Sebastian

Wait.... are you guys saying that meditation is basically suicide ??

Great posts Freeform and Starjumper. Question for StarJumper, it seems you're saying that focusing on certain parts of the body, or aspects of it like posture, breathing, etc... can be helpful at first, but then a crutch later on. Would you say it's also a crutch at these advanced levels, if you focus on the wholeness of the body, and not specific parts ? That's what I'm currently doing. Master Ni Hua Ching refers to this as dynamic meditation. You basically place your pure awareness on your life being, that's it. Another word is natural meditation. Because energetically if you keep looking at the mind, and choose not to connect to the body in any way, then the fire of the mind is not mixing with the water of the body and you end up with a different result. At least from my experience. I'm not saying it's better or worst though. When you place awareness on the body, without thoughts, effectively what you have is energetic conservation, transformation and alchemy. Of course the sense of body dissolves, but the body is an integral part of that meditation. Or else it couldn't grow and transform, it's like watering a plant energetically. I'm sure there are different approaches, especially in Buddhism, so just wondering how you guys meditate. Thanks

Btw, looking at this more, it seems the OP first experienced these issues 5 years ago and practiced Flying Phoenix Qigong since then for a few years, with some Pingshuia thrown in if you look at the post history. So it doesn't seem like he tried Master Lin's MCO in 2019 for the first time and immediately experienced issues. It seems like the opposite in fact, he's trying to use the SFQ MCO as a way to get the Qi back in the correct channel. Anyways, I'm sorry you've had this for so long Awareness rules. I stand by my advice to get a healing from Master Lin or Jim Nance but it may require repeat sessions since you've had this for so long. I would also highly recommend Brion Beller who you can email directly at brddog822 at aol.com. You can email him your concern, he is very responsive and detailed in his answers, and his fee is also comparatively lower. His fee is $75 and he often spends one hour on you, he's from Michael Lomax's stillness movement lineage. All these Masters have third eyes open so can help you in ways a Western doctor never could, especially for these channel issues. If you want to practice SFQ then it's good to try the two Masters above, or go to an event and spend time with Master Lin. The strong Qi fields at events can really remove major blockages in a lot of people. If you really experienced this as a side-effect of doing the SFQ small universe, then email them directly and explain the situation. Support at springforestqigong dot com. I'm sure they'll help you out or refer you to a Master of the system. Hope this helps

Hahaha Freeform. I'm sure Chunyi would like to meet her, he enjoys teaching grandmas. And I know you mean no disrespect, you are just sharing your approach, I appreciate it. I also appreciate discussion as it helps us flesh out our understandings. Anyways, that's one thing I always appreciated from Chunyi at events is that he makes no distinctions between the ages of people, or where they are at spiritually. He often spends more time with the older folks and teaches them relentlessly. He will never reject someone because their health is too poor or they have "bad energy". He's not like that. And I appreciate him for that. By the way, like silent thunder, I appreciate reading Freeform's posts too Good advice in them, that I can use for myself too.

I understand your way of thinking. If you go to their website right now, it actually says "ancient Qigong reinvented' which is in line with what you are saying. But it's hard to discount as a system when you meet the Master in person. His energy is sublime and he never leaves you the same. It's also hard to discount as a system when you see the countless healing testimonies. You can always point to a few cases of deviations here and there and then extrapolate that all visualizations or modern systems like this are wrong. Maybe the classical way had much lower rates of deviation, it's very possible. But I would venture the thought that SFQ is doing a lot more good than bad as a whole, and has safety measures built in. For example, some classical Taoist lineages focus on the LDT exclusively as their practice, until it creates a hot ball of energy that opens the MCO. Master Lin didn't chose that approach in his system because it is dangerous without a Master guiding you. What's dangerous exactly ? The nature of the energy. Hot and fiery Qi that can rip through organs and channels if you don't know what you are doing. Starting folks out with the MCO sounds ridiculous to almost all traditional lineages. But the thing is, when you don't have a lot of Qi, how are you going to hurt yourself ? That's the approach that SFQ takes. Start very small with what you have, slowly build and circulate. The MCO of SFQ is deceptive because it is nothing like the real "alchemical" MCO. It just borrows the name, but it is really a modern invention, a completely new meditation. It will release blockages along the front of back channels by connecting you to an external energy source and using the power of intent, music and sound. It is a therapeutic meditation basically, it is not the MCO. To open the real MCO you need Dantian development, there is no shortcut, or any other way to do it. Yet, you also can't say that doing the SFQ MCO won't eventually kick start the real MCO, because it greatly builds your LDT too. I know the Master has put in so much thought into the system, it's really something. And it comes from a deep understanding of how the Universe works, of energetics, and actually seeing the results of the various meditations and Qigong forms through third eye vision. But the system itself is only a few decades old, so I can totally understand people who prefer to chose time tested lineages and traditions. It's just a matter of resonance. SFQ is a healing Qigong that appears to be quite new-agey, but the more dig, the more you appreciate its design and wisdom.

