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THanks. I just remembered that in Zen they often keep awareness at the dan tien and that A couple of Thai friends that showed me how they meditate also keep awareness there and they of course do Vipassana

My advice would be to listen to the very good advice given her by others. ALL you need to get well has been told to you in this thread. Beyond that my only advice would be intuflow and pilates. Intu flow is a physical method that will also sort out a lot of energetic problems. You can learn level one, which is all you need for now, for free on youtube. It will slowly harmonize things and dissolve energy down. Pilates will structure your body correctly so that energy will also flow correctly, however it does so without producing much more energy that could mess things up. Also the endorphin energy from jogging, or even better from vigorous dancing, will harmonize whatever is happening in your body.

What if one does Vipassana with awareness at the Dan tien? I feel drawn to use it instead of the nostrils. As far as I understand som etraditions use the nostrils, some use the abdomen. Using the dan tien should be ok to right as the key is just concentration and awareness of sensation? Can you say a bit more about the uniting of the heart and dantien to produce awareness. I thought that sounded interesting.

THank you Cat that made me very happy. What I write about it is 90% just a collection of what you could call the collective wisdom of thetaobums about this topic. It was one of the things I tried to sort out when I started lurking here and I was very happy to find that workable solutions had been found through collective effort. I believe similar things can be done with other issues about cultivation and I think that is part of the greatness of this site and others like it.

I tried moon salutations (as opposed to sun salutations) and they had a very powerful cooling effect.

But does it create a "kunlunish" type of energy or is it different?

Agreed! I am a nice guy too and get girls easily too. Even when I am not all that confident and not really trying it happens. Non, you are in college and clearly above average intelligence, much more well read than the average man, interested in philosophy, you do Kung fu, you meditate, you are into eating healthy and know a lot about food and are vegan for ethical reasons. All of these are very attractive qualities to most women. I would say do a lot of breath based meditation and lots and lots of inner smile and secret smile and do standing meditation. You could also learn the Maori Haka warrior dance. It gives instant confidence in two minutes. You can learn it by looking at videos online. Once you get into a relationship you can start having this kind of sex: reuniting.info THat will "ensure" that your love remains strong and will largely eliminate tendencies towards "darwinian" attraction patterns.

Here`s one more: After a decade of intense and dedicated training, in April of 2005 Sydney James "Jim" Nance was certified as a 2nd Degree Spring Forest Qigong Master by Qigong Master Chunyi Lin, the creator and founder of Spring Forest Qigong. Master Nance is the first of Master Lin's more than 100,000 students to have ascended to the high level of qigong master. He is also believed to be the first African-American in history to be certified as a medical qigong master. http://www.springforestqigong.com/bios.htm

Several here practice it and find it to be very good. Dr Lins method also has a good reputation. Trunks site alchhemicaltaoism.com has a sort of summary on Lins method.

My teacher has been a monk in the Tibetan tradition for 4 years so he knows a bit about celibacy. He says saving sexual energy gave him a lot more energy the before. Acording to him when he has non ejaculatory multiorgasmic sex he gets even more energy than when he does not have any kind of sex. This goes for solo sex but even more so for sex with a partner. A key part of this is to not have multiple versions of the explosive types of orgasms we all used to have but a more valey type of orgasm. The type of orgasm described at the reuniting.info site is roughly what I am talking about. They talk a lot about not having orgasms but as you can see calrified in some of the posts in tehir forum what they are talking about is a valey orgasm. This all fits with the study done on multiorgasmic worms. Some scientists put a type of worm into three groups. One group was not alowed to have sex. One group had sex with ejaculation. One group was manipulated so it could have orgasms but could not ejaculate. The celibate ones lived longer than the ones that ejaculated but the multorgasmic ones lived longer than the celibate ones. If you google multiorgasmic worm or something you should find the study.

Read this: reuniting.info

Can you say a bit more about what Nirvikalpa Samadhi is acording to Budhism? Is it the eight jhana? Is it Nirodha Samapitti? Something else? If it is nothing more then it is irelevant and I find it puzzling that it is held as an essential attainment by some. If it is considered essential or a high state of enlightenment within a school then that would be a sign of the school not being good as it confuses nice states with enlightenment.

Her husband must have been very healthy!

