Pietro

that's wonderful! I don't even need to reply anymore ;-)

Surely Testicle/Ovarian breathing and Scrotal compression would be part of the practices criticized. And when I was speaking about practices that were coming from the Taiwan booklet I was in fact thinking about them. But Bruce critic was general and I refer it as I heard it. As such it would also cover Lin's anal breathing, I suppose.

In the water method you use less specific energetic pathways, and more all the channels at the same time. But you do this at specific depths. So your breath will reach a certain level of depth first, and then go deeper. You don't want to go deeper until you have completed and stabilised the levels above to avoid the swiss cheese effect. Where energy does not spread uniformly through the body.

We need to differentiate between organ breathing and breathing in various parts of the body. There are several reasons why you will want to breath in a particular part of the body. But the first and foremost is to awaken that part. Imagine you are the director of a chorus. Yes you want all to sing, but if someone is not singing you ask him to sing alone. Then in small groups, and then to join the chorus. That's a good reason. There are of course others. You need to reach full body breathing, and parts that are not awake will not join the chorus. Organ breathing is generally good as a form of massage. But again you will eventually want to practice each organ alone and then all together.

Well, of course this kind of information stand on authority and the trust you have on a person. This is generally bad practice and not accepted in science. But it is accepted in parenting ("kid, don't do this, I'll tell you later why"). It also wasn't released to the public, but to his students. At the end you need to make the decision in your heart who will you believe. After following both for several years I know where I stand. like me? because Bruce advised me against practicing sexual techniques many years ago because of specific things with myself ("unless I work with you for 6 months in a 1o1"). Now we did some brain techniques in this last retreat that I felt were going in that direction. I asked him and he confirmed (which doesn't mean I am fit to practice sexual chi gung now, but we are getting there). Honestly being mentally unstable is not a one zero thing. It is a continuum, and there are many people who are stable under normal conditions and unstable under the right (or wrong) kind of pressure. WHich teacher? I had several teachers. Alan? Bruce? They both are doing great. Bruce has never ever been so good. He is lighter than I ever have seen him. He walks normally and without a stick (last year he had a stick). And for someone who was not supposed to walk again the rest of his life, got his spine broken several times he is nothing short of a chi miracle. Alan is just fine. Anyone else?

wow, lot's of reaction. I shall try to answer rapidly to all. We all would. I am not even sure Bruce is allowed to speak about it too specifically. He was trained as a taoist priest before training with Liu. The training with Liu released his of several obligations, but I am not sure if this is among them. After all Liu taught him the water tradition, and this seem to be more on the fire side.

thanks for asking if it is not used to suppress emotions (something quite easy to do), it would generally be a good addition to most people most of the time. I am still digesting and integrating the information, so forgive me if I don't enter in the details at this point.

yes, mantak is not exactly celibate. I don't know if the point is ejaculating or having sex. Bruce said "having sex" so if he was litteral (and no reason to think he was, by and large the people present were not people trained in taoist sexual practices), the Mantak should be ok. But also Mantak is not your average dude, he does all sort of practices with his energy... but by now some of his older students might be in the position to show some of the effect. Look I don't want to bad mouth mantak. Basically I don't know. But I thought the red flag risen was too important not to repeat it. Also Bruce never said it was happening to everybody. Suppose it happen only to some people in a way that is independent to how they practice and dependent on who they are (karma-dna, you name it). What percentage would be an acceptable rate? 1% 2% 0.1% 10% Even if you accept a 10% of risk (slightly better than a russian roulette), you are still having 9 people who do not show the signs. If all you call are the teachers, each will still have a 90% to be ok. As I said,, don't make this a school fight. That those practices can be dangerous is not a news. I am just adding a little detail from a guy who happened to study as a taoist priest in his youth, having one of the topics being sex.

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Thanks for all the input. They all seem to make sense, but I think I would go with the metal+fire+sexual energy sounds right in this context and the fact that most of you associate this combination with porn also fits in quite nicely. But that is an effect not the question. And what is that? I can't enter into the detail but I asked a question and I got a cryptic answer. The rest I could decipher but the "pink dots" part still baffled me. I, for me, would have associated it with metal. But the fire part makes a lot of sense. Thanks, case closed. Take care, Pietro

Congratulations for real!

