Maddie

Today I went to see this psychic lol because this whole issue was really bugging me and I wanted some insight. Now the psychic was Catholic not Taoist, but what she said sort of brought to mind the other possibility that I had considered regarding my present situation. She said that the reason I was having a difficult time making friends and meeting people was simply because that's what this phase of my life is all about. What she said made me think of the other possibility I had been considering which is that its simply part of my Tao at this time to be somewhat isolated for the purpose of concentrating on myself, which is what she said too. According to her because I'm at this place in my life, no matter what I do I will not be able to get very close to others, and that working on myself was the reason for it. She also told me a lot of other stuff about myself that there was no way she could have known, so that added to her credibility considerably. I pondered how that because this phase of my life is for the purpose of working on myself, not forming a lot of new relationships I was unable to make many friends no matter what I did. And then I pondered how deciding to follow Tao changes everything. She also told me that I was very different from most people. This caused me to consider that if one follows Tao their life does not seem to go like most people's. Other people get out of crappy relationships and almost immediately fall into another crappy rebound relationship. Yet I now do not seem to be able of doing even this lol. A few years ago when I had separated from my ex I did indeed fall into the whole rebound thing, and seemed to have no problem at all in getting involved with several relationships. Yet now no matter how hard I try it just does not happen. Though I suppose that since its for my greater good this is a good thing, but still a bit confusing to figure out. I suppose it is like several of those girls I mentioned a few months back that I either just knew were not for me, or knew that they were not part of my Tao. So on that note I guess a good title for this thread could have also been something about how following Tao affects your "charisma" or ability to make relationships and/or friendships. I guess if its just not in your Tao or destiny its just not going to happen assuming you have decided to follow Tao or your highest spiritual path?

Ok perhaps I was just having a bit of a pitty party lol...

Yea I guess so, cause I know two facts. One is that I often feel low on energy. Two is that I'm often out and about by myself, and even when I try to make friends it seems like everyone just wants to get away from me. Its kind of making me paranoid lately. Yet I see other people (who btw appear to be high energy types) with a bunch of pals around them.

Yea I think I'll keep the 8 brocades since I still want to have some kind of balancing practice in there. Though I am still curious as to the original intent of this thread which is how does your qi level affect ones interactions with other people? and how does simply the amount of qi someone has affect how they feel?

Yea I don't know either, one can not say that I have not given ZZ a good chance, as I've done it consistently for over a year now. Therefore I think I'm going to try the Yi Jin Jing form as taught by Dr. Yang for a while and see how that works for me. Dr. Yang says in both "Qigong for health and martial arts" and "Qigong the secret of youth" that the 12 form set of Yi Jin Jing builds a lot of Qi. If this is the case then that is definitely what I need to be doing. Dr. Yang also says in his book that the 12 forms of Yi Jin Jing were created by DaMo after he arrived at the Shaolin temple and saw all the monks were weak (kind of like me lol), and specifically made this form to remedy that. If that is the case then it sounds exactly like what I need. Has anyone had experience doing the 12 form Yi Jin Jing as taught by Dr. Yang?

Yes I practice everyday. The only time I miss is when I am feeling too tired to do so, but that is not very often. The ironic thing is , is what usually makes me tired is after I've done ZZ consistently for a while :-Z.

Kundalini style stuff has a lot going on around this.. like I'd get a shaktipat and women would come out of the woodworks to talk sexual stuff with me. what is a shaktipat? and where can I get one? lol I'm a major fan of zhan zhuang (standing meditation) and practice for an 30 min to an 1 hour daily. It can be subtle, but seems to build jing/sexual/body energy. And also depends on what posture you hold I have tried ZZ, usually the majority of which was "hold the ball" at various positions, with a little wuji position at the beginning and end, but never felt energized from it. Actually I usually felt more tired after doing so, but I wonder if it had to do with my theory I stated previously that the hold the ball position actually uses up chi for chakra opening? What version of ZZ do you do?

That is a good question, and the reason is because when I began qigong I was in Fairbanks Alaska where there are no qigong schools at all. I would have loved to have gone to one, but there were none to be had. * As a side note, the forms of qigong I have done/do are rather simple like the 8 brocades, inner smile/ healing sounds, which most instructors say are pretty safe ones to do on one's own.

