zen-bear

Hi Junbao, 1. Yes, almost everybody sooner or later finds that the seated Monk Serves Wine meditations have a very calming and smoothing effect on human process following practice the standing FP Meditations (--not to say that the standing meditations are not calming as well). 2. Yes, the very slow "sand dune-speed" of the FP movements will translate into slower, calmer, more refined movement in Tai Chi and other Tai Chi-like internal arts. I first discovered this in the early 90's when I did "Bending the Bows" and then did the Yang Short Form (CMC) right afterwards. The FP energy turned my thought into action as the Yang Form seemed to do itself. 3. Your scheduling of different combinations of 3 FP meditations per day covering the 3 Standing FP meditations and the first 3 MSW seated meditations is very effective means of mastering each of those exercises in rotation. Everyone has to fit and tailor the practice to suit one's daily routine and lifestyle and what you've designed is a nice approach that "covers all bases." TIP #1: At some point, go back and do the 3 "warm-up" seated meditations that precede the 3 MSW meditations in Volume 2. After you've solidly established MSW meds 1 through 3, you'll find that these basic meditations are not that basic. TIP #2: Every now and then--say after 3, 6 or 9 months--block out enough time and push yourself to go through all the FP meditations (standing and seated) in one very long session--practicing them in the same way that you are not practicing them in combo's of 3--just to experience and obtain the FP Qigong System's cumulative effects and to let your next combination of exercises reveal itself to you. Given your present routine, you will find that you will get stronger and more energy-facile over several months of FP training. Good work! Sifu Terry

Hi Lloyd, Thanks for your appropos comments about the workings of karma and the lack of "smoothness' after the years of woodshedding in my 20's. Actually, thereafter, my training was concentrated to 2-5 hours per day (instead of 6). And for 15 years, life was a well-oiled machine: career, home life, hobbies, travel, and of course, kung-fu, Tai Chi, Qigong and healing practice all went dazzlingly smooth. Things only started getting rough in my mid-40's (late 90's) when the Special Interest niche of the video industry was exploding and my videos were booming-- and nasty (I mean really nasty and corrupt) large corporations entered the business. I can share the following with you because I know you're around my age: when it started in the mid-80's, the special interest sector of the video industry was pristine and actually was a clean channel for secular religion--i.e., people wanting an alternative to institutional religion could find good find good resources--be it Buddhism, Taoism,Vedanta, hermetic philosophy, and "new age" movements, etc. Back then, just like in the mid-and-late 1960's of rock-and-roll, artists were making records for love of their music and to reach people with their art to raise social and even spiritual consciousness--not to make big money. Similarly, in the mid- and late 80's, the Special Interest Video niche was a friendly and very honest cottage industry with a wide offering of ethically-made products (I don't know if you can remember that era and how products were made available). But as soon as Indian yoga and Pilates took off as a raging national fad in the 90's, and hundreds of yoga videos started getting churned out (like a herpes outbreak in the Oakwood apartments in Marina del Rey), and the smaller video publishers started getting bought-out by large conglomerates, the business got totally polluted and of course, the quality of programs went to shit also. This period of high pollution was from 1997 to 2003--partly due to the advent of DVD's in 97, which reduced manufacturing costs from $2.50+ for a 2-hr VHS cassette to less than 70 cents for a 5-hr. DVD. These higher profit margins were most appealing to the New Age bean-counters--who considered themselves avatars of higher consciousness living. For the past 8 years, the DVD products coming out of large publishers are more sterile, soul-less and shallow than ever in terms of content because they're cookie-cuttered--publishers just copied the format of the first generation of successful videos on VHS (that Healing Arts pioneered) and added slicker production values and packaging. But with no new substantial content. So that's where we are these days. As for Indian yoga industry in general in America, for the past 10 years, it's my often-expressed opinion that Indian yoga should return to its mode of teaching in the 1960's: only serious dedicated students learning from authentic guru's in a few small cadres. It's over-commercialization, super-low standards for practically anyone becoming a yoga teacher, and mass-marketing/"McDonaldization" doesn't do anyone any good because the truth and essence in that discipline has been diluted to the point of non-existence. And there are plenty of other more means for just plain relaxation--including aerobic forms of sports and exercise. More in a later manifesto. But back to karma: I also have some deep family karma (trans-generational) at work which manifests in certain battles that I undertake against corrupt organizations. But my battles pale in comparison to the ones my father and grandfather had to wage against overwhelming and oppressive powers--of a geo-political nature in my grandfather's case and of a military-intelligence nature in my father's case. Thanks very much for keeping your antennae up for corporate sponsors for my PBS project! Regards, Sifu Terry

