Maddie

http://www.meditationexpert.com/yoga-kung-fu/y_microcosmic_circulations_and_playing_with_your_qi.htm

I have been reading a lot from this website lately (MeditationExpert.com) and its been really interesting, I think he is a Zen guy.

Just a couple things he has said have confused me though. He sort of poo poos the MCO in this article saying that it will happen automatically on its own if you practice emptiness meditation, and does not recommend trying to do it. He also said that Taoism is lower level cultivation.

Of course I read master Alex Anatoles book "The Truth of Tao" (tao.org) and he sort of poo poos Buddhism for this and that reason. Interestingly enough, master Anatole does not seem to do the MCO either, but emptiness meditation instead. hmmmmm.

Any thoughts?

Oh a couple other things I forgot to mention. I've also been attempting the MCO but can't seem to get the chi to rise past the sacrum??? Also the full lotus is great for reducing desire as you stated, but does it also make .. er. "mr. happy" smaller?

Hey Drew

I've been loving your advice, and am grateful for it. I got a couple other questions. Is half lotus still beneficial even if less so? because I can do that quite a bit longer than a full lotus. Also what about standing meditation? Can that do the same thing, or is it different? I had tried doing it for a few months because I heard all the ranting and raving about it, but I don't know, maybe I was doing something wrong, but I found that when I got up to about 15 min of standing in the "hold the ball" position that afterwards I would be more emotionally agitated, irritable, ect.. Not sure why, but I stopped it because of that. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on that, as well as in regard to half lotus. Thanks

And that one way or another, sooner or later, that guilt will demand payment.

Which is what I was pondering in our national karmaic debt? I wonder how this will play out for the United States when this karma bill comes in the mail.

History books have largely ignored the fact that Germany was not alone in the invasion of Poland -- Hitler & Stalin were partners because they believed they were ideological brothers. The intellectual elite in the US & Western Europe heralded the rise of socialism in Germany as they had in the Soviet Union and then scrambled to distance themselves from Hitler's atrocities after their extent was latter revealed. Had the intellectual elite not been so eager to rally around the charismatic guy with the funny mustache, his reach would likely have been limited to just Germany.

 

Just another case of revisionist history, I guess...

Yes true, I am aware that the Soviet Union also participated in the invasion of Poland, and that Nazi German had supporters in the West such as Henry Ford, and Limburg for example, but my main point was about the karma of nations due to their actions, which is why I was stating broad facts supporting the point of that topic ;-)

Also its not just the spleen organ, but the Spleen meridian as well ;-)

I'd also suggest martial arts at the same time as meditation. I suppose that is why Taoist and Shaolin monks do both, maybe to balance eachother? I've also noticed that if I do lots of meditation alone it makes me somewhat of a marshmellow, and if I do a lot of martial arts alone it makes me somewhat of a testosterone poisioned arse. If I do both at the same time it helps keep me in the "middle way" ;-)

How about a new spin on this topic?

I have been pondering the karma effects of our wars since World War II. The reason I say since World War II is because that one was pretty cut and dry. We were attacked, Hitler was evil, (probably the reason my focus while majoring in history was on World War II).

But what about the karma the United States has earned since that time? Germany invaded Poland and a bunch of other nations, got some really bad karma, and was just about destroyed. Ok so we invaded Iraq, Afganistan. Not saying we are Nazi Germany but and unprovoked invasion is an unprovoked invasion, karma is karma. In World War II we fought the bad guys; now I hope we are not becoming the bad guy/ getting bad karma ect..

I'm not implying that pacifism is of the Tao, look at Sun Tzu and the art of war, or that the military is not of the Tao either, for Taoism has a god of war. For me war and the military is not the point, for me the concern is karma, and specifically that as a nation the US is accumilating bad karma by its military actions.

As a recent University graduate who majored in history, with an emphasis on World War II and military history, I'd like to clarify a point.

The United States has always had a standing army. Prior to World War II it was usually a very small one composed of a cadre of professional soldiers. During times of war the militia was called up to greatly augment the regular army, and then after the war was over the militia went back to the farms.

Then came WWII, and the United States got caught with its pants down. Our standing military was so small that it took a couple years before it was large enough to really go on the offensive (that is why WWII started for America in 1941, but we did not land in Normandy until 1944).

Then after the war was over Truman and Stalin couldn't play nice with eachother so the Cold War began, thus keeping the military at a realtively large state for such a long time that now it has become part of the establishment and the idea of not having a large standing military is just too much of a paridim shift for most people to accept (I think Rush Limbaugh would have a stroke at such a suggestion.... hell lets suggest it then ha ha) so yea there ya go.

Glad it worked. You may try also to round your back, that is making concave (hollow) your chest. Notice that your elbows will move a little both to the sides and forward.

