Buddy

Not as much as I used to. Used to do mostly santi and 9-breath piquan for a very long time. In the beginning I'd do Kumar's standing/dissolving for an hour or two.

"ZZ is too static " TOO static? It's a static exercise. "It would be the best Qigong because you are not moving externally, hence qi flow is faster." Well, let's establish that qi actually exists firsts. That you say "it" moves faster is purely presumptive at best. "Neijia work in a similar way but not so aggressively and are a good way to break from a constant ZZ routine." What on earth earth does this mean? "Remember that DaMo taught moving energetic arts to the Shaolin monks because they were rotting their health after so much static work (maybe this is a legend but it makes sense to me)." Well this sound like a lot of pretty stories to me and germane to real practice in these times. Zhan Zhuang and Mabu are the same thing. One is deeper legwork is all. To think otherwise is silly.

How often do you stand and why?

My pal, Bernie Langan is in Oakland.

"This central role of standing meditation to develop an awareness of, connection with, and control of body energy (of which chan su jing is one) seems to be what separates internal from external practice more than anything else, in my experience with both." Mmmm. maybe. I tend to let the "energy" take care of itself. For me the most basic reason for practicing standing is to release all muscular contraction not necessary for remaining upright (fang-let go).

Really?

I don't know Chinese. It means...coiling, twisting power. Something like that.

In bagua and xingyi we call it luo xuan jin.

Yeah, sort of. It's actual movement of the soft tissue. Think of bending a bow string to shoot an arrow. Here's how my friend Paul Cavel describes the method I learned it from: The Marriage of Heaven and Earth In this movement you learn how to stretch all the muscles, tendons, ligaments and fascia of the body. The work is then taken deeper into the fluids of the body - the blood, lymph, synovial and cerebrospinal fluids. When this material is fully integrated the body moves as one interconnected piece. The energetic work combines the descending and ascending energy currents to move chi through the micro and macro cosmic orbits. The energies of heaven and earth are joined within the tan-dien (the centre point of the body).

Baji mabu.

"There is alot of 'me too' in the internal arts, so you start to hear about yang style having 'pulling silk' etc..it just alot of nonsense to confuse people, imo, because these things are pretty simple once someone shows you." Well, it does need to be shown, but SP isn't nonsense. It's the conscious control of the lengthening in and out of the soft tissue. It's part of my neigong.

"They weren't so confused as some may think.." While I agree that in hindsight, the Buddha answered all those questions to complete satisfaction, you speculate here. I suspect that not as many of the assembled were as enlightened as we would hope they were. Cultish behavior has existed for a long time and when the cult loses the authority...confusion ensues. I doubt the Buddha meant for such a grand and elaborate situation as an -ISM to sprout up in his "name." And the phrase "entered Nirvana" is suspect. He already WAS the Buddha. His body died. No more than that. It's not like Elvis left the building.

"I think if you keep practicing Tai Chi "it" will teach you what you need as long as you are willing to listen." No. it won't. It has to be specifically taught to you. Neigong should teach you shenfa. Without shenfa you're just waving your hands in the air.

Jazus, It's just a horse stance. There's a northern version and a southern version. But, bottom line is, it's stance training, no enlightenment here. Please don't make more of it than it is. It's gongfu, nothing more, nothing less.

"Taiji IS qigong, " Taiji is qigong if you understand the shen fa. Otherwise it's simply choreography.

The neigong I learned is the "operating system" of my martial arts.

ttt

Your transitions are amazingly fast!

What makes this Daoist? Or internal? I thought it was mediocre at best. Just because you get thrown around doesn't I would. You might be a duffer for all I know.

He farts in the bath tub. And everyone knows that turns you gay.

Christof, First off, Derek Notman is a good friend of mine and posts on EF as somathai (He's a Yin Fu bagua guy). He introduced me to Egoscue so I am intrigued by your post. It's twice the price of Egoscue, so I am hesitant to shell out more money. That said I've been on Egoscue for over a year. How long does your menu take to complete. How often do you change menus? If you've done Egoscue, how does it differ? ***edit*** Looks like about 800 bucks for the first 5 months. Egoscue was $250 for that amount of time.

Egad, more of the most obvious and despicable fakery.

Cheat kung tao is best.

"Opening the Dragon Gate is not fiction." Of course it is.