating parallels between electromagnetism and the concepts of yin/yang Chi, but it's a far leap from that to "yin = magnetism and yang = electricity." Cultivate what? How? There are plenty of systems which require the practitioner to be "grounded" while practicing, and there are plenty that don't. Is one approach right and the other wrong? Or are these different systems working with different segments of a vast energy spectrum and just applying the same terminology (or not, as the case may be)? Speculation is one thing, but unless you're discussing one specific system using the specific terminology of that system, then it's quite another to make massive leaps tying together vastly disparate concepts. The reality is that nobody knows (in the scientific sense, which is to say, has formed a hypothesis and demonstrated it through properly undertaken experimentation) what Chi is exactly, let alone all of the various sub-divisions. Those sub-divisions and labels are good for providing a model for practice within a specific system, but you can't take them and then apply them to another system, or try and universalize them.

There's also the "waker upper" (MSW3), maybe you could open with it to give you a boost of energy so you can then focus more fully on the rest of your practice? Although I'm not sure what the effect of using it regularly to compensate for lack of sleep would be.

I don't see the difference because I don't see the mind and body as being separated in that fashion - rather just as different layers of your whole being. eg. if you look into the Hindu yogic systems (they serve as a better example since the concept is expanded on a bit more there, although the same concept applies to Daoism as far as I know), you'll see that the different chakras are related to not only different physical processes and energetic processes, but also to different mental processes and aspects of the consciousness. Imo there's no firm divide between where the physical body ends and the energy body begins, and there's no firm divide between where the energy body ends and the consciousness begins, it's a spectrum we break down artificially so we can more easily understand it.

I've spoken to at least one teacher who claims that there are Taoist traditions which work with a lower dantien located at the height of the navel (specifically, that the navel location was the "original" site of the dantien, and it was only later on that people moved onto using the sub-navel location because it worked better for martial applications) - although this teacher never named these traditions, so I take it with a grain of salt, but the concept is at least out there. That said, when I tried utilizing the navel for this purpose, I didn't find it to have much effect. I actually ended up locating my dantien's specific location because whenever I tried to direct energy behind the navel, it slide down the center line towards the dantien (right where it's almost always described, about 3 - 4 fingers length below the navel), where it would "catch" for lack of a better word, and cause a slight pulse back up the center line and out the bai hai. Damo Mitchell recommends a similar exercise for locating it in his books, except starting at the hui yin and moving upwards.

Could be that the vast majority of landmass (especially that suitable for human occupation) is in the Northern Hemisphere?

Do you have a source for any of this?

Damo Mitchell has a pretty interesting perspective on Empty Force:

Yup.

Wow. Interesting and productive discussion in a Mo Pai thread... who knew?

Could you be a bit more specific about the nature of these spheres?