Creation

That sounds about the same as Max and Jenny's stuff, which is why I figured it belonged on the list with them.

Here is the suggested progression for Chia's stuff. Most of these have a book and dvd (available from pacifictao.com) Unless otherwise indicated the titles of the book/dvd are the practice name. Level 1. Inner smile, six healing sounds (SHS book not out yet) Level 1b. (optional) Chi self massage, Tao Yin (Book: Energy Balance through the Tao) Level 2. Microcosmic Orbit (books: Awaken Healing Energy, Healing Light of the Tao; DVDs: Guided Sitting Meditation, Awaken Healing Light) Level 3. Iron Shirt Chi Kung With some experience with Iron Shirt, and a good grasp on the rest, the other stuff opens up. Iron shirt 2-3 (tendon/marrow stuff), sexual stuff, tai chi, basic alchemy (fusion 1-3), and a LOT of auxiliary stuff. Winn breaks it down into qigong fundamentals 1-4, 1 being his version of Level 1 plus some, 2 being MCO in a supposedly safer, gentler way than Chia, 3-4 are the supposedly safer version of Chia's iron shirt 1-3. Then he has courses on sexual stuff, fusion 1-3, and auxilary stuff like a non-martial tai chi form. These courses are in the form of eBook+CD+DVD packages available from http://www.healingtaousa.com/ This is from my research into the matter. I have not purchased or practiced most of this. Just what I called Chia's Level 1 and 1b. And it's pretty good. If you want to be really thorough and take a more yin/water route, Winn's stuff looks great, better than Chia's. But I can't comment on its actual quality. If anyone can I would appreciate it, as I am looking into maybe getting some of it (obviously ). Somebody mentioned this earlier but was cryptic about it. So I'll be explicit. http://www.precisiondocs.com/~altaoism/ Great info on all most all things related to Chia's system, brought to you by our very own Taobum brother Trunk. Anybody read Chia's Secret Teachings of the Tao Te Ching? That looks pretty interesting. Some

Decipering the Golden Flower: http://books.google.com/books?id=cHBzcJmbi...tsec=frontcover It was originally called "Diary of a Connecticuit Yogi", and that one has some of the parts not in the preview for for the new edition. http://books.google.com/books?id=PgashIuoc...tsec=frontcover Happy reading!

Don't forget our friend Ya Mu's spontaneous qigong system Stillness Movement. Or haven't any of the Bums tried that yet? I was thinking about going to one of his workshops (we are both in Missouri, after all) but I don't have the money at this point. Also, KAP has a shaking component?

A guy named JJ Semple wrote a memoir called "Deciphering the Golden Flower" (previously "Diary of a Connecticut Yogi") detailing how a childhood accident stunted his development, his subsequent troubles and misadventures. The thrust is someone gave him Wilhelm's SotGF, he practiced it, awakened his kundalini and healed himself. I really recommend it. He has a great narrative ability and a great story to tell. I read most of the book on Google Books in a couple of hours, so check it out if you are interested. Semple just came out with another book, called "The Backward-Flowing Method," giving more details on what he actually practiced, presumably to fill in the holes in SotGF. He claims it is a reliable and safe way to awaken kundalini. Yet no Taoist source gave me that impression, and I haven't even found the claim that anyone else actually has used his method and gotten the same effect. I haven't read this one or tried his practices. But he swears that the "reversing the light" part is what was responsible for his awakening. So... Anyone know anything about Semple and his methods? Any comments from our resident kundalini expert Santiago? Actually, I was just thinking about starting a thread about this, since I hadn't seen anything about it on here before. Maybe someone who's not a noob like me can tell me if I should go ahead and start another thread.

