Dainin

Have a Drink on Me!

Mewtwo, Congratulations on beginning to meditate and finding a teacher. The effects you've experienced while meditating are typical. It's probably best not to name, analyze, or dwell on them too much...just observe them without judgment, and keep going. If you follow Hundun's advice, I think you will be led to the right path. It won't be easy...you will need to bring focus and self discipline to the table. Good luck. "You've taken your first steps into a larger world."

Maybe you should read a book about it...and then teach it to others, like what you are going to do with qigong. Then you can call yourself Rinpoche as well as Grand Master!

42!

The web site for the Bihar School of Yoga is back up. It must have been a temporary glitch. They also have branchs in the U.S., Australia, and some other countries under the name of Satyananda Yoga. Their curriculum seems to be one of the most complete I've seen, at least based by the book titles that they publish. I have one of them, "Asana Pranayama Mudra Bandha", and it is really one of the best hatha yoga books that I've read.

Since you seem to be fascinated by "special powers", here a few places you can learn them from: Skills of the Vagabonds Coney Island Sideshow School Once you've developed these "special powers", you can use them impress the students of your new formless school of qigong, Grand Master!

Isn't Queensland where Mal is from? If so, I hope he is okay...

There are different types of "religious experiences". In my estimation, persons who have undergone what might be termed "mystical" religious experiences, regardless of their tradition, are neither authoritarian nor exclusivist. Perhaps you can clarify your statement...I would guess that you are talking about fundamentalists??

When you say "researching it", have you actually studied qigong with any teachers, or have you just read books, watched DVDs, etc? If you are just making up your own system without being taught by anyone (in person), and don't have any prior training in things like Chinese medicine, martial arts, meditation, etc., I think that it's credibility would be questionable. But since you'd be the founder, you could call yourself "Grandmaster"! If you do have a teacher, you could ask how he or she started to teach, and if they think that you are ready. There are also teacher training programs that you could attend in a variety of qigong systems.

"Special powers" don't usually fare too well against bullets, as was seen in the Boxer Rebellion, as well as those warriors in the Congo who thought that their shaman's spell would keep them bulletproof...it didn't work. But maybe Starjumper's buddies have had better training!

Just tried Level 1 for the first time this past weekend...definitely induces a nice qi flow!

This book and DVD set is coming out soon: Awakening the Sacred Body by Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche Product Description Awakening the Sacred Body brings the ancient art of Tibetan breathing practices to the mainstream. Teacher Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche outlines the theory and process of two powerful meditations: the Nine Breathings of Purification and the Tsa Lung movements that can help you change the way you think, feel, and experience the world. There is an excerpt on YouTube: Sounds interesting!

Well...I think that there is a tendency among some people in both arts to exaggerate the age of the lineage in order to make it seem more credible. It is likely that any form that actually is very old has changed substantially over the course of time. For example, if you look at something like 8 Section Brocade or Yi Jin Jing, there are many different variations. Remember, not everything new is bad, nor is everything old good. Personally, I find some newer qigong forms to produce results as good or better than some of the legacy forms. Also, if you encounter a practice that makes extravagant claims about it's lineage, that doesn't mean that the practice is bad either. For example, I tend not to believe that the Yogi Bhajan style of Kundalini Yoga is 40,000 years old, as they claim. However, I like the practice, and find it to be fun to do, so the actual age of the lineage doesn't matter much to me. Let your own experience of the different practices guide you, versus the rhetoric of the schools. Good luck!

Another DVD set on Gao bagua that sounds promising: Tom Bisio's Ba Gua Concepts

I think that if you mean Ashtanga yoga as practiced by K.P. Jois, that is probably an accurate statement. In general, Ashtanga means "Eight Limbs" referring to the eight types of yoga discussed by Patanjali: Yama : Universal morality Niyama : Personal observances Asanas : Body postures Pranayama : Breathing exercises, and control of prana Pratyahara : Control of the senses Dharana : Concentration and cultivating inner perceptual awareness Dhyana : Devotion, Meditation on the Divine Samadhi : Union with the Divine There is a recent book out called "The Yoga Body," published by Oxford University Press, that looks at the question of how much modern hatha yoga comes from traditional sources versus the influence of Western physical culture. Many of the asanas currently practiced were not mentioned in the traditional writings. The ones mentioned in the sutras were mostly seated postures, used for meditational purposes.

