Maddie

I am by no means an expert in this, and realize this isn't really an answer to your question, but I think the best weapon to ward off demons is to not get their attention in the first place if at all possible.

Good down to earth advice for sure . I've done a little research on this topic since posting, and have found that the homeopathic remedy Phosphorus is supposed to be good for people who get lonely easily.

I have been pondering inner vs outter alchemy. All things being equal I perfer inner alchemy, but when one is not feeling well, doing inner alchemy becomes difficult. When I feel bad, I tend to lean more on outter alchemy in the form of homeopathy, flower essences, crystals/gemstones, ect... It is my impression that things such as homeopathy and flower essences are sort of like taking Qigong in a bottle or a pill form. I think they affect your energetic body as well. My intuition tells me that they can only take you so far, but until you reach that point I think they are excelent methods of energy cultivation.

ha ha I love it

Due to the fact that I have been fatigued lately, by default I have not really been doing much practice so to speak of. One other factor that I thought about last night, is that not too long before this fatigue kicked in I had started taking Milk Thistle to clean out my liver, mainly because I was feeling very irritable. Now I realize I have been doing a lot of things all at once, and that any one of them could explain my fatigue, or a combination of them as well. Since Milk Thistle cleans out the liver, detoxification can be a very exhausting process. So just another hypothesis.

Hmmmm interesting......

Christoff Thank you for that reply, it was very encouraging :-). It is interesting because prior to feeling this extreme fatigue I did feel wired a lot. In fact only recently I have not felt wired. Mainly because I began doing the cold draw and for the first time since puberty I have not been sex obsessed. I was wondering if perhaps this fatigue I have been experiencing was somehow related to a sort of "withdraw" from constant sexual stiumlation, either physical or mental. Also I should mention that my stress level for the past week or so has been through the roof. I know that it is due to the problems I have been having with my wife, but what confuses me is that we have been having problems for a long time, so why now am I now feeling so utterly stressed and worn out?

On one hand I just got right into inner smile / healing sounds as Mantak Chia states its a good beginning practice. On the other hand though I have been doing it for a couple years now, the amount of junk I keep digging up from it never ceases to amaze me.

No, I mean that you should do TB for a couple months first before you begin another practice. TB takes time to really get the feel for, so I'd recommend just focusing on that for a while. Then once your good at that, then try to learn a new skill.

SC comes after you have been doing TB for a while. Also in that book it makes it sound like you bring the energy to the head and leave it there ( at least that was the impression I got), but you don't. It's very important that after you get the energy to your head that you bring it down your front central channel to your lower dan tien.

I do my routine based up Mantak Chia's inner smile. I start with the heart, lungs, liver, spleen, kidneys, and then end with the lower dan tien as to make sure I don't leave too much chi in any one organ so it does not get burned out. Sometimes thought (like now) when I can tell a specific organ needs a lot of work I tend to focus more on that one, but this is a speical thing, not my daily practice.

I don't want to get this thread too off topic, but then again if you factor in how everything in the energetic/spiritual plane affects the physical then this ties in together nicely. I have been working a lot on my organs lately, and from what I have noticed working on two organs in particular has helped me to stop putting up with bad treatment, the lungs and the kidneys. The lungs are about our boundries, our personal boundries in life, as well as separating oxygen from carbon dioxide in the physical. We need oxygen, but carbon dioxicde is harmful. So too in when it comes to people, people who are kind to us are great, but toxic people we need to "exhale" out. The Kidneys are the organ of either fear or wisdom/clammess/strength. The kidneys have to be very vigilant as to ensure that they remove all the amonia from our blood, so they are the paranoid organ. They also need to remove posionous people from our lives, but if they are frozen in fear they can not do their jobs. If this is the case we are too fearful to do what would be best for us, so we remain with people posioning, we are frozen in our place in life, as the kidneys element is water, and season is winter, tempuratre is cold. Only when our kidneys are clean and functioning can they do their jobs calmly of filtering out what ever it is in our lives that are poisioning us. This would explain all those cases of one partner continuing to live with an abusive one even though they know their partner is bad for them. They "freeze" with fear. The lungs feed the kidneys, the lungs other positive virtue is courage. When there is enough courage in the lungs, this feeds the kidneys with good energy, so that they will not be frozen up anymore, but will feel calm and gentel, being fed by courage to remove what ever it is that poisions us from our systems.

