UTI

The finished result: Next will be an image showing mechanisms of the initial stages of neidan according to the timecycles of the tripod. All according to Yijing theory, of course

I will indeed! when the exhibition comes close I will start taking up a list for orders of prints, and I will also sell the originals. Whether or not I make prints will depend on how many people are interested.

I'm definitely going to work more with the movement of energy. I've been working different ways to express it in my head. BUT, I think I will have to somewhat separate anatomical function and energetic movement, it's difficult to express them both at the same time... at least in the way i work...

bump and update. working on the next pic, a posterior view of the du mai and central meridian rising to the niwan and tianmu via the internal and external aspect of the channel, and the right and left central meridian and their relation to fluids/kidneys/hemispheres of the brain. a sort of mishmash of internal alchemy and chinese medicine, as promised.also, this is a work in progress. .Criticism welcome!

Thanks for the feedback! Yes, the detail of the first image becomes too compressed for a photo. IRL I love it (it's 100x140cm) but as a photo it's cramped. Also I am working a mental image of how to make the movement in the channels more palpable without it becoming too messy. Also, you gave me a good idea with the movement of rising falling that I may apply to the second image, to make it less static.

Thank you! This is a very good idea, also possible to develop further into the illustration of chinese medical concepts through philosohical ideas of cultivation and physiological/systemical functions f the body described in classical litterature.

Interesting book tip! I haven't read it, might pick it up. I use channel palpation in most my treatments. Also, not to forget that taking the pulse is a form of channel palpation (the third pulse position stretches all the way back to the elbow according to the nanjing). i will definately take up symptoms of disease, but more from an energetical perspective: how the movement of qi within the body is perceived in different states of illness. That study you link to is also very cool, and completely legit

Aha, I see what you mean about the deadman pics. The illustrations in his book are really good, quite unparalleled compared to other point books. I will keep in mind how he does it

That's the one I have too. It's great, and Pregadio gives a quite good walk through the source material. Read it!

soaring crane, thank you for the kind words! you say you cant think of anything right now, but you just gave me a couple to think about the moon phasing in the first image actually follows the phases of the 60 hexagrams following the lunar cycle through the body, as described in the cantongqi. the kan li qian and kun hexagrams are described as not being part of this cycle. kan and li according to the cantongqi interact at the end of each cycle, entering at huiyin and forming qian and kun (or wood and metal) at the upper and lower dantian. this is also what happens at every breath, the breath of the lunar cycle is simply slightly longer it is a good idea to try and illustrate this further in a separate image。i have been considering how i could draw the interaction of kan and li through the microcosmic orbit, also drawing on the analogy of the shepherd boy(heart fire li) and weaving girl (kidneys water kan).if this subject interests you i can recommend that you purchase and read the cantongqi, it will be worth your while. lso, dont apologize for your meandering thoughts! they are precisely what i asked for -j

In my experience: In neidan this is as when joining the male and female principles, fire and water, by circulating them through the ren and du mai. There is another circulation which is initiated: drawing water-essence up births the wooden element, the niwan, which pours over downwards. Drawing the fire-qi element downwards births the metal element, the yuchi, which pours over upwards. These two pure energies of yin and yang are the boddhicitta that are in turn transmitted towards eachother through the central channel. They are a synthesis of the body's pure yin and yang, and the opening up towards this same raw natural energy outwards that is attracted when the upper dantian and lower dantian are open through emptiness. When the two boddhicitta adhere to eachother in harmony the central channel is opened, and the right and left channels are balanced. When the boddhicitta moves from the lower body up to the head it pours over into the meridians from baihui. When the boddhicitta moves from the head to the lower body it pours over inwards from huigen, nourishing the organs. In this way the whole body is filled with pure yin and yang. When their energy exchanges through emptiness they merge as one in the central channel, drawing down the "one" energy which is unseparated, and the two boddhicitta are unified. The upper boddhicitta moves downwards through the central channel and joins with the lower boddhicitta. They then together enter the tailbone and travel up the spine. This pure energy is experienced as complete oneness and emptiness-bliss. This is how I have experienced it when I practice meditation. There are many specifics as to where the different energy centres are located and such, but it is really pointless talking about it. This process seems to me to happen naturally when one has cultivated emptiness and basic MCO practice over a longer period of time. Also, the process described in the mahamudra text happens over and over in more and more pure forms, starting with simply circulating energy together with the breath until it is pure enough that one is completely dissolved into pure consciousness. I haven't gone beyond the merger I speak of lastly, I stop when it starts merging/dissolving up the spine, but up until that I have experienced it personally through my practice before reading about it in books about mahamudra (I have never practiced tibetan yoga/buddhism). SO, I gladly take criticism for this not following exactly how it is supposed to be, or how more experienced and informed practitioners have heard of it, as my understanding of it comes from experience and daoist theory, not the actual yogas of naropa. BUT, I strongly believe they are the same, as all spiritual practices eventually are, especially when they actively step away from intellectualization/worship and move into practice. In daoism this is basically "jing converts to qi, qi converts to shen, and shen returns to unify with the dao". It should be added that when I tell me master about these experiences, he simply says it is too advanced for my current practice, and that I should keep to the basics so that it may be done in completion. I agree with this, and keep to the fundamentals. There is no rush to experience divine union, we all get there sooner or later. peace!

