E. S. A.

I will PM you.

Not exactly the same but achieve the same function and have many shared similarities. Even Xing Shen Zhuang itself is a little varied from lineage to lineage. If you have access to Zhi Neng Second method then that would work great for posture purposes. The trick with these exercises though is to relax into it and know where your rotation axis is. Each movement has a different rotational axis in your body the movements are centered on. It is not simply a movement. You need to feel things rotating from that axis and learn to guide the mind to those points.

I believe it said, "From change emerges Taiji, hence the two poles resulted". If you look at the characters Tai means like "Bigger than Big". Ji meant the top of the main pillar holding up the roof, meaning the highest point. So TaiJi is like the "vast limitless nature of the universe". To my knowledge the legend goes that Chen Tuan passed down his "Illustrate of Wuji" which was then later elaborated by Zhou Dunyi in his "Illustrated TaiJi". According to Chen's illustrate "From Wuji (无极) emerges TaiJi (太极)". The basic philosophy is something along the lines of originally the universe was in a chaotic state, an ultimate void, knows as an environment of "Fundamental Qi" (真气, pronounced ZhenQi). Yang begins to emerge when motions are activated in the qi. When motion reaches its full capacity, qi settles down to form the Yin. Then all things are created through an interaction if Yin(阴) and Yang(阳) Qi. So that is to say specifically that TaiJi is the state when WuJi begins to divide into Yin and Yang, therefor the state of TaiJi is the origin of all things. E. S. A. The Wanderer

I will send you a PM. There are large collections out there. Cheers, E. S. A.

It is my understanding that at the truth of things the MCO is meant to arise as something experienced naturally through one's training. Not the sole purpose or intent of one's training. We don't go into it trying to produce an MCO or we will likely end up just creating illusory sensations. The Dao turns itself.

The best posture specific QiGong I know if is called Xing Shen Zhuang. It is a QiGong that goes through and works on specific sections of the spine. That combined with fundamental TaiJi poses is going to be the ultimate posture training. Seriously pick up a book or video on the fundamentals of TaiJiQuan (I would suggest Chen's style) and practice the standing poses for a good amount of time. Cheers, E. S. A. The Wanderer

There is a sequence of 4 exercises used in various QiGong circles and Vajrayana sects intended for exactly this. The first exercise is as follows. Grab each arm around the forearms, creating a sort of rectangle with your chest and arms. Breathe in through the chest, expanding the diaphragm and the front of the ribs, slowly raising your linked arms above your head. Keep going and slightly apply pressure downwards, feel the back portion of the diaphragm sink, and the front portion rising up and stretching. Breathe out and slowly lower your arms back down, keeping them connecting. Switch the arms and repeat. This begins the proper diaphragmatic movement. Second exercise, place your hands on your side near the base of your ribs, elbows pointing to the side. Do the same breathing, expanding up in the front, sinking down in the back. But this time more focus to expanding on the side of the chest pressing against your hands. Feeling the back sink down. Third exercise, same as first exercise but when you stretch your arms above your head you unlink them at the top and continue to stretch further up going in to the first exercise posture of Ba Duan Jin but with linked hands. do the same breathing this time at the top focusing on expanding and breathing into the upper portion of the chest. Final exercise is essentially spreading your arms out to the side while breathing in and pushing them out in front of you while exhaling. This is done with palms down first then palms up. But if done properly after the previous exercises the entire chest should be expanding and moving freely and you should feel as if your arms are being pushed apart to the side when you breathe in and pulled in like a spring when you breathe out. Feels like you aren't moving your arms yourself. The Qi is. If you have any questions I can record a video or something. Very similar to various "Power Breathing" methods taught. Enjoy, E. S. A. The Wanderer

Well, that lasted a whole of a few hours before it got removed and my entire account deleted. I don't understand why IronPalm LLC. would remove the videos as they were made and released FOR FREE by James. Seems they are more concerned about pinching every $ they can instead of respecting Lacey's memory. Looks like I will be rebuilding my video archive. This time entirely private.

Greetings fellow Dao Bums, First let me start by saying I know there are many opinions on James Lacey, Doo Wai, and pretty much everything involving them. However, that is not the purpose of this and if you would be so kind, there are many other posts and places to have such discussions. I have put together a public archive on YouTube of the videos James released for free over the years. Most of these videos have been lost to time and it is a shame. So for historical purposes, I have placed everyone I can find and published them in a public playlist. Keep in mind, none of these were ever sold and were originally released for free by James himself. [Video] James Lacey Historical Archive If anyone has any other footage feel free to get in touch with me. Cheers, E. S. A. The Wanderer

This is an amazing paper, thank you so much for sharing this 🙏 I’d also like to thank everyone else who took the time to respond. It seems I have a lot to learn. I will stick with my current teacher for now. I am enjoying the motivation he instills. @Taomeow coffee and chat? Haha, you seem to know your stuff. I’m finding lacking the experimental factor of this internal system limiting to my understanding of its relationships. Hopefully in time. Cheers, E. S. A.

