Dainin

This "quite" reminded me of Commander McBragg:

I was thinking about one of my favorite Bums who has been missing for some time and learned that she transitioned back in January. I gained a lot from her posts over the years. https://www.oshonews.com/2023/01/21/adeha/

Qigong Bigu or Fasting: The Best Investment in Your Health and Long-Term Wellness by Dr. Kevin Chen. He does these retreats quarterly. I haven't taken one but hope to eventually.

There are some versions of Yi Jin Jing which use relatively little external movement and consist of sequences of tightening and releasing different muscle groups by doing things like pressing the palms down, spreading the fingers apart, tightening the fists with the thumb inside the other fingers, and so forth. You may also be engaging the core and perineum (and coordinating the breath) with the "flexing" while doing this. One of these is shown in Dr. Yang Jwing Ming's early book Qigong for Health and Martial Arts. Another, called Sinew Metamorphosis is taught by Sifu Anthony Korahais in his Qigong 201 course (probably learned from GM Wong Kiew Kit).

Hi Dan, two books that I think meet your criteria and would recommend are The Way of Qigong by Kenneth S. Cohen and The Healing Promise of Qi by Roger Jahnke.

Hi Asher, I don't have any experience with this material but here is a Tai Chi/Qigong teacher that has done some work in this area: https://www.susanamatthews.com/brain_workshop.htm

The beginning of a qigong session is usually more quiescent as you mindfully adjust the breath, posture, and mind to enter into a relaxed state. This is part of what distinguishes qigong from just doing basic exercise. That said, some qigong methods that I find quite heating are Yi Jin Jing, Five Animal Frolics, and Swimming Dragon Qigong. Since you are aware of Ayurveda, you probably know the yogic Sun Salutation (Surya Namaskar), a classic method for generating body heat. You can find YouTube videos of all of these.

http://www.healthyfoundations.com/guolin/guolin_video.html

Just learned that there is a DVD in English: https://www.primehealthproducts.ca/store/ydan-details.html

I took one two day in-person workshop with him and that was enough for me. It was on a short 5 or 6 movement form. He spent almost the entire first day on the first movement only, going into overwhelming, endless detail about it, then rushing through the rest of the form on the second day. Lots of self-aggrandizement and treating attendees in a demeaning manner. He brought a couple of guys who did Japanese martial arts up front to demonstrate that he could hurt them using pressure points. There were also some women hanging around up front gazing at him like cult members. He had one of them strip down to her underwear to make some anatomical point (he did this with a guy also). I doubt that his Chinese teacher would have done that. The whole vibe was pretty weird. He also appeared to be over 300 pounds at the time, and had trouble walking. He said that he had been in 5 or 6 car accidents in the past few years. I give him credit for losing a lot of weight since then and being able to move better. I did take a few series of classes from one of his students later on, and fortunately that person had none of the same characteristics and was a better teacher than his master.

https://www.gofundme.com/f/square-inch-press "We are gathering funds for the newly launched Square Inch Press 方寸書社 (SIP), which will be the publishing wing of the Daoist Foundation 道教基金會 , a US-based Daoist religious and educational non-profit (501[c][3]) and public charity (170[1][A][vi]) dedicated to fostering authentic Daoist study and practice and to preserving and transmitting traditional Daoist culture. As one of the few Daoist presses, aspiring to create a similar cultural space as Snow Lion or Wisdom Publications in Buddhism and Paulist Press in Christianity, Square Inch Press will publish tradition-based books with a Daoist aesthetics and material culture. The current fundraiser aims to gather seed-money for book-design, type-setting, copy-editing, and the actual printing. The first projected title is Entering Stillness: A Guide to Daoist Practice 入靜指南 by Louis Komjathy 康思奇, Ph.D., CSO and Kate Townsend 唐鄉恩, EAMP, CSO. Anyone who makes a donation of $75 or more will receive a complimentary copy upon publication, which is tentatively scheduled for April 18, 2022. As is the case with other Daoist Foundation projects, all contributions are tax-deductible."

Hi moreira, I think Cheya is taking some time off from the Dao Bums, so I'll try to answer this. The DVD is by Fengming Wang, a student of Feng Zhiqiang, not Feng himself. You can find it on this web page: https://www.worldtaiji.com/index.php/taiji-store Note that he doesn't offer e-commerce, so you have to email him to discuss how to make payment. There is a book too, but the translation isn't very clear. Another student of the Feng Zhiqiang method that has streaming video material on the tai chi ruler is Dr. Yaron Seidman. He offers a one hour intro and a full 12 hour course. You can find these here: https://hunyuan.life/sub-category/tai-chi-1610885619922x645456003119185900 There is also some Youtube content of Master Feng demonstrating the stick and ruler (with no verbal instruction): https://youtu.be/AtbuKO4PltQ https://youtu.be/QyfBfYsmTO8

Inner Alchemy (from The Holy Mountain, directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky)

I first learned Yi Jin Jing from my medical qigong teacher Paul Fraser. He and his teacher Master Tom Tam learned it from a Shaolin monk when they were on a trip to China. Paul actually taught two forms, which he called external and internal Yi Jin Jing. The external form was similar to the second video in Vajra Fist's post above. Later on I got a Yi Jin Jing DVD by Master Jesse Tsao and it was very similar to what Paul had taught our class. Then I got the Chinese Health Qigong Association book (it came with a DVD) and it was also the same form. I've also taken Robert Peng's course and I'm repeating it now. His form is pretty similar but not identical to what is apparently the standardized version, and as Luke mentioned, he does go into a lot of detail about breathing compared to the other sources I learned it from. Some of the movements have a hatha yoga like feel and they are stretching the muscles and massaging the internal organs as well as stretching the tendons to a certain extent. The internal Yi Jin Jing that Paul taught was quite different. Here the movements were much smaller (some would probably be barely noticeable to an observer) but seemed to really emphasize stretching the tendons. Eventually I saw similar versions to this in an early book by Dr. Yang Jwing Ming and in a VHS video series put out by Roger Hagood called something like "Oriental Health Secrets." I'm currently in an online course with Sifu Anthony Korahais and he's now teaching "Sinew Metamorphosis" which is also similar. I think these teachers are all basically coming out of southern Chinese kung fu styles, so I would guess that is where this version originated. I like both approaches and they seem to complement each other.

