grady

The Dao Bums
  • Content count

    101
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by grady

  1. Threads like this are why I'm still on Taobums.
  2. Qigong induced damage.

    The person referenced by Sean in your quote as "Sherfu J" is Dr. Jiang, my Shifu. The hospital where he practices classical (pre-Cultural Revolution) Chinese medicine and medical qigong is in the Yellow Mountain district of Anhui province in mainland China (www.apricotforesthospital.com).
  3. More sitting. Seriously, I'm not trying to be funny, the callouses will develop eventually. Milarepa's apocryphal "last lesson" to Gampopa is instructive here.
  4. We have just one spot left available in the private room at the seminar location, in case anyone feels like making last minute plans to join us in beautiful San Francisco a month from today feel free to contact me. Once again my doors are open to anyone who wants to have their health evaluated according the principles of Dr. Jiang's classical Chinese medicine (I'll actually be consulting with him during the evaluation process, so you will be getting my opinion as well as his). Looking forward to seeing everyone stateside!
  5. This seminar is 7 days, not 10. I'm sure from a "marketing" perspective it would be good for me to offer something like the "open door day" you suggest, but contrary to what some believe the format of these seminars is not designed with marketing in mind - 7 days is the absolutely minimum amount of time in which Shifu feels it is possible to get people to a level where they can practice effectively without supervision. Also, as I have written above please keep in mind that throughout the seminar period my door is open to anyone who wants to come and have their health condition & meridians evaluated, not necessarily to practice our qigong. No, Shifu does not perform "distance transmission" or "transplant transmission", and frankly I would urge you to be very suspicious of anyone who claims to do so!
  6. Unfortunately the chances of bringing Shifu to the States anytime in the near future are practically nonexistent. The difficulty of acquiring the appropriate government permissions (both on the Chinese & the US side of the equation) is more than a little daunting, and with the opening of the new hospital in Yellow Mountain it seems Shifu has recommitted himself to practicing his medicine and teaching in China.
  7. Just a short note to thank everyone for their interest and to let you know that there are still two spots left available in the private room that we've arranged at the seminar location, so if you're on the fence or have questions that you'd like to have answered before diving in, it's best to act quickly. Looking forward to seeing everyone in July!
  8. qigong for kidney yang deficiency ?

    I don't know your age, and I hesitate to give our herbal advice over the internet, and your low sex drive could mean any number of things, but because it is such a dead ringer for kidney yang deficiency, and because this disharmony is so prevalent in Western men, lets just assume for this conversation that your pattern of disharmony has indeed been identified accurately. Wherever you are if you have access to Chinese patent medications (the so-called "tea pills") see if you can get a hold of some of this: Guifu Dihuang Wan - 桂附地黄丸 - it's a famous classical prescription which is specifically designed to help your problem. Take ~150% of whatever the recommended dosage is on the bottle. It looks like this: http://www.ebay.com/itm/171025387350?redirect=mobile Obviously if you have access to an herbalist who can compound the raw herbal formula for you (any Chinese herbalist should be able to compound this for you from the name alone - tell him you want the maximum dosage he's comfortable giving you) which you can take home and decoct yourself that's even better.
  9. qigong for kidney yang deficiency ?