Before I started with chinese medicine and cultivation, I worked with Franz Bardon's hermeticism. The first stages of his teachings are about moving from visualization to manifestation of will within and without the body by focusing the visualization on physical processes to create physical response. I find this to be the right use of visualization. Don't visualize qi moving somewhere, feel qi moving. Get the actual bodily response of something happening. Otherwise it is my experience, just as several have stated here already, that visualization can go astray and lead away from stillness into malpractice. The body is here to manifest our will, so we should use it.

I agree completely. I hope I didn't come off as claiming one should lead qi all over the body to fill the dantian. I also feel there is a difference between visualizing qi and leading qi. Like the difference between thinking about breathing and taking a breath.

I usually see a field emanating from people, from nonexistant to 50cm outside their body, depending on how that person's health is. Disease usually manifests itself somewhere within that field. Different colors can indicate different types of energy, also a sort of density can be indicated, either as something healthy or pathological. I "tun it off" when I am not in a state where it is necessary for me to see it, like when I'm not with a patient. I focus on the useful aspects of it. for example, I use it to examine the meridians, locate acupuncture points, and find specific energy blockages that need to be treated in specific ways to be removed. In my opinion, increasing your overall health and energy will in a good way also increase your sensitivity. It's a pointless ability to have if you do not know what you see, or if you can't control when you are open to it. You can see things you don't want to see, things you're not capable of processing in a productive way. Cultivate yourself as a whole, gathering understanding and acceptance together with health, and it will come naturally and in a way which is best suited for you. I have it the way I do because I practice chinese medicine, and have a great use of it. If i did not, it would be more of a problem for me, as it was when it first developed. Peace

That's very interesting indeed! You must have been very lucky, to find those teachers! It's amazing how we can be lead to a way that suits us. I wrote the thing about chanting enochian because that is a path that doesn't suit me at all, yet i pursued it for a while. Now I read chinese quite fluidly in stead, but I can't say it was easy to learn. Far easier than it was for me to try and learn hebrew, enochian or sanskrit. I have met many, though, from there, that are very interested in TCM and qigong. I guess wherever you start walking, people who seek a similar goal will cross similar paths.

True that, Bagua Also, good luck trying to find a teacher for enochian! I'm sure the scholars are in strong disagreement over pronunciation. The older the knowledge, the greater the disarray.

Sorry for not reading through all of the thread before posting, just thought I'd lay my two cents. I'll read the rest soon. I have been practicing a family lineage of nei dan now for a few years, and it stresses the importance of filling the lower dantian as a prerequisite for opening the other meridians of the body, cultivating the upper dantian, and opening the greater heavenly circuit. However, it is filled through a long alchemical process, which involves more than simply breathing. It is, in this tradition, via circulation through the ren and du mai, focus along certain areas, contraction of the right muscles at the right time, and a synthesis of several simultaneous inner processes, that the lower dantian is filled. Filled as a word is probably misleading. Full is, in this content and my opinion, when there is an abundance of qi to such an extent that the pressure of outflow it exerts is so big that it exerts it on the rest of the body continuously, keeping the regular meridians open without needing the "push" of our intention. In my experience there is a difference between the space of the abdomen that can accomodate qi through inhalation and exhalation (the sea of qi), and the space where true yang is cultivated (the true elixir field). This latter space can be filled indefinitely, and when the capacity to hold what is being put there is insufficient, it will let its contents out into the rest of the energy system. A sort of "flowing over". This increases the body's general capacity, and in effect also it's capacity to hold qi. Thus, the more you fill the dantian, the more it can in turn be filled. Is it then ever "full"? Beats me, I'm a novice. However, I find that when treating patients, using qi filled through the sea of qi is sufficient, and this can be done with each breath. The process is described in alchemical terms in the Can Tong Qi, and illustrated in the Nei Jing Tu. But to be properly understood, I do believe a teacher is required. During the years I have practiced it I have come a bit of a way, to the point that I can use my qi when doing acupuncture treatments with good results, but it is not without my teacher having to correct me once in a while (read as quite often) when I start straying off the actual path of practice for lesser ones. It takes lots of time, and lots of focus. I meditate three times a day sitting, and do semi-active practices in my day-to-day activities. I have been doing it for many years, and am still doing the same exercises as when I started. This is quite normal. There's no quick path. Without my teacher, I would have come nowhere. I'd probably be in the OTO chanting enochian or somesuch. If any taobum lives in stockholm or the vicinity and wishes to learn from him, I can gladly give you his name and he will teach you if he wants to. That being said, the rewards are great, and we all have so much time. Much more than we have patience, but that is also something we must learn to cultivate. As a novice, that's all I know and can share, and even what I have said I am not so sure of when applied outside of myself. Peace

