dwai

BTW this is Master Waysun Liao's free lesson on Taiji ball development https://www.taichitao.tv/programs/taichi-connect-engineering-a-taichi-ball-master-waysun-liao-4192020

Fair enough

exactly! It literally is what they (the masters) say...how they describe it and how it works. Yes that’s why critics ridicule it as “woo woo”... until they are on the receiving end.

Yes, that's what we're taught in Temple style as well. Abandon strength. haha even with the way my brothers and I do fajin, my Sifu laughs because we like to put a little "oomph" at the end. It is very hard to give up using physical strength. The worst of the lot (at doing that) are those who have cultivated hard martial skills over the years -- that's why when training internal martial arts, it is a good idea to eschew all other external martial arts or strength training until a certain level of proficiency is developed. BTW, when my Sifu bounced me for the first time, it was like how Rick Barrett described in his book. It was his fingertips lightly touching my chest, and then the next thing I know is I'm peeling off the front door of his home several feet away -- all I felt was fingers, wall and my mind couldn't comprehend anything in between. It was as if I was suspended in midair and the earth rotated and hit me in the back. He was standing on the edge of a staircase leading down to his basement, with his heels hanging precariously close to the edge. When he did that, I was afraid that this "frail 65-yr old man" might topple backward to his basement. And then he told me, "make as strong a stance as you can". I braced myself...and flew away...

I like Rasmus' videos -- it is more-or-less congruent with Temple style methods (except for his hermetics descriptions)...

Check out the art of living sudarshan kriya yoga (SKY) protocol. https://www.srisriravishankar.org/sudarshan-kriya It is very powerful and there are good online instructions in our post-covid world.

TL;DR it please?

I see some worthies found this advice funny It is easier to learn a taijiquan form than it is to jump right into neigong. Taijiquan has all the elements of neigong if done properly and practiced in the right manner. But in order to be able to take it to that level, regular practice of the form is needed. When I was in my twenties, I started my taijiquan journey with Paul Lam's 6-form taichi DVD -- doesn't seem like much, does it? But if you practice these forms with sincerity and diligence, there will be certain benefits at the physical level, as well as the energetic level. After the 6-form practice, I got his 24-form Yang style form DVD. It took me a while to learn the physical movements. If you are naturally gifted at proprioception (which I was, and had many years of Karate training prior to starting Taiji), it will help learn the movements easily. After a few months, when the form has become embedded in your system, that's when the fun begins. For me, it was around 6 months. I didn't know what this Qi thing was -- but I loved the way I felt to move in the taiji way -- breath coordinated with movement, stretching, contracting, and twisting gently. I practiced the long-form over and over, an hour or more a day, sometimes twice a day. That summer, as I was standing in the middle of a public park around sunset, doing the "tree hugging" form, looking into the horizon as the sun was slowly setting, opening and closing the form when a mini-tornado started to move around in my lower abdomen. It felt like a dust-devil that one might see in an arid landscape....spinning, undulating, twisting, and turning -- kind of like the taijiquan form movement sped up. After that day, whenever I practiced the form --- I would start to sweat profusely, the body would get warm and it felt really good. The coolest thing was the feeling of intense flow inside the body, especially in the legs. Little by little, the body was becoming an integrated energetic entity... Soon after this, I found my teacher (Temple style taiji master) -- and I found Temple style to be a profound and comprehensive system that uses Single form practice (Dan Tsou) which is practiced in the "Qigong" way -- repeated movements over and over again. The nuances of what Taijiquan really is are explained. These are the "inner-door" secrets that have been closely guarded in the family-styles, revealed without any reservations to the students. Along with that are standing meditation sets, seated meditation sets -- this forms the corpus of "Dao Gong", which is what Temple Style Taiji aims to teach -- and I've been practicing this system for close to twenty years now.

One can even breath from specific points — some of it has to link the “normal” breath with the opening/closing of specific points (such as the Mingmen, etc).

I know two people personally who’ve had debilitating health conditions, taken up cultivation after than and restored their health. One had been unable to walk for years, after getting injured by a forklift at work, and within a year of starting taijiquan (modified for wheelchair bound people) started to walk. Another is a taiji brother of mine, who had a stroke and is paralyzed on his right side. His cultivation is very high level, and has pretty impressive skill and power. Meridians are in the subtle body, though there are physical correlates to them. Having physical damage is not necessarily detrimental to real energetic cultivation. wrt aphantasia, I believe that the “visualization” actually comes after one develops some internal skill — it is basically the ability to sense and map where the energy is flowing internally. It’s better to call it “imaging” aspect rather than visual. We use it to project the energy in a certain way, but imaging is not necessary — if you can fathom concepts of time and space, you can apply your mind/will to shape and guide the energy in your own way. The main thing about cultivation, in my experience and humble opinion is to maintain hope and an open mind. Energy finds a way even when it seems all is lost!

The right and left nostrils open and close at different times of the day based on how the yin/yang cycle is. This is not, of course, a complete opening/closing but of dominance of one side over another. https://drjahnke.feeltheqi.com/?p=1391 Doing a daily alternate-nostril breathing practice (aka anuloma-viloma pranayma or nadi-shodhana pranayama) will help balance the ida/pingala channels and is a very simple and yet powerful practice.

Take up taijiquan practice. The yang style long form is a good one.

