Aeran

Is there a range limit on this healing effect? It would be amazing if the FP energy could be transmitted long distance the way someone like Eric Isen does their healing - especially since the two energies (the Oneness Meditation energy and the FP Chi) seem similar in many ways. What you said about tension also brings to mind something I was wondering the other day - I was watching a video of a Tai Chi teacher discussing the concept of Sung in Tai Chi practice and the continual release of layers of tension as one progresses, and it seems to me that FP Qigong would be uniquely suited to practice alongside Tai Chi, not just because of the health and spiritual benefits (which would also complement any other martial art), but because one of the most obvious effects of the FP Chi seems to be the active seeking out and releasing of tension within the body. Would this be a fair assessment? And if you don't mind one last question, do you have any advice on using the FP system to release emotional tension caused by sustained stress and past trauma? Several years ago, only a few months after discovering the FP system, I received a powerful surge of energy during meditation (not Flying Phoenix - I believe it was related to Hermetic practices I was working with at the time) which had the effect of breaking through some kind of emotional blockage, and ever since then I experienced an intense upwelling of negative emotion whenever I meditated. Unfortunately for a long time this effect overpowered even the healing capabilities of the FP meditations, and I could only practice sporadically. I've been working for the last 3 years to process this, to work the emotional chafe out of my system ("grist for the mill," I believe you once called it) and get myself back into a better place so I can resume full time practice, taking up mindfulness training to help process the emotional release and working with several healing practitioners via herbs and direct healing, and I seem to be finally getting back into a place where I can resume a daily FP Qigong practice, but any thoughts you have on how particularly to apply the FP system in this situation would be massively helpful. As always, thanks for taking the time to spread some wisdom

I think I'm far enough away from it that I can't possible answer the question. I tend to not worry about "the E word" too much, since I figure that in the fullness of time, in this lifetime or another (probably another ) it will happen anyway. I'd rather focus on just making sure I'm getting some steady momentum going - growing every day and getting closer to reaching my full potential and living the best possible version of life that I could live.

Thanks guys - sounds like the Neti Pot is a go. Any suggestions on good brands/sources, or will any old thing from the local shopping center do? Hey Bubbles, I don't believe I've posted regarding this topic before, since it's something I've only been having real problems with in the last few months - but of course I could be wrong, since I've been posting here on DB on and off for a few years. I know I've posted a few things only to forget about them then come back and find them some time later. Anyway the suggestions of a dietary source are interesting - I've been experimenting with my diet a lot over the last year or so, since my digestion is another area where I've been having trouble. I haven't tried actively cutting out dairy or grain, but it sounds like it might be worth a shot. I'll definitely look into it, thanks That sounds interesting, I'll see if I can look it up, cheers.

Man, that actually sounds really confusing to me :/ You're right though, the lack of visualisation is a huge plus. All the meditations I've done which require visualisation seem to end up being too ineffective or far too forceful, without much room in between. And of course so much depends on your ability to visualise properly. Did a nice round of MSW1 last night, and just feel like reiterating how much I love that meditation The soft, flowing movements while seated are incredibly relaxing, and the energy it induces feels very gentle, very nourishing. Only problem is that I'm so out of practice with seated meditation my legs went numb after 20 minutes, even sitting on a cushion. Will have to work on that.

It's brilliant, isn't it? I remember the first time my Taiji teacher worked on my back - it was like being inflated with liquid sunlight.

It looks like I'm not the only one who's decided 2017 is the year to get back into, and get serious about, Flying Phoenix. I sometimes feel a lot of regret for the last 3 years during which I've been unable to practice regularly due to problems with poor health, blockages and concomitant emotional release, but I've slowly worked, inside and out, to sort myself out and get back to a place where I can pursue the practices I want to with the dedication I want to, and I'm feeling good about things this time. I just wrapped up a session with the Basic Seated Meditation #1, followed by an experiment with Monk Holding Pearl seated instead of standing, and I'm feeling quite brilliant. Things got a bit bumpy during the breathing sequences, especially the first one - I think the anxiety is as much anticipatory as it is a result of emotional release, especially since FP seems to have something of a dissolving effect on the stagnant emotions released from practice which I haven't found in other Qigong systems. But I found it easy to ride out with the mindfulness training I've been working on integrating the last 6 months or so, and by the time I got stuck into Monk Holding Pearl I was feeling more deeply relaxed than I have in a long time. So onward and upward... On a side note, the seated version of Monk Holding Pearl works quite well, although the energy seemed to build up more in the torso and then start circulating more fully around the body only after ending the meditation and moving around a bit, compared to what I remember from when I first started practicing FP, where it seemed to circulate outwards from the LDT more immediately and create that "bubbling" sensation. But it could just be that I'm getting back into the practice after a long break. I'm also getting a rather interesting (and pleasant) "swirling" sensation in the Lower Dantien which I've never experienced before. I'd be interested in other people's thoughts on MHPearl Seated v. Standing.

