Maddie

I use tea a lot to accomplish various goals. Chamomile is good to relax ye, and for settling the heart meridian when over stimulated, and strengthening the stomach meridian as well. Green as lots of antioxidants, and cancer prevention properties, Licorice is good for the kidney yin, and adrenal glands. I like Ginger tea for the digestive system, dandilion/milk thistle tea to clean and strengthen the liver, echinesea tea for the immune system, nettle tea to cleans the kidneys and for hayfever symptoms, kava tea to destress, and the list goes on and on. What are you goals, or do you simply want a nice tasting cup of tea to enjoy?

That pretty close to what Mantak Chia teaches except the lungs store sorrow rather than fear (think of being deflated). Fear is what the kidnyes store (just think of you get scared so bad you pee your pants lol), and you got the sounds right, just the one I learned from Chia for the kidneys is chooooooo but most of it is still the ooo sound. But yea and you got the colors right as well. Out of all the pratices I know of, for me this is by far one of the most effective of getting rid of unwanted emotions. neg. / pos. Kidney : fear / gentelness, will power, wisdom Lung: sorrow, grief / courage, righteousness Liver: anger / kindness, decisivness Heart: love, happines / hate, cruelty, over-excitement Spleen: worry / trust, openess, comfort

LOL I have her book, but I found your reference to money as metaphysical quite interesting, I shall ponder that.

Holding the ball a little lower and smaller has helped a lot with my breathing. Does anyone else get really hot from doing ZZ? Like even when they are just in wuji posture?

One other thing of importance I thought I should mention. After I did the big draw the sexual energy issue was greatly improved, but there was still this lingering desire that really had no substance behind it. For a while I tried testicle breathing some more, but that did not seem to make a difference. Then I considered that after being sexual aroused it could create too much excitement. Over excitement / joy can harm the heart. So I did some smiling to the heart and heart healing sound and then that feeling of being overly stimulated mentally went away as well.

I did an experiment today and stopped the chi at my heart center for a bit to see what would happen. I started getting palpatations, and overly stimulated. Now I remember why I don't do it.

I was reading meditationexpert.com and he seemed to imply that yoga asanas only made you flexible but did not do anything to your chi. Now I was kind of supprised to hear that because I had always been told that asanas and Qigong exercises / movements did work on your chi and meridians, not only on your flexibility. I know a yoga instructor and she said that sometimes people will have emotional reactions from doing various poses as an energy blockage is relased by the pose. So my question is do the physical movemnts help your chi, and if so how so? If they do not then what is their purpose?

quote from Drew Hempel---- "Yeah at first you do standing active exercises at a 3 to 1 ratio to the sitting passive exercises. The standing active exercises build up your jing energy but then the "small universe" or "microcosmic orbit" exercise converts the jing to chi. When the chi builds up then you have strong electromagnetic fields going throughout the body and so flexibility returns from the chi energy. That's why it's more important to study the alchemy dynamics of building up jing, purifying it into chi. Then when the chi is strong enough it turns into shen for the third eye opening energy." Lately I have been doing a lot of sitting stuff, because emotional/sexual issues were my top priority to fix, and I have found that the meditative types of qigong more directly fix this. With that being said, I have found myself physically drained (perhaps because my chi is busy clearing out blockages?) and the thought of doing anything standing/moving/physical seems very exhausting. Is that why you recomend doing a 3 to 1 ratio of standing to sitting? If you do too much sitting at first with out a strong jing base will be become exhausted from too much sitting qigong? Yet on the other hand I placed an emphasis on sitting so that I would not loose jing the obvious way (I had to get control of my urges). Just curious how does standing/moving qigong build up the jing, what are the mechanics of it? What else does it do? For up until about two weeks ago the vast majority if not all my qigong was standing/moving (8 brocades), yet I was not making much progress on the emotional/sexual side of things. Now that I have been doing a lot of sitting qigong I don't feel like moving or standing lol, or doing much of anyathing for that matter, I'm feeling pretty lethargic as of late.

why do I suddenly feel so lost? lol

About mudane reality. I love this forum, its very interesting and there is a lot to learn here. BUT with that being said sometimes I get the feeling here that the tendancy is for some of the people to be a bit top heavy. I mean its great if you can do all this cool stuff and understand all these concepts, but what about "before enlightenment chop wood, carry water, after enlightenment chop wood carry water?" I think when a person has a weakness they are aware of in themselves they are more easily able to recognize it in another as well. The reason I started this thread is because I don't feel that my Root Chakra is as strong as it should be, and I've noticed some others here seem to have the same issue. Isn't the purpose of the Root Chakra to ground is in physical reality? Isn't the sign of a healthy Root Chakra to be down to earth and to realte well to physical matters? Isn't that why we have a Root Chakra in the first place, because for what ever reason we exist in physical reality and therefore we just suceed at not only surviving in physical reality but learning the lessons of physical reality?