Sure, I can try to answer that. But I should say I am only speaking as a beginner practitioner of the system, and not as a Master or Teacher. The small universe goes through the Ren Mai and Du Mai. It goes down the Ren Mai. The central channel will be affected too because it mirrors the motions of Qi, and because the Qi touches the periphery of the chakras as it goes up and down the front and back channels. But you don't focus on the central channel. It will open as a side effect, especially if you focus on the LDT behind the navel like we do at SFQ, and not three finger widths below on the skin at the Qihai point. Yes Master Lin learned visualization from his teachers, for this meditation and others. In my example of the Laogong, it was to gather Qi for yourself, by opening to your environment. You can also visualize a beam of Light emanating from the Laogong and sending it to people. If you want to experience that, breathe in Qi from every pore of your body and breathe out Qi from your Laogong. Do it 12 times until the palms will feel hot. The points will open the same whether you receive or give out energy, but this is open/close in terms of your environment, not in a clinical sense. By the way, for the glass tube visualization, I didn't mean you can fill your Dantian completely that way. What I mean is you are like a vacuum tube and you create a hole. Because of the huge pressure difference, Qi will rush in until the pressure normalizes and then your cup will be "full" only as a matter of speaking. Your Dantian can still use development. You can also use the Bahui point if you like that visualization. You can imagine Light raining down from that point cleaning your energetic body of impurities, as they leave through the soles of your feet. Or you can also use the lower Dantian point. Imagine it sucking all the Qi of your universe. That will lead to filling it much quicker, as opposed to going through the palms, then arms, etc.. Hope this helps

Mostly the lineage of Spring Forest Qigong. I am currently learning with three Masters along that lineage: the current Master of the parent system, Master Lin of course, and Master Jim Nance who founded Guiding Qi. In terms of more traditional Taoist lineages, I am also quite close to the teachings of Master Ni Hua Ching. Personally, I don't think a posture approach would open the Laogong in the same way as in the glass tube exercise. The intent would be slightly different. Because yours is to use the mechanics of the body and of Qi to open all muscles, bones and soft tissues in an optimal way. You are working from the perspective of the body and mind, and there's nothing wrong with that. It will lead to a different opening, something that's optimal from body Qi mechanics perspective. I'm not saying that's better or worst, just different. It's like, if you want to make a connection to the North Star, then you need to set your intent to it or visualize it. If you want to connect to the Big Dipper, then same. You can't work on your body or brain to create that connection for you indirectly. When we visualize, we work from the perspective of the Divine in SFQ. We ask the Divine to see our liver completely free and open, and we do this because we realize that engineering has its limits. We realize that the Divine has access to infinite amounts of information, much more than we can possibly fathom, and that it can unblock the liver in ways we never could. For example, it can see the future, it can heal the past and future of the organ. It knows what diseases are potentially coming, and knows what healing we need at this moment. It uses Light to heal us which works at the quantum level and doesn't have the physical restrictions of Qi, although Light is just a more refined form of Qi. That is not to say that sound energetic engineering and good posture aren't important, they are. But when you're stuck with a deep blockage or trying to go deeper spiritually, then working with Light can take you there if you wish. Otherwise we would be bound to the limitations of the body. When all else fails, Light can bend form, open channels and transform the physical body too. It does this invisibly and claims no credit for what it does. A sincere intent repeatedly cast in light can move mountains from my experience, there is nothing it can't achieve. Some people call this Light Jesus. It's good to engineer and have good posture to build Qi first, then you can convert that Qi to Light or shen and experiment with your spiritual energy.