Interesting!I was wondering what kind of exercise would stimulate the hormones up in the hormonal cascade. You might have inadvertently hit one. My understanding is that Stretching the testicle produces oxytocin.Also recently there was a paper showing that produced sperm could turn back into stem cells. I am not sure if those exercise really are the one that are responsible for recreating the stem cells from the sperm or from creating the sperm from the stem cells. What is quite obvious is that oxytocin helps handle the whole thing, so it doesn't explode.

Has goldisheavy account been hacked?

I mentioned a doctor as a figure of speech. Let's extend this question to any figure... I have my intuition about what would happen, but I will not post it now. Too much Pietro a day can get boring

Craig, Ya Mu. having worked with one foot in academia and one foot in meditation schools I had to investigate thoroughly the boundary between those two fields. Eventually I realised the difference between being real, and being measurable, and I tried to pass that on in my post. As I felt this was more important and subsumed any other discussion on my or Ya Mu credentials. If Ya Mu still feels I should answer his question I will surely do so. You Craig raise a few questions in your post, and I would like to answer them. I disagree that getting the words right is silly semantics. Even if in Taoism we have a tradition of "the tao that can be said is not the eternal tao" we also have also a very long tradition of describing what can be described thoroughly. This is why Taoist meditation tradition could be reach the next generations so well. To honour this thread that is hosting us, and which we should not forget it is about transmission, it is common for my latest teacher to transmit me a concept, then give it a name, then ask me to explain what was the transmission, to make sure it has fully arrived. Now I go back on track. Yes, the word quantum has been used and abused all over the place. And so the word non-linear. But of the problem is that sometimes the word non-linear is intended as non-linked-by-a-linear-relationship. Thus the kind of relations that fall under the field of chaotic system, and complex systems, and so on. But other times it is intended as non following a continuous progression. And here people speak about linear time as opposed to cyclic time. So non-linear would mean not explicable using standard causality where x can have an implication over y only if even x happen before event y. Both uses are ok, but are different. And the problem arises when people confuse them. Which happens very often when people speak about non-linear dynamic, for example, which has a precise scientific meaning in the first case, but people tend to assume that non linear dynamic means a dynamic in a universe where an effect can precede a cause. Or can be perceived as doing so. It can in fact be misinterpreted. But only until one reads what I actually write as opposed as to reacting to what they think I mean. Hi Craig, it's deeper than that. I don't think there is science as a separate action of human being. I see and experience science as common sense, summed with knowledge and with precise measurements. Anything that pertains to a field that can be measured and that has those three characteristics is scientific, but what does not have this scientific is not "unscientific". It's bogus. It's like saying: 2+2=5 I say, no 2+2=4 and you reply, oh, but I was not speaking mathematically. Sorry, 2+2 is mathematics. Saying 2+2=5 is not correct but no mathematic, is simply false. I said that you need common sense, knowledge and measurements. We call this process science. Let's look what happens if you miss one of those three, and what kind of knowledge is then gathered. We have three cases: 1) If you make a claim based on good measurements, with good sense, but you ignore what has been done before you, you are making a good try, but your ignorance make it fail. No big deal, we are all ignorant to some extent. The aim is to be aware of our ignorance, expand what we know, and avoid making claims based on things we ignore. If someone now would explain that the sun went around the earth he would be falling in this category. 2) If you make a claim based on what knowledge, common sense, but you have no good measurements you are essentially making an hypothesis. It is ok as long as you call it a supposition. It is not ok if you call it a fact. Each time that you test your supposition with good measurement it will be more and more considered a fact (while being called a "theory"). And every scientist will defend it unless they are presented with alternative explanations backed up by measurements that the first theory could not explain. 3) If you make a claim based on knowledge, and good measures, but no common sense you are essentially not being reasonable, being illogical, not using Occam's razor to propose the simplest solution, in what you are claiming. This is the only case in which you can sometimes make "unscientific but plausible claims". Now the claims that were flaying around over here were supposedly consequences of measurements, as such they fell under the domain of scientific investigation (remember how 2+2 is mathematics). So where they reasonable grounded claims? Well, quantum theory is a very complex field, I have a very limited understanding of it (having only followed a course at the uni 2 decades ago). It looks to me that people here have an even lower understanding of the field, so this raises in me all sort of warning bells. I will not comment over the common sense, for the sake of peace for the forum. But what really was misplaced was the way measurements were taken. With no measures the maximum that we can aim for is to have an hypothesis. Which is what I said. I think that Ya Mu has had interesting experiences that point to something that can exist and that can potentially be measured. I think that until we cannot measure it, any claim about its measures (different from very fast) are empty talk. As are any claim that descend from the previous claims. Makes you wonder what would have happened if the doctor seeing the patient has suddenly healed refused to operate.