 

And if any day you're having big trouble with emotions, you could try holding the ball at navel level. Let your arms expand and contract by the belly breathing. It has helped me quite a lot. IME it won't solve the blockeage at the middle tantien, but may put it on hold while developing a better foundation at the lower tantien.

 

Best,

Is that what holding the ball at the chest level is supposed to be doing? working on the middle dan tien? and is that the problem I was having a blockage in the middle dan tien? What exactely does the middle dan tien do anyways? what are the symptoms of a blockage?

I have five kids, and I use Qigong healing on them all the time. I've used qigong healing for all sorts of ailments, nausea, constipation, diarrhea, colds, coughs, fevers, headache, pains and aches, infections, sore throats, ect... I mainly use the colors of chi described in Mantak Chia's Taoist Cosmic Healing book (one of the first Qigong books I got). In order for me to not get too depleted I usually draw chi in through my feet and project it out from my palms. Sometimes the results are amazing, they come to me sick and after a 15-20 min session the symptoms are gone. It keeps them out of the doctor and saves me a lot of money. My most interesting example is that my first four children had to be under biliruben lights for a week after they were first born because my wife and my blood types are different, so the babies had bad jandice. By the time the fifth one was born I had already begun Qigong. Since jandice is a liver issue, I flushed my babies liver with chi, and she was the only one of our children that did not get bad jandice and have to be under the lights.

Every now and then I try to get the kids to do the 8 brocades with me, but since they almost always groan that does not happen too often. But yea qigong healing is great if your a parent, I love it!!!!

Check if your thoraxic diaphragm isn't tight, if your breath can't go down to your tantien. Try breathing with your belly and floating ribs. Also don't held your elbows above nipples level (but at the diaphragm)and try a narrower ball with your arms. Hope this helps!

Thanks for the tip. I stood in the holding the ball position, and lowered my elbows to the diaphram area as you said and noticed that it loosend up my breathing significantly. Yes previously breathing in that stance was quite stiff and labored, lowering the elbows makes a lot of difference. Thank you :-)

One thing I've noticed is that every time I get up to 15 min of ZZ (holding the ball) my emotional state tends to become problematic. Anyone know why this might be?

One experience I have not shared too often for obvious reasons ..... Back when I was in the Army my buddy and me on our free time would slam an entire bottle of Robituson DM and then proceed to astrally travel together. I only did this a couple of times, and it was impossible for me to do this with out a large does of Robituson. I know we were both truely out of body because we could see and communicate with eachother and then once we were back in body we would both confirm what we said to eachother and saw, and once my buddy kicked the door open while out of body (needless to say it was rather unusual). My buddy said the Dexramenthophine in the Robituson is what indused the out of body state, but I have no idea. But it did significantly change my outlook on things for sure.

What I do is just transmit the chi energy out of my third eye instead of storing up the chi energy in my lower tan tien -- this is easier because my parents, in their 70s, need the chi energy.

Drew

Thanks again for your very informative answer, I learned a lot from it. So what is it that you perfer to transmit energy out of your thrid eye? to help your parents, or do you not want too much energy in your lower dan tien for some reason?

Ok to answer your origianal question without philisphical commentary.... here is what you do ( I was in the Army, did basic blah blah blah)

Push ups- if you can't do a real push up do girly push ups, if you can't do girly push ups, then bench press as much as you possibly can until you can do girly push ups, and then do as many girly pushups until you can do real push ups, then do as many of those as you can.

Sit ups- if you can't do those do crunches, and leg lifts lying down.

Running- slowly build up your distance, don't do too much too fast, and brisk paced walks are also good if you can't run very well.

Healthy Diet- no junk food, ect...

One last thing. I personally do martial arts, finding a good martial arts school might help as well because they work you out really good (just make sure the instructor looks like he/ she is in shape, no pot bellies) and you can make friends, and doing excersice in a group is easier than doing it alone. ;-)

Hope that helps

Hey

You have a good question, and I'm sure you will get a lot of answers, so here is mine lol. I am also a scorpio and have a hard time calming down, (mind always going). Before I began my current Qigong routine I dabbled with various styles to see which one tickled my fancy. Still meditation (sitting or standing) was hard because I had a hard time being still. Tai Chi was rather complex to learn, and part of my problem in the first place was a lack of patience required to learn it, plus you should learn from a teacher and I couldn't do that. Yoga was too still abd didn't have enough motion for me (though it is relaxing).

So what I eventually made my regular practice was the 8 Brocades, which have helped me to be able to begin to do meditation. I like the brocades because you move, but the moves are simple to learn, you don't have to go to a class to learn it, its easy to memorize so you don't need a video or book for very long. Each movement is designed to work on a specific meridian, its good for your health and mind.