I don't understand a word you just said lol

Holding attention in the dan tien while doing abdominal breathing is a great way to build up the dan tien. Another good thing to do is to not unnecessarily empty the dan tien. Once your dan tien begins to fill, you will know it. You will feel a lot of energy in there.

Ok somehow this thread started out about Jing, and ended up on "how to be a porn star" lol, ok maybe not exactely, but Jing is not sperm, penis size, testosterone, or anything else like that, though it is related to those things. Kenneth Cohen states (I'll paraphrase) that sexual fluids are the yin expression of jing, and saliva is the yang expresion of jing. It is also the energy that creates bone marrow, bones, grey matter in the brain, hair color, and hair growth, and physical viatality. It is the source of sexual energy, is stored in the kidneys and the lower dan tien (where as qi is stored in the middle dan tien, and shen in the upper). It is described as being the most dense and refined type of energy in the body. It is easy to understand how it can be confused with sperm, because it takes a lot of jing to make sperm, and jing is also related to our DNA which sperm carries. It can also be understood how jing can be confused with testosterone because testosterone is made of jing as well. Now I believe that one of the purposes of doing physical qigong is to not only clear your channels but to build up jing as well. If anyone truely knows and understand what jing really is, and what it does, and how to build and cultivate it, I would love to have deeper insight into this topic.

Yea it was pretty gross. I can't say for sure, but I had the feeling my intuition told me two things about the dark spot in the center. One was that I should not try to figure it out, but just let it go, and two was that it was deep deep in my liver because it was karmaic baggage from a past life. Of course thats just my intuition and I could be wrong, but then again I could be right.

True I don't like to over do it with reverse breathing cause like you said I definately feel more tension, but it does seem to be more effective in converting jing to chi, and lust surely isn't good for tension either lol. Indeed there is a very thin line between the two sometimes.

ha ha ha hilarious

I dabbled with fussion a couple times, but can't I suppose it wasn't enough to really get results.

Oh when you said Middle Eastern I thought you meant Arab countries. I don't really consider India the middle east, but more South Asia. But do the Arabs/Muslims have a cultivation method? Is this deeper channel the Thrusting vessle?

So are you saying that not all MCO uses the Governing Vessle, but some use the Bladder Channel going up the back as well? There are middle eastern sects that train MCO??

I had an unusual experience this morning. I was going through my inner smile as usual. When I got to the Liver I sensed a lot of dark purpleish gunk on it. So I began to use the healing sound to remove this, and it took quite a while. Then I thought I was done, so I resumed the inner smile only to notice a very very large black spot deep in the center of my liver. So I once again began the healing sound to remove that. This felt different than anything I'd done before. The black energy in the center of my liver was very dark, very thick, and very sticky. This also took a long time to remove. I'm not really sure what this was or means. Has anyone else had similar experiences? or know what this means?

The reason I stored the lust energy in my dan tien at that time was because I was sitting in the church and really could not do much to deal with it at the time. Later on I did indeed have to convert it because I began to feel it as it started circulating in my MCO. As far as anger energy goes, I did in fact have to store it in my dan tien last week when my wife was PMS'ing lol. We were in the car and she was not really saying much, but nevertheless she was mega pissed, and I could feel the anger energy very strong. Since this time I was driving and could not deal with it, I stored it in my dan tien. When I got home I did not convert the energy and sure enough after a while I indeed did begin to feel extremely angery until I realized what was going on, at which time I did deal with the energy and learned my lesson lol. I have found full lotus a very effective means of convertin energy. The only draw back is that it is not easy for me to get into full lotus so sometimes I have to use other means. In the case of anger an effective method is the liver healing sound and inner smile, in the case of sexual energy I have found testicle breathing and reverse abdominal breathing to be effective. So there is more than one way to do something, its just that I have found full lotus (when I can do it) to be one of the most effective from my personal experience. The other methods I mentioned take more time and effort.

I guess I'll as the other side of this question. Can one by doing ONLY Qigong achieve and maintain a great degree of physical fitness?

Would you mind elaborating more, I'd be interested to know more.

I am curious about prayer from the Taoist point of view. My background includes being involved for several years with a rather radical/strict chrisitan group. Now we did not do meditation per-se, but prayer on an individual and collective level were a major part of it, and I do have some interesting examples both personal and otherwise of getting amazing answers to prayer on occasion. As time went on I first left that group and then later on left the christian religion all together which leaves me with the question, who to pray to? Now I realize that somehow prayer can and does work, but since I do not beleive the christian version of god to be correct, I'm not exately sure who or what answered those prayers. Also is there a Taoist way to pray? One prayer that I have not had answered is the one for finacial success lol. Is it wrong to pray for money/finacial help? It does certainly not seem to be very effective :/ . Anyone have any insight?