Maddie

Is Taoist Kung Fu synonymous with internal martial arts? Are all the taoist martial arts, internal? Are there any "external" taoist marital arts? I found this video very interesting, I appologize if it has already been posted here before. Once you watch the first part you can just follow the links to all 5 sections. It is aboaut Wudang mountain.

I recently moved to Washington state. I have studied mainly Karate, and a little BJJ, but I am becoming more intrested in studying internal martial arts and wanted to know if anyone knows how to find a good teacher or school for this?

I know what you mean, for I feel that I have spent a large amount of my life in this state as well. I feel that only lately am I slowly beginning to come out of this "fog". The means which I have used to accomplish this is simply by doing qigong dilligently, trying my best to do practice daily, and just like a tree grows, little by little, changes are taking place. Being American sometimes it can be hard to be patient and let the changes take place naturally lol (we like instant enlightenment), but then again that mind set is part of the problem (ironic eh?). I'm not going to endorce any one specific type of Qigong because I think likely most types of Qigong if practiced diligenty will produce healing over time. My personal routine mainly consists of 8 brochades, inner smile/healing sounds, MCO ,and healing love, but like I said I think its less the specific routine I do, and more just having the dicipline to do it daily. Good luck to you in your endeavor to escape the matrix lol.

There are lots of remedies for the common cold as has been seen just on this thread so far. As far as herbs go, again a lot of good herbs that produce good results. In Traditional Chinese Medicine herbs are prescribed depending on the cause of the cold, as there is not just one type of cold in TCM. There can be internal wind, heat, wind-heat, dampness, ect.... So a doctor of TCM would prescribe herbs depending on what internal disorder was the source of a particular cold. From the more general western herbal perspective, Ecanesia and Golden Seal are very good immune system boosters. If you are familiar with the specific source of your cold, for example dampness then a good drying herb such as Ginger would be appropriate. If you had Liver wind then maybe a good liver detoxifying herb would be called for such as dandilion or milk thistle. Often the lungs are affected and licorice is good to tonify the lungs, and a natural decongestant such as nettle leaf helps with the immediate discomfort of nasal congestion and mucous. If you have a lot of mucous, which is a symptom of dampness a spicey herb such as a hot pepper is good to breaking up the mucous, inducing sweating, and cleansing the digestive tract (which houses a lot of our immune system. If you want to really keep it simple I really like "Airborne" that herbal mixture that you sizzle in water and drink. It contains a lot of the herbs mentioned above, is easy to prepare, and very effective.

Is the question how to heal yourself of a cold or others? As far as myself goes I've noticed regular Qigong practice is great preventative medicine. It keeps my immune system strong, and its rare for me to come down withi something, and if I do I tend to bounce back quickly. If another person gets sick, such as one of my kids for example. I have found Chia's "Taoist Cosmic Healing" book to be very effective. Its all about projecting your chi into others for healing purposes. I have had rather remarkable results on my kids and others with this technique. I'd recommend anyone interested in healing others check it out.

I've found that in the short term (like I got to deal with this right now) the Big Draw if done right is very effective in helping with this.

You asked the question that has pretty much been the major problem I have been seeking a solution for ever since the beginning of my pracitce. After having asked this sort of question for a few years now, and also after having really not recieved any good answer I have been trying to figure it out on my own. I'm not sure if you read my musings on the Middle Dan Tien thread but I feel like my experimentation has been leading me to get the results I want in that direction (the results I want are the same as you seemed to indicate). After much trial and error, experimentation, and meditation I seem to so far have made the most progress in this area while working on the Middle Dan Tien area (including the organs that fall with in its area, heart, lungs, ect.) I theorize that if a man's middle dan tien is blocked then it might increase the pressure seeking to escape through his more opened lower areas. Additionally one of the major problem areas of the heart meridian is over excitement. Over excitement would definately describe my reaction to seeing a good looking woman. I also think that sometimes we guys seek women/sex as a way to boost our morale when it is low. The lungs are also in the middle dan tien area and their main problem emotion is sadness. So if we are feeling lonely, bored, dull, (all the various flavors of sad) then I think our lung meridian causes us to feel in such a way that we want to reduce those feelings (fire "the heart" melts metal "lungs" = excitement reduces the blahs). The middle dan tien / heart center is the part of us that desires to connect with others on an emotional level. The sexual organs (in the lower dan tien area) also want to "connect" but in an obviously different way (not good nor bad just different). So lets take person X with a closed middle dan tien relative to his lower dan tien. Person Y has a more open middle dan tien relative to thier lower. It is reasonable to assume that person X is going to be attracted to others sexaully faster (energy follows the path of least resistance) and person Y is going to be more likely attracted to others emotionally sooner. Most often person X is how men are wired and person Y is how women tend to be wired. So all of that is to basically say that I think that if we work on removing blockages from our middle dan tien area our energy will then have more than one gate through which to easily exit. The method which I have been using to accomplish this is a combination of heart and lung healing sounds and inner smile, as well as breathing into the middle dan tien much like we do with our lower dan tien. This has so far been seeming to move me in the direction I want to be going in. Hope this helps, and any other insights would be appreciated.