This is posted on another forum, but I figure the taoist cultivation crowd is a lot larger here, so I'm hoping some of you can give me your thoughts on my practice So, I am very grateful for constructive criticism and thoughts in general. I know there's a lot I'm missing, since I'm practicing this on my own. I feel I am progress, but I also feel I could be deluding myself, going down a branch. __________________________________________________________________ From abrahadabra.com Since I first started, it has now been 98 days. I admit, though, that I "failed" around day 70, but the practice was starting to get rigid, I figure it was necessary. Afterwards I could resume the practice in a more efficient way, and I did a lot to "catch up". After a week I was back to the same fullness of Jing. I spent one month doing Ba Duan Jin daily, I used the set commented upon by Li Ching-Yuen in the book by Steven Olson, don't remember it's name. After a month I decided to do something more productive than just building jing. I've been really interested in the YiJinJing practice described by Yang Jwingming in "Qigong; The secret of youth..." since I first read it, so I decided to go along with a toned-down version of that (2x20-30min daily in stead of 3x45min daily). So, now I have just about gone 100 days without ejaculating (more than once ) and done 3 of the four months of the first step of YiJinJing, which is filling the lower front channel with qi. Problems faced along the way were, of course, extreme horniness accompanied by the difficulty in holding ejaculation this means (I've never been into thelemics), and after about two months, when the jing was more full and reverting back to normal cycles, the difficulty of adapting to the inner cycles of yin and yang in the body. By which I mean, around full moon the body becomes more yang, heating the jing up, making it more reactive. This has meant, for me, a far more rapid point of ejaculation during intercourse, as well as a risk for nocturnal emissions. To counteract having too heavy fluctuations I meditate twice daily now, and take Gotu Kola before practice (balances the energies and promotes yin), also during the week before full moon and three days after I eat plenty of Goji, which is very yin. To get more jing (like I don't have enough) I also eat Arctic Root once a day. The effects, so far, would be summarised as; * Heighened self-awareness * Better health * Presence of Dantien (warmth, solidity) * Multiple orgasms through entire microcosmic orbit * Enhanced abdominal muscles (nice for the summer ) * Generally happier I can also say that I have become more diligent and structured in my practice, but I think that's just because it's become habit. Before I had a lot of trouble having a structured schedule for cultivation, it always felt as though there was no time, or I was distracted by restlessness, hunger, horniness, whatever. Now I have little trouble setting everything aside and training twice a day. I have doubts about how good the training actually is for the body, though. I chose to do the YiJinJing because it's quite bad to stop, since you will do damage to the abdominal muscles if you don't practice regularly. However, I am not sure how fluid the step from building qi externally through massage to storing it internally in the marrow is. I have a feeling my body will have taken some toll from it... for which reason I have taken to practicing yoga and pranayama daily to make sure everything moves smoothly throughout the body, not making it only hard and rigid. There's quite a lot of beating and pounding involved in the massage, quite like iron shirt training I think, so it's not entirely healthy in the first stages. You need to complete it all for the benefits to be good. Next step is to complete a full year of training, starting to build the energy internally, and getting more fluent with "emptiness". I feel emptiness meditation is crucial to progress, since it gives natural arisal of yang in the lower dantien -the creating of which seems to me the whole point of cultivation. For me this is felt as a heat and buzzing becoming present within the lower abdomen, as well as a great calm and lack of spatial and temporal perspective. I find staying in this state very difficult at the moment, though, as I have enough trouble actually getting there (1/5 meditations, never longer than half a minute). With practice, though, I hope I'll be able to get there every day. That's about all I got for now, please comment as I have no real points of reference but my thoughts and the masters in my head! -J

