ShaktiMama

I agree. Using the mind to train the mind is like telling a little kid to guard the cookie jar. But people are attached to using their minds so it's a start. s

I would go as far to say qigong becomes your natural movement, belly breath becomes natural, all activity is moving meditation...life become more seamless and flowing. I remember, early in the process, how I dove into something very dark and heavy, when I arrived on the other side my spirit body was charred and burnt. Only my two eyes were recognizable. Not for the faint hearted. s

Or as some of my female friends said, just like I did when it happened to me, "OMFG! I am effing pregnant!" I once watched a woman grow a pregnant belly and lose it in a half hour when Dr. Morris and I were leading a pranayama type excercise. Freaked us out! (But hey, we played cool. ) Yeah, it was a girl baby in my belly. Still there in different form too. Your MMV but be prepared. s I don't hear of this phenomenon at all out there (except in private sessions with women)but I would imagine considering where the idea of Immaculate Conception got started. Just a thought.

Its alright, I am not a Taoist. Nor are any of my students probably. I work with people from where they are at. We can get into a pissing contest I suppose and say my chi kung master is better than yours (Chinese, 105 years old...blah, blah, blah) and he will contradict what you say. I trained with him in Beijing, Master Duan Zhi-liang. We can trot these elderly men out but I am speaking from empirical knowledge. My students are not at the level of these masters. They make mistakes. It is best, IMO, they learn not to give their own energy away. When they become a master like the ones you know they can but the general public and noobs, can't. I would expect someone at the level of these masters who have been cultivating since they were 8 or 9 to be like this. Like I said, I know chi beasts. But I teach young students and grandpas, males and females, who only have a short time each day to attend to practice. I can't ask children to lift boulders even if that is what they will be expected to do someday. Does that clarify? Students will get sick if they use their own energy. Someday they won't have too. But energy hygiene is so important to beginners up to medical qigong doctors. s I am sorry if I have offended you. I have to assume that I don't know anything about you (I don't) and work from there. Yeah, I know VAST in energy...but I won't talk about it on a forum.

swinging swords: it is possible you are feeling intent. Intent is very important. In Japan, when you get to the 5th level Dan they give you the sword test. Hatsumi-san stands behind you with a shinai. You sit in fudosai with your back to him. Or you can do it on your knees. The only way to be promoted is to move away and not get hit by the shinai when he brings it down over your head and back. We do that for second Dan in Hoshin. Myself and others consider it child's play. It's so easy once you know what you are doing. Dr. Morris told me that sometimes Hatsumi would mask his intent so he could hit the person so they would not advance. He also told me that not too long ago, maybe a 100 years or less, the Soke used a live sword. If you didn't know when to roll you died. That's why I stress using learning that has been battle tested. If it doesn't work, you die or at least are seriously injured. Maybe I should talk about energy from combat perspective from now on. Maybe people would understand it easier. If you were a pain in the ass trouble maker, the Soke would mask his intent and kill you with the live sword. Great way to take care of political opponents in the Ryu. If you have been hit hard with a shinai you know it hurts. You know when you failed when you failed in front of all the other Shodan. You can't fake that. But regarding sword play in the dark it helps to be able to see auras. It also helps to be able to read the emotion, to feel the "killing intent". I am good at feeling the killing intent. My body says, "RUN!" re: training and practice. This will sound harsh. One who trains and trains well for basketball and then performs well doesn't necessarily perform equally well at singing. It's probably the shen development you need to be cultivating more. re:avatar If that's what you think then there are far more avatars walking around in the world than you realize. I wouldn't call that avatar skill. That's every day skill. Basics. People who are more advance beyond the basics you will see more evidence of the virtues. People who have the basics down are not necessarily nicer or better people. Even if the universal energy is not infinite it would theoretically take a long time to use up the power source of a star. More than I need to worry about it. I also think your world view that seems to be dualistic will hinder you rather than help you in your quest to go other levels. Ok...work comes early in the AM. Happy trails, Susan