I would just call Master Lin and ask for a session and he'll tell you what's wrong. 952.593.5555

Just want to provide another perspective on visualization, for good measure.First, I don't think the suggestion of "once a visualizer, always a visualizer" is fair or even reasonable in these imagery/ no imagery debates. By this I mean, you can very well visualize for the first 5% of your meditation (to set the intent), and then not visualize for the rest of that meditation. So you can both visualize and not visualize in a session. Yin and Yang. Now, actively holding onto a visualization the whole time and continuously feeding it imagery is something else, and comes with major drawbacks if done for a prolonged period of time. That's why a lot of Tibetan monks end up with diabetes even though they have powerful minds - they visualize elaborate worlds or Buddhas in such great details that the energy is always in the head.In my opinion, the payload or driving force behind any visualization or meditation is intent, the major driver of Qi. Because what is energy ? It is intent set in motion. Everything in the Universe is always in a state of flux or manifestation. As they teach in stillness-movement Qigong, manifestation = intent + energy. The Dao itself has a subtle intent to its energy, otherwise it couldn't create the universe like it does. Even if you say, well, I never use visualization in my practices and I never use intent, then your intent is set on no-intent. It's easy to prove this too. Below is a fun practice. Imagine you are like a sealed glass tube in your environment and your palms are like valves to the outer world. Imagine for a moment that you open these valves. Qi will come roaring inside...... Woooosh. Can you feel this ? All the Qi in your immediate environment is rushing inside you, traveling up the channels of the arms, through the shoulders, and back down to the Dantian. It will keep doing this until your Dantian is full and can't take anymore. All you do is see your laogong points open as valves, and then you don't need to keep looking at the valves once they are already open. Before your tube was in a closed state to your immediate environment, and now, because of this small visualization, you are open to your environment and drawing in new Qi. This happens through mild use of intent. No-intent would not achieve the same result. Intent is a major change agent.Taking this further, you could say that your Intent is like your valve to the Divine, to affecting the world of manifestation. My Master always says: "the Divine understands the language of intent perfectly well". For example, If you pray sincerely for your liver channel to open, then it will open. If you visualize a Divine Light in front of you, then it will always appear, whether you see it or not. If you ask for a 5 color cloud that can fly you to the sky, it will appear with the characteristics you ask for. The secret is that anything you visualize causes a subtle response from the universal energy. A major hint is that if you think of any organ in your body, its sensations will change. This opens a door for further understanding. Let's say you think of your liver, and now you visualize it as a transparent organ bathed in divine light. Its channels will open completely. Even reading this and not doing the meditation, the channels will open the same because the intent is in the words and calls on Divine energy to magnify its effect.The secret of the small universe of SFQ is aligning the internal intent of the practitioner with the external intent of the Master singing the names of the accupoints. It is hooking up to the vast universe as a power source and not doing it in a closed state like the Mantak Chia people. It is recognizing the power of intent and visualization and yet not holding onto them as a crutch during the meditation. You don't need to visualize where the Qi is traveling, you don't need to force the Qi, and you don't expect to feel it. You don't do anything on your own power. The Qi will just move by itself as you set your intent to the different points. Even if you relax and do nothing it will cycle because of the intent embedded in the CD. Personally, I don't see anything wrong with visualization, it is just a useful tool that a practitioner can use as part of a balanced approach. And many traditions past or present see its value and hence include it in their approach. But the best use of visualization is to let it go after the intent has been set, to allow the spiritual energy to unform and shift according to the intent. Otherwise you are doing a pure mental practice and hindering the entire process by boxing your spiritual energy into a certain posture or image.

