Iri

Polls suggest that more than 90% of people experience intrusive thoughts, while only a tiny % applies for help and thus are officially ‘diagnosed’. So I think it’s useful to raise the topic that we’re so shy to discuss. In fact, intrusive thoughts were one of the reasons I stopped my Buddhist practices and then stayed away from anything esoteric at all for many years. Great deal of them are of ‘Blasphemy’ type, meaning they target directly what I practice and believe in. Probably the term is a bit confusing because this classification was done by a Christian-culture psychologist, but I hope you see the point if we substitute an Abrahamic God with the Universe and energy. Now when I’m starting with Qigong, I tend to believe that the Universe is utterly intelligent to recognise that those thoughts are not coming by my will, so it’s not really ‘me’ saying them, and thus they can’t hurt my practice. Do you agree? Or should I beware? Also, I did a simple yoga for a few weeks to prepare my mind for qigong, and after a few days I noticed that intrusive thoughts - including those during the practice- gradually disappear. Then I had to stop yoga to learn qigong more quickly (it still takes most of my time). When I started making my first steps in qigong, I noticed again the stuff that I don’t want to come to my head returns. Should I expect improvement soon, due to my practice? Or should I better add yoga, as I already know it helps quickly? For the context, I have a few days experience of SFQ, and able to concentrate most of the time - probably my main worry is in question 1 (that it can harm me or make my practice not effective). What do you think?

Hi friends, It’s stated the Advanced form of Pangu Qigong requires half year practice of the other two forms, so I was really anticipating to learn it. However, when time came, they said that private lessons are not offered, and I should wait for the group lesson, which is scheduled for the end of June. So they basically said I should wait for almost half a year! I wonder if they really changed their policy of private lessons, or they just feel they shouldn’t teach me right now for some reason? Sorry if it seems strange to ask this in a forum rather than them directly BUT I feel they are quite unwilling to comment this or explain it to me. So that it was even uneasy to get their straight ‘no’. The whole thing seems strange because private lessons of the Advanced form are still mentioned on their website - which I mentioned when asking for a lesson but they still didn’t comment why the info is there but no private lessons are given. It’s also weird that if they really stopped teaching the Advanced form privately, it means you now have a once-a-year opportunity to learn it in a group, which makes this practice quite difficult to learn. It doesn’t seem to correspond to their mission as a public qigong school? I’m relatively new to the qigong world, practicing less than a year, so there’s a lot of weird things in that situation which puzzle me. I’d really appreciate your thoughts or experience that might clarify it. Thanks in advance!

Has anyone practiced it? One Sedona method practitioner mentioned that Shen helped them to significantly speed up their Sedona progress, but other than that, I have no info. It’s described in 4 videos here, by David Harris: part 1 part 2 part 3 part 4 Thanks in advance for sharing your thoughts!

I often encounter that Dao practices require their practitioners to be ‘of good character’ - virtuous, sincere, empathetic etc. Take Pangu’s maxim as an example, or talks about Flying Phoenix not helping ‘bad people’. Though ‘goodness’ is not something you can directly control unless enlightened. I can choose to raise my hand, but can’t choose to forgive a terrible thing straight away. So if a person who doesn’t have this control tries to be good to someone who they hate inside, they’d suppress their emotions thus making huge harm to themselves. So ‘trying’ good deeds while being not ideal inside is actually more damaging to you than just being who you are and accepting it. 2 questions I have about it: 1) Do the teachings actually imply that you shouldn’t do good if you don’t feel like it? For the sake of not destroying yourself? Or should you blindly do kindness no matter how it resonates inside? What about the harm of suppressing then, which in my experience is not compensated by any good deeds (say, people pleasers). 2) Do the practices actually help us reach that better nature, become sincerely good, so that you don’t need to suppress anything when dealing with negative stuff? Say, I’m a bad person who wants to become a good person - will Flying Phoenix help me transform? Or being not good enough just shuts this opportunity because ‘Flying Phoenix doesn’t help bad ppl’? Thank you!