    Abstinence. Seriously.
  10. 2013's Summer "12 postures" seminar is confirmed, finally! I am delighted to announce that the location will be beautiful San Francisco, California. Dates will be Sunday July 7th - Saturday July 13th (try to arrive on Saturday the 6th and we can all meet somewhere for dinner that night). As soon as I know exactly where we will be holding the lectures/practice/clinic I will let you all know so that we can arrange lodging, but I wanted to firm up the dates so folks can book airfare before things get too expensive. For anyone else who is interested in coming please PM me. Looking forward to seeing you all in a few months!
  11. I'm in Korea for a few days and being out from behind "the Great Firewall" I had the chance to upload some material from the grand opening of Shifu's hospital which overlapped with our last Gengmenpai Yijinjing training seminar in China. http://www.youtube.com/user/doctorjiangfeng I'm still working with Shifu to confirm exact dates for the USA training, but we should still look good for early July.
  12. Location will either be San Francisco, Los Angeles, or NYC - these are the only places that Jiang Shifu and I are sufficiently confident will have the range and quality of herbs I need. Dates will be in the first half of July, most likely Saturday-to-Saturday to help folks who are on corporate schedules. Tuition is confirmed as $2000, with a deposit of $1000 required to reserve your place. Unlike the seminars in China we will need a minimum of 5 participants confirmed in order to make this happen - please contact me via PM if you seriously desire to attend and I can provide more detailed information. I will be holding an open clinic according to the classical Chinese medical practice (some say of Buddhist origin) of YiZhen 义诊 "compassionate diagnosis" (in other words free diagnosis) in conjunction with the seminar for anyone who is interested solely in having their health condition diagnosed, and not necessarily in learning our jibengong. Please post here with questions or to further convince me of which city we should choose ... personally I'm leaning a bit towards San Francisco.
  13. MPG is on the right track here. If you have them, then they're not supernatural. "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
  14. After a bittersweet parting the day before yesterday, our Spring 2013 seminar has finally drawn to a close. Every one of these seminars is different, and while the fall seminar offered slightly more in the way of personal one-on-one contact with Shifu, this particular seminar offered far more in terms of the opportunity to witness qigong phenomena not just from Shifu, but from several of the uncles and brother students as well. Perhaps most noteworthy was the demonstration of the emission of the electric-like zhenqi 真气 ("true qi") by a handful of Shifu's long-time Romanian students (following the opening of important acupoints by one of the uncle or brother students), most of whom have been traveling to China three or four times a year to receive corrections and LianGongDan 练功丹, the so-called "practice pills", since 2006. I consider it the most important as it shows that we Westerners truly are capable of making real progress in this art. Uncle Jiang (same surname as Shifu but not a blood relation) undertook the initiation/empowerment of over 30 students performed in a single session, powering through the procedure while barely taking the time to towel himself off, a tremendous display. Shifu amongst other things demonstrated the "injection" of qi into the bottles of water bought by two of our seminar attendees, essentially the same procedure he uses to "activate" certain herbal medicines, and which turns the water exceptionally sweet. Many of Shifu's old patients showed up to support the opening of the hospital, including a lympatic cancer patient in full remission, a young victim of a traumatic stroke who has recovered from fully 95% of his paralysis with over 50% decreases in the size of his brain lesions since beginning Shifu's treatments, and a family of four Western medical professionals trained in Europe & the United States (a surgeon, an internist, a pharmacist, and a nurse) all of whom place their health under Shifu's care. Personally I could not have been prouder of our three seminar participants from abroad, two of whom I first met on my own first trip to China to meet Shifu, and all of whom pursued this sometimes challenging practice with genuine intensity and determination, including not complaining when I woke them up at midnight to come outside and train under the stars in the cold mountain air. Future seminars like these will be at Shifu's discretion - the hospital will take up large portions of his time, and I am not yet qualified to teach people without his supervision. As things progress I will keep everyone informed, but right now it looks distinctly like there will not be another seminar like for another six months or so, perhaps as early as the second half of August. Best, -Grady
  15. I'm pleased to announce that Shifu's new website is up and running. apricotforesthospital.com It's still pretty basic, but in the future I'll be translating several of Shifu's articles on different topics (medicine, Buddhism, qigong, martial arts, etc.) and making them available here. Information about future seminars and clinics will also be available here. Because in the past unscrupulous people have created websites, facebook pages, youtube accounts & email accounts using Shifu's name and likeness in order to defraud people, I feel it important to emphasize that this website is currently the *only* official website both for the hospital and for Dr. Jiang personally. Best, Grady