These two Swimming Dragon movements might be helpful: You may also want to check out a book called "Unwinding the Belly" which is more of a self-massage technique.

GiCheon is another one. I believe it's basis is in standing meditation. There is also a cold water component where they stand in mountain streams. http://www.gicheon.org/ http://www.gicheon.com/gicheon/ I think that this and Sundo are both based on Daoist principles. Korea also has a strong indigenous shamanistic tradition but I don't know anything about it.

I just picked up a nice little book about this practice: Arm Swinging Qigong by John Robertson I first learned this with Dr. George Love, who would do 88 repetitions as a warm-up. He would sometimes do these slowly, other times quickly. I also learned it from Dr. Roger Jahnke, who did it slowly and called it Flowing Motion. Both of these teachers had the palms facing up on the upswing and facing down on the downswing. They would both lift the heels on the upswing and the toes on the downswing. It became a rocking motion with Dr. Love's faster version. More recently I've been doing the "Ping Shuai Gong" version with Dr. Kevin Chen during his weekly Zoom classes. He does 300 repetitions during his warm-up sequence. This one is palms down on both the up and downswing. The arms are kept straighter, it moves at fairly quick pace, the feet are kept flat and the knees bend every five reps. The knee bends bothered me at first, now I'm used to it. Dr. Chen and Dr. Love both say this practice is very good for detoxification. It does seem to pump a lot of the lymph nodes.

Hi Eduardo, I also saw that form illustrated in Master Wong's book years ago. That book was also where I first saw Shibashi, which I subsequently searched out and it became one of my favorite sets. I never learned the Waitankung though (couldn't find much information about it back then). It looks like it was developed in 1976 (slightly before Shibashi) by Grandmaster Tuan Haji Ali Chang Chih-Tung and seems to be popular in Malaysia and Singapore. You can find some information about Waitankung below: http://waitankung.org/index.php?langsel=eng https://www.philcheung.com/Wtk/wtk.htm (links to a YouTube video of the Grandmaster). There are a lot of videos about it in different languages on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMWDBhBJRGW3vdn6b6_zNWYI-z6YaESQI There was once a book about it, but it no longer seems to be available: https://www.amazon.com/Chinese-Waitankung-illustrated-Taoist-Health/dp/B00PKRUROW/

There's also an Australian Jesus: https://www.divinetruth.com/sites/main/en/index.htm#welcome.htm and of course, the Date Jesus guy: https://datejesus.com/

Hi escott, I've been practicing the first set of Shibashi (and occasionally the second set) for many years, and it's still among my favorites. I learned it from Sifu Wing Cheung in Ontario. I'm not familiar with the Udemy course that you mention, but I can recommend Sifu Cheung's materials and also those of Fabrice Piche (also from Canada) who studies directly with the creator of the Shibashi system, Grandmaster Lin Housheng. A nice book on the first set is The Theory and Practice of Taiji Qigong by Chris Jarmey. This gives a lot of detail on aspects such as the breathing, mental focus (at beginning, intermediate and advanced levels), and the health benefits of each movement. There are 8 sets in the system. Each one has 18 movements. Some of the movements are taken from Yang style Tai Chi. One of the sets is for health issues and one is like a "greatest hits" from the other sets. Unlike learning a traditional Tai Chi form, the individual movements are repeated (usually 6 or 12 times), rather than one flowing into another continuously. The Temple style Tai Chi that Dwai mentioned also has "single form practice" (i.e. repetition of individual Tai Chi movements) as part of their system. I believe that you can view recordings of the weekly Sunday sessions with Master Liao for free. I've tried many forms of qigong over the years, and Shibashi remains one of my most favorite, and one that I keep going back to.

Hi escott, Soaring Crane was one of the many forms of qigong banned by the Chinese Communist Party following the "qigong boom" which lasted from some time during the 1980s until the mid-1990s. The ascent of Falun Dafa led to many other schools being categorized as "evil cults" by the CCP. There were also rumors that some people with pre-existing psychiatric conditions had psychotic episodes due to the spontaneous qigong section at the end of the Soaring Crane form. In the USA, Soaring Crane seems most popular in the Pacific Northwest, where it was taught at an acupuncture college in Portand by Professor Huixian Chen. There were also some Chinese teachers who taught it in New York City (not sure if they are still active or not). Soaring Crane is a short form, divided into five sections with a spontaneous qigong section at the end. I practiced it for a while. It's a good form and produces a lot of qi in the hands. I learned it from Dr. Wu Dhi in Miami (both from his DVD and in-person). He calls it Flying Crane. He learned it from a Chinese doctor in Michigan. I think there are a few slight variations in what he teaches from the "original." Although I'm not currently practicing it, it is a form that I do think is one of the better ones, and one that I'll probably go back to practicing eventually. (Fragrant Qigong is another one in this category for me, btw). The most comprehensive information available about the form (including the book) can be purchased here: https://qi.org/products2/ If you can find a copy of this out-of-print DVD, it features the late founding grand-master, Xiao Jin Xiang and was filmed in some beautiful locations during his trip to North America. It might be available online from the producer Maureen Goss. Gerald Sharp also has a DVD on it. I haven't seen that one, but have some of his others and they are very good indeed. Best regards, Dainin