Just a very comprehensive article to answer this: https://deniseminger.com/2011/05/31/wild-and-ancient-fruit/ There are many other articles across the web that say more or less the same thing, including the same tiny difference in sugar of wild vs cultivar species. It can be measured, after all, as many wild species are still alive - and it was done. Wild ones are disgusting just due to high content of other non-tasty things, not lack of sugar. From my perspective, it well explains humans’ fantastic resistance to the poison named sugar, compared to other mammals. Yes it doesn’t do you good, but it does WAY more bad to other animals who didn’t evolve on fruit. And I deffo trust science that we evolved in the present-day Ethiopia (=tropics) thus any reference to Europe is not quite relevant. The amount of time our current population spent in Europe is too tiny compared to the past. (There were several attempts to populate it but only the population whose descendants survive to the present matters). And many populations have nothing to do with Europe at all, never heard of fruit shortages in their sunny Thailand. I’m not a fan of fruit at all, so I hope to be unbiased But to be on the safe side, non-starchy veggies are your best friends

Hi all, I wonder if SFQ Small Universe meditation is compatible to practice along the other qigong styles (particularly Pangu)? Active exercises of SFQ don't quite resonate, so I wouldn't consider sticking to SFQ alone. Thanks!

Thanks! I actually asked the Pangu school about their compatibility with others before I learned it. They say it can be well mixed with anything Probably no surprise they are quite relaxed about many things that other schools are strict about Though SFQ instructions mention to avoid ‘mixing with other energy techniques’. Good to know it’s only about spacing them in time!

I noticed some qigong schools advice to practice outside ‘to not obstruct energy from flowing in’. But goodness it’s energy! It has no limits, can it go as far as Earth’s core, through all its layers, and beyond. How could thin material walls of my home ever obstruct it? Is it really the case? Thanks!

The question remains though - do those styles work with special energy that don’t penetrate material objects?

Without arguing much on the topic, I’ll just say that vegetarianism is far from the most healthy options a human can take. Avoiding processed food, both plant- and animal-based - yes Avoiding unhealthy food, both plant- and animal-based (pork, lamb, sugar) - yes Maintaining the right doses of certain foods so that they do good instead of harm (like, meat once a week instead of each day, or 100ml alcohol instead of a pint ) - yes Avoiding plant-based food grown in a dirty environment (like cities) - yes Exercising regularly and correctly - yes Avoiding what kills you directly (smoking, radiation) - yes Keeping peace of your mind - yes Having passions to live for or being in search of them - yes Good luck maintaining good health as a vegetarian if one goes for McPlant and Cola every day, doesn’t move much and doesn’t have light in their mind.

From my understanding, vegetarianism historically appeared where it could be afforded rather than strictly tied to the religion. Compare lush tropical lands where fruit and veg were unlimited with Tibet or Mongolia - both don’t grow crops and obviously didn’t have such imports till recently. Even now, great deal of their people live quite traditionally, with no easy access to a supermarket. No surprise that even Dalai Lama is not vegetarian. As for plants, just because they are more different from us structurally than animals (no nerves etc) doesn’t mean they are less alive - or less sentient. I believe there are more ways to sentience than just nerves. Otherwise it seems quite human-centric to me: - ones without nerves can’t feel - ones who can’t let me know they are suffering - not suffering - ones who don’t have human-like hands can’t evolve into intelligent creatures etc etc A bit of a side note - I know a few communities who were historically plant-free until the recent globalisation. It’s the already mentioned Mongolia, and peoples of Northern Asia. But I don’t know any nation/tribe that was historically meat-free. If you do - please share!

Recently I’ve researched a lot about medical qigong in my eager to start practicing, and got an interesting impression which I’d like to verify. That is, it seems to me that the potency of self-healing and healing others might be different within the same school. Say, Zhineng testimonials are the most dramatic - but they mostly come from those treated in that legendary ‘medicineless hospital’ by a master rather than from a sole practice at home. While results from Pangu can be easier achieved by an individual themselves. Do you think I’m correct in this observation?

Hi All! In my mid-teens, I converted into Vajrayana Buddhism. I practiced a bit but it was too much magic for my scientific mind, so I stopped "unless the right moment for it comes". 20 years later, the moment came, and I decided to go into qigong. Surprisingly, I found out that for all those years, I actually shared Dao understanding of the world, without realising it. Let's be friends!