Damo Mitchell makes the same recommendation in White Moon. Personally, I'm not huge on jewelry, but I do wear a silver pendant and have never noticed any effect from it consciously. Now that the subject has been raised, I might try removing it for a while just to see if there is any difference. What I have noticed as having a strong effect on my energy is a magnetotherapy wrist band I experimented with for a month or two. There was a definite sensation of energy having to swirl and loop around the wrist band as the energy moved up and down my arm during qigong, although it didn't have a negative impact on the practice that I noticed. It, however, seem to correlate with a period in time in which excess heat seemed to build up as a result of practice - I can't prove a causal relation, but the woman who sold me the wrist band said that they could cause dehydration (and I experienced this effect myself), so there was definitely something going on.

This would also be nice, but is it realistic on a widespread level? A cultural shift towards greater critical thinking and analysis of news sources would be excellent, but seems like it would also be very difficult to achieve and sustain, at least in the short term. Creating a croudsourced news-review website/app, on the other hand, seems fairly achievable (although I admit I know nothing about creating websites or apps), and could be a good step towards a shift in our approach to analyzing news sources, although of course there is the hurdle of dealing with resistance from within the news industry.

What would be nice is a way to "crowd-source," if that's the right term, reviewing of the news. So maybe create a website where people can go and different articles/sources are ranked by readers, in the same way that places like metacritic and imdb provide consumer ranking of entertainment media, instead of consumers being forced to rely upon "official" reviewers who tend to have all sorts of unexposed motivations and incestuous ties to the industries they're supposed to be reviewing. Of course, ideology would still be a factor, as it always will be, but at least this way it might be a bit more upfront and reflect the demographics of the public as a whole (especially if there was a way to label and sort news based on ideological perspective as well as quality, making people more conscious of these distinctions), instead of things being sorted into an invisible echochamber by algorithms or preselected teams who all share the same worldviews.

I'd disagree with that.They might be "happy" in the immediate sense while intoxicated with their drug of choice, but the nature of addiction is such that it tends to manifest in response to dissatisfaction and discomfort with one's life circumstances, past experiences and present environment - it is, almost always, an attempt to self medicate some combination of those factors.And addressing these factors tends to be a major facet in successful recovery from addiction. I would argue that by definition, someone to whom the label "happy" could truly be applied would not be inclined towards addiction.

But how many of these people are there, relative to those who are doing jobs they don't like just to survive and spending the rest of their time dulling their dissatisfaction with assorted distractions (TV, games, internet, porn, sex, booze, drugs, etc)? Does our society emphasize happiness, meaning and the ability to fully express yourself as an individual as much as it could/should, relative to other values? Maybe it's just me and the people I surrounded myself with for much of my life, but it seems like the ones who are genuinely content and living out the life they want are in a small minority, and have to put great effort into going against the flow of mainstream society to attain that lifestyle. By contrast, society seems to much more strongly encourage the kind of mindless "make work" and equally mindless "comfort consumerism," and as a result people seem to easily fall into that pattern unless they're some combination of very determined and very lucky.

Robert Bruce's "Practical Psychic Self-Defense Handbook" has a ton of really good advice on just this topic. It helped me immensely, and if you're having issues in this area I'd highly recommend it.

Hope Sifu Korahais' school works out for you - I took his introductory seminar online and gained a lot out of it, especially his training on relaxing the body prior to practice, his 5-Step method and the Flowing Breeze Swaying Willow "form" he teaches. I didn't continue with the school because, ultimately, I wanted to focus on the training I already had, but he seems like a decent guy who's passionate about helping people with his art. And his teachings definitely did help me tune into the sensation of Qi in my body during practice.

Saying "it was announced by Anonymous" means about as much as saying "some drunk guy told it to me in a bar last night." By definition, anyone can adopt the label of "Anonymous" - that's the whole point of it. While not a whole lot would surprise me at this stage, after how insane the whole election cycle has been, I find myself believing that if American politics were corrupt enough for this to take place, then they would be corrupt enough for Hillary to have just been handed an outright victory in the first place.

If you're going to make such a bold claim (sorry, couldn't help myself ), I think you should probably go into a little more detail and back it up.

This is better than Game of Thrones or House of Cards. "Interesting times" indeed...