Ya Mu, let us clarify a bit of epistemology, or theory of knowledge. There are things that are real, and things that are measurable. Something that is unreal cannot be measurable. But there are many things that are real but not measurable. At least until you find a way to measure it. When something can be scientifically studied, per definition, it must be measurable. There is a bit of elbow movement if you use consistent statistical observations spread over many people, using a double blind. But the quality of the science coming out is much less consistent. Mostly because you are not measuring the stuff itself but the effect of the stuff. And you are not sure if something might have intruded in the gap between what you are measuring and what you suppose have caused it. And all this is why we have so many problems with medicine and sociology, respect to physics, for example. But not just everything that is scientific is measurable (either directly or indirectly), but everything that is measurable is, or can be (and in fact should be), subject to scientific exploration and investigation. So a first conclusion of this is that while I can laugh at your claims about the speed of qi transmission, I cannot laugh at your experience of them as something having happened. This is a very important difference. One is a claim about a measurement, the other is a claim about an experience. And a supposition (consistent and grounded in many observations) that there is something in reality that caused it. As a scientist I cannot accept as "surely part of the external reality" what caused it. I need to keep it in a special container called: anecdotal evidence. Even if I had (which I did, as I have done meditation for many years) direct experience of it. In this a scientist, that is a scientist, cannot treat his own observations differently from the observations of anybody else. And must treat any personal observations as untrustworthy. Why? Because we, human beings, are very well known for missing the mark, remembering things wrongly, deceiving ourselves, being subject to all sorts of delusions. In short being a faulty measurement system. All this while being absolutely, honestly, convinced that we are telling the truth. Please do not ask me to dig the literature on this. I trust that having had a scientific eduction, you must have had this explained to you over and over. So what you are presenting is not certainly false. But is not certainly true either. It is anecdotal evidence of the existence of something. And fair enough, this website is based upon anecdotal evidence. If we did not consider anecdotal evidence no school of meditation could survive, nor would we have important suggestions over what to study in science. But where I see you going overboard is when you make claims about measurements (this is instantaneous). And then make claims that are based upon those previous claims (because this is instantaneous then it must be ...). Measuring something as instantaneous is a big deal. It is a big deal to understand what does it mean that two events happen at the same time. As a human being you have some limitations. There are plenty of studies made that show this. And you claim that you can measure something as being "instantaneous". Oh, and differentiating it from something that travelled only at the speed of light? Now something happening anywhere around the globe and affecting you and traveling at the speed of light would affect you in less than 0.04 seconds. Something so fast that you cannot even perceive. But no, you claim you can actually perceive something that took 0.0000 seconds. And then you wonder why I call this claim naive. I wonder why you wonder.

When Galileo wanted to measure the speed of light he went with another man over two hills, in the night. He would open the shutter of his lamp, and when the other man saw the light he would open the shutter of his lamp. Then Galileo measured the amount of time that passed between when he opened the shutter, and the light that he would receive back from the other hill, divide by two, and he would know the time that passed for the light to go from one hill to the other. At least in theory. When he tried it out it came out that the light would take about a certain amount of time x. Then he sent the man to another hill, at double distance. Expecting the time now to be 2x. Again he measured the speed and ... it was still x. What they were measuring was not so much the time necessary for light to go through, but the time necessary for the other man to realise he had to act, and act. The speed of light was just too fast to be measured with this crude method. A better system would have used a mirror and a longer distance. And that was what was eventually used. I don't remember the details but I think it involved sending the light to the moon, and the seeing the reflex, or something similar. The light to travel from the moon to here takes about 1 second, so it is something that can be quite easily measured. The idea that someone can measure "qi projection" speed, while we have no objective tools to measure qi is incredibly naive. The idea that by measuring it in this way a person can check if the speed of qi is faster than the speed of light is even more silly. The only reason why you guys are so fixated with quantum physics is because you do not understand it, it look good, and it fits well with your world view. It would be more honest to just admit so. Just say, everything would fit well if it was a quantum effect, but of course we don't know.