Will you give students their own pint of your blood every day in class? Chi is real like gravity or radiation regardless what people say and how they hound about data. It is not some airy fairy concept. All the data they need if that's what they are looking for is in the first edition Biblio of Jerry Alan Johnson's Medical Qigong. Not much western data yet but there are tons of data from China. It's there if they want it. Search PubMed for chi and you will find articles. When you give people your energy ( an amalgam of chi, jing, and shen-the three treasures- in my experience) you are actually cutting off a piece of your body and handing it to them. Don't do that. You will kill yourself or at least make yourself sick speaking as someone who has been ill unto death with chi and blood deficiency. Get universal chi (not new agey concept. It's old agey.) There's a level to every thing that is done. There's a chi, jing, and shen level. I am asking you to pull energy from the shen level on a universal scale. Basic chi gong hygiene. As you pull in the universal chi you benefit as well as the one who is receiving from you. If you have a strong cultivation practice you might not be depleted so much because you practice so much. So that can protect you. But people do use up their prenatal chi doing healings in some opinions. It varies whether that can be replenished or not. Depends on the authority you are talking to but those with poor prenatal chi can surpass the hugely naturally gifted ones if their internal cultivation practice is good. Eventually, you will get saturated enough your intent will just handle it and you can go on autopilot. Someone just sitting next to you will get the chi they need. This is going to sound harsh...but this is all basic chi 101 grade school stuff. In my experience once you got this stuff down then you are beginning to be ready for the good stuff. I don't talk about it much, at least not anymore, because people jump in to want me to prove things to them. I do this stuff everyday. It's like they are asking me to prove I can tie my shoelaces. It works and I am happy with that. Your body is the nexus between heaven and earth for transformation and alchemy. Once you understand that the fun really begins. I am giving away the good stuff here. There will be those who will recognize it for what it is, take it to heart, and the rest will, well, pooh pooh it. s

Getting pretty busy so I have to back away from the forums again so I cant be around to answer questions as much as I like. It is called subtle energy for a reason. But, I have had personal experiences with chi beasts that just knock you off your chair and set your hair on fire or turn your body ice cold but lets just leave at that. Energy cultivation is culmulative. The more you practice the better you get. One of first thing we do in our seminars is do things to teach people how to become sensitive to energy. By the end of the weekend some of them are pushing people over with chi but they have also become more sensitive to feeling and are in a protected space to practice. Your practice will bring in more energy and knowledge that is not always transferable in words. I will say coming with an empty cup is about the most important thing you can do for a teacher. One must also consider polarities. If the energies between two people, for example, are strongly polarized as in one more yin and the other more yang it is easier to pick up. The easiest one to feel is that of sexual attraction. Much of that is energy. Energy exchange is going on all the time even when we are not aware of it. The body has it's way of knowing, a wisdom, that if are aware of it you can see what the effects energy have even if you can't see. Listen to what people say, "that tugs at my heart strings. I feel that in my heart." "I felt like I was punched in my stomach." You can probably think of others like that. Those are some characteristics of energy exchange. Sensitivity training is fun to do with your eyes closed. The higher levels of the martial art that I am involved with, Hoshin, requires that at a certain level black belts learn to defend themself in a pitch black room just by sensing energy fields and auras. Easily testable. In ancient times, an assassin sitting in a tree could feel the energy field of the approaching soldiers. Could also tell the numbers and the emotional quality of their thoughts. When students eyes are closed it is easy for me to watch students and see them react to subtle energy fields. You watch their faces or their body language and you know they are feeling something. But then you see the doubt cross their mind and they deny having this natural body response. There are simple energy games we play in class to promote confidence in feeling energy. It is natural to everyone. You just need some more training and practice. If you are also a healer you will advance faster than others. I am not sure what you mean by the last question but there is no time, nospace, no distance in Consciousness when we are working with energy. Never use your own energy. Pull from the heavens and the earth into your body. Mix in your heart and send out your arms to your hands. Or radiate out your body into the world. So much to learn here. Be well, Susan I just wanted to add... I only can feel Santi's energy field as very subtle. The polarities are pretty harmonious between us so when we send each other energy it feels like a marshmallow toss. Dont judge your abilities by what others report. It is subjective to the person although there are definate signs. I use to be a total brick about all this. it just takes time. My knowledge has been enhanced by working and teaching with Dr. Glenn Morris and Santi. There's a lot of fluff out there. They both come from ancient warrior martial traditions. These esoteric martial arts understand energy very well. It is also very practical because if you didnt learn the right technique and you were learning fluff instead from a nice guy who had no juice...you would end up dying in battle or a fight. This is how techniques were chosen...did it save your life?

