:::

May I say how touched I am that people from around the world should find the time leave these posts for me. Like many others, I'm trying to make sense of profound experiences with Qi in the absence of a good teacher and your comments have given me much to reflect on. I feel you've changed my understanding in a way that will enable me to develop further. Your kindness is very much appreciated. Thank you. I can't imagine I shall be starting many other new threads, so much of interest to me has already been posted elsewhere on here but your response has assured me that, if I do, someone will care enough to answer. This forum is a wonderful resource for someone like me.

Hundun, Thank you for taking the time to post such an interesting, and informed, reply bearing in mind that you consider my post to be silly, cumbersome and unanswerable. I feel that as you have said "i'd like to answer it, but don't think i can", I should be especially grateful to you for spending so many words trying to do so. You seem to think my question was aimed directly at you and that you were obliged to answer it. Whenever I see a question on this, or any other forum, that I'd like to answer, but don't think I can, I tend, unlike you, not to attempt to answer. I'm interested to learn that you believe that your being sensitive to one of your students who lives 2,000 miles away has anything to do with my original question unless, of course, you feel that by mentioning that you have students, (you could have just said a "friend"), makes you feel better qualified to air your views. At least your response to my question wasn't in anyway bullying, or patronizing, which was nice. I've decided to take your well meaning advice to heart and have just applied to join the Navy as a submariner. I look forward to reporting my own very personal, individual and highly subjective experience of sensing Qi in a metal tube deep below the oceans waves on this forum at some later date. Bye for now, :::

Thank you WhiteTiger, I hadn't heard of that before. We both await further interesting posts.

On my own journey I have, at various times, asked others on the Path if they could explain whether different environments, mostly man made, effect the prevalence of Qi but have never really had a satisfactory answer. My question is, if mankind's natural place might be said to be barefoot on the surface of the Earth, what effect in terms of availability of surrounding Qi would be experienced by, for example, the crew of a submarine ? Would the substantial steel hull and volume of sea water above reduce, increase or have no effect on the Qi within the submarine ? Likewise, would the aluminum construction of a trailer home, or being in the basement of a steel framed skyscraper undermine one's qigong practice ? I'm personally very fortunate in that I have a choice of nearby, and powerful, trees to stand under...... I'm asking this question to help me understand more about the nature of Qi. Wiser T-Bums please enlighten me. Thank you.

Interesting thread. I'll add this link. http://users.erols.com/dantao/qigongdeviation.html

If you haven't already done so, may I suggest you buy any one of his DVD's that appeal to you just to see if you can live with Mantak Chia's presentational style. I don't think one is intended to follow this set of DVD's in a certain, rigid order and the individual titles of each DVD give an important clue as to the level of practice required. There are lots of short clips on YouTube to help you decide. Personally, I find some of his DVD's a bit rambling and amateurishly produced, qualities that, for me, get in the way of the content. In contrast, I find most of his books authoritative and helpful. These are just my own views and, of course, other people will have different opinions. Whatever one thinks of Mantak Chia he has certainly been prolific and thirty years ago his books were one of the few sources of information generally available. Like most people on this forum, I tend to absorb techniques from different sources. Just 50 years ago acquiring this knowledge might have involved trekking to some distant land, not buying DVD's with PayPal on the net.

Frankly, I'm more concerned about .. who's been trying to get on this forum for a long time but because of the overly harsh, minimum three digit username rule, is being excluded through no fault of their own.

We are all as one. I can't say I've had any close contact with ... but I occasionally meet up with .:. in a local pub, I'll ask him if he's seen ... recently.

I don't believe anyone is suggesting that one should eat only sprouts although one could with the addition of just a few important supplements. For someone living in a city with limited time and space, sprouts could make up a large part of one's diet and would be far, far preferable to eating the dead food on offer in the shops and in "organic" to your door boxes. It doesn't have to be just mung beans, any seed, bean, grain or nut can be sprouted. Also, it's not just about vitamins and minerals, sprouts are living when you eat them and therefore an important source of Chi, something that should be of interest to the sort of people who frequent this forum. I sincerely hope I didn't give the impression that I wasn't doing anything other than completely agreeing with what you had said in your earlier post. On the subject of witches,

I think people are free to follow their own path. Pseudo religious, and religious mumbo jumbo, is hugely attractive to many people and those who exploit them use mumbo jumbo as a means of ensuring only the most gullible fall into their web.

God knows what the checkout queues would be like if the Findhorn Community were running Tescos.

Get big with the sprouts Emily. Sprouts are a significant source of chi and one can have a whole farm going on just a kitchen shelf. Eat raw in summer, lightly steamed in winter. Having tried most sorts of sprouters I now use "Easy Sprout" containers that minimize the need for rinsing. Plenty of info on the net. http://www.sproutpeople.com/devices/ez/easysprout.html http://www.sproutman.com/

Looking forward to learning from others on the same Path.