This is the most amazing zoological discovery I have ever heard of. Even better that when I heard they discovered some nonhuman primates using simple tools. But that's probably because I have an ongoing obsession with pure mathematics Ms. Shipman's discovery of the relationship of the bee dance to flag manifolds is a true triumph of thought, but please note how very unlikely it is that quantum fields a la quarks are involved here. That has about as much chance of being true as the speculations of Aristotle on physics. I do admire admire her bravery in putting forward radical ideas, but consider the following. 1. Flag manifolds are a very general concept and are ubiquitous in geometry. To say that all the times they come up in applications are related is like saying everything involving triangles is related. It's just that they are abstract and fairly recent, so since mathematics is so specialized these days almost no one has heard of them. Which is why this discovery is so amazing! What incredible synchronicity! 2. She defined some parametrization of curves in flag manifolds that is related to the bee dance. It is most likely that this could turn out to be very important for flag manifolds in general, or specific to this application. Either option is not in favor of a relation with quarks. But this is just nay-saying; only time will tell. 3. Quarks are asymptotically confined. The quark field affecting things not through their manifestation as protons and neutrons has not been observed at low (i.e. everyday life) energies. Anyone who could demonstrate otherwise would be immediately handed a Nobel prize. And I don't think that flag manifolds come in to play at the level of nucleons. But I am no expert on that. I hadn't even heard of the relation with quarks. Why must science journalists be so sensationalistic as to use inaccurate titles? It's not like anyone who wasn't already nerdy would read that article, so there is no need to be misleading At any rate, thank you so much for bringing this to my attention!

Thanks for sharing your experience Stigweard. It reminded me of something in my past. Many years ago, I often woke up in the middle of the night and felt terrifying presences in my room. Not necessarily good or bad, just frighteningly powerful. Later, I went through a stage of frequent sleep paralysis. Never both together though, even when I had some extremely frightening hallucinations. Several times I tried really hard to move, for a long time, and actually had the sensation of moving. I thought I was physically crawling out of bed and across the floor very slowly, but I would later wake up in bed again. I always figured I went into a half dreaming state, but maybe I was having an OBEs? Any thoughts?

The perineum (between anus and genitals) connects the two channels. So the muscular contractions in that area are to stimulate that point. But that's just to get the energy flowing more powerfully, and is not necessary. Unlike at the top, one doesn't have to do anything to connect the channels. As a matter of fact, I've heard these squeezing methods can be dangerous, because you can get more energy flowing than you can handle. Everybody has energy flowing in these two channels. The question is, how freely and how powerfully does the chi flow? And what is the quality of the chi flowing through? There are different types of chi. Yin, yang, yuan, pre-birth, post-birth, etc. I'm no expert on all of this. And I also get the impression that the flow goes in both directions, but one is just more aware of a certain one for whatever reason (e.g. you are concentrating on one in your meditation). So you can concentrate on a particular direction in a particular channel on the inhale, and then the other direction in the other channel on the exhale, and you can use different types of breathing, leading to many ways to meditate practice the orbit. And all of these focus on pushing the energy according to your intention, which can get you into trouble if you have blockages or don't do it quite right. This is why I don't mess with MCO meditations, at least not until a teacher recommends it and can guide me through. But having higher quality chi to move more freely and powerfully through all your channels and energy gates is certainly a good thing. Personally, I do standing and longevity/internal breathing (taught by B. K. Frantzis) to generate and ground/store the energy, and am starting on Bodhri's White Skeleton visualization and Frantizs' dissolving to get the energy moving freely and powerfully. Also, Trunk recommends self-acupressure on the points of the MCO to help it open up. See http://www.precisiondocs.com/~altaoism/MsgIntro.htm It has had some beneficial effects on my relaxation and energy levels. But I can't yet report MCO results. So maybe I'm just full of it . Best of luck, -Tyler