Learnt Kuji-in from anamatva, which has really given a completely new depth to my understanding of meditation and virtue, greatly thankful! I'm going to keep doing it on an as-daily-as-possible basis. You're awesome, anamatva -uti

'so, I'd like some help if someone can offer it. I've been parcticing acupuncture now for a few months (yes, I'm attending a professional education) and I combine my treatments with some point-based healing (no, i have no education in this). I get some good results with the combination, better that just the needles alone, so after I followed my intuition into it the first time I kept at it. Now I have a few things I wonder if anyone can help me out with though: 1-Pop: The popping sound. What the heck is that? I'm doing something on someone, working inside their body, and suddenly there's a "pop". Happened several times by now. 2-sting: So this is outside the body. I'm using my middle and fore-finger to stimulate an acupuncture point, and there's a jolt through my fingers. Can't tell if it's to or from me, but it feels like an electrical shock. wtf? It's happened a few times as well. Mostly on the belly, around tianshu (st25) and qihai (ren6). 3-vortex: This one happened just yesterday. I'm stimulating the drawing-in and grounding of yongquan (K1)on a patient, and suddenly everything starts spinning. It's like I'm caught in a whirlwind coming from the ground. I felt the energy was meant for the patient, so I directed it that way, which diminished the surge slightly, but I had to let a lot of it back down into the ground or I would have fallen over. If anyone could explain any of these experiences or relate it to their own it would both be interesting and helpful. -J

Yeah but I'm not sure the pop is physical. It's more like a pop inside the air of the room. The patient never hears it either. I practice MCO-meditation (a practice called yigong I learnt from a doctor in stockholm) and neigong (neigong from Practical Tai chi chuan, taught by dan docherty). Also empty meditation, and a form of meditation I do for "boosts", which is a bit weirder to explain. I train 1-3 hours a day usually.

Thanks for the input! Not sure about the paralell between my jolts and JC, since my projection was constant but the jolt was small and sudden, but who knows? The patients reacted with "WHAT are you doing now? It feels strange!" I'll definitely check that book out, sounds intersting! Oh yeah, movement is definitely there. The body part I'm sending energy down often spasms on the patient. I see it as "wind", a sudden stir in qi in that area. Most often though the patient doesn't notice this, they just say that, during the time they were moving, they were unaware of it and deeply relaxed. I first took it as the same sort of spasm as before falling asleep, but as it coincides with where I direct energy I'm choosing to interpret it further. Thanks for all the answers! It's really valuable for me to take part of you guys' experiences with this stuff, keep it coming!

I could teach someone a method of meditation I learned through dreaming. It would be very interesting for me, since I've never taught it to anyone. I've been practicing it in regular intervals and when my energy is low. For the past five years or so. It is preferable to be able to sit in lotus, but half lotus also works. Some basic knowledge of acupuncture-points could be useful also, but isn't necessary. So... I'm open to teaching whoever wants to try it out. The dream laid no restrictions on who I could teach it to, only that it can not be practiced for personal profit. What I notice from practicing it is that I become healthy, intuitive and energetic. Along with other things.

Hey! Wanted to give a heads up and a call out to people in the stockholm area, I know there are at least some of you taobums living around here. I learned Yigong from a chinese doctor and healer named yang chungui before summer, it boosted my own practice to new levels, made me as healthy as I have ever been, and pretty much solved many things I had been wondering about and not been able to completely get to work (like the sex-aspect which I have always struggled to enspiritualize more, but never fully succeeded with). I'm sure he will hold another course soon, now in autumn, and I am going to retake it. would be cool to get some more people there. The course is basically focused on focusing and circulating energy in the ren and du mai, interspaced with drinking lots of delicious chinese oolong and getting help from Dr Yang's qi (which feels like sitting in a microwave or something). Give a shout if you're interested in going. Dr Yang is very low key, but extremely amicable and kind as soon as you step towards him. Gathering up some people beforehand and asking him as a group to hold a course is probably ideal, 5-8 people would be enough. I'm going to ask some friends elsewhere also. his homepage: http://www.akupunkturyang.com/text1_16.html (it's in swedish) PS! This yigong is not the same as the kunlun thing i've seen people discuss here. It is Dr Yang's family tradition of qigong and meditation.

我找到了这好本书，你们有一最好本文言书吗？ A Concise Grammar of Classical Chinese