Trunk

Cool.

I think that its a very valid, actually necesary, approach to look at the parts (like the perineum) and what it takes to activate each. ime, on these boards, no one knows what an activated, fully functioning tan tien is. The basic question comes up a few times a year "what is a tan tien", and everyone kind of goes, "duhhhhh... good question!". So, I think its perhaps a little premature to think of "moving from the tan tien". ..and that the detailed "finding & activating the parts" that might add up to a real live tan tien one day is maybe a practical approach.

Some similarities with how I've been activating it in my practice. Both working with the exhale, creates a slight internal suction that gently pulls on the point from the inside, activates it. Or could be that activating navel and spine kicked in neighboring powerful points (perineum, hui yin).

Yup! Yippeeeee! Wide like this w/white background is a relief.

Good inquiry. You'll find that, amongst Taoist schools, similar topics come up - but they are often treated in critically very different ways. Chia's presentation, imo, is rife with serious flaws. So, seeking out other Taoist sources is .. very important. Some sources are published, some teach just in person. One accomplished teacher of an internal martial art just sort of shakes his head and makes jokes when the topic of books comes up. After hanging out in his school for some little while, it was very clear that there was no way that anyone could learn that particular art through books; the corrections had to be done person-to-person, repeatedly, over a long period of time, in order to produce the correct body-changes that empowered the art. My point is, its worth while to seek out teachers who are teaching in a regular class setting. Not everyone who is extremely accomplished publishes books, or markets themselves widely. All this is not to say that there isn't some decent published material out there. Outside of Taoism, the Tibetans have some parallel studies, and the Tibetans are a very serious bunch. a couple of references: Sun Do - a Taoist lineage The Six Yogas of Naropa - a book that contains the crux of the Tibetan Tantric system imo, you'd be well served by keeping a look-out for good sources as a long term project. ... added later ... Yan Gao Fei - authentic Chen style tai chi, based out of Florida

The Exhale comes through again. (Look at the last technique.) I haven't experienced how its integrated with movement. Thanks for the tip, will experiment.

Hard Light

Pasted from #5099, I've been getting a lot out of this: Yipes. I just double-quoted myself.

Thus I have heard:

There are a number of people that I've sat with, where the room was totally suffused with light. 'Subtle' isn't quite the right word, as sometimes it was intense enough so that it was difficult to stay in the room. Certain work literally integrates a human being with Light. We've talked about it before.

All good points.

Likely. I've read BH&E, but not the others. But, basically, every other herbal book that I've seen just doesn't compare - not even close as a reference. Sometimes I've seen very good supplemental information in other books, or convenient listings (like the Outline Guid to Chinese Patent Medicines, which is an excellent guide to the bottles of herb formulas that you can buy for ~$2 in chinatown). But, as a Reference, basically there is no other reference than those book$. Then there's the worse-than-iffy presentations that diminish TCM into something everyone can understand with no considerable effort. Which tends to leave out so much detail that people are at a generally 50-50 chance (at best) of helping/hurting themselves. Luckily herbs are mostly relatively forgiving.

The references on Chinese herbs are Bensky's Materia Medica, for the single herbs, and Formulas & Strategies, for puttin' the singles together into classic formulas (& variations). These are the two that are used in English-speaking schools of TCM. They're expensive, but they are _the_ resource. And, yup, squirrel poop is in there. Breaks up blood stasis, if I recall correctly (and there's a good chance I'm not).. but its definately in there, I know that. I wouldn't worry particularly about ingesting that herb; if its in those books its been done a lot before.

Dang! .. and .. Good for you!

Profound situation. They're interelated, though not synonomous. "The kidneys", the water element, bone marrow, sexual energy, vitality, jing, constitutional reserves .. all those are talking about aspects of the same thing. The first two terms are most often used to talk about the whole subject, but jing could be used also. Kundalini (and related or very similar phenomena) are expansive. You probably went too far along the expansive route and damaged the denser aspects of your constitution, your "kidney yin" (which includes bone marrow). There are various standard herbal formulas that supplement kidney yin. "Lui wei di huang wan" is a common classic such formula, and is good. Good quality he shou wu (a single herb) can also be very helpful. Its not technically a kidney yin tonic; its a blood tonic, but the blood and kidneys support eachother and he shou wu is particularly nourishing. You would probably experiment with, and benefit by, a wide variety of nourishing herbal formulas over a long time. And you should consider reading up on foods. Your practices, if you practice, should emphasize integrating the more dense and earthy energies into your system. The sexual practices are generally poorly presented, both in theory and method. Injured students come through here, and the HT site, all the time. That doesn't mean there's nothing to the cultivation of sexual energy, just widely poorly presented. There's lots of info on all of these topics at my site, linked below. No charge.