What is primordial qigong? Also for all I've heard about standing meditation (been doing about 20 min a day) I have never felt the energy boost that is supposed to come from it. :-/. I thought I should specify my own experience with loneliness a bit so that it makes more sense. When I've found emotions that originate in my organs, usually they just are, and are not usually based upon any specific experience. Once I remove the bad energy associated with that emotion from said organ the problem clears up. In the case of loneliness I can not really find its source in any specific organ (though sometimes I can find its effect in some of them). My experience with loneliness seems to be experience based. What I mean by this is that most of the time when I go up to people and try to befriend them (actually try to hang out with them beyond small talk) most of them usually get this same glazed over look and make an excuse and go about their business. I've also noticed that 90% of the time I am also in a qi deficiency state. The contrast to this state has been those rare 10% times that I actually felt as though I had a decent amount of qi. It was at these same times that with out effort people would come up to me and put forth the effort to befriend me. Eventually when most people you seek to befriend show no interest you kind of wonder wtf? Now I'm not saying that loneliness is the result of qi deficiency (but then again I'm not ruling it out either), but that a difficulty making friends could be a result of qi deficiency, which then leads to loneliness based upon experience. If you have noticed people who tend to have lots of friends and make friends easily, if you listen to their friends they will often say that so-and-so is so full of energy and/or life. I think they are unintentionally being quite literal. I remember in high school, the jocks always were very popular, and obviously jocks have to have a tonne of energy to be good at sports. On the other hand the 90 pound, white as sour creme weakling who does not have many friends also does not strike the casual observer as an example of radiant vitality either. Same could be said of a cheerleader all cheerful and bubbly, and the leader of the girls chess team who just got the head gear on her braces adjusted (ok braces don't really have anything to do with it, but I'm painting a picture here lol). Again the cheerleader is full of vitality, energy and cheer, while chess team chick probably has a hard time opening the mayonnaise jar by herself.

Do you think that qi-deficient people can only get qi from other people? no, which is why I want to change my qigong routine rather than go out and be a vampire lol. I do how ever think that most people don't even know what qi is, but subconsciously "feel" someone with a lot of qi, and it feels good. if you see where I'm going with this? actually I have no idea where your going with this lol, but glad you found the post interesting never the less. My personal theory is that doing a lot a balancing excersices with out doing much building excersices used qi in the balancing process, but did not build any more to replace it. Empty Water, I find your experience interesting, and it sort of confirms what I suspected.

Well as for me I tend to lean towards "morals" (if you want to call them that), but with that being said, in the case of the "typo" guy, this was not a case of morals, for if you had held him to the rules it would have in no way at all been "immoral" of you. I believe the TTJ says something about labeling virtue as such makes immorality happen, or something along those lines. I think the point is that when "morals" are what society labels as such it actually creates immorality. Rather the TTJ talks about finding your true nature, which as the Buddha said is good, and then what society calls "morality" should just come naturally. But as far as holding someone to the rules, that is not immoral lol.

Try to listen to your body. Sometimes I'll be doing the healing sounds and inner smile and suddenly my body just kind of says "enough for now" and when I listen all goes well, but when I force the issue and keep pressing on then I feel crappy.