Love that analogy.... Did you come up with it yourself ? It's on the mark. Anyways, it had me thinking about what is shen along the same line of thinking. I'll venture a bad guess.... Shen is analogous to money in your bitcoin account ... Anyone have a better suggestion ? EDIT, how about : Shen is your stock in Divine Inc ?

I wouldn't say you have to trust anybody, the Master or even the SFQ system. Just trust yourself, trust that you have a Divine nature that responds to you. If you put all your faith in Masters, systems or techniques, eventually you will reach a certain level of expertise, but that approach carries an opportunity to be proven wrong. My Masters in SFQ told me... Don't trust in us, Don't even trust in Chunyi, Trust in the Divine, that connection is truly unshakable. I'm also an engineer. I enjoy experimenting with various forms, movements and drawing my own conclusions. It's awesome to see how it all works. But spiritually, engineering and focus on technique can sometimes lead you to being a performer, or an expert. It can put a cap on your spiritual potential. In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, in the expert's mind there are few. When you truly understand your relationship to the Divine,then you understand the relationship to the true expert.In that relationship, you are always the beginner.The Divine is always the expert. I don't think the Master is asking for your blind faith. He is asking you to offer your innocent mind to something greater than yourself. He wants you to draw your own conclusions. Technique and well engineered Qigong sets can indeed have a wonderful effect on you, and the way we view it as SFQ is that they take you to the door of the Divine. Because enlightenment can never be a matter of simply following a 1-2-3 formula or just implementing a form. You need to focus on something else, let's say the essence of all Qigong systems. So my advice is to create your own faith. Build it on what you know is true in your experience. Don't give it out to anybody so easily. You can try SFQ and see if it works for you, or any other system in this thread. All of them are good. But understand that any system will only take you to the door. There are many practices and systems, but only one door to Tao. Eventually you need to learn to open that door. And to let something in greater than yourself, you need to be willing to relinquish performance, engineering, the intellect... at least for a moment. And be then willing to see what happens.

Just wanted to provide some clarification so you don't get the wrong impression of Spring Forest Qigong. The abilities you wrote about regarding long distance healing, third eye abilities etc... are universal, they lie in the Yin sphere of life, and are in no way exclusive to Spring Forest Qigong. The way you can view this, is there are two main spheres of practice or abilities in Qigong. First there is the Yang sphere (which works at speeds below the velocity of light), and which utilizes the Chinese medical meridian system. And second there is the Yin sphere (which works faster than the speed of light) and appears to be non-linear to our intellectual minds, to nature's laws and even time. In fact, it transcends all of that. The Yin sphere, is what you might call the sphere of Divine vibration, and it can bypass the medical meridian system and do what doctors would refer to as 'miracle healings'. These two spheres correspond to Qi and (spiritual) Light respectively. One sphere ends at the speed of physical light, and the other starts at the speed of physical light. A practitioner typically starts working with Qi, then Qi and Light, and eventually only with Light if one wishes. That's the pattern we follow at SFQ. After you train with Light for a while you will eventually develop the abilities you wrote about. When entering into the field of Qigong with a consumer driven mindset, like most of us do at the start, it's natural to gravitate towards a practice that makes sense intellectually, where all the inner workings are fully exposed. You might think : "OK if I keep moving Qi with my hands from point A to point B, along the medical liver channel, and I keep doing it 200 times, then at least I know I'll have done something positive for myself, it's a safe bet". That is the scientific approach to Qigong and it works. You might even find studies and papers that prove the effectiveness of such practices. It seems this is what you are looking for. When you work with (spiritual) Light however, it's impossible to scientifically prove what's happening. It's non-linear, so by definition it's impossible to make a case for it scientifically. That's why for a system that uses Light a lot like SFQ you will see a lot of testimonials. Because when people can't prove to you that something works, all they can do is the one thing they know how: share what happened to them, often in shock of the whole thing. Personally, as a practitioner of the system, I would highly recommend SFQ as a healing Qigong system that works with both Light and Qi. This system is interesting in that there have also been some scientific research papers at the Mayo Clinic that proved its effectiveness. You can read these papers on their website if you want. The Master is also a wonderful person with a warm heart. His motto is "a healer in every family, and a world without pain". I can confidently say his Qigong achieves that. In closing, if you are looking for a pure Yang sphere practice without any of the spiritual stuff, then try the 8 pieces of brocade. If you are feeling adventurous and want to try a completely non-linear practice, try Stillness Movement. I would say SFQ is in-between. In terms of gaining the abilities you described, I doubt you will develop some with the brocades, but you may well with SFQ, and you likely will with Stillness movement which is entirely non-linear and hence works beyond all limitations of space and time. But having these abilities won't place you in a cult like you were worried about. It just means you are human, and doing what humans can do in the Yin (non visible) sphere of life. Hope this helps.