So from one scorpion to another I'd recommend beginning with the 8 brocades or some other type of moving physical qigong. ;-)

Oh one other thing I forgot to mention in regards to what you talk about with pervs sucking off your energy. Well I don't know much about such things, but in regards to personal experience I have noticed this, that there are certain people that after I have been around them I have a much more difficult time with the bizzare sexual thoughts n such. Also sometimes I'm out in public and may be close to someone and just get a nasty dirty vibe from them in a sexaul manner even though we may have not said anything to eachother? Is that sort of what your talking about Drew?

Well it's a third eye energy reading. So at first you do the tai chi and microcosmic orbit training. Everything is great -- you store your energy in the lower tan tien, and with good practice your energy builds up. But when the energy gets strong enough to open the third eye then the chi is also strong enough to do healing -- strong healing -- and also to have telepathy which is a third eye skill of the chi energy -- and precognition and telekinesis.

 

Those abilities are before nirvikalpa samadhi which is the spacetime vortex to fully open the third eye -- when you have the macrocosmic orbit as immortal breathing and you can see dead spirits.

 

At this point people around you will freak out because they can feel your chi energy -- so you have to store the chi energy in the lower tan tien -- and the shen energy -- but at the same time you are now able to perceive how your energy affects people around you and you can read where other people have their electromagnetic essence stored in their bodies.

 

So before the third eye is opened then a person is not able to read other people's energy -- but it's a function of the third eye to translate the energy outside the body -- the brain translates the electromagnetic fields back into the sensory perception of the various levels of energy: the electrochemical blockages of the organs, or the level of telepathy when the chi is stronger, etc.

 

Since where a person has their electromagnetic essence stored in their body is an energy level -- then just telling someone or even telling anyone doesn't do anything. Last time I outed a perv on taobums I got banned for a week. So now I just avoid the perv -- but unfortunately other people are not able to perceive that the person has his electromagnetic essence stuck in his lower body.

 

I've already posted what that entails -- just read the previous posts on the thread.

Hey Drew

Thanks for the info that you gave me about using the full lotus. It has been helping me quite a bit so far. I had a few more questions about something you mentioned about the converstion of sexual fluids to jing, to chi to shen, and going the opposite dirrection from shen, to chi, to jing, to fluids. You also mentioned (or something like this, I may have the exact details wrong) about heart chi turning into liver chi, to kidney chi, to fluids. This is something I'd really like to understand better.

Here is what I've noticed from personal observation (but don't know what it all means yet) I've noticed that when I'm uber horny if I release usually there is a large amount of fluid. So then is it the sexual fluid that causes desire? What I don't understand is why the older I get the more bizzare my sexual thoughts become when I do get uber horny? Also I had been doing a lot of full lotus for a week and been feeling better and better, but then my wife wanted me to do my husbandly duty, so yesterday we got busy and all seemed fine. Now today the urges and bizzare thougths were back again and strong this morning. But I remembered your adivce and immediately got into full lotus for as long as a could bear, which helped a lot.

So what happened? Did getting aroused with my wife cause more sexual fluids to be made? thus increasing desire? Is that why I had to get in to an emergency full lotus this morning? Did the full lotus convert my fluids into jing or chi or something which is why I feel better now?

Also some clarification about the heart to liver to kidney to fluid thing you touched upon would be appreciated as well. Also you mentioned doing Tai Chi, could the 8 Brocades be used instead of Tai Chi? As the 8 brocades is what I'm most familiar with and tend to do daily anyhow.

Thanks again

Yeah the full lotus is by far the fastest and most efficient means to burn off sex fluids back into electrochemical jing energy as heat and then into chi as electromagnetic energy.

 

So the question -- what to think about - the answer is nothing! The biggest problem in Western meditation is that it gets stuck in the conceptual realm of self-help theoretical b.s. -- stuck in the realm of words and thoughts!!

 

If you can sit in full lotus for just one minute -- then what are you thinking about in that one minute? Problem not sex -- problem that it hurts like hell and you want it to be done with. The goal is to EMPTY OUT that thought of pain.

 

The full lotus can be dangerous - you don't want to hurt yourself -- but at the same time as Chunyi Lin says about the full lotus:

 

"There's good pain and there's bad pain."

 

The reason the full lotus is good pain is because it's based on the inherent resonance of complementary opposites -- or as qigong master Effie P. Chow calls the full lotus:

 

Five Points Facing Heaven.

 

So again the full lotus will most effectively transform your energy up into the heavenly realm of the third eye. The Five Points being the two feet, the two hands and the head.

 

When the legs are crossed then you're getting the yin-yang resonance just like connecting wires of a battery.

 

The pressure on the bones creates ultrasound frequency which then ionizes your emotional or electrochemical energy. So your thoughts are a byproduct of emotional energy.