I was thinking about s just yesterday! , driving back from family xmas get-together and combining scrotal compression (inhale) followed by a (exhale) gentle lift in the urogenital diaphragm, then gentle lift in the perineum, then (end of exhale) a sacrum squeeze. The few times it really seemed to "fit together" it reminded me of one of biel's posts that I have at my site (here) and how what I was doing was similar to what he was describing way back when, and thinking "wow, he was so far ahead". (The other post by him that I have up is s.biel's fire & water.) I think at a certain point he saw that he'd basically gotten what he'd came there (HT board) looking for, plus being and posting on the board tended to be somewhat addictive so he deliberately "took a year off" not visiting nor posting. The year turned permanent. Healthy disciplined conscious move. Also, James McConnell deserves mention. He was the webmaster who built the HT USA site including the discussion site. And he built the DragonDoor site (which was originally more qi gong oriented). A couple of saved posts from James (who very rarely posted): 1. Kan & Li, Fusion and the Tiger & Dragon 2. re: Anyone doing iron shirt packing

It looks good to me. You're covering all the basic areas to address. Not fixating on one area and ignoring others.

Link?

I'm currently of the opinion that the spine and central channel (and their details) are two Fundamentals of cultivation. I don't experience them as one and the same, or necesarily in the same location: the spine is very physical, the central channel is in a subtle layer. Also, that having some physical practice (like sacrum-squeeze, and whatever other spine exercise/s) and having some meditation (like the spinal breathing) are very complementary. I'm so very typed out. Taking some time away from the boards.. Happy holidays. cheers, Trunk

Got around to trying that! Really good one. Going as a link from the spine essay as soon as I get back home.

Whatever methods work for you. imo, this situation might be something you should take a progressive role in pursuing resolution of. If this is not "something that is coming up and releasing" but "something that is going wrong and could go more wrong" ... joints~bones are a deep layer and good to have them healthy. I could be entirely wrong. Just my 2 pesos.

I had heat in the joints for a while. Two things that helped a lot were: 1. Tahitian Noni Juice This was miraculously effective. 2. Bridging on a Yoga ball You can relax while on it and breathe into the lower tan tien. Shift on the ball to emphasize lower belly opening or more chest opening.

Both could be interpreted as signs of heat. The first as heat stuck in the center of the chest and the second as heat at the level of "the kidneys" (which include sexual energy and the bones & joints, joints are considered to be part of the bones). That said, both of these could be due to saving aroused (hot) jing and not being able to disperse the heat, and/or a jing deficiency. (My interpretations are not for sure, but might be "pretty good guesses".) You should: 0. Take this situation seriously, and do your best to resolve it at an early stage. 1. See a doctor of chinese medicine, and get their interpretation. Hopefully one that you could also talk to about your practices in regards to this situation. 2. Review your practices in regards to this situation. 3. Drink lots of (somewhat warm) water on mostly an empty stomach (so as not to dilute the digestive process).

Can we change this topic to "what is the power of winter solstice", and how does it feel? ..or.. Got any conscious New Year's plans? ..or.. "alternative rituals" (sorry, i'm suffering from a case of western post-modern nausea)

Sean, Sorry it took me so long to get back to you. I knew that I wanted to have the time and attention to answer adequately. Nice technique. Thanks for the link. Yup. If you're younger than ~40, naturally have a vigorous sex drive, and live a modern lifestyle .. its likely that you'll have to work for just "interruptions" of desire. The fact is that you're a young healthy male. You do what you can to keep balanced, so that you can increase the opportunity to soak in the formless desireless states, in Light. Gradually, over a long period of time that connection gains power and the whole process gradually gets easier. Prior to really really profound mastery of this stuff, it might be considered that we're in trouble the whole time. Neither, really. More like if you have your hand in a loose fist, squeeze a little, then let up. You're loose fist is like the middle of your ltt at the bottom of the exhale. When I first tried it I wasn't "aiming" for the sacrum. I just exhaled s-l-o-w-l-y in the ltt then gave a little squeeze in the middle (like flexing closed~open a loose fist). Its just that the front and back can get pretty close at the bottom of the exhale, so when I 'aimed' for the middle my squeeze got the sacrum some, probably more the front part of the sacrum than the back of it really. I was just going for 'the middle' (deep-center experimentation) and had no idea that I'd latch on to the sacrum at that point. The muscles around the sacrum are so rarely deliberately used that there's almost no feeling or reference point for it in the beginning, thus the awkwardness that you're feeling. That's normal. Jing has so much to do with the production of muscular tension, and much of the jam-up that can occur in the ltt has to do with residual unprocessed tension. Deliberate flexing of muscles helps process that force and restore healthy blood flow. I'm lately appreciating more that its helpful to explore all of the various muscles in the ltt and learn to work them deliberately. Much of this idea is present in such things as pc muscle exercises, learning to work the urogenital daiphram, the unfamiliar finesse needed to get scrotal compression breathing actually down to the scrotum, etc. That book looks like a 'must-have'. Next time I order from Amazon. Trunk