The Big Draw is what you do with the energy after you stop it from squirting out of your penis. Once you stop it at your perineum then you "Draw" that energy into your MCO and circulate it around till it gets to your Lower Dan Tien where you store it if your doing solo. If your doing it with a partner you circulate your enegy through her, and hers though you. Just a tip from personal expereince.... don't leave the energy in your head, always store it in your lower dan tien.

In the middle dan tien / heart center thread I was stating that I have a huch that in men the lower dan tien is predominate and that in women the middle dan tien is. So I find some of the above statements interesting as they seem to support this notion. I had not heard that women should avoid working with the lower dan tien except when they are menstrating at which time they are supposed to focus on the middle dan tien. But it is my hunch that womens middle dan tiens are naturally more developed and open, while for men its the lower, but thats just my personal hunch for now. Yet in my thread I felt that perhaps men should work on opening their middle dan tiens so that perhaps many "man" assosicated problems would find balance. Maybe if the woman focused on her lower that might help her to find more balance as well. I wish I could find a good source on this.

Ok so today I put this into practice as I'm not one to just rely on theory alone. I spent several hours today working on my heart center area, heart, and lungs (all middle tan tien territory). I did the inner smile and healing sounds for the organs in that area a very long time. Then as I was out and about today I noticed that my out look on the female gender was different. My views of and about them felt a bit more honorable today than usual (usual being my x-ray vision kicks in, their clothes desinigrate before my very eyes, and the imagination goes to work). It did seem that the energy in my heart area was less constricted so that I was able to feel more compassion for them, rather than to just want to feel them . They seemed more like someones sister, daughter, ect.. as opposed to (me love you long time). Likewise I felt less pressure in the lower areas, so perhaps with more energy moving through the heart area maybe the pressure in the lower areas was indeed lessened a bit. On the other hand I did feel a bit more emotional (not to the point of crying over soap operas and eating bon bons on the sofa) but more emotional nevertheless. I'll continue this tomorrow and see what happens.

In my own expereince after you stop ejaculation and do your energy circulation it tends to go limp a little, but I think that is just a sign that you have moved the energy from there to the places you want it to be. Once you begin the next session it tends to get right back to attention

I think there has been a lot of good advice on here. 1. Cardiologist, 2. Acupuncturist, 3. Your probably just becoming more senstive to what was already there. All those things have been already said and I agree with all of them, and though I'm not a pro so don't take this too seriously my intution tells me its probably 3. but I'd still start with 1. to rule out any possiblity of a more serious problem. good luck

From my personal experience and from what a lot of others have said .... I tried to do the Big Draw before I had a good foundation of other practices such as a good and flowing MCO and inner smile / healing sounds. The whole point of the Big Draw is to draw that orgasmic energy into your MCO. If the MCO is not really open well then its not going to work properly, and the energy will get stuck in your genitle area. This can lead to stagnation which then can lead to a whole lot of other problems. Check out this well read website [email protected] and look at the dangers of retention article under healing love.

any recommendations as to how to do this?

There are three dan tiens, lower, middle, and upper. The question on if you have sex and having to start over again depends. If you don't have sex too frequently you don't necessarily have to "start over" just replace what ever precentage that you lost during ejaculation. If your dan tien was very full then most likely returning your energy level to pre-ejaculation won't take as long. Of course if you over do things sexually then the rate you depelete your dan tien increases and therefore it takes longer to recharge it. It also depends on your age, health, general constitution, and the amount of pre-natal jing you are born with.

I assume we are talking about filling up the lower dan tien eh? It did not seem to take very long for me to fill up my lower dan tien when I first gave it a try ( a few weeks I think). Filling up/opening my middle dan tien seems to be more tricky to me by far.

I just woke up this morning and I had this dream that I feel gave me an important insight. There is the heart center which lies in the Middle Dan Tien, and the sexual center which is closer to the domain of the Lower Dan Tien. It has been my observation that people with blocked heart centers tend to be more focused on sex, while people who have blocked sexual centers seem to be more focused on the emotional aspect of relationships. Think of it as a PVC pipe with water flowing through it. Now lets say I drilled two holes in this pipe. As long as both holes are clean water is going to flow out of both holes more or less equally. Now lets say that one hole becomes clogged or blocked. This will have the effect of raising the water pressure in the remaining hole. So lets say one has their heart center blocked. Then that would seem to indicate that more pressure would tend to flow out of the sexaul center. Now it would seem that for what ever reason that a lot of men (and of course some women too) tend to be more straight foward "mission minded" less emotional in regards to sex as compared to women. Women on the other hand tend to be a little more problematic when it comes to achieving an orgasm than men (and usually are more sexually hesitant), but also seem to emphasise the emotional component of a relation ship then men. This would suggest to me that in general men have more problems with blockages in their heart center, and women have more problems with blockages in their sexual center (and yes I know there are always exceptions). The man with a blockage in the heart center would have more pressure trying to escape their sexual center, and vice versa with the woman. It is easy to see how this would not only create a great deal of internal frustration (sex obsessed man, emotional woman) but inter-relationship issues as well. To the woman the man would seem to not care enough about issues of the heart, and to the man it would seem hard to get into the womans pants. In my observations on homosexual couples, women who have become lesbians often tell me that their relationships with women are much more soft and tender than with men. Homosexual men seem to be highly promiscuous changing partners often. This behavior tends to reinforce my theory on where blockages tend to predominate in the various genders. A third category might be the serious scholar / nerd who might be blocked in both the lower centers and only open in the Upper Dan Tien, the kind of person who seems uninterested in either sex or emotional relationships, but only in study and contemplation. So then I suppose that the idea state is of course to have all areas unblocked so that in all aspects of life we remiain well blanaced. Yet if in a certain aspect of life we do seem to be unblanaced, then understanding why we have such an imbalance is likely the first set in finding a solution to that imbalance.

