BiGF00T

I'm back. After reading through Mr. Yangs book on Taiji Qigong, I've read his book on "The root of Chinese Qigong". If you say "natural flow without directing", would that be the natural movement of Qi? According to the book "The root of Chinese Qigong", something that reads like a wave of stronger Qi circles once a day around conception and governing vessel. That would be really imperceptibly slow.. If you don't guide it, is it then just moving at this pace? And do people really feel this or did you mean something else? Anyway, I have decided that MCO is still a bit advanced for me and that I'd need a teacher to practice it. For the last about 50 days, I've been doing daily Zhan Zhuang of about 20 minutes per day and am quite happy with it. I still stuggle with my posture and tension and don't even think about doing something energetic except for finding a position in which my body is not tensed up. Sometimes, I get the feeling of Qi somewhere and sometimes it is like Bearded Dragon said in his last post: manufactured tension. At least it keeps me relaxed (confirmed by my wife). After I have found a good posture, I can take Qi into account again. But for now, I'll adjust my body and mind until I'm ready for the next stage.

Got the e-book of Mr.Yang and I must say that it is worth its price. It's even the first e-book I've ever bought. Normally I'm more into normal books but I can see the advantage of full text search and the continuous availability on my smartphone I just passed the point where he talks about "... holding up the hui yin and anus. It is important to know that holding up does not mean lifting up or tensing. Tensing causes qi stagnation." So did I misunderstand it in the past for tensing the anus? How can I understand "holding up" better? In Chinese texts I had always seen 提肛 and thought it meant lifting by tensing the muscles. If no tension of the muscle is involved, how does holding up work? Intention? Thinking about going up? In one of your previous posts, you said "When the stomach contracts, the perineum closes. It can be tricky as you may think it is moving but it may not be. It is like a muscle and I spent a lot of time using my hands to verify if it was truly moving or not." What was the result of your testing? Was it moving or not? Moving would imply tensing of one or more muscels to me.

I'll try and see what it does. Thank you again for the time to answer my questions and for sharing your experience. I'll probably also purchase the e-Book of Mr. Yang and have a look at more theory and see how it fits together with what I know or think I know.

Hello Dawei, first of all, thank you for the long answer elaborating on the different methods of Microscopic Orbit (now I finally know its English name). The book is extremely cheap in the US, not that cheap over here (Germany). The second Google-Books-Link could be purchased as an E-Book for less than half the price. Would the Google-E-book include the stuff from the one you recommended first? You are right, the Yu Li Qigong Link describes pretty much what I do, just that I don't stop the Qi to work with it in the mouth or other places. My Qi-sensation is lowest around the middle dan tian but as you suggested, I'll continue. From your different versions, I see that I could try the two breath version to see if it brings an improvement. I shall also try the perineum thing again and see what it does to my practice. From what you say, I might also lack buildup. Mostly, I sit down, calm down and then just start doing it. I might better start with some patting/shaking, then buildup LDT and eventually start my Microscopic Orbit practice.

1. One breath one circle. Sometimes it'll be more than one breath because I lose my concentration and need to regain the feeling and come back on track. Breath in on the way up on to bai hui, breath out on the way down. 2. I understand the question and I prefer NAB. I have the feeling that RAB prevents me from relaxing. 3. Perineum is not part of my practice, although I remember that there was something about flexing it while breathing in. Since I have the feeling that the muscle tonus of the pereneum is already a bit too high (probably due to stress), I am worried about using this technique as it might worsen the cramped situation even more. If I do 提肛 (do you call it flexing of the pereneum or what? Or lifting? I lack the vocabulary to explain lots of the stuff here), it would train the musculature even more that I feel to be a bit too strong already.I don't know if that would really be the case if I would do it...

I would disagree with the need of a long term teacher but agree with daily practice. Any chance to practice regularly would be ok after in initial setup with base vocabulary. Going to China would definitely help you, of course Without someone to speak to, you will not reach any decent level of fluency. (Although, reading old texts is completely different language than speaking to native Chinese about the weather or their family) I learned best by stupid repetition of flash cards and studying of dictionaries. But of course not only that but the most important was to use the new vocabulary immediately. This only works if you have some foundation of words that enables you to speak simple sentences. Afterwards, I just looked for patterns like 因为……所以……。 or 除非迫不得已,…… and inserted my vocabulary into it. The more you speak and hear others speak, the more of those patterns you'll build up in your mind. Study new words, use them immediately. Nothing else works for me. I've been sitting and repeating flash cards with stuff that was of no interest to me and had no chance of using it. The time was wasted. See what you like to talk about and try to learn some vocabulary to be able to express that. Then find some native and talk. Oh, and for me, it works best if I write flash cards no my own. Bought cards don't work that good, maybe because the writing already burns it into my brain. Best card setup for me is to fold a small paper, write the character on one side, the translation on the opposite side and the Pinyin on the inside. Cards with two sides suck because if you want to study English > Chinese or Chinese > English depending on where you wrote the Pinyin, then you'll probably already see the solution without really reading the characters.

I'll just use this forum for my real first post as it seems to be designed just for this kind of basic question. I've recently done some 小周天 (dunno its English name "small heaven cycle?"). My problem is that I sometimes lose track of the sensation and I wonder if it would be better to wait for the feeling to "appear" or just move on and see what happens in the next cycle? Between 玉枕 and 百会, the feeling is the strongest. I have the feeling that it is easiest felt, if I can keep the sensation alive until I reach the point where i don't feel it that easily. But just out of curiosity, would it probably be better to rest one's awareness on the point where the Qi-feeling became unnoticable and wait for it to reappear or is it just the normal process of learning that some parts of the circle are without feeling and the more difficult parts will become noticable later? Thanks, BiGF00T

Hi Marblehead, I know people are looking for me. I was meditating in the woods for some decades... Only once there was this guy with his camera who caught me on tape during my walking meditation but the image turned out to be quite blurry due to the extreme Qi-energy emmissions from my body ;P Not sure about becoming an immortal, though. Maybe I'll think differently in a few hundred years from now I'll sure enjoy the time here. As I said, I have already found a lot of useful stuff on here. Have a nice evening and thanks for the approval of my membership, BiGF00T

I don't know what was wrong but I got a "page not found" error earlier today. Thanks for telling me that the link isn't broken. I've already found a ton of interesting stuff on this forum which made me forget completely about what I was searching for in the first place this morning...

Hi@all, I stumbled upon these pages when searching for something not specifically Daoist on Google and thought I had to register to see the page "Learning to Breathe" that was reffered to in the post I found. Unluckily, the page doesn't seem to be available. Anyway, since I am interested in Chinese stuff, do Chinese Martial Arts and have been at Wudang for some training, it still might just be 缘分 that I came across this page. I'm not that much interested in Daoism as a religion but rather as a philiosophy (I'm not that interested in immortals and stuff but their thinking is spot on and I can relate to many things from what they say in normal life). Hope this coincidence will give me some new input for improvement of my practice. Regards, BiGF00T