I know Bruce has promised to teach things about this when we do it in a spooky cave in the south of Italy.

I was just repeating what Bruce said. But if you have direct experience of that I will step aside. My (intellectual) understanding is that when you dissolve the aura you might end up in touch with external entities. Which can scare the $#!+ out of you. But it's a maybe.In all case, I haven't worked on dissolving the aura. We might have done it a bit on the last (and only) spiraling course I did. But by the time we reached that part of the program I was already done and cooked ;-)

agreed with everybody else: do something until there is something you want to do then do it

For what I know the maximum hat can happen is that you damage your joints for poor posture (but they would scream bloody murder before it happens), or that you touch something that it is so bad, but so bad that you lose consciousness, and the as you fall you can harm yourself. But I only heard happen one time, and the person was not just doing Zhan Zhuang, but also some different meditations. Generally you can keep a chair on the back of where you stand and if the worse come to the worse you just sit.

In the i-ching each odd hexagram is strongly related to the even hexagram that follows it. To the point that often they point to the same situation, from opposite point of view. So you have hexagram 1-2, 3-4, 5-6, 7-8, 11-12, 13-14, 15-16, 17-18, 19-20. But in some cases the relation is not so obvious. You might have noticed that I missed some pair above. And yet no way is the relation more obscure to me than with the couple 21-22. One is Fire over thunder, biting through. And it has to do with "administering justice", and the other is fire inside the mountain, "adorning". Is the relation that you need discipline to appear beautiful? Anything else? P.

Let me add something to what Jesse is explaining. The most important difference is what you are dissolving. As long as you are dissolving the physical energy or the etheric field you are in outer dissolving. It really does not matter if you are sitting or standing. It might make it easier or harder, but it does not make a big difference. When you are dissolving emotions, when you are dissolving thoughts you are entering into the plane of emotions or of thoughts. They are connected and related to the physical layer (which is why you physically go down your body), but they activate emotions and thoughts that then you dissolve. Can you dissolve emotions without going through the body? Yes it can be done (it was taught in Crete in 2003-I think-). You want t have an example of feeling a thought? Take an idea, any idea. Take 'peace', or a mathematical formula, or anything. Lay down so that your body is fully supported, and there is no neural activity coming from the body being in discomfort. I use to do this in the bathtub. Now hold in your mind the thought you are concentrating on, and let everything else fade in the background. Just let yourself be in the presence of that thought, until you are not feeling neither your emotions nor your body (this is not what you do in taoist meditation, btw). Until only that thought exist. Now you are in the mind space. If you have a higher education you know how to reach it, although you might never have called it in that way. Now, in Taoism, we dissolve on that level too. We just don't start there, and we don't work over there losing the feeling of the body. You always feel the body. But as you feel the body and feel the blockage, you also feel the thoughts that are connected to that. And you dissolve there. Now that is inner dissolving. You do it sitting because you want less neural noise reaching the brain. It implodes in instead of exploding out. But the key thing is what you are dissolving. If you have gone through some serious stress (torture, rape, ...) you do not need all this. Anything will connect you with the deeper parts. So any normal dissolving will trigger internal dissolving. Similarly when you do some external dissolving while sitting it is possible, even easy to connect to the deeper parts of the mind. But they are not the same things. While you are standing the continuous concentration necessary to keep you in position will often prevent you to go to those deeper parts of your mind. And will keep you focus on your physical body, which is what you need to work on for now. Because until you have cleared out your body, clearing the mind will not be very effective. Now forget all this, and go back to do outer dissolving. :-)

You know, I find it surprising that you are 60.