Ramel Rones teaches a similar practices in his Sunrise Tai Chi. I think he learned it from Yang Jwing-Ming because it's mentioned in some of his stuff as well. You visualize that you are breathing qi in and out of your yongquan and laogong points, first individually and then all together. They call it "Four Gates Breathing". I don't recall him saying to connect the points to the dan tien, but since I breathe from my nose to my dan tien, I do that intuitively. This practice is supposed to develop the power to move the qi to the extremities and project it out. Doing this from other points of energetic exchange (crown, perineum, third eye) seems like a natural thing to do. Not a big jump from there doing it with all the energy gates. I haven't done it much because I don't like visualization and don't have a consistent feeling of qi yet. As for the practice Franklin mentioned: In Frantzis' practice you use intentionally send chi to the energy gates to dissolve blockages there (the Opening Energy Gates set includes more practices, like the moving ones Dainin mentioned, this is but one part of it) Even though the method is different, the idea seems similar. That is, if it is practiced with the intent to get the qi flowing freely and powerfully. Cultivating the dan tien is different. Just moving energy in and out of the dan tien doesn't cultivate it. That is the when you store excess energy there, right? So this would be only a first step in a dan tien cultivation practice.

B. K. Frantzis teaches a Taoist meditation method called dissolving. Outer dissolving is the preliminary practice performed while doing standing qigong. When you get the basics down you move to inner dissolving, a sitting practice. The idea is that by refining awareness you can detect physical, energetic, emotional, mental, etc. blockages and then intentionally "dissolve" them into a freely flowing state. When all your blockages are dissolved and your entire being is integrated you become the "Real Man" of the Yi Jing and can truly live in the way described in the Dao De Jing. I can't speak from experience yet because I'm just getting started on this. It seems kind of hard to learn from a book. I read the description of the method and thought, "Yes that sounds nice but how do you actually do it?" Any other Bums have thoughts on this? And Frantizis' seminars are not cheap... Yet of all the methods I have read about it seems the closest to the ideas of Lao Zi et. al. Here are some references (all by B. K. Frantzis): Opening the Energy Gates of Your Body Chapters 5-8 cover breathing, alignments, and outer dissolving in detail. Relaxing into Your Being The most inspiring and complete description of the process of meditation from the Taoist perspective I've read. It discusses breath-based meditation in detail, and touches on the standing, basic moving, and outer dissolving practices but it is really not too practical. The Great Stillness Sequel to Relaxing into your being, it goes into more depth about the theory/process of dissolving and gives a whiz-bang tour of moving, sexual, and alchemical practices. Even less practical than its prequel. I hope this helps, or at least prompts further discussion. -Tyler

Wow, my first post on thetaobums! I haven't ever participated in blogging or internet forums before (it took me almost ten minutes to figure out how to post ) but I have gotten so much out of reading the material here that I just had to get in on the fun. So, a special thanks to Sean and all the people who make this possible. Since you asked for it, here's some background on me. But I have a tendency to rant <gets self conscious>. I like to question everything, to understand, and to discover relationships and patterns in the things around and inside me. On the other hand, I like to be expressive, to forget myself, and to experience the world without any tinge of interpretation. Often times I feel like there are many people inside of me, fighting with each other. My mind is very disharmonious. I get depressed a lot, am rather irresponsible, and have trouble focusing and committing. I dropped out of college last year because the aforementioned troubles became unbearable (the ultimate irony for me, since I love learning so much and wanted to get my PhD. in pure mathematics). The number one issue for me now is working through my issues and gaining stability and harmony in my mind/body processes. So I've taken to Taoism, that great philosophy way of life which stresses harmony and integration of opposites above all else. I don't have a teacher and I'm pretty broke. So I got some instructional materials to get started with and am saving money to study with a good teacher. For now, my practice is geared toward laying the foundation: internalizing correct postural and breathing mechanics, developing an awareness of chi, sinking chi and rooting, and stilling the monkey mind. Zhan zhuang and meditating on the breath are my most consistent practices. Here's the problem, though. With no teacher or peer group, my disintegrated and undisciplined nature is a huge obstacle to consistent practice, and since my concentration is in the toilet, I fear I'm not able to get nearly the full benefit out of the practices I'm doing. But I'll keep trying, because I think right now it's my best bet to get better. And along the way, I might make some progress toward self-realization and God-realization, my real aims in life. What a deal! Your fellow seeker, Tyler