I certainly didn't expect you to follow any prescribed understanding. I should have better stated what I did as, "In my humble opinion, trying to retrofit today's standards for a story from the 1900s seems anachronistic and unnecessary". But that said, you certainly shone a different light on the matter -- something I hadn't considered at all -- so thank you for sharing. By no means was my intention to dismiss what you said...if it came across that way, my apologies. P.S. I 100% agree with your position vis-a-vis the atrocious nature in which ignominy has historically been forced upon women with respect to sexuality (and of course various other forms of repression). Every person is sovereign and should be free to choose how they express their minds, bodies, sexuality, and so on.

It’s a story — I’m sure it could have been that she was a man in her previous life, and due to his insatiable lust he became a prostitute. Parables are meant to express a specific kind of meaning, and not to be taken literally. What I got from that story was that an unfortunate woman, with the help of a spiritual master gained liberation against severe odds. And that one shouldn’t judge another based on appearances. But I AM sorry it affected your feelings, my friend.

It’s a perspective. Can’t anachronistically apply today’s social norms on something that’s supposedly happened120 years ago.

There can be many reasons. One cannot generalize without understanding any individual’s circumstances and/or past. Karma is not a thing one earns, karma means action. What is called the law of karma is actually the law of causality. Do good in the world, the consequences are usually good. Do bad in the world, and the consequences are usually bad. In the transactional world, things can be understood as follows — Energetically and psychologically, result of such activities is usually negative. Why? In general promiscuity is not a good thing — every person we interact with leaves an imprint on our subtle body, as do we on theirs. The more “intimate” the interaction, the stronger the imprint. These imprints form seeds for future causality, across lifetimes. Having multiple sexual partners causes pretty strong psycho-energetic imprinting. Intimacy without emotional/spiritual connections can cause a vicious cycle of addiction — both for purely sexual gratification, as well as other subconscious things like addiction to a certain personality type and so on. So, caveat emptor — buyers beware! And sellers beware too.

A very interesting observation from Wang Liping on the location of the lower dantien —

A very interesting parable - https://mohanjiparables.wordpress.com/tag/morality/

One should pay attention to the shape of the hands — they should be like a “fair maiden’s hand”...slightly curved and not stretched wide open with locked finger joints. A good way is to work on generating a Qi/taiji ball between the palms. That’ll get the Lao gong points activated. Just standing in proper wuji posture with mind resting on the lower dantien area will result in sinking Qi into the area. There will be a filling sensation there.

There’s a (I’m not kidding) strong bias wrt Indian history on Wikipedia (and western academia in general). And also an de facto attribution for anything significant in ancient India to Greece or Mesopotamia.

Astronomy and mathematics were very advanced sciences in (ancient) India. Though I believe the calculation comes from text known as "Surya Siddhanta", which is dated tentatively to be from between 4-6 CE (though some claim it to be much older)

Follow the exercises in this video above to develop your ability to do full lotus.

This is cool — I knew you could do it Now, whenever you pay attention to it, the flow is there to balance things out. It’s always there, but sometimes the energy gets stuck in specific regions of the system, in course of a day. Mostly in the head (like being stuck in neutral or in a particular gear — only those of us who’ve driven a stick shift will know what this refers to 😜). By bringing awareness to the flow, the system can be “unstuck” again. BTW what happens to the ringtones after the flow becomes apparent? Tbh I’d never even seen a kumquat (that I remember). Now I must go get at least one so I can find out 😁

Indeed...what part of the body is not illuminated by awareness? Awakening cannot be localized, but it happens via the mind. Don't be so eager to dismiss the mind...after all, one has to use it, even to dismiss it away.

I've not learnt the Buddhist approach per se. The Yogic approach is pretty well-rounded and comprehensive. Though in my own journey, retrospectively, I realized the reason why I gravitated towards a movement-based system like tai chi (and associated neigong) is that my mind wasn't ready for deep meditation in my twenties. The Qi-based/movement-based approach helped give the monkey mind something to focus on, and gradually meditation started happening. I think the key aspect of this approach is the indirect nature of making things happen. One could advertise this paradigm along the following lines -- Can't meditate/sit still? Have a hyperactive mind? Try some Tai Chi/Qigong instead of seated meditation. Tai chi will indirectly lead you to meditation. Can't focus on and move the energy inside the body? Try some Tai Chi/Qigong. The movement will indirectly induce the proper energy flow. It takes us to the same place in terms of the clarity/focus of the mind as seated practice and was certainly easier for me. However, what I mean by "just enough physicality" is really to do with not obsessing over physical "objects" (even if they are inside the body). Or even, subtle objects (dantiens, chakras, etc etc) for that matter... That has to do with the recognition of our True Nature. How much effort is needed? It seems as though a lot of effort is required. But one realizes upon the recognition that it was never something that was distant, hard to access, etc. It has always been with us, shining as the light of awareness. No special work is needed to 'attain' it. All the effort was in the process of settling and stilling the mind, to part the veils that hides this pure awareness that is our True Nature. There IS NO immortal being apart from Awareness itself -- nothing to be attained, nothing to lose. Vedantins would say, "prāptasya prāptī, nivrittasya nivrittī" (attain what was always yours, lose that which was never yours anyway". The way of the reduction applies to all those things that were never ours, to begin with. The way of "attainment" applies to that which was already and will always remain ours. Realization is not predicated on any kind of fuel. It is the fuel behind all such fuels.