Here a simple way to empty the cache. Dr. Morris talks about it his first book Path Notes: the Bad Ass Brain Scrub. Leads to the state of Mushin . Also called No Mindness. You can read about it here. Simple but can you do it? Scrub He discusses it over several pages. s

Fighting for Lives This Charity was started a few years ago by a friend and student of Vajrasattva (Santiago). It helps children around the world by raising money and giving education and love. There are a series of ten videos on the site that documents the visit of Fighting for Lives to Kenya. I dare ya to watch them without cracking a smile or shedding a tear. The Kenya visit is in memorium for Vajrasattava's son, Izaac, who recently died. Please help if it speaks to your heart. Blessings, Shaktimama Susan

ya...sorta like me who thinks her parents are a lot smarter and loving the older she gets. my invisibility cloak is worn thin in some places and really, really thick in others...makes me nutters sometime.

Back in 2005 I worked myself into a blood and chi deficient state. I was working 16 hour days and more. I also found out I was severely, severely anemic to the point I could have easily died. I eventually required iron transfusions to recover and now have to take iron supplementation for the rest of my life it seems. Before that a lot of free advice I received revolved around "are you practicing your qigong? Do more standing?" and such. The advice generally revolved around do more, do more. So one weekend I attended a qigong workshop and by the time Tuesday rolled around I thought I was going to die. I had to crawl from my bed to the kitchen or to the couch. I would fall over with weakness and nausea. My skin actually took on a greenish color. Occassionally, it also had this yellowish orange color that is called "smoked ham". The color change lasted for about three months. After three days of crawling and nausea and feeling like those were the last days of my life on earth I was strong enough to go see an excellent acupuncture physician. Through his heavily accented Chinglish he scolded me for doing so much qigong. He said I was even purging myself of my own prenatal chi in my chi and blood deficient state. I was making myself worse not better. He gave me firm instructions to do only 1 minute of chi gong a day for the next couple of months. Then maybe I could go to five minutes. He gave me a standing posture to do that was minimialist in its simplicity: Standing with arms at side, index fingers pointing to the earth. Pointing straight down so that they pointed through the tops of my arches in a stance. Then just breathe. This experience led me to start studying medical qigong. People who want to be teachers should ask themselves, If a student said they became very ill from chi gong would you believe them and would you know what to do? Qigong is not an innocuous practice. It is extremely powerful. It is important to learn what practices are beneficial for most people but they are not necessarily beneficial for all. There is one particular practice that I know of called Bringing Down the Heavens. It is pretty common. It should not be done for more than a couple of repetitions with people who have low blood pressure because one of it's effects is to lower blood pressure. Unless... you want your students fainting on you. I am sure others could contribute some similiar experiences. s

Depends. If you are a healer it may be because your skills at energy hygiene are lacking, or you are processing their karma through your body, or you are running your own personal energy instead of a universal, cosmic energy. It is difficult to become depleted/tired when you are the channel and not the source of the chi. s I did want to add...one of the ways you know you are flowing universal energy rather than your own is because you will feel energized rather than tired. When Vajrasattva and I work in tandem we can work for hours with people on the table. We have people bring us food and drink and then we go right back to it. It can take a long time to fall asleep at bed time when it comes. For both of us, individually, it is the same way. I have gone for 5 hours working with people without a break.

