Aeran

That's really interesting AB - had you noticed any of the FP meditations interacting with the blockage beforehand, or did it all just come undone at once? And did you notice any emotional changes along with the physical effects of the blockage releasing? I've held off on practicing FP for a while because I have some blockages in the chest/shoulder which are aggravated by any more than mild energy flow, but maybe some of the FP Chi is exactly what I need to dissolve them. I'd really love to start practicing the system again - I enjoy my current training, but there's something profound and magical about the FP system which I've never found in any other system of meditation. But aggravating the blockages causes several days of powerful emotional release, which really interferes with my day to day life.

This doesn't really answer any of your questions, since I don't have any direct experience with Kunlun, but another interesting example of a "top down" technique is the Middle Pillar ritual from the Golden Dawn, which involves drawing energy down through the crown of the head and the central channel, stopping at several points to visualize and vibrate God Names, then circulating it through and around the body in various ways. In my experience, it's one of the more intense practices out there in terms of direct, quantifiable energy sensations produced (although of course that isn't necessarily a good thing). The Qabbalistic Cross portion of the LBRP could also be put in this category, although for some reason it doesn't induce nearly as intense an energy flow (perhaps because the energy is run through the whole body and not just the central channel).

Interesting - never heard of anything like that before (at least not in the context of Taiji and cultivation). Can the ball be taken into the body, or does it stimulate the internal energy structure by being moved over the surface?

Thanks for explaining - although I have to agree with idquest, from what I remember of Mitchell's books, his method is much closer to what you describe as "indirect" than it is to what you describe as "direct." But it's been a while since I read that section of the book, and I've never tried the dantien work itself, so I could be wrong. If you don't mind clarifying a bit further to sate my curiosity What does the "energetic Taiji ball" you described consist of, and how is it moved around the body?

That sounds interesting - are you able to clarify on the distinction?

If you don't mind me asking, what does this "merger" exercise entail exactly? I found the effects of the Middle Pillar intense to the point of being overwhelming if I kept the practice going for more than 15 minutes or so, so I'm curious about what would be involved in a practice which is "more powerful."

While qigong can definitely help with emotional problems, including anxiety, in the long run, it's a more complex relationship than "more qigong = less anxiety." Practicing qigong and related systems of cultivation can also cause mental health problems to worsen in the short term by putting you more fully in touch with your internal energy and your subconscious, which can serve to bring suppressed emotions and stagnant energy to the forefront of your awareness where they can cause symptoms to increase before being processed. This is especially tricky for anxiety, which tends to involve a positive feedback loop type effect - in other words, the emergence of these stagnant emotions and the symptoms they cause will itself trigger anxiety, which, if not properly processed, can delay recovery or even worsen your condition. While this process eventually leads to long term recovery, it can be a bumpy and uncomfortable road which may entail things getting worse before they get better. If your anxiety is moderate - severe, I'd highly recommend practicing under the guidance of a teacher (one who understands not just qigong but it's relationship to emotional health, and who is willing to help you through this process), taking things slow and easy, having some kind of mindfulness based practice to accompany your qigong and maintaining regular contact with a mental health professional. Good luck!

You aren't "letting" her do anything - you have no control over her behavior, she was an addict before you met her. No amount of interference or outside circumstances can cause an addict to decide to seek help with their addiction, that drive has to come from within. Given how much emotional torment this is causing you, I would say you'd be better off separating yourself from this woman entirely. Your suffering alongside her isn't going to achieve anything but create more chaos in both of your lives. And to be blunt, the situation doesn't sound sustainable. Polyamorous relationships are fraught with pitfalls at the best of times, throw in the chaos of a substance abuse problem and I can't see any outcome that doesn't result in everyone involved being hurt. I sincerely doubt OSHO was talking about crack cocaine and alcohol when it comes to "opening up the right hemisphere of creativity." There are very few substances in regular use which are more destructive to the body and mind when abused than alcohol and crack cocaine. As for whether you're missing out? Only you can decide that. I think an argument can be made for "certain" drugs enhancing the quality of a persons life, opening up creativity, etc. but cocaine and alcohol aren't really among them. If you've gone this far in life without using drugs, I can't see how taking them up now would be likely to end well.

It's an interesting theory, but there's a real dearth of evidence there. But who knows for sure? Like the future, our conception of the past is constantly shifting based on our experience of the present.

The spelling debate has been going on forever and there's never been any agreed upon designation of different spellings to different systems. I find it easiest to just use Kabbalah as a catch all, unless directly quoting or referencing something.