Was it Tsoknyi Rinpoche ? I've been to a few of his seminars and he does discuss the Lung issue for foreigners a lot. It's basically speedy Qi. Qi that rises to the head, and often goes with frozen or tight shoulders. You could view the shoulders as the stop valve in a canal system, once all the Qi is in the canal of your head, it locks the whole thing there. So the first thing is to relax the shoulders, then let the Qi sink down to the lower Dantian. Why do Westerners have this issue ? We are aggressive in the way we practice. We practice with the mindset of a performer. We expect results. We attach to the outcome of our practice. We rush when we practice. We practice on a timer. Just one of these will limit the effectiveness of your practice. Focus on "how" you practice first. Even if you only have 10 minutes, before you start imagine that you just woke up from a million years slumber in a cave, and you also have another million years to practice. Relax your body from head to toe. Then say, "I don't care how well how I do these practices today, what results I'll gain from them, but I know one thing..... I want to relax with my practices today". It's about peace, not about perfection. It's about love, not performance. I know the above suggestions sound a bit weird, but Lung responds to these suggestions well. If you keep that speedy unruly Qi in the head while you practice, it will also reflect in your form, in fact it will amplify it. The Tibetan solution is to work with the central channel to extinguish Lung Qi at each chakra point. They call this "Tsa Lung" and this involves sometimes strenuous breath retention. This works well but feels like heavy medicine if you are used to the subtler Qigong. So you can choose your medicine. I suggest working on your perspectives and softening your approach to practice, as this where Westerners have a tendency towards imbalance. Qigong can help in some situations because it helps bring mind/body integration but you really need to look at how you do it, and honestly look at your mindset. Overly thinking about practices, which one you need, or in general seeing your problems as an equation to resolve will create Lung balances, what we call as "hard thoughts" in my tradition. Just let everything become more like a day-dream, relax your approach and shoulders, and let the Qi drop by itself.

It depends on the context. You see, there are many oral tips that get passed down in traditions of practice, and what you wrote may well be helpful for Kunlun. However I don't really agree with the part about it being a "leakage", at least in my tradition. It is definitely not a leakage to connect to the earth. What happens is your energy flows from Dantian to the earth and then back up to the head through the spine, it is a sort of natural rebound effect. However if you keep visualizing energy exiting your soles and never replenishing it, then that might be a leakage. That is different, it's a forced imagery, not natural. There are two major ways to connect to the earth, the soles of the feet during standing meditation, and the perineum when doing sitting meditation. You could view it like the earth plug in an electrical appliance. If you're going to have strong energy coursing through your body, then I'd definitely ground. Doing too much mental stuff up there is the source of many deviations. Hope this helps.