Consider one of my teachers who is a direct student of Dr. Jerry Alan Johnson. She can tell you the 18 ways of holding your body in correct stance and why. http://www.qigongmedicine.com/info.php?i=2137 Do you know how to correct someone's stance if their pelvis is tilted too forward in standing stake and why that is important? Students will ask you why all the time. If anything you must have a lot a knowledge to teach a very little. Learn one stance very well, teach proper posture, and correct breathing and why this is important and you will have a class. s

yes...I was instructed hurting and healing went hand in hand. If you broke it you had to be able to fix what you broke. When we get to playing at levels you are describing people who are observing the players start to use magical thinking to explain what is happening. s

I did want to add Starjumper, that I attended a one day class with Alexander Everett in the mid 90s ...95? ...also. He had a profound influence on a teacher, now passed, of mine. The class was a good gate way into higher concepts. He was not so well known in his later days but it is good to find someone who has learned from him. s

I like you too, St. I just wanted to share that a DVD is a powerful way to share energy. You can not only feel the energy but you can see the aura if they have one. The old ones are particulary good at it but some of the younger ones can transmit as well through that media. s

Sometimes it does happen but the ones who do that I know are the first to try and resolve the issue peacefully or even avoid it. Using super powers is the last resort. And they don't boast about it to the noobs. It only is discussed in class as examples or as conversation among the elders. The biggest super powers are love, peace, and harmony. The elite esoteric martial artists know there is always a better way. Dr. Glenn Morris occassionally use to tell me stories of elite martial artists who did so as did he. He always stressed, with a smile in his voice, that a good warrior always came home to Mother, alive. It was family first, friends second, then country in order of priority. s

milk before meat, Cat... some of my fav aphorisms: Reality is what happens when you don't believe in it anymore. Time is a great teacher...unfortunately, it kills all it students. aphorisms are easily digested, but the effects on are growth are sometimes like empty calories. But, they are a nice starting point for people if it gets them to begin to think rather than stoke their egos. I am finally learning, Cat, that real wisdom is a form of child abuse. It's like making someone with little strength carry something immoveable when they are not ready. love, s

In the olden days, saying "my way or the highway" was often just economic. If a teacher depended on their status for livelihood (which is often not the case for today), it is often to the teacher's best interest to make the process last for years and to admonish the students to never study with anyone else. I had a student who was admonished by his shaolin teacher to never see anyone else. The student came to see me and spent a week learning. He went back home to his teacher who said, "what is this bad energy you have? Are you learning from somone else?" This was more serious than it sounds for the student since his teacher was telling people he was going to make the student his lineage heir. A year later the elderly chinese shaolin teacher and I taught a few classes together. He remarked on how advanced my students were even though they were not chinese. He was never told that myself was the teacher who gave his student "bad energy." He did depend on his students and patients for his income. So keep in mind the economics of who you learn from. Find a good teacher and stick with them for awhile until you are really good with their basics and maybe the next level or so. Then go exploring because diversity is good for practice. It injects new blood (chi) into the practice. I always tell my students to go out and learn from others. s

That's her natural hair color. In the afternoon we would go swimmming together and she would have us practice chi gong forms in the deep end. I could do chi gong all day in water. One day I had a cramp in my leg while swimming. She grabbed my leg in the pool and massaged the cramp out and filled it with chi. She has fingers like steel. She doesn't look like a 70+ year old woman in her bathing suit. She also taught us the anti cancer walk, a chi gong form. We would do it up and down the hills in the afternoon sun, sweating like you wouldn't believe. s

I dont know what happened to Madame Wang's website but I found this which has info about her from a couple of years ago. http://www.kahunavalley.org/wang-yan.htm I found it! http://www.drwch.com/