Lately I have been doing a lot of work on my lower three chakras (root, sacral, and solar plexus) as these have long been my weak areas. The lower three chakras deal with issues about our physical incarnation into the earth plane. The upper three deal with more spiritual issues, and the heart chakra blends the two. I've always had a natural inclination towards the spiritual, abstract, and esoteric. I've also had a rather difficult relation to phyisical reality. Yet we are obviously here on the earth in physical form, so I suppose I should learn how to realte to physical reality in a healthy and balanced way. I began this adventure by working on my sacral chakra a while back as issues related to sex were the most distracting to me, and I am of the opinion work on the biggest problem first. I noticed that at first while working on the sacral chakra it initially felt as though things were actually getting worse at first. I used the hold the ball at the sacral level during standing meditation, and the MCO as my primary means of adding energy to this charka. I got very tired, as I assume a lot of my qi went to work on clearing that area. I had a surge of intensely errotic and sexual thoughts and fantasies, some of which were very bizzare. But then after that initial healing crisis, this area of my life seemed to level out. Next I began working on my solar plexus, as I realized while working on my sacral chakra (it was as the chakra showed me things) that some of the issues I had concerning sexuality were actually more ego related. So I got to work on the soalr plexus. Again I used the same method, hold the ball at the solar plexus level, and MCO. Again I got very very tired, and actually began to feel as though I had less self esteem, and things related to the solar plexus. But again this was just part of the healing process as my extra qi was going to work on clearing out the junk there. After finishing I began to feel more comfortable with myself, but my solar plexus showed me that there was still yet another issue to deal with which was more related to the root chakra. First of all all this work on the sacral and solar plexus chakras had been a bit ungrounding in and of itself, which alone is a good reason to work on one's root chakra. Additionally the root charka unlike the sacral chakra holds a lot of information about raw sexuality, as opposed to the sacral chakra's more emotional/sensual aspect towards sexuality. This is where I am now. I've began to see a lot of my problems with the physical world are very much root chakra issues. Its all about basic instincts and surival. The base sex drive, issues with work, money, instinct ect. The sexuality of the root chakra is not romantic nor tender, its very aggressive and raw. As much as I hate to admit it to myself these are also issues worth dealing with, within myself. I've also had a hard time focusing and getting practical things done, so I'm sure this will help as well. The method I use for this is the wuji posture in standing meditation and MCO. Anyways enough about me. This has made me wonder though why it is that we are in the physical realm of existence? What is the point, what are the lessons? Has anyone else struggled with this as well? Has anyone come up with any good insights after having dealt with this issue. I'd be happy to hear others experiences and insights into this topic. *edit: One other thing I've noticed since working on the root chakra, and after having previously worked on the sacral and solar plexus chakra is the various roles they play in attraction between the sex'es as well. Working on my sacral chakra didn't really have much affect upon how women responded to me, though it did make me feel more comfortable around women to a degree. The sacral chakra is a yin chakra and this is the center of resonence for most women's sexuality, as their sexuality is more emotionally based. Working on my solar plexus I've noticed did cause more women to resond to me but on a more intellectual level. I was getting more attention, but not so much in a sensual way. The solar plexus being yang would have this effect, but since it is on the level of the spleen and liver which are both organs of mental reasoning and intelligence it is more on this level where my attention from women increased. This played out in the real world by me getting lots of dates where we would have really interesting conversation, and not a lot of action. Now that I have begun to work on my root chakra it seems that women suddendly seem to be coming out of the wood work and are definately responding to me in a more sexual nature. The change has been only a little so far as I have not been working on the root chakra very long, but it is noticable nevertheless. I suppose this makes sense as well as the root chakra is also a yang chakra, but also the center of male sexuality for the most part. Here is how I've observed the male yang root chakra and female yin sacral chakra interface with eachother. The root chakra is predimantely jing, as it lies close to the testicles, and over the prostate. The sacral chakra is primarily qi, as it lies with in the area of the dan tien. The women therefore wants the mans qi as this is what her sacral chakra desires, and the man wants the woman's jing as this is what his root chakra desires. It would seem that when a man has a strong root chakra this is what makes him seem "sexy" to women, and vice versa. Also since the root chakra is the chakra of physical vitality, men who display strong root chakra attributes such as jocks and athletes are usually very attractive to females. Factors that indicate a weak root chakra such as the 90 pound weakling are not as attractive to females. And interestingly enough when I focus on the root chakra and breath into it, it kind of feels like a constant mild climax.

Something else I discovered that is kind of what I'd call a secondary reaction to loneliness would be the stress about it found in the liver. Since the liver is the organ that deals with frustration, stress, ect... feeling this way about feeling lonely can further compound the problem, making one feel even worse about something that is already bothering them. Of course it does not have to be only loneliness, but what ever primary issue us bothering you, the stress response and frustration about the issue is going to affect the liver, and then the liver will just add to the bad feelings about what ever it is. In my case today I spent a significant amount of time on my heart, pericardium, triple warmer meridians due to their relationship to loneliness. After wards I noticed that I did not feel quite so lonely, but that I still did not feel so good either. At this point I was confused because I could not understand why I would still feel bad if I no longer felt quite as lonely as before. It was when I realized the secondary stress response in my liver and worked on that with the inner smile and healing sounds that I felt pretty good finally. Perhaps it could be seen as the heart (fire) burning up all the wood (liver), and the lungs (metal, as they are also involved in this) subduing wood.

I think I may have been a little hasty to discredit that link lol, cause now I am doing the triple warmer sound and I'm finding lots of junk relating to loneliness and stuff like that. I guess I was just not patient enough before to give it a chance to work, and to connect to it.

The best I can come up with so far is that its a combination of lungs and heart, as I've continued working on this. Lungs cause you feel sad about being lonely, and heart cause you feel cut off from love and social interaction. I also have a strong suspicion that there is a chicken and egg effect going on. What I mean by that is I think that if you have issues about loneliness in your heart and lungs for example that not only will you feel lonely, but you also will have a behavior pattern and vibe that causes you to be more isolated from people as well. So I am thinking that once you deal with this internal problem of feeling lonely )which affects the other world causing you to be alone, thus validating your feeling) then you will not only feel less lonely you will probably be less alone as well as you interact with people easier and more naturally, and they in turn feel easier about being around you as well. I say this cause I've noticed this cause and effect cycle with other organs and issues in the past too. *edit: I found this and it pretty much confirms what I had said above. My link

I think you make a good point, as it depends on what is causing you to feel lonely and how you experience it. After my last post I sat down for a good while and went through all my organs since I was having a hard time pinning where I was feeling this down. After doing so I found probably the most relevant feeling of loneliness for my experience was in my lungs. I suppose this makes sense as the feeling of loneliness is a rather sad one, and additionally after working on my lungs I did feel better to a degree.