 

This is why any obsessive thought is actually a possession of the spirit of the lower emotions. If a person thinks the same thought over and over -- be it a thought of anger, or a thought of sex -- then that person is literally possessed.

 

So the full lotus will get rid of that thought -- replace it with the thought about the body pain.

 

Now if the third eye is open then the body channels also have to be open. If the third eye is really open then you can sit in full lotus as long as you want -- if you can't sit in full lotus then the body channels are not open and the third eye is not open.

 

Anyone who says otherwise is just using the conceptual realm to lie -- thoughts are more likely used for deception then they are for truth.

 

So if you can double your time in full lotus to TWO MINUTES that's great progress. The work from there -- UNTIL your spiritual possession state is gone.

 

The question is do you want to be free? Do you want to have a clear mind that is free to think whatever it wants without being controlled by the same thought over and over?

 

The answer is the full lotus. But if the full lotus is too difficult then you need another practice of body transformation using complementary opposite resonance. So the standing active exercises of simple Tai Chi -- the yin and yang reversal of the upper and lower body and left and right hand exercises.

 

Then there's the "small universe" exercise which is the 12 yin-yang notes or energy nodes along the outside of the body -- you can get the practice c.d. from http://springforestqigong.com

 

Chunyi Lin told Jim Nance that if he wanted to be an energy master then he needed to sit in full lotus for two hours straight nonstop every night -- without missing a night.

Drew

Thank you very much for you detailed reply. I will begin to do the full lotus as much as I can. A question about possesion. Do you mean possesion as in a spirit posseses you, or possesion as in you are possessed by your own emotional energy?

As to the standing moving aspect. I have already been doing the 8 brocades fairly reguarly, can I continue that in order to obtain the results that you recommended I could get from Tai Chi? Just asking because I am already very familiar with the Brocades.

Thanks again

I was reading some of the replies and I have a question for Drew or anyone else who can really give me some good advice.

I read where Drew was talking about Perverts, and converting jing to chi and / or chi to jing. He also mentioned that perverts had their electromagnetic essence stuck in their lower chakras. So here is my dilema / question... I really struggle a lot with unwanted sexually realated thoughts. As the thoughts first begin to arise I;ll try all sorts of things to quell them such as Qigong, meditation, homeopathy, flower essences, gemstones, ect... But eventually none of that stuff really has done any good for me so far. I usually don't get any peace from it until ejaculating, but of course the relief is only temporary.

What really bothers me is that the thoughts that bother me are of very unusual fantasies which freak me out, but they are strong and consistent.

I read that Drew said sitting in a full lotus was the answer, but one I can't really do that for more than a minute, and two what are you supposed to do in one, just breath, empty your mind? do the MCO? Is this a sacral chakra thing? a meridian blockage, or what?

I would really appreciate some help here as this one topic has been a long time source of mental anguish for me.

Agreed.

 

To go along with that, not everyone really agrees on this, but orgasm can have detrimental affects as well. I say detrimental because it's not really "bad", but if you get locked in a situation due to semen retention like you describe, it can become detrimental. In short, you don't want to get caught up in cycle like that.

 

From a more Taoist perspective, Trunk's site goes into more depth and detail about the dangers of semen retention and what to do.

 

Quick question. Are you "retaining" or are you simply practicing chastity (i.e. no masturbation, no touching, no sexual touching of self, etc.) I was under the impression that semen "retention" was something more specific and different.

No, I'm actually practicing semen retention, where when you reach the point of climax, you stop ejaculation, and move the energy. The idea is to not loose your energy, but I become so energetic after a while I feel like exploding.

Hi

I am new to this forum, and found it because of this very topic. I have been practicing semen retention for about a year and a half now along with other Qigong practices. One of my main motivations for getting into Qigong was to sooth my emotions which can tend to swing. Well I started to consider that semen retention was doing me more harm than good because the longer I retained it, the more of a sex obessed maniac I became to the point of it being exteremly distracting. When I got to the point that I couldn't take it anymore I would release semen and feel a LOT better for about a week or two. Then the same sex obessed feelings would come back until I released again. In the mean time I was doing other more traditional Qigong practices in order to stabilize my emotions, but the longer I "retained" the less help my Qigong exercises helped. When I did not practice retention Qigong exercises helped me so much that I was able to get off perscription anti-depressants (one reason I took up Qigong in the first place), but I think I may have gone from one problem to another with semen retention. The reason I started it though was because I read about how good it was for your health and longevity and aging ect... So while I don't want to loose a lot of my vital energy and stuff like that, I don't want to walk around as a sex maniac either. Is there a happy middle ground?

Hi

I am new to this forum and saying hello. I have been practicing various forms of Qigong for a couple years now with mixed results which is why I decided to join the forum, so hopefully people with more experience than I can help me out a bit.