Hi, She asked us not to train others because you must be trained by a knowedgeable practitioner. She was trained by one of the few practitioners of the art in China. It involved an initation and transmission. She said this way to help us absorb and process the solar energy better. The initation happened as the sun was rising.Our eyes were closed but we were instructed to look towards the sun. She starting saying a Buddhist prayer (that is what she said it was) and then it felt like someone drove a nail into the top of my head. Not painful but just strong force. It felt like it pierced my skull and to my inner vision I could see a white diamond hanging from the interior top of my skull. It began to glow and shine through my brain. It is still there. She said she wasnt touching me with her physical finger but was drilling with her chi finger. Then she gave us instruction on how to gaze and breathe the energy, how to circulate, what to look for, etc. For example, I saw some of the hexagrams of the I ching, plus a pulsating yin yang symbol on the surface of the sun. The solar chi is very life affirming, powerful, good for health. I don't do it as much as I like to but she considers it something essential for long life and health. Since she is in her 70s, looks like she is in her 40s ( I have a pic of her, also vid or her doing Tai Ch'i Sword) and is still a practicing Medical Qigong doctor in Holland, she may have something to say. She is married to a traditional medical doc who is a surgeon. She says they have interesting conversations. If you are in the US she does come to teach her once a year at Michael Winn's retreat. s

One of my female Medical Qigong Masters, a woman in her late 70s who lives in the Netherlands, for years traveled over China for the government collecting all extant teachings of Qigong into an encyclopedic reference. She knows so much and shares readily and she vibrates with chi. She is also a Tai Ch'i international judge and world champion. I didn't read about her on the internet. I went and studied with her. One of the things she taught us was to absorb solar energy from the sun in the morning through eyes open gazing. Wonderful effect on post natal chi. s

Ahhh...you have all your answers already. Good to know. Happy trails to you, s

I can speak from my own experience, the more you live and understand the knowledge you have, the more knowledge you receive. What I know is if you don't cultivate your own garden it is a bit difficult to cultivate in the world's garden. It's great that you want to help people but, suprisingly, a lot of people don't want your help and it is fairly big headed to expect that people do. We even have a phrase for that attitude, The helping hand strikes again. If your knowledge and understanding is not growing through Aha! moments and through your own personal understanding and practice...you need to work on your own stuff more and not come to a forum and ask questions like that. Just my opinion. Relatively speaking, in 20 plus years of practice and meditation, I know much. In the scheme of things I know nothing. I am always a beginner, always a white belt. But I will tell you the knowledge is simple and elegant. I have spoken of such knowledge on this board before but what I hear most often back is "you are full of shit," in so many words. Lots of entitlement feelings here it seems. I could be wrong. And, there are other teachers who do feel the same way. People want to wolf down the meat before they learn to digest the milk. You might say, "i am ready for the meat!" Well, if you are still looking for it...maybe not. I still share stuff and people still attack me. Other teachers ask me, "why in the hell do you remain on that board?" Good question. A couple of qigong masters have told me you can reach enlightenment by doing one qigong practice a day for about 3 years. Usually they say standing stake or horse stance. If a person has even stood in a stance for a half hour (or even 10 minutes!) a person will understand what a lesson of self awareness that is. It is your practice which will enlarge your knowledge more than anything that anyone can share with you. Knowledge is just knowledge. Learn how to use rightly what you know first. Check in with an authentic master and see if you have an authentic practice that has brought change and self development, brings virtue, on your path. You seem to have been on this board for awhile so maybe you know how to accomplish that. That is one of the first enormous pieces of knowledge that is shared with you. Will you reject it out of kind for what ever reason or will you thoughtfully explore this piece of knoweldge? You have discarded the concept of "virtue" then? A student once complained to me, "you keep saying that same thing,". 5 years later he says to me, "I understand now. You were right. I could not see it before." The information is not suppressed if the ground has not been prepared. Why throw good seed on hard, dry ground? Nothing is going to grow. In fact, it will die. s