Wilhelm

Good for you man! I was not into this sort of cool shit at age 16. Another fella here put together some quality beginner friendly exercises you could try when you come back. YouTube is indeed a cesspool of weak or dangerous content but this stuff is both safe and effective provided you don't add anything on top of it. Also if you search Mantak Chia on here you'll find a bunch of us went through similar problems with his work 😂 0/5* would not recommend

This guy fucks

Thanks Awaken! There seems to be quite a gap between the two stages, as many report a Qi sensation very quickly into their practice. Have you or any of your teachers/students completed the second stage? It sounds like an advanced accomplishment.

I understand your point. We see things differently, which is fine 🤷

And I had just gotten my old lady on board with the idea that I might look like a peeled potato once the 'filling' process hits a certain stage 😂 But if its your teachers relaying this development (and not yourself), then I think most of us wouldn't have to worry about that for quite a while. Does your tradition develop these side branches on an as-needed basis, or is there some other considerations involved? So at this stage practitioners should primarily concern themselves with achieving and maintaining the ideal qualities of Jing, which is observable from the outcomes of those qualities (i.e. shown physically in the perineum, but also insubstantially in the psychology) Great advice, thank you 🙏 This reminds me of the first line from the Classic of breath and Qi consolidation http://lotusneigong.com/the-classics-of-breath-and-qi-consolidation/ "In order to strengthen the Jing you should consolidate your Qi,"

This brought to mind an old stats quote: "All models are wrong. Some are useful" Could you talk a bit about your experience with Yuan Jing to Yuan Qi conversion, Bindi?

I appreciate your concerns, but this is a discussion forum 😂 if I stop listening to everyone who thought different from me then id be guilty of the sort of dogmatism you rightly warned about earlier. I was grateful to learn your own understanding of the process as well, but what fun is it to shut down anyone who's understanding differs? For goodness sake, you've only been training with him for about a year, right? Nobody could expect you to have all the answers so quickly...

Thanks very much! So if you don't mind me asking - if Jing isn't a distinct substance, what is it that's being replenished? Thanks for the recommendation! I have a copy of this, and started reading it last night. I appreciate how it references the classics I was having trouble pulling this information from (i.e. Awakening to Reality)

I've got my notes from his lectures but I made this thread to hope to learn what everyone else is doing too

Respectfully, would you mind opening a separate thread to talk about Damo specifically? I was hoping to keep this one tied to the subject in the OP. I think folks who've been reading Daobums the past few months are well aware you're no fan of his, which is fair enough! But if it keeps coming up every time we talk about Nei Dan it just seems to be more efficient for you to say what you want to say in full elsewhere, so we can stop derailing threads

Thanks for sharing your understanding 🙏. So to continue with this metaphor a practitioner first restores their supply of 'ice' (Yuan Jing) which is then gradually melted into water (Yuan Qi), which is then gradually evaporated into steam (Yuan Shen)? And in this model would it be fair to say the pre and post heaven Jing don't have a direct relationship? Yes thanks for the pre/post heaven distinction. As a sidebar did you get that model from White Moon on the Mountain Peak? 🤔 It's not what he's teaching right now but I know in the past he's simplified some of the models for books. Thanks for including these too 🙏

If I believed you it would 100% be jealousy, that's true. But I don't, so maybe it's just general dickheadedness 😂 And I'd feel this way about anyone making that claim, simply cause everyone from Lu Dongbin on down was said to have needed a guide. I think the lore goes that Gautama made the leap himself at the end, but even he had teachers help him most of the way (and iirc he's said to be the last one who's gonna do this in the current Yuga). But as you say, I'm just a guy sharing idle thoughts through the internet for all I know you could be the second coming (and if you are - get tf off Daobums and do something with your life!)

Love you bro 🙏

If you've got discernment that clean, what do you even need a teacher for? Learn the method, 'feel out' any inefficiencies, and you're a straight shot to the finish line. Then when you get there, you can tell your teacher all the inefficiencies you discerned in his method. No joke, that's a high level quality imo - being able to tell the true from the false.

No doubt. One man's teacher is another man's student, and so on. Imma sound like a dick so please know I'm saying this tongue in cheek to a peer - without a direct line to the Ultimate Truth, how tf would you know how good your discernment is?

Nah you've got a ton of knowledge that I enjoy reading but considering we've been doing Nei Dan for about the same period of time idk why you're presenting them as inaccuracies instead of things your teacher would disagree with 🤷. It's not like me and you are chilling in the Yuan Shen here - pulling knowledge straight from its source (idk if it even comes from there haha but I imagine you've been taught enough theory to know that). Somebody's teacher says one thing and somebody else's says another... If it's not part of our experience we're talking in hypotheticals, so how would we know our corrections are correct?

Did you see Damo's FB post today? Edit: Relevance - you're clearly super smart and full of passion, but do you ever wonder where these ideas would fall on the Dunning-Kreuger chart? 🙏 P.S. All Love, I'm a dummy anyways so not comparing.

Thanks for the forward. Learned a lot! Think I'd like to train with him in 2023

Could you link the series please? All the videos I'm seeing are on the Taiji form

Sure. I don't think a whole lot about what the definition is, to be honest (focused instead on the process as I've been taught), but I generally think about it in terms of the above quote.

New course videos just dropped on YouTube - looks like intros to course 1&2

No, the definition I go by came up early on in the thread. But it was interesting hearing your perspective!

That's ok, I found it using the search function.

So its rudimentary in its instruction, but how difficult do you think it is to achieve? It is like finishing a marathon, or becoming the fastest man alive? Both just have the instruction of running a certain distance or speed, but one is difficult and the other near impossible.

Doesn't that make Nei Dan seem a bit rudimentary of a pursuit? For example, we might be able to learn to solve a Rubik's cube using online tutorials, but we wouldn't be able to play tennis past a recreational level without instruction. Is Nei Dan really so basic?