Krishnamacharya was the teacher of B.K.S. Iyengar, as well as K. Pattabhi Jois. Iyengar and Jois later established their own styles which are quite different. Iyengar emphasizes precision in alignment, and pioneered using props to make the asanas more accessible. Jois (Ashtanga yoga) emphasized vinyasa, which is flowing from one asana to another, and linking them with sun salutations and ujjayi breathing. Jois stated that Krishnamacharya taught him Ashtanga yoga based on some ancient writings which were on palm leaves. Another student of Krishnamacharya who became a teacher was Indra Devi, who I think was born in Russia and lived in Argentina, and had some books that were popular back in the 60s or 70s. It was rare for a traditional Indian teacher to accept a foreign female student back then. Krishnamacharya's son T.K.V. Desikachar established a style of yoga called Viniyoga, which emphasizes therapeutics. A guy named Gary Kraftsow from Hawaii is the main teacher of this in the U.S. There are soem other teachers of Krishnamacharya around such as A.G. Mohan and Srivatsa (I forgot his first name). Mohan recently wrote a biography of Krishnamacharya that would probably give you more details about all of this. Some things that stands out for me about Krishnamacharya are that, one, his students were able to develop distinctive styles based on their own experiences with his teaching (i.e. they were encouraged to think and not just imitate), and two, the great longevity achieved by many of them. Krishnamacharya and Indra Devi lived past 100 years. Jois died recently at 93 or 94, and Iyengar and the others that I mentioned are still alive. Hope this helps!

I went to one of his qigong workshops in a park down near FIU a few years ago, and was very impressed by his knowledge. It was on Incense Qigong, which was similar to Fragrance Qigong, but with greater "depth." I didn't get to check out his other arts, but I know he teaches tai chi and liu he bafa as well as bagua. If I lived closer to where he teaches I would definitely check out his classes. His student Sifu Andrew Chung is a really good teacher too. He teaches in south Broward.

Recommended Sequence of Winn's Tao Home Study Courses I would think you could apply this sequence to the Chia material as well.

Last Friday night I was at the Santa Barbara Mission, sitting on the patio with three classmates. We had all just finished a week of training there with Dr. Roger Jahnke. I looked up into the sky and saw a bright flame-like light flash in the sky, and pointed it out to my friends. It lasted for a few seconds, then the brightness faded until it looked like a regular airplane light, but then a second or two later it developed a long tail like a comet. It went across the sky like this for about a minute, then the tail faded, and it went back the "airplane light" mode. This seemed to be the end of it, but when I looked up again a little while later the bright flash was happening again. Then it disappeared. We all agreed that we had never seen anything like it before. I figured it was probably some kind of experimental military aircraft. When I saw this other thing had happened in Los Angeles two days later, I thought there might be some connection to what we had seen not too far away from there...although what we saw was flying horizontally across the sky, whereas the one in L.A. was going up vertically. Hmmm....

Some of my personal favorites are: Bruce Frantzis: Dragon & Tiger Medical Qigong Jerry Alan Johnson: Chi Kung: The Healing Workout Ken Cohen: Qigong George Love: Meridian Qigong Roger Jahnke: Qigong - Chi Kung: Awakening and Mastering the Medicine within You There's been a lot of good feedback on here about the Flying Phoenix DVD series and Spring Forest. I haven't seen these yet myself though.

I first heard of Subud many years ago, but never really knew anything about it, except that the 60s rock star Jim McGuinn of the Byrds changed his name to Roger after becoming involved in it. Anyhow, I just read the Wikipedia article about it, and their main spiritual practice (called Latihan Kejiwaan) sounds very similar to spontaneous qigong, except using a theistic framework. Plus their notion of "The Opening" sounds like getting qi transmission from a teacher. It originated in Indonesia, so maybe it ties in with Silat-related energetic practices that have been discussed here before. I was wondering if anyone here has ever been involved in this and could share what their experience of it was like...

From Wikipedia article on Roger McGuinn: "When he originally started with The Byrds, he used the name Jim, which he thought to be too plain. During 1965 McGuinn briefly explored the Subud spiritual association and began to practice the latihan, an exercise in quieting the mind. McGuinn changed his name in 1967 after Subud's founder Bapak told him it would better "vibrate with the universe." Bapak sent Jim the letter "R" and asked him to send back ten names starting with that letter. Owing to a fascination with airplanes, gadgets and science fiction, he sent names like "Rocket", "Retro", "Ramjet", and "Roger", the latter a term used in signalling protocol over two-way radios, military and civil aviation. Roger was the only "real" name in the bunch and Bapak chose it. While using the name Roger professionally from that time on, McGuinn only officially changed his middle name from Joseph to Roger. McGuinn left the Subud religion in 1977, the same year that he met his wife Camilla (they married the next year). Both have become committed Christians since that time."

Who gave Master Li the title of "Master"?