On a system level Norway is the oposite of america in the sense that you have free healthcare, free univeristy education and you get real suport if you are disabled etc. But it is still a capitalist country with large differences in salaries and fortunes etc. However, income disparity is much less and our levels of poverty are much less and as poor you are still better of in loads of ways. On a cultural level you will notice that the same basics are there with mass consumerism, advertizement etc. We are not Buthan! However, this is counterbalanced by the government paying for tv and radio stations that broadcast stuff that does not have a market big enough to suport it but is still viewed or listenned to by many and is found valuable such as arty Spanish or French movies or documentaries about Hemmingway or Ghana. And people read A LOT more newspapers and are generally informed about international events. That does not mean that most people still aren`t idiots in that regard. As a people we are quite shy and reserved. Making friends is much easier in the US but when people open up to you they really open up and it is very real and you don`t suddenly find that your firends weren`t your friends. And if someone actually gives you a compliment it is very genuine but don`t hope to get too many of them. We are very real in these regards. Emotionally we are the oposite of Italians. We like to supress emotions and not talk about them to much. We`re a bit stiff. We have more casual sex than most people and women have much more sexual freedom. The distribution of household chores is more even than most places. Men tend to take a few months of paternity leave to spend alone with the children during the first year after birth. It is said Scandinavia was the last place Christianity came and the first place it went. We are very secular. Still we have all the same religious nuts less than most others. We drink little on weekdays and get drunk in the weekends. Norwergians are immanent and not transcendent. If you can`t see it, touch it and preferable measure it and use it for something mundane then it certainly is not real or relevant in any way. In a cultural more than religous sense we are VERY protestant in our mindset, kind of pious in a way. We don`t like to stick out. We are very un-californian. If you stick out we think you have a big ego and that you think you are better than us and we will try to peg you down a notch. We are VERY egalitarian. We never had a real aristocracy and it shows. In general I find a lot less of Really bad behaviour than I have found in say England or India. The type of contempt I could see some englishmen display towards each other is almost unheard of here. The way a servant or anyone of a lower cast in India is treated is unthinkable here. On the other hand I Don`t find as much of the really good behaviour I see some other places. You Don`t find the extreeme hospitallity and warmth you might find in Syria for example. We are more middle of the road. Stuff generally works. Governemnt, schools, infrastructure always fairly well run. There is little corruption. We like to be in nature. Nature here is quite beutifull and there is a LOT of it. Kind of like a scaled down Alaska. It is a bit boring here. Oslo only have about 500 000 citizens and it is the largest city. To me it has just enough to offer for me not to move but not enough to make me enthusiastic. We are extreemely anti eltisit, quite anti intelectual and a bit provincial. We are very NOT French. We are not very polite but we mean well we just don`t know how to behave very well (never had an aristocracy just farmers). Our Unions, our organisation for buisnisess and the government cooperate quite smoothly. Cross country skiing is our national sport. We are very proud of having had the first men on the south and north pole. If you take up cross country skiing we will love you. We have a king. We like him, but not so much. Our prince married a single mother that partied way too much and everyone knew had done lots of coke and that had a drunked father on welfare and we are almost OK with it. She`s been good though. Our other princess the princes brother has become a new age nut and is teaching how to come into contact with your personal angel (they aparently tend to smell of roses). We are NOT too happy about that. I don`t think there is any norse alchemy that is real left and although we have few laps living in the north I think what is left of their shamanism is low level and quite empty. We have quite a few americans working here. I don`t think it is very difficult for you but you need to find a job first probably and for the most part have some skills we need. If you have an MBA or something it should be quite easy to get a job that can get you here but I am embarassed to say I have no idea what the rules are. If any of you come here I will try to help you out a bit and I know a couple of good teachers of meditation, qigong, tai chi and yoga.