Don’t mind him. There’s a common view of the church being a vampiric power-obsesses organization. I’m glad you have found your way here. You will find some great sections related to these topics. May I ask, are you interested in more of the practiced work or the theology/metaphysics involved? I don’t know much of Daoism but I have studied many of the sutras and may be able to point you in the right direction. Cheers, E. S. A. The Wanderer

“A baby is born without an understanding of the meaning, or lack thereof, in the world, and yet it is born equipped with the desire to play in various games. The baby is quite happy being fully engaged in a game without feeling the need to question whether there is inherent meaning, or not, in the task. [You have stopped playing]. Perhaps [your] either taking life far too seriously, or are consumed by a search for the ultimate truth or belief system to explain the complexity of life in its entirety, whereas you may be better off taking a break from the bigger questions of life, and simply engaging in more playful activities. This is not to say that the bigger and deeper questions of life are unimportant, rather, a healthy and fulfilling life is better achieved through balance, and in this case balancing the serious and heavy subjects with a more lighthearted and playful approach to life” Nihilism is a tough beast but I would argue in practice it’s very broken. It would seem that we have an innate biological process for meaning. Whether we realize it or not. Cheers, E. S. A. The Wanderer

I own the highway. Cheers ✌️ E. S. A.

It’s not a silly question at all. More than happy to elaborate. From my personal experience, in energy systems, we begin to use our minds as tools to develop and effect our practice. We want to begin to learn to control the mind and not let it race. To teach it to have more powerful visualization as well as clear focus at whatever task is at hand. Just like any skill or muscle it can also be trained. I think the most fundamental sense of meditation is learning to quiet that background noise. You can’t begin to genuinely focus on a particular practice or technique of you can’t even quiet your mind and actually focus on that task. Personally, I have found the best method for beginning this mental control to be a simple Zen meditation. I feel at a basic level it does not influence the energy system much so you don’t have to worry about adverse effects. It will act as an introductory chi cultivation method as well (ID HIGHLY SUGGEST AGAINST VIEWING IT AS SUCH THOUGH, focus on control, not power). Sit relaxed whatever that is for you. In a chair, laying down, half lotus, etc... begin to take some deep breaths and loosen all the muscles in your body. Working around your face down your chest to your toes. Let your breathing try to slow to a natural rhythm. You want to aim as if you are breathing like you aren’t thinking about it. When you are ready to start, with each breath count up. You can start simply saying the number in your head. But if you want to get into visualization practice I would try and picture the number (as well as say it in your head if you wish). Continue this till you hit 10. Start over. You will often not make it close to 10. Wandering off in thought. That’s okay 👌 Just start back at one when you realize and keep going. You will get better and better until that background noise is no longer a problem. Again, my expertise is not in this area and there are likely people better suited to answer your question. But this is my view 😎 Feel free to send me a PM. Cheers, E. S. A. The Wanderer

Hey Ashbell, welcome 🙏 I am in a similar circumstance to you. Over the years I have worked with many systems, looking for that “path”. In terms of QiGong systems I don’t know a whole lot. However, from everything I’ve heard people say it is more important to attempt to establish a strong foundation than get caught up in the complexities of one system or another. It would seem just as important to do what you can to set your every day life in order, not just every day practice. So things like sleeping ,eating and life habits should be paramount to ones system as it will cascade downwards and effect the results of your training. My teacher says that in China, devout students of TaiJiQuan would train a single posture or movement for potentially months. Only then moving on to another posture or movement. He listed roughly 10 fundamental stances/moves if I remember correctly. These were designed to teach the connecting ideas of the routine and how energy in the system moves at a basic level. Before going in to full routines. My teacher says that the only reason they teach routines now in the beginning is to satiate the short-term oriented western minds. Students would get bored and give up if he had them doing the same thing for months. But he strongly believes single postures before routines it is a much faster way to true Kung Fu. As far as meditation itself goes I think you can think of it very similarly. There are lots of complex systems. Different visualizations, breathing techniques, mantras, physical positions, tension flow, etc... but we want a strong fundamental first. I think it’s important to just take 5-10 min a day when you start and just do a basic meditation. Nothing fancy. Just sit and breath, try to relax, breath naturally calmly, don’t worry about your thoughts. Begin to count on each breath and visualize the counting. This is really as fundamental as it gets. Basic breathing, basic visualizing, no pressure. Then, once you feel yourself actually getting in that meditative state, go and learn a more advanced technique and get absorbed in a system. Cheers, E. S. A. The Wanderer