These kind of similarities seem to exist between most major esoteric traditions - I think it's mostly a matter of studying the same thing and coming to the same conclusions, but expressing them in slightly different ways as determined by environment and cultural background.

Where exactly is all this drama and conflict taking place? It isn't in line with my experience of this forum at all, am I not reading the right threads?

First of all, I'll start by seconding Dwai's recommendations - and I would add to them, if you aren't already, that you should seek out help from a mental health professional of some kind. It's not a quick fix, and finding the right therapist can take a few false starts, but therapy can help enormously in coming to an understanding of your mind and why you feel the way you do. Secondly, on the matter of Jing, I'm no expert, but I'd recommend being careful with the retention stuff. Moderation is one thing (eg. not masturbating 4 times daily), but I've never heard anything to suggest complete retention, outside of the context of specific phases of intense internal practice taking place under the guidance of a master, is a good idea. In fact I would guess that it generally leads to stagnation and assorted sexual and other problems (look at the Catholic priests). Although it might not be a bad idea to cut back for a time to let your system reset and see where you fall when it comes to your body's natural levels of desire. As someone who was overindulging enormously (like most men), then went to celibacy for a while, and then settled down somewhere in the middle, my experience is that either extreme comes with it's own set of problems. I'd highly recommend watching this video, it's one of the best discussions on the whole "jing" issue I've heard: Finally, I'd recommend looking into mindfulness practices. My experience has been that energy practices alone can only do so much when it comes to issues like depression, and in fact are just as likely to worsen the issue as help with it, especially without the guidance from a master or eastern healing practitioner. They tend to bring repressed emotions to the forefront, which can result in quite a violent and traumatic eruption which can lead to further issues if you don't have a framework for processing those emotions. It's not enough to get the energy flowing and bring things to the surface, you have to know what to do with them when they get there - at least in my experience. (as far as mindfulness goes, I'd recommend checking out the works of Joseph Goldstein and Tara Brach - the latter in particular, despite feeling a bit new agey at first, has been of immense assistance to me in working through emotional releases induced by energetic practices).

The irony that America is on the tail end of a massive moral panic about a mostly fictitious epidemic of rape on College campuses, while totally ignoring the widely acknowledged actual epidemic of rape in their prison system, should not be lost on anyone. The difference is in the demographics, and the demographics are why there isn't going to be a public outcry about the prison rape problem in America anytime soon. The same is true in Australia - I'm not sure what it is about America that makes the problem so much worse there, except that there appears to be a much greater degree of intertwining of sex and violence in American culture than there is in most Western nations.

^ Who is the Canadian healer?

Part of what's happening here is something I've noticed in a lot of "spiritual" forums, which is that a lot of the people that post on them have a kind of intense modesty when it comes to describing their personal experiences, especially anything particularly "spiritual" or involving "powers" or psychic effects or anything along those lines. I'm not judging, just saying that I've heard a lot of people describe things in private correspondences that they never discuss in public.

Not to necessarily disagree with any of the above, but I'd say the most important thing to keep in mind is that different teachers and schools have different definitions for these terms. I'd argue it's more important to understand what an individual teacher means when he uses these terms than to try to adhere to a strict definition based on etymology, especially if you're getting knowledge from multiple sources.

I don't think I explained it very well He didn't say the effects were limited, just that they had a low ceiling ie. the benefit of practicing is great in itself, but doesn't necessarily increase over the years as you practice, like some other systems. At least that's how I understood it, and I might be wrong there too, it just came up briefly in conversation. I'll check out those interviews.