Nice post. You can also turn any prayer into a meditation if you wish. Just pray and wait for a subtle response. It might be nothing, a breeze, an image or silence but it acknowledges that the Divine is there and doing something for you. You can ask to feel the gentle caress of the Holy Spirit for example, to heal someone else, or yourself. As my Master always says, the Divine understands the language of intent perfectly well. It doesn't care what language you are praying in or what rituals you are following. It knows your cry before you even voice the prayer. Energetically what's happening is you are developing a relationship to Light, through praying to the Holy Spirit, which is the Light of Jesus. When the Holy Spirit comes to you he's not adding anything new in you, he's just awakening your own Holy Spirit, your own Light, based on your intent/request to come closer to the Light. "I am the way, I am the truth, I am the Light". Message healing which you wrote about, or information Qigong, even prayer, works through Light. It is intent cast in Light. It is also Jesus' promise that your prayer will always be able to reach the Father. Light is one level deeper than Qi. When we do a Light healing with my Master we use Jesus' words, "My yoke is easy and my burden is Light". This can be interpreted in different ways but it's true that Jesus doesn't require much of us. Just an open heart, a sincere intent, and then Light does all the heavy lifting. All Jesus has to worry about is Light, fanning our Light, changing it according to our prayer, etc... Practically we imagine a Divine Light in front of us and call on the Holy Spirit, then pray, and wait. Even if you felt nothing, the energy will have shifted before and after your meditation, and something is always listening to you. You might not know it or feel, but everything might be different about the rest of your day.

Cool, so like the friendly sea turtle from Dragon Ball z.... very nice and a lot of wisdom too. What forms of Qigong do you practice ? Do you live in mainland China ?

When I first joined this forum I tried to be perfect in my execution of the various forms I was taught, and thought that by doing them very well I could "max out" their benefits so to speak. Later I painfully learned that how you practice (your mindset) is much more important than how well you execute the various meditations and forms. For example, if you are not relaxed and rush into it, if you do it with a perfectionist mindset, or a confused mind or body. Look honestly at yourself before even starting your form, ask yourself why you are doing it. Are you trying to sedate yourself, to run away from responsibilities, to gain a feeling of safety, to gain power, is it an ego thing ? When you get the "How" part down, when you are sincere and reconnect to your deepest consciousness, then the form won't add that much to your experience. I found. It's just an icing on the cake. Then later on I also painstakingly realized that the time you spend not-practicing is more important than doing a 30 form in the morning and a meditation in the evening. Because there's 23 other hours in the day. If you live an unbalanced lifestyle, no magical form is ever going to compensate for that. And for spiritual matters, I found cultivation is real life. So I found that true cultivation is rough, it's an every day, moment to moment adjustment of your energies. For example, for lower dantian development I don't think it's wise to meditate 10 minutes in the morning and then let your energy float the rest of the day. So at first I was trying to do a lot and fill myself of all kinds of energies. I tried to fill up my container actively. Now I see the reverse. I am already full and take a bottom-up approach. I avoid leaks to the container by appropriate lifestyle changes, you could say correct energetic hygiene. Of course I still practice, but when I do, it's not with the mindset of being a performer. If you are aggressive in the way you view your practices or attach tightly to them, then this energy will also reflect in your form. So you need to work on yourself, as a human being first and as a practitioner. How you move will reflect who you are. That's what I learned.

Agree with Free-form. A lot of people think that you can become a spiritual expert by amassing techniques or following complex rituals. But the expert's mind is very limited. Remember this quote ? "In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities. In the expert's mind there are few." Technique and the intellect is limited if it doesn't intersect with intelligence. Meditation is Intelligence working through you. It is being a beginner and offering your innocent mind to something greater than you. I think it's fine to use some technique as a preparatory stage to most meditations, if as you say, you view it as a means and not an end. Preparation can be a powerful gateway into meditation too. Some call it a formula. But after ingesting the formula, your focus should be somewhere else.