  16. As of today, 2013/01/23, there are 6 spots remaining for the spring seminar.
  17. Tigo doesn't seem to be around, so I'm going to step in and respond to this. The 百日筑基 BaiRiZhuJi "100 days to build the foundation" applies, but it's really more about quality of celibacy than quantity. Also I ask for a period of celibacy before the seminar. During the seminar we had two lecture sessions per day and two practice sessions per day, with the practice sessions themselves lasting from 1-2 hours. After the seminar you need to practice every day to make adequate progress. Twice a day is better. I cannot in all honesty adequately predict how long it will take any individual to achieve this level. With proper empowerment, a healthy body-mind, and diligent, *correct* practice, this level can be achieved in a few years time. That's how long it took me. I can't answer this on behalf of Tigo, but I can speak for myself: I've been involved in Chinese martial arts & Chinese qigong since I was a teenager, and Dr. Jiang's method was very different than anything I had learned previously, and despite being couched in the same general traditional Chinese terminology as other Chinese cultivation systems to which I had been exposed, the meaning of the same terminology within the context of his system has sometimes proved to be quite different.
  18. Dates for the spring seminar are confirmed, February 24th - March 3rd, 2013. I am particularly delighted to announce that these dates overlap with grand opening of Shifu's new hospital in Yellow Mountain, and he has invited us to attend the ceremony as his personal guests, which is quite an honor. Shifu has also permitted me to shave the seminar length down to 8 days from 10, no less, in an effort to assist those of us with tighter scedules. Consequently the tuition for those interested in being formally initiated and beginning training in our Gengmenpai method has been reduced to reflect the slightly abbreviated seminar format. Of course those who are interested in coming for diagnosis and potentially for treatment are invited completely free of charge. Once again I am limiting this seminar to 10 people. If you are interested in attending please PM me directly for instructions on how to access our private forum where we will be discussing the details. Best to all in their search, Grady
  19. I perused Yang's book quite a few years ago, and based on my admittedly sketchy memory of its content I would say that no, what we do is very, very different.
  20. This brings up a very good topic, namely that ethics surrounding the development and display of various "special abilities", and their proper value in the context of a given tradition whose ultimate goal is either "immortality" or "enlightenment". It's certainly true that the vast majority of people who don't display their "powers" don't do so because they don't have them, plain and simple. These are very often the people who protest the most vociferously that such abilities do not exist at all, or perhaps more insidiously claim that the powers represent a deviation off the "main path" as opposed to a natural result of accurate & successful practice. These people are of course required to either very inconveniently ignore the multitude of written accounts of such powers displayed by the founders of said tradition, be it Milarepa or Siddartha himself for the Buddhists, folks like Zhang Sanfeng and Zhang Daoling and Lu Dongbin for the Taoists, Jesus along with his disciples and all the saints for the Christians, etc, or at the very least to claim that these accounts represent hagiography and not history. I fully admit to being attracted to a path which purports to provide a series of objective manifestations by which one can evaluate one's progress. Indeed it always struck me as more than a bit odd this idea that one could become truly "enlightened" or even "immortal", without undergoing a series of fundamental changes in one's body-mind, changes which consisted of a great deal more than alterations to one's own subjective perception. My own master has asked me on more than one occasion why Western seekers after these things are so often, for lack of a better word, so gullible. It's as if otherwise reasonable people completely abandon their skepticism when confronted with an asian wrapped in robes claiming vast power that in his enlightened wisdom he chooses, conveniently, not to use. It boggles the mind. In the very practical Chinese mind of my teacher, and frankly in my skeptical Western mind as well, a "master" who can not provide at least the most basic *objective* evidence of his mastery is no master at all.
  21. He is referring to the seminar which was just completed. The upcoming seminar will likely be in March, but is not confirmed yet. The attainment referred to is the most basic manifestation of what we call the ZhenQi 真气 "true/real qi", the "electric-like qi" if you prefer, which thanks to my Shifu's compassion I recently demonstrated on some Western guests for the first time. As for Mr. McMillan I am not privy to what sort of health problems he may be having. I continue to bring people to Shifu for diagnosis free of charge, and these days I'm not that hard to get in touch with.
  22. Meditating on top floor

    YM and I are actually in agreement on this one. 忠言逆耳 "honest advice often grates on the ear"