Maddie

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?

1. Most of the books I have read about this say its not a good idea. 2. I have noticed if I did let the chi stay there too long that I became very irritable, moody, emotional, ect...

Dealing with conspiracy theories is a stick tar baby indeed, but thats to be expected due to the very nature of a conspiracy. Obviously if a conspiracy is taking place great lengths are being gone through to keep it very secretive, and under the radar as much as possible. So thus there are few documents, and little tangeble proof. The evidence that does exist while it may look very fishy, is not usually enough to stand up in a court of law. I think maintianing balance is very difficult indeed. It seems about this subject extremes in both dirctions seem to be common. You have the people that think everything is a conspiracy, and others who trust everything that we are told. Truth be told in my opinion I think its somewhere in the middle. For example in my opinion the offical facts about the whole September 11 story don't add up, yet just because I don't buy the offical party line, I do not know what really did happen, so to say definitevly "this is what happened" when I do not know for sure is only speculation. If something comes out in the open and there is tangible proof, then it is no longer a conspiracy. So just because I do not buy the offical story of 9/11 I can't say for sure what the truth is even though there are lots of theories, because I DON'T KNOW what the real facts are. So I try to balance a healthy skeptisism with realization that I am not all knowing either.

I suppose I have, though I realize its kind of confusing due to the various teachings on it, but the main source I used was Dr. Yang's method of YMAA. First you have to build up a sufficent amount of chi in the lower dan tien. Once this is pretty high, and easy to feel, you begin to use the mind to circulate it. At first the chi seemed to get stuck in certian areas, such as the sacrum for example. But you just sort of patiently wait for the chi to open up the blockages (don't force it) and then as you lead the chi you just sort of feel it moving along. If I get out of practice for a while then it can take a while to get things moving again, but I think the key is to have built up enough chi in your dan tien. From my personal experience I noticed that I felt the chi more strongly when it began to go across my skull. Sometimes when it got to my third eye area I might let it linger there a bit, and I would feel this twitching feeling there. I have also noticed that its not goood to let the chi sit in the heart center area, so I tend to just zip it past there as fast as possible. And then of course its important to properly store it at the dan tien when you are finished.

I definately suffered from adrenal burnout aka (kidney yin depletion) not too long ago, but I didn't realize it could take a couple years to full recover from . I can also relate to General Liver running the show of my life for way too long, and am now trying to get out of that automatic responce reaction. The inner smile does seem to help with this, and as you said it can be quite exhausting at times. In order to help me recover from adrenal burnout I stopped drinking coffee and have limited my use of black tea, as well as having taken some herbs.

Well not bad theory, but why did I observe this in Alaska as well? I mean the air up there is really clean, yet I noticed the same stuff going on.

Q: "what accompanies (sitting full lotus) to accomplish this conversion process?" I asked Drew the same thing lol, and his answer was basically that nothing really has to accompany sitting in full lotus, it just automatically happens. And I have found this to be the case from my personal experience. Usually when I do full lotus (if I can lol) I simply do reverse abdominal breathing and empty my mind as in Zazen. Its really that simple , well in theory at least, actually getting into full lotus can be another matter . Q: "Why didn't you want it to circulate in MCO at that time?" Because I didn't want raw sexaul energy flowing through my body lol. Storing it in the dan tien was a convinient way to put off dealing with it, but I simply stored it there, but did not convert it as of then. It might be compared to putting a bear in a cage. The bear is contained but if you don't tame that bear as soon as its out of the cage watch out haha. hope that helps