I loved Fearless, just had to say it :-), one of my favorite movies

I had another moment of relaization today. Things with my wife and her crazy family have had me in a state of "fight or flight" for an extended period of time. Realizing that the fight or flight responce comes from adrenaline, which of course comes from the adreanline glands which in TCM are considered part of the kidneys, and that the kidneys are one of our main energy storage areas of our body; I think I have just gained even more insight as to why I feel so exhausted lately. I "fear" what she might do next, or what will become of things, all Kidney emotions, and thus I feel burned out.

Hey Tubes As you mentioned there are a variety of breathing methods, and most of them vary depending on what it is you are trying to accomplish. In Dr. Yang's Root of Chinese Qigong book he covers a variety of breathing methods, such as reverse abdominal breathing, and regular abdominal breathing, n such. He categorises regular abdominal breathing as the Buddhist method, and reverse abdominal breathing as the Taoist method. He says that the Buddhist method builds chi slower but is more relaxing, and the Taoist method builds chi faster but is less relaxing. So I suppose based upon that description (which is a rather simple one) you decide what your goals are and chose a method.

as far as our soul goes from a taoist point of view we have two parts of our soul. The Hun and the Po. The hun reisde in the liver and are the part of us that continues to exist after the death of the body. The Po reside in the lungs and disolve when the body dies. The Po relate to more of our animal instincts, and constitute mainly the reactions you see in a new baby which is almost all Po. The Hun reside in the eyes in the day and the liver at night, and when we sleep fly away as we dream. Of course the shen our spirit also accompanies us after death, but it operates at a different level. Hun http://www.fivespirits.com/hun.php Po http://www.fivespirits.com/po.php

I've never heard of anyone remembering being in the womb or a new baby before. I wonder why it is that we do not remember past lives?

Well not so long ago, about an hour, I almost got in a fight with one of my wife's big mouth brothers who came over to my house and started yelling at me. So I called the cops on him.... So perhaps when 9:11 keeps coming up, it means nothing good is about to happen lol. Sheesh I am going to make it to Texas??

So do you know the low down on 11 then? lol

Is this pretty much Zazen?

Lately this has been happening to me with 9:11 , I'm not so sure if that is a good thing :-S

Well the organ I have been working on a lot lately is the spleen. I have noticed while working on it that it seems to house a lot of the negative emotions that have been ailing me lately, such as home discord. Some of the books I have read state that the spleen relates to us feeling comfortable with our surroundings and our home enviornment, all earth element type stuff. I've always felt like I was unable to settle down and find my comfortable spot in life, and I think that holding a lot of negitive energy here has had a lot to do with that. Bruce Franzis said that chi is where karma connects with our bodies. So I am hoping that once I get my spleen cleared out that I will stop attracting to myself unfriendly domestic situations, and begin to find good ones. The spleen also has to do with our musculature, and flesh, either too much, too little, or just right. I have always tended towards the slightly skinny side. Also I have tended towards the slightly unenergetic side. Both a lack in the spleen department. About a month ago I was working a lot on my heart and lungs, mainly due to issues with relationship and love stuff. After about a good month of working on that area I noticed a big different for the better. Before that my main area of focus was my liver, due to having a short temper at times. Working on that helped there as well. A year or so ago it was my kidney's and the weird thing about that was that a lot of old memories even ones that I had forgotten came up in the realm of things that I feared. Now those things do not bother me either. So going though the organs and clearning them out of junk is definately worth it.

I'm not sure why, but I've only had one wet dream in my entire life, and that was when I was a teenager. I've heard that with guys this is a problem with often don't have enough kidney yin, and that tonifying kidney yin helps.