Jackaro, You've received some good advice in this thread. A common theme of the replies is too much energy in the head, and somehow getting this energy to descend. This is sound advice. When reading your posts, I feel the mind anxiously trying to find a solution to its anxiety. This cannot work. In Daoism, Fire = Mind Water = Body You cannot solve the Mind with the Mind, you cannot solve Fire with Fire, it will only lead to more Fire. Please keep this analogy in mind, it can help bring you healing. Balance/health is when you put the fire of the Mind on the water of your body. It's when you are natural. Practically, let me offer some suggestions that shouldn't interfere with the rest of the advice you've received. 1) Just walk more and think less. Try walking meditation. Walk slowly in nature, in your house, or everywhere really, just focusing slightly on the soles of your feet as they touch the earth. 2) During the day, notice how often you are projecting your energy outwards. At this point it must be a lot, through thought, thinking, etc... Get used to drawing that energy back to the body. Set your intent to gather your energy inwards for small periods of time, and just focus on the body, nothing else. A perspective like finding the LDT cannot bring you the balance you are looking for. Don't make your health depend on such an esoteric perspective. My grandma is 93 and never felt her LDT. And last piece of advice, when you feel anxiety, burn in its fire. Don't try to put out the fire, as this is what leads to odd strategies and perspectives to avoid anxiety that are ungrounded. You've got to be willing to suffer a little bit to be free. I know it sucks when that feeling creeps in, but everyone has emotions, even Daoist immortals. It's just part of nature. When you no longer fear the emotion, you are half-way free. You will start to brew a new energy and your energetic centers like the LDT will automatically start to fill up, even if you don't know its location. This gift won't be a product of exertion, mental or physical, but a product of "not-doing". As a Daoist Master once wrote, It is the principle of natural spiritual cultivation, to let the shen grow naturally with the peace of the mind, to let the mind grow naturally with the peace of the body, to let the body grow naturally without interference from the un-growing mind.

Well said, I agree that this approach to emotions is more therapeutic and not classic Daoist, which as you write, is usually a very sober and rational perspective to emotions. As you say, Spring Forest Qigong is a very modern medical Qigong system. The Master invented this part of his system to help folks heal in a more immediate way. He noticed that by combining emotions and movement, while having an open heart, people could instantly shift their energetic arrangement, even with little to no experience of Qigong. So that's what this is all about, helping people with various illnesses shift their energy into a new posture that is more free-flowing and open to healing. It takes all the elements into account to achieve this effect : body, mind, emotions, spirit and intent. No area is overlooked. I also agree with you Taoism takes the approach that you are already healthy and balanced to start, but many people in the United States aren't even at the start point. So this isn't a classical Daoist system, just a unique perspective on emotions and spirituality invented by Master Lin. At Level 2 and above emotions are discarded to focus on Light and the Void, and his Level 2 assumes you are already reasonably healthy and balanced, much like the classical Taoist lineages. And when your health drops, you are advised to drop back to Level 1 or Level 0 which are the 5 elements/emotions Qigong. That's my understanding of it at least, as a beginner cultivator of the system. Personally when I feel very balanced, I enjoy being emotionally sober. Just placing the mind on the body as was advised in this thread. But when I feel blocked somewhere, low or unhappy for some reason, I just set my intent on peace, joy or happiness and watch my energy as it shifts into a more balanced posture. The other advantage of all this shifting work is that you eventually realize that you are an energetic being, and that you can can shift your energy to a posture of peace and well-being whenever you set your intent towards it. It's empowering, but a very different approach than classical stuff.

I'm also not one for forcing emotions for emotion's sake, but how about cultivating "the spirit of joy", "the spirit of happiness", "the spirit of Love" in your daily life ? These come to you naturally, effortlessly and endlessly when you choose to see the beauty of everything, when you choose see anything good or bad as a gift from the Divine. If your heart is not open like this and you feel you're blocked somewhere, then I think positive emotions can indeed be helpful to shift your energetic arrangement to a different posture. That's the value of Master Lin's 5 elements Qigong. Each emotion he uses has an energetic signature that will unblock a specific channel, but they are really used as a bridge to reconnect you to the source. Repeated exposure to these emotions will imprint them into your subconscious, so much so that it feels like you have a wonderful cushion of energy pushing you back up whenever you feel down. Happiness, joy, peace, contentment and gratitude, correspond to the colors of green, red, yellow, white and blue. We need them for our energetic nourishment. They correspond respectively to the liver, heart, stomach, lungs, and kidneys. Put all these colors together and you have white light, or the emotion of love. If you live with unconditional love in your heart, or with the spirit of love, then I don't think you need to worry about feeling individual emotions. You're already there, and can just let your spirit watch emotions pass by like a breeze.