With regards to VIpassana it is already, to quite an extent the case that teh open discussion of teachings between westerners HAS improved upon the teachings. Daniel Ingrams map of the stages of Vipassana is, acording to those who have practiced it for years in the east and in the west and read and learnt about different maps, the best and most precise map so far. Furthermore, it is being imporved upon by the open disucssions about experiences with the different stages at the dahramoverground, by people like thusness and other "open discussion" practioners that have set up blogs etc. THe same holds true for subtleties in the techniques used for VIpassana and Jhana attainment. Remember that a lot of those people have studied with several teachers in the east and can give adequate comparisons of the usefullness of the teachings. I am sure there are plenty teachers of Vipassana in the east that in many ways are better than Ingram but he does have the best map. In 20 years time this work will have reached a much much more refined stage and not only will the west have the best teachings of Vipassana but it will have detailed documentation of how the various strategies work as exsperienced by large numbers of people. If easterners do not particiapte in that work but keep on doing the same they will lag behind. I will give you another example. I read a book about attaining Jhana that had interviews with sevreal eastern and western teachers. The pattern was that the eastern teachers had studied under only one or a few teachers and they were, for the most part extreemely confident that the exact way they taught Jhana was the only or the the best way of attaining it. THe eastern teachers did not at all agree on the ways of attaining jHana. THe western teachers had largely studied with several eastern and several western teachers and likely had discussed techniques with many others who had a similarily wide background. THe western teachers in general were much more open to the fact that Jhana could be attained in several different ways and no particualr technique needed to be best in all cases. Despite this they absolutely had opinions about techniques that were better than others but this was of course based on a much broader actual experience with different techniques a much, much wider knowledge of how other people had attained Jhana with different strategies. THe result seems to be a combination of a braoder approach that has a hgiher likelyhood of finding the right technique for each person and of finding those particualr technique that work best for most. If the east keeps doing what it has done it will not attain this and lag behind. THis is not to say that western vipassana teachers are yet better thatn asians as there are so many more vipassana teachers in the east and with more experience it is only natural that you will still find better ones there. But I am convinced that this strategy leads to a hgiher percentage of good teachers and a hgiher ability for students to orient themselves in the field and find the best techniques for themselves. In the future when you have more westerners with long experience with VIpassana this width of experience and open discussion will lead to the best teachers of vipassana being found in the west. THat is unless the east changes its ways and I believe it will. THe same strategies for imporvement of teachings could just as well be applied to energetic paths. I can`t see any reason why Kan and LI meditations or kundalini meditations can`t be discussed with the same level of detail by a large number of practioners and be improved upon in an emperical way. IN all other field these types of learning strategies outcompete just doing it as one did it before. If it is in did the case that it is almost hopeless to find a real master in taoism and also maybe in yoga then there is obviously something wrong with the way things are being done. Large amounts of great teachings have also been lost and this will certainly be the case time and time again if things do not start to be discussed openly. If they are discssed in this way they will forever be saved and every time someone invents soemthing new it will go into our catalogue of teachniqes. Imagine having ALL the Egyptian teachings througout all time, ALl the CHineese teachings and ALL the Indian, Jewish, native american, western magick teachings and so on. It is also important to remember that these teachings have treavlled across boardes and been exchanged and mixed througout history and this is an important reason that what exists today is at the level it is and not something much less. Another interesting point is that acording to the book reenchantment (about tibetan budhism and the west), several of the tibetan lamas when they started teaching westerners saw it a an oportunity to figure what was the actual essence of the teachings and what was just himalayan dogma as they said. When they were confronted with fresh eyes that did not have the same cultural refrences it was much easier to figure out what needed to be there and what was just there because someone had just said so. This is the reason why many muslims so apreaciate talking to converts from other cultures. they feel that the converts often have a beeter ability to see what is the real teachings and what is just their culutrual traditions mixed in.

I seem to get the impression that China is full of huge amounts of alchemical systems that are widely different such as mopai and maoshan stuff. It seems to me there are so many very, very different systems while the yoga systems seem me to be all the same basically. So it seems strange to me that Daosim would not have plenty of good alchemical systems with realized masters. Not sure it is one way or the other just an impression I get.