Just to be safe, I'd say start with a doctor. Unless there's some other pre-existing condition in play then I think the chance that it's an actual physical heart problem is fairly small, but it's better to be safe than sorry when it comes to the heart. And just ruling out the possibility that it's a sign of some kind of impending cardiac doom should help you relax a bit. After that, I'd say a good TCM/ayurvedic practitioner would be the next stop. I'd also recommend finding a decent teacher of whatever energetic/yogic/meditative system you feel would be the best fit for you - someone who can guide you through what you're feeling, directly perceive what's going on in your body and use their own energy to work on you. If this doubles as aforementioned TCM/ayuverdic practitioner, all the better, but unfortunately the two don't overlap as often as they should. Generally speaking, You might have an easier time with standing/moving form of meditation - my experience is that compared to basic vipassana/quiet sitting type meditation, a gentle qigong/yoga style practice is a lot better when those kinds of underlying blockages are causing problems. It's easier to focus on the practice instead of on the symptoms, and they're generally designed specifically to get energy flowing in a healthy manner for the purpose of clearing these kind of things out. I'm not an expert, but it does sound like you might have some anxiety going on. Chest discomfort, rapid heartbeat, sore/tight throat and worries about death and dying are all classic anxiety symptoms - it's possible you have some underlying anxiety which is coming to surface when you still your mind during meditation. If you think this is the case, then working with a therapist is probably not a bad idea - a good therapist can help you process your emotions intellectually, and understand their source, as they start to arise and clear out during any kind of meditative/energetic practice. Shop around, find someone who genuinely cares and doesn't want to just park you on pills, and it can do you wonders. I've been working through some fairly similar issues (uncomfortable sensations and emotions arising during meditation), and apart from what has already been mentioned, there are two resources I'd highly recommend. The first is Tara Brach's book Radical Acceptance - which I know sounds incredibly cheesy, but combined with her R.A.I.N. method for mindfulness (which I found in Dan Harris's 10% Happier, but I imagine is also available online for free) is probably the best single set of tools I've found for exploring, understanding, coming to terms with and eventually clearing emotional blockages. It's really in a class of it's own. The second is the chapter on Sung Breathing in Damo Mitchell's book Daoist Nei Gong. This chapter alone is worth the price of entry, and the method is not only excellent at doing what it's intended for (helping release emotional/energetic/physical tension) but has enhanced every other meditation practice I've tried since in a profound way. It completely changed my approach to both emotional blockages and to breathwork in meditation. There's a video here which discusses the process a bit: Good luck

I've always wondered on this point - Mitchell himself says that the training in his books should be attempted with a teacher, but then he goes and writes a detailed book obviously intended to be used as a practical manual for that exact same training. Seems a bit contradictory.

^ Good advice. I go back over the section on sung breathing in Daoist Nei Gong every so often, and get something new out of it every time. It's enhanced all of my meditative practices immeasurably.

If you don't mind my asking, what does the version of yijinjing you practice consist of, loosely? There seem to be a fair few practices going around under that name, some of them quite different to the others, and (from the outside) yielding different results. But how does one "see... potency" in a particular style, without actually practicing it or having direct experience with someone who's mastered it?