Cool, looks very interesting, thanks for sharing. I'll check it out. Well actually the form Simon learned is a traditional one from Wudang, at least centuries old. If you ever get tired of the complex Taichi forms, or have only 6 minutes or so to spare in a day, give it a try. Simon learned it from Grand-Master Zhong-Yun-Long of Wudang, who has a copious amount of hair by the way, that's why he wears a hat

I'll present another perspective on Taichi here, which will be more in line with what RideforEver wanted at the start of the thread, namely performing Taichi without too much technique or focus on alignments. I really don't know much about Taichi, at least not in a formal sense, but the way I was taught by my Master doesn't even include a form. It is more of an approach or a perspective that you can apply to any Taichi form, including Chen Taichi, and alignments were never mentioned. It's based on the understanding that "how you do Taichi" is much more important than "how well you do it" so to speak. We do taichi without the confusion of the mind or the body. We do it without thought, or with very soft thoughts. So instead of using the body or the mind to initiate the movement, we let the intelligence of the movement think us into motion. How do we do this ? We learn the movement first, to educate our energy. Then we access our deepest consciousness which we refer to as Pure Qi, or the Void. Taichi is getting out of the way, and letting that Pure Qi move us. It's like letting the entire process of creation unfold in you, so you don't have to micro-manage and worry about alignments or "doing it right" while you're doing it. I learned this technique with Master Jim Nance of Spring Forest Qigong and this is seldom taught. If anyone is interested in studying with him you can reach him on his website at GuidingQi.com. Otherwise you can keep practicing a simple form over and over again until it becomes so ingrained in you, that one day you can just get out of the way, and find you move perfectly. Then, you will be moved by a pure form of intelligence. You will have let go of your expert's mind trying to control the movement, and you will move in a completely inhibited way. But you need to will it, you need to surrender completely to Light or the deepest energy guiding you. I noticed you were looking for a short form, I recommend this one, it's quite potent and Eric Risen, the medical intuitive that people keep using in this forum, had found it to be extraordinary in terms of the results he perceived. Enjoy.

Some suggestions Niraj. Set your intent on balance. Notice everything that is already well with you. This will shift your mindset to a different posture where healing becomes possible. Remember your value as a human being. Remember that any energetic disturbance is ephemeral. Remember that you've been through many problems in your life and always overcame them. Become more gentle in the way you see yourself, in the way you approach this situation, and project into the future. You could say your thoughts are quite hard right now. When you see your life as a math problem to resolve, that's hard thoughts. When everything is like a day-dream and you don't apply a lot of force or direction over your thoughts, that is soft thoughts. Hard thoughts will make this situation worst, they gather energy in the head and harm the digestion. Speed will make this situation worst, both speed of thinking and speed when practicing. You need to slow down. So drop your shoulders and let the energy drop to the lower dantian. Interlock your fingers and massage the dantian slowly 36 times clock-wise while saying any of these "my energy balance is restored", "my energy quiets down", "my thoughts become soft", "I love and value myself", "I forgive myself". When you do this, don't attach to any outcome. Don't do this while closely monitoring the process to see if it really works. This is like being in a house and trying to watch the house from outside at the same time, you'll just project all your energy outside with hard thoughts again. The house is your body, come back to the body and stay there. Be sincere. Last bit of advice. When you do Qigong or meditation, start with a prayer. "I am going to do Qigong for 20 minutes just to take care of myself. I am just going to relax so much and love myself and not attach to any outcomes". Forget your condition, just do Qigong for yourself, and if you see healing come as a side-effect, then that's great. You can heal quicker that way. You can also get a healing from Master Lin if you want or best would be to go to a retreat. Good luck and take care

Hi Niraj, I found this for you, I hope it helps. If you have awakening issues, make sure to be very gentle with your awareness and intent. If you feel the mind becomes tight, you're doing it a little bit too strong. The Dantian contains a Qi ball and you are moving this ball from point to point, back to the lower DanTian. Master Lin does recommend this exercise for those experiencing kundalini issues, and you could also consider getting a healing from him or going to a retreat. Hope it helps.