:lol: You just made my day with the Cuba idea! THat would even work. THey would LOVE for an american to do that. Castro even offered to send doctors to impoverished areas of the states where no one had health insurance as they send doctors to other countries in need. Its spelled Chaves I think and he is messing up his country for the long term so that is not a good option. I have read that there are suburbs and areas of cities in the US where there are so many alternative people it is almost difficult to find food that is not organic. I had that experience in a little town in Hawai were I spent two weeks doing yoga (it is called Hania I think). Al the food was organic, fair, short traveled, non fat and so on. Everyone who lived there were either a surfer a yogi or a washed up hippie with a drug habit. THere really should be enough places in the US were one could live agood life. If not for my family and friends back home and the lack of health insurance and free higher education I could certainly see myself living certain places in the US like New York and San Fransisco. I think people are going to change a lot because of the research done into meditation, yoga and qigong. THe research done into how meditation changes the mind and how drastic the short and long term effects in terms of happiness are has really made the news many places and research into meditation is now getting much more funding. One example is the Shamatha project where a bunch of the worlds leading scientists have studies what happens when someone does shamatha 8-12 hours a day for a year in a retreat environment. They have scanned their brains on a regular basis, analysed changes in their facial expression done a bunch of psychological tests, empathy tests, blod pressure measurements and so on. Attention and committment therapy and mindfulness based cognitive therapy are two therapies both based on meditation and the psychology of meditation that are both showing way better results than conventional therapies such as conventional cognitive therapy. This is changing the whole field of psychology rapidly. In 10-15 years these therapies or stuff like it will be THE standard therapy everywhere. That means that every time someone goes to see a therapist they will be told to meditate or at least apply mindfulness and the psychology of mindfulness to their problems. Imagine what that will do to spread cultivation on a broad basis and to change how people think. Sudarshan kriya, a form of pranayama, has in six studies showed as good effect against severe depression as electroshock with the side effects being better health in general whereas electroshock of course has heavy side effects. More research is on its way and once enough data is gathered this technique will start spreading as well documented and safer alternative to anti depressants. Similar will happen with other breathing techniques, yoga therapies and medical qigong. My meditation teacher is probably going to get to do a phd on the the effect of going from little to no practice to practicing meditation and qigong 1-3 hours a day for a 4-5 year period. Once more similar studies are done we will have precise data to convince people what a more high level practice can do for you. What all this means is that whenever you are in contact with a psychologist, a psychiatrist or a medical doctor you will, eventually, be encouraged to do some sort of cultivation practice to cure your health problem or for general health because the data shows it to be the most efficient. Once all this data is in and docotrs and therapists start to do this corporations will also try to make their employees do these things as it reduces absence because of illness, increases IQ, increases concentration, increases efficiency and so on. It will make business sense and when it means they will make money of it they will push for it as many corporations today offer free or discounted gym memberships and so on for the same reasons. Actually some of this is being done already. A while ago I read an article about a large american corporation that had gotten 70% of their employees to meditate by paying for courses, allowing them to do it during work hours, making meditation rooms in the offices and encourageing the employees to learn it. Google is also offering courses at google university on meditation. Eventually there will also be research on what happens when a school has meditation and yoga session at the beggining of the day etc. and that will show such good results that teachers will want to implement it. Especially once the teachers understand how quiet the students will become . Actually several US schools are having mindfulness sessions with their students, walking meditation is an elective in a swedish school and many indian schools are making ALL their students do yoga. It WILL happen, it is just a matter of time. So unless society completely brakes a part this will be the future. THe critical part of this is that a fair share of the important research has been done and the rest is really on its way now and many psychologists, neuroscientists and doctors are very excited about this research and how it can be used. Read one of the mind and life dialogue books for an example. So throughout your lifetime Mikaelz America will change profundly because of this. Much will be the same but there will be a fundamental change. Edit: Of course I know that people are lazy and don`t like doing the work but when it is what you are told to do by your doctor, therapist, health club trainer, your professor and your boss and possibly also by your teacher in school and you can do some of it for free in your working hours you will get a lot of results. I also forgot to mention a couple of other forces that work in the same direction. If you dabble in the pickup community for some time you will encounter several people who encourage you to try out cultivation stuff. Aron Sleazy one of the hottest new pickup artists claims meditation was key to his success and teaches people to do zen meditation in his workshops. Cosy, a legendary poster on masf also has a heavy meditation background an talks about such stuff a lot. David Deida is pushed as one of THE books to read about realtionship. All the four central PUA sex gurus, Daniel Rose, David Shade, Stephan of ideagasms and Steve Piccus encourage meditation in some form. Meditation is also encouraged to overcome aproach anxiety by many on PU boards as well. A LOT of men spend some time in the PUA community and in the future there will be many more. Several people on thetaobums have said they started meditating because of the pua community. Another big factor is the whole mulitorgasmic male thing. A lot of the bums came in to this stuff just because they read mantaks best seller and wanted multiple orgasms. On norwegian forums that have nothing to do with meditation I have noticed that both the multiple orgasms Chia style and the aneros stuff is starting to spread. It is becoming a fairly regular topic. Eventually it will spread a LOT more and that will bring more guys into cultivation. THe same can be said of tantra workshops and sexologists which will encourage more and more of these techniques in the future but already encourage quite a lot of it in many cases. Also, if what they belive on this site is true: http://www.reuniting.info/ and I believe they are mostly correct. Then eventually we will have research proving they are right and it will lead to a huge spread of that kind of sex amongst couples. -