Wow, you're pretty off the mark there dude. Maybe you misread my post? Putting aside the accusations that I'm some kind of greedy, fame-mongering materialist :/ what I'm concerned about is that, as I said above, the ability to create a gust of wind out of nowhere has no inherent purpose. There is no practical use to which it can be put, beyond showing off and demonstrating to people "I can do something you can't." Even if he is creating the gusts of wind, so what? That's not a rhetorical question, I'm asking how is whatever he's doing improving his life or the lives of his "students," or otherwise making the world a better place in some way that would make it a worthwhile pursuit? The thing is there are abilities which can be cultivated which do have practical uses, in that they allow you to help people and make the world a better place (namly, different types of healing), or open your perspective on the world and allow you to perceive reality more fully in a way that makes your life more fulfilling (things like clairvoyance, astral projection, etc). And there are other effects of cultivation which aren't necessarily "abilities," but which are highly desirable in their own right - good health, longevity, spiritual development, and so on. But what's allegedly being demonstrated in the video has nothing to do with any of that, as far as he's demonstrated. Being able to create gusts of wind isn't going to make you happier, or healthier, or more spiritually developed, it isn't going to enhance your perception of the world or allow you to make the world a better place or improve the life of other people. So again, I ask, what purpose does it serve? There is an argument to be made, and you seem to be touching on it, that these kinds of abilities can be an important tool in opening people's minds to the greater capabilities of humanity - I don't necessarily disagree with it, and have in fact made that argument before. But I don't think something so subtle as potentially influencing the flow of wind is going to change many minds that aren't already extremely open to the idea. It's certainly not going to change the mind of anyone with even the slightest scrap of doubt already in their mind.

Do you have a link to those interviews? Sound interesting.

I'm not necessarily skeptical of the phenomena itself, there are a ton of weird and wonderful things which humans are capable of doing if they put in the effort to develop the ability, and I have no way of knowing that this isn't one of them. What I do question is the point of what he's doing. Accepting for the sake of discussion that he is really causing the wind movements in the video - so what? What does that ability demonstrate about the individual in question beyond the capacity to create gusts of wind? What purpose does it serve beyond showing off in youtube videos?

Ahh that makes sense. I'm curious, after 43 years, how do you feel about TM? Obviously you're getting something from it, but is it something that would be worth taking up? I was discussing it with someone else the other day, and they said it was a very beneficial method, but that it had a low ceiling in terms of the effects it provided. As far as feeling Qi goes, you should try the Sung Breathing exercises from Damo Mitchell's book. I'm fairly sure he goes through it in Heavenly Streams, but Nei Gong contains a more detailed description. I'd also recommend checking out Anthony Korahais at http://flowingzen.com/ He runs online workshops where he teaches a specific training routine which can be adapted to pretty much any style of qigong, and seems to help enormously in both maximizing the effects and become more sensitive to the internal effects of the exercises. He writes a bit about it here: http://flowingzen.com/17310/how-to-feel-qi-energy-without-waiting-years/

Although I've never had anything published, I've done enough writing to be able to imagine how crappy it would be to come up with and flesh out an idea, only to have someone else snatch it and claim it as their own to the whole world. I really hope your next legal action pulls through, corporations shouldn't be able to get away with that kind of blatant plagiarism. Just a thought, have you considered creating some kind of video documentary, to give a visual narrative to your case and your legal struggle? You could introduce yourself to put a personal face on the whole issue, give details about your kung fu training which lead to the inspiration for the concept, then outline your own creative process and the theft by Dreamworks which you've laid out in the timeline, show direct visual and narrative comparisons between your own creation and their movies, include clips from the court cases, and then tell viewers what they can do to help out. A kind of mini-documentary. Your timeline is detailed, but people have short attention spans these days, and even if they read it and repost/retweet it, they're likely to forget it by the end of the day. Taking everything and tying it into a single major video which would be easy for people to both watch and to spread would grab a lot of attention, especially if you manage to get it to some major mainstream or alternative media outlets (even something like an appearance in a major podcast would draw a lot of attention to your case). I don't know if it's feasible, or even wise from a legal perspective, but it seems like these kind of videos and documentaries are the quickest ways to gain public traction for a cause, and even if the legal system fails you, this would give you a chance to put your story out there and let people know the truth. Good luck Sifu Terry.

Glad it helped man It really is an excellent book. Although I have to admit, I am curious, why have you gone through so many different forms and systems? It seems like every few days you're discussing a new one here Are you just experimenting out of curiosity, or is there a specific result you're looking for?

I studied Western philosophy intently for a period of time (it was my first major at University), but this had the effect of deepening my conviction that there was no chance of living any other way, that the human condition was to either live in that meaningless manner or to delude oneself into believing mythological concoctions to provide a veneer of meaning. As for beliefs - my beliefs (or perhaps a better term would be "worldview") changed as a result of my experiences, which I underwent (mostly, but not exclusively) as a result of the practices I had taken up. I initially took these practices up, not in a conscious attempt to provide some kind of existential cure, but from a desire to investigate certain experiences I had had. These practices then opened me up to further experiences, and my research into these lead me to an intellectual and philosophical framework which supported these experiences and practices (although it is a framework which I'm constantly adjusting as I'm exposed to new concepts and new experiences).