Flower remedies are a good way to determine a tree's personality, or at least the effect it can have upon your personality. Check out this description of flower remedies (a lot of "flower remedies" are from trees) http://www.anandaapothecary.com/bach-flower-essence-remedy.html

Actually today I had an experience that was the exact opposite of fireworks exploding. I felt unusually lonely today for what ever reason. On a hunch I began to do the heart healing sound and inner smile. I was breathing out that lonely feeling (kind of like on Top Gun) but the odd thing was, the "lonely" energy that came out of my heart felt like "anti-matter". It did not feel like something but rather the opposite of anything, almost like a black hole. As I was breathing out this energy it had a very imploding collapsing feeling, very odd. At the same time as I was breathing out this anti-matter feeling stuff, I was breathing in intimacy as I believe that is what a heart lacks with it feels lonely. Yet as opposed to seeking intimacy from another human being this technique seemed to have me connnect to intimacy within. It was rather unusual, and difficult to put into words.

I like Ken Cohen's book too, lots of good basic info. I'm sure you will get a lot of various answers here as you already have. So I can't tell you what is the "best" for you, but I can share my experience. When I first began Qigong I experimented with all sorts of various practices. What I found in my expereince is that starting off with the Physical Qigong (the movements) helped me to prepare for the more still sitting meditative Qigong. At first it was very hard to make my mind still enough to sit and meditate. Doing movements on the other hand took less mental concentration, yet had a very beneficial effect on my mind. After I had done the physical Qigong for a while (and I still do it almost every day) then it was much easier for me to move on to some of the still Qigong. Even now I usually do my moving sets first in the morning, and then do meditation. Ok I'm no master, but thats just my experience, hopefully it may be usefull. :-)

Does/has anyone done Kan and Li, specifically the lesser kan and li? I have the book from Chia and was hoping to get some tips and pointers from anyone's personal experience with it. Do you feel much or is it mostly visualization?

So.... does anyone know much about the middle dan tien???

That was pretty interesting and ironic because just today I was pondering a lot of the issues mentioned. I was pondering evolution and the purpose of it all. Additionally I was pondering the Jehova god of the Old Testament / Torah. This is just my most recent opinion, but to me Jehova seems like a rather immature yet powerful, yet unenlightened being. He does not seem all that well adjusted and on a constant ego trip. IMO he is just a being with some power but without Tao. One thing that has long baffeled me about Jehova is whats up with the animal sacrifices? For that matter why did so many ancient religions practice this? Does sacrificing an animal for a powerful entity give that entity anything? or perhaps it was based more upon human understanding? I don't know, as usual I tend to have more questions than answers.

I found this site http://www.namastecafe.com/edu/symptoms.htm , and I have noticed that I am experiencing a lot of those symptoms as I have begun to focus on my Middle Dan Tien/ Heart Center. I still do not really understand what this area does/is/is for, but I seem to be experiencing a lot of those same symptoms nevertheless. Now I do not think that this is any sort of enlightenment, but rather I feel that it is the opening and healing of something previously closed and blocked (at least that is my assesement). Anyone else have any experience with these symptoms and/or the heart center/middle dan tien?

I had a very ...er.."interesting" weekend. Late last week I just had this intuitive feeling that I needed to do Middle Dan Tien breathing. I have no idea why I had this feeling, but I did. Usually in my Qigong practice this is the most ignored Dan Tien. So for the last couple days of last week I focused on my middle dan tien while deep breathing and also did the Big Draw to that area as well. Well this past weekend I was an emotional wreck. I almost never cry, but I was a basket case last weeekend. I felts soooo emotional on Saturday, and was weepeing, and sad beyond description, yet at the same time I was thinking about my children and felt as though I had never loved them more. (This is all very out of character for me). On Sunday and today I litterally felt ill. I felt sick and could not really stand up with out feeling dizzy and almost blacking out, and felt nauseous. I'm not 100% sure if it is connected, but it would not suprise me if it were somehow connected.