I know two so that makes three in total

THe toerhs are right. I don`t have much time now either but look through my old posts and find those that are in threads concerning sex, tantra, karezza, retention of semen and the like. In those posts I sum up a lot of the "collective wisdom" of teh web community regarding these issues. Posts by others in the same threads do similar things. Also look through Trunks site alchemicaltaoism.com. It has much good advice about these matters. Consider doing some standing meditation (start a thread asking for advice about it or search up old threads). It will bring your energy down and it will balance things out and over the long term help develop you energetically adn slowly open your orbit. As long as you can get the energy down by other means it might be a good idea to hold of a bit on doing the orbit yuntill you have meditated more and done some standing or some qigong etc. The orbit is often placed as a sort of number two practice after you have gotten a base in more basic practices like following the breath, standing, inner smile etc. It is not necesarry to do this first, Opening the orbit now will probably work ok, but you will have a smoother ride if you do more other stuff first. Once you want to open the orbit you could use springforestqigongs small heavenly orbit (circuit?) cd. One way you could eventually use to learn to deal safely with arroused sexual energy is to take KAP 2 where they teach you single and dual cultivation techniques. Good Luck

I think you would love dharmaoverground and Daniel Ingram. AYPsite.org should also be in your taste. THere are also several other "rational dharma" blogs and sites that have open discussions about teachings and try to foster development through sharing experiences and critically discussing everything.

Great post!

WHat is your opinion or experience with "supergreens" and with the ph balance theories. I have taken the greens stuff myself for some time and like how it makes me feel but the explanations for why it supposedly works is apparently utter bullshit and the inventor and promotor a shady character: http://www.quackwatch.org/11Ind/young3.html I might add that those who sell it were I live also claims it is very important to add some drops of another substance to make the water more balanced as the water is supposedly very alcaline. My father checked with the appropriate agencies what the ph balance of the water in our area actually is and turns out it is more or less perfectly in ph balance. I find it amusing that no one who sells or uses the product actually bothered to check if the claim about our drinking water is true.

Of course I am not saying one should create a control group in this instance I use it as an example of what one in many cases need to do and which is way too often neglected in Indian and Chinese research. THe most important thing to do in this case is to keep him under such observation for a month or so to be absolutely certain it is not just the result a long training in fasting that makes his body tolerate better and react differently to lack of food but that he really has no need for food what so ever even for very long periods of time. 10 days as one of the studies was is too short but very intriguing. Several Indian and chinese scientists, most maybe, readily admit the research in this area haven`t been up to a western standard and that they need to improve in that regard. I have read several articles were that has been discussed by indian and chinese scientists. I don`t remember the exact number, I think about a thousand or so, studies have been done one qigong showing beneficial effects yet very few of those are good enough to be considered proof of anything. That demonstrates a lack of regard for rigorous scientific protocol. THe reason that is now slowly changing is primarily that these studies get little respect and little publishing in the west for their lack of strict standards and that the indian and chinese scientists wants their studies accepted in the west. More than 40% of the scientists in the west certainly is not from India. Please document it.

Six healing sounds and inner smile work specifically with the organs and are very good exercise that I love to do and benefit a lot from. Perfect for emotional balance. Fusion of the five elements takes that process much deeper. THe sounds and smile you can learn n your own fusion IMO requires a teacher. Learn it from Winn or Andy Fretwell. Fusion also works the eight extraordinary. I had a discussion whit my acupuncturist about the relationship between the liver and the heart just the other day. He said that the "bad energy" from the Gall Bladder which is strongly connected to the liver can spill over to the heart or something like that. More specifically in my case he thought that frustration, irritation and anger in the liver/gall bladder could spill over into the heart and create haste and coldness in the heart. After he used a gall bladder point I could feel an angry energy retreating from the heart over to the area of the liver and got very annoyed for a while. After that the heart felt much better and softer. Same thing happened only stronger in the next session.