Yea I think I'll agree, I found a few sites that said loneliness was kidneys' but after having worked on it a bit, I don't think that's it. To be honest the source of this one is really eluding me?? Still working on it.

Actually I did see that link that you mentioned, but it didn't have enough explanation for me, and plus when I did the Triple Warmer healing sounds I just wasn't feeling the results I wanted. After doing some thinking and some of the Kidney healing sound and inner smile, I sort of began to realize that loneliness could be seen as "fear of being alone", which if that is the case would make sense.

I was very surprised today. The latest troubled area I have been dealing with is loneliness ( I just moved to a new town where I know no body for TCM school ). The thing that surprised me though was that I had been working a lot on my heart and lungs for a lot of various other issues, and surely thought that if loneliness was going to be dealt with then it would be there. But usually when I do the inner smile/healing sounds on a particular organ, as long as its the right organ for the right emotion I get results fairly quickly. In this case I would work on my heart and lungs yet still feel the same level of loneliness and could not understand why. So I got online and researched everything I could find about where in our bodies loneliness could be found. The answer was the Kidney meridian and the water element. This surprised me because I can not see the connection (at least right now) but I'm just making this note to myself and afterwards will go and work on my kidney's and see what that digs up. Was anyone else aware of this, or understand how this might relate?

Lol well I sort of thought by now my approach would have already become predictable, if you feel that heartbreak is your issue, do the heart inner smile and healing sound. If the issue is truly heart break then that should fix it. Since Non said he has no friends I believe working on his heart would do a great deal of good, for it is the system of communication, sociability, and charisma. If there was a blockage or some kind of bad energy stuck in there it would definitely make making friends difficult. At the same time if one feels bad about themselves because they don't have friends or for what ever other reason, they should also work on their lungs as the lungs deal with this kind of thing. I personally have been doing a lot of this lately and I have noticed that making friends seems to be getting easier and more natural as I do.

My recent work on the lungs led me to take a deeper look at my spleen as the spleen is the mother of the lungs. What I found was that lately I have been living life in my head, but with out taking a lot of action in the real world. This is a classic spleen issues, as the spleen's element is earth, and earth of course is all about physical reality. If thoughts going round and round but no action is taken on them, this is not good, and this shows there is a spleen imbalance. For example I would get several phone numbers from girls, but have no interest in calling them or going out, it was all simply mental food. Looking back I can see several episodes where I would just live life in my head, and not really want to engage in the real world. When ever we get like this, this is a spleen issue. I've seen this a lot in other people in different forms as well. Guy's who only want to play video games, but never get out in real life. Or people who like to chat online or talk to facebook friends for hours, but never really meet them or do things with them in real life. Of course people who worry about the same thing over and over again, but never come to a practical solution. The common thread is life is lived in the head, not in physical reality. Since the spleen is earth, and earth is "real" our spleen is supposed to ground us in the real world, our thoughts are supposed to lead to action. When our spleens are not doing their job thoughts just lead to more thoughts, rather than the actions they were intended for. So like in my case thinking about girls with out really wanting to go out with them is a classic example. It was also due to this were I thought to myself "what is wrong with you man" lol. In my particular case I had done a 48 hour fast a couple weeks ago for detox, this I was told weakened my spleen. After that my appetite was weak, I lost a lot of weight, my stools were loose, and I had almost no energy. Since I'm a student at a TCM school I get to get free acupuncture. So I went into the student clinic, and was diagnosed with Spleen qi deficiency. I got a treatment and was given herbs, and first the physical symptoms cleared up, I got my appetite back, got my lost weight back (my pants were about to fall off at one point due to weight loss), my bowls went back to normal, and my energy level improved too. Now it seems the that mental symptoms are next. So I'm just throwing this out there to anyone who feels that they might live in their head a little too much, or be obsessed with mental stuff, but not so much about doing physical stuff, so you can know what to work on. Once again my main method for working on just about any organ is the inner smile, and healing sounds. So far I have found some worry, and anxiety in my spleen, I'll keep posting as I continue to work on this.

Don't worry your not loosing your sex driver permanently, its just a phase, as your body begins to loose its addiction to adrenal release, it will bounce back as your body comes into balance. But my question would be why are you doing this?

My question is why do you want to do this?

The way I have dealt with fears in the past effectively is pretty simple actually. I did the kidney inner smile and healing sound since the kidneys relate to fear.