This is a complicated situation, but I'll try and keep the explanation as brief as possible. If anyone has any input or advice, or is able to help in any way, it would be massively appreciated. Basically I have, as the title suggests, what I believe at least a couple major energy blockages which are causing problems with both my spiritual practice and physical health. The first and most obvious issue is in my legs, where I get bouts of intense, painful prickling and itching whenever I perform an exercise which runs energy through that part of the body. I first noticed this in Dec. 2012 when I tried learning Qi Gong for the first time, I ignored it at first hoping it would go away, but it's been there consistently ever since, I try and ignore it and push through in the hope that continued practice will clear up, but so far it hasn't improved significantly. Obviously this interferes with my practice quite a bit, as I end up cutting certain exercises short when the symptoms become too painful to continue (Monk Gazing at Moon from Flying Phoenix is one example which triggers this in a major way). The second major area where problems manifest appears to be in the upper left torso. I first had trouble here around the middle of last year, when I noticed symptoms similar to the ones in my legs appearing in my left arm whenever I meditated. After a few weeks this went away, which I put down to improving posture in my shoulders and neck during practice (I have a long history of upper back problems). However this area appears to have become problematic again, practicing sets off intense symptoms there (both acutely and long term - especially the morning after a day on which I practice). At first it was just ordinary pain in the shoulder blade, in the torso under the armpit, and along the arm itself - then it seemed to spread further inward and start causing weird symptoms around my heart, chest tightness, palpitations, shortness of breath, sudden spikes in blood pressure and heart rate. Obviously I saw a doctor at this stage, who ran some tests and didn't find anything then put it down to stress and anxiety (which I had issues with a few years back when I was living a very high pressure and unhealthy lifestyle, but I thought I had gotten rid of). On top of that, they tend to manifest alongside physical fatigue and just generally feeling awful. These symptoms all correlate directly to spiritual/energetic practice, and go away entirely if I stop practicing entirely (which I have done twice, to test the correlation), but they came back as soon as I resumed practice - even basic emptiness meditation, which sets off the upper-left torso issues (as well as the leg symptoms if I sit in full lotus posture). Or standing outside in a basic wu chi (sp?) posture (exactly like this one here http://thestillmind.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/img_01401.jpg ), which results in an almost immediate buildup of the painful prickling in my legs followed by the other symptoms manifesting over the next day or so (especially upon waking the next morning). I'm kind of at my wits end on how to deal with this. I've been trying to just 'push through it' in the hopes that it would clear up with practice, but that hasn't worked. I don't have a teacher available to consult in person (although I do corresponding online with one and am hoping to hear back from another). The obvious next step seems to be to consult someone in person, but I live in a smaller city, and all I've found through my searching is an incredibly new age-ish ''wellness'' center and a couple self proclaimed TCM practitioners - none of whom inspired any real confidence when I looked at their websites or spoke to them on the phone, and all of whom want large sums of money for their time. So as I said, if anyone has any suggestions on how to approach this problem - or even if any other Aussie members can recommend practitioners or healers within the country who could help with the problem (I'm in Adelaide, but willing travel out of state if necessary) - it would be majorly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

I think we've possibly gotten a tad off topic here

If you want a laugh, there's a fairly hilarious video of "Christian Tai Chi" floating around the internet which was put together by some evangelical group in the US. Apparently regular Tai Chi is the devil's work, so they worked in the sign of the cross and Biblical quotes which have to be chanted at certain points in the form. Which deity, out of curiosity? One of my old hermetic teachers taught a mantra he claims was received from an ancient Greek deity. It had an extremely powerful effect, just saying the names in order to memorize them - without vibrating or chanting them - resulted in a powerful ecstatic state, a kind of "energy high" closer to what you'd expect from recreational drugs than a spiritual practice. I obviously can't validate his claim about the origin of the mantra, but the effect was powerful enough that I doubt he just strung together a bunch of terms from old Greek texts. It makes me wonder which other old deities are floating out there in the ether, just waiting for someone to get in touch.

To be fair, it seems like it's a little more complicated than that in the case of the FP system. Most Qigong systems work with the energy which already exists within the body and the environment around us - you could think of it as, in essence, a kind of metaphysical technology. Combine X movement and Y breathing and Z Qi movement results. So the food analogy is somewhat valid, in that Qigong is only working with something which is already intimately involved in just the daily process of living. And many of the Mystical sects of the Abrahamic religions work with similar practices (certain Sufi sects work heavily with energy centers and energy healing, and there are the Hesychasts of Greek Orthodox Christianity, just off the top of my head). But FP was specifically taught to a Daoist monk by a Buddhist deity, if I recall Sifu Terry's explanation correctly, and the FP energy "trunk," from which the unique blue Qi which makes the system so effective is drawn (again, this is if I remember correctly, it's been a while since I read back in this thread), is somehow maintained, or at least connected to, the Buddhist monastic community at Mt. Ehrmei. This could potentially be a problem for members of certain Abrahamic religious groups, since many of them believe than any spiritual being not explicitly connected to the Abrahamic God as described in their scripture is, by definition, demonic. Practices taught by a Buddhist deity to a Daoist Monk and passed down and maintained by a Buddhist monastic community might, therefore, pose some problems, depending exactly on what one believes in that regard. So I can see why the question comes up. That said, coming at it from the opposite end, there's nothing about the FP system which would make it inherently un-practicable by someone who is Christian, and I've never heard that Buddhist deities object to their teachings being utilized by people of other faiths. There are plenty of people who consider themselves Christian, Jewish or Islamic who integrate aspects of and teachings from other systems of belief into their spiritual life, or who adapt their Abrahamic beliefs to be more in line with their mystical insights, including many of the great mystics of these religions. On the other hand, those who hold more strictly to Abrahamic scripture, at least on the subject of other religions, might have trouble in the form of some cognitive dissonance, if the practitioner genuinely believes that Buddhist deities are actually demonic in nature, which might not be great for the practice In short, it's a question only the individual in question can answer. At least, that's how it seems to me

What do the "Egyptian" practices consist of? I wonder where he picked those up.