Hello Christoph, Is there physical pain or discomfort that causes the "irritability"? Or is it more mental/emotional? Without seeing your practice, I can only say this much: if there's no physical source of the problem, you may be venting some emotional energy in the meditative state--which is a given in any type of meditative practice. At any rate, if it persists, try to pinpoint the source of the discomfort and if it's not physical, allow yourself to vent it safely. It's called "grist for the mill." All Qigong practice should balance meditation in repose with meditation in movement. Thus, if you're not doing it already, I would suggest adding to your practice the moving meditation, Bending the Bows", which is most fundamental to the FP System and which I wrote about in some detail one or two postings ago. This exercise will definitely start moving the energy between the three tan tiens and may alleviate or dissolve the source of the irritability. Also, the moving meditations, "Wind Above the Clouds" and "Wind Through Treetops" are most effective to remove any type of energy stagnation. (Vol. 3 of the CKFH series) Hope this helps. Sifu Terry Dunn

There are kicks and crane stance balances in the advanced meditations not just in the Flying Phoenix system but in the other internal arts of the White Tiger system. In all kung-fu forms, every cat stance or "sit" stance where 99% of the weight is on the rear leg and the front foot's heel or toe is touching the ground 1 to 2 feet in front of the rear heel, that posture can be interpreted to include a snap-kick or a crane kick or a sweep by the front foot as the primary application or as an optional application. fyi, for those of you who have reached this point in the FP training, in the last third of the FP Long Form Standing Med. (Vol.4), the left crane stance (left 45 degrees) before the step-down to left bow stance with forward extension of the right arm and palm (before turning right 90 degrees into square horse and left vertical punch), a kick can be done between the crane stance and the bowstance. (I just decided not to put it in to make it easier for beginners to keep their balancen, as that FP form has more than enough movements and complexity.) The "kicks" and crane stance balances in the Flying Phoenix meditations are done yogically following the principle that the generation of chi flow gives rise to the form of the posture. Sifu Terry Dunn

Hello RR: Answers: (1) No, I have not had experience with the Blue Flying Phoenix Tea. Is it made from a formula from GM Doo Wai? Who is providing or selling it? What are its ingredients? I would have to look at the ingredients (and the proportions are all important, as well) in order to tell if it's helpful to meditation and energy cultivation. In the FP training that GMDW gave us from 1990-1996, we used powerful herbs, but they were/are in an alcohol tincture, not tea'd. the only tea we made semi-regularly was from a Chinese mushroom (dried). Still, I'm interested in learning about the tea you mentioned. Thanks for mentioning it. (2) Both: Flying Phoenix is a 100% medical or healing Qigong system AND there is a spiritual aspect to this body of yogic knowledge. The alchemy by which it works has high spiritual origins, as the oral tradition states that Feng Tao Teh attributed his creation of the FP Meditations to a visitation during a meditation-induced trance state from an unnamed female Buddhist diety. In that part of China, Emeishan in Sichuan, the most revered Buddhist diety (that all the Buddhist temples on the mountain were dedicated to starting in the 3rd Century) is the Bodhisattva Puxian or Samantabhadra. Taoist and Buddhist practices, and all authentic yoga's are tools that can lead one to attain enlightenment and immortality. But attainment of either does not come by simply and exclusively practicing Yoga's--be they Taoist, Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, or Muslim, etc. The two, btw--enlightenment and immortality--are not exactly the same thing. They certainly overlap, of course. Taoism is a fine "warrior's" path because it teaches/inspires one to attain immortality within one lifetime. Regards, Sifu Terry Dunn

Thanks very much for your good wishes,Rainbow Vein!

Hi Lloyd, I thought about answering your question here through a PM, but upon review, I think it's ok to make available on the forum, in case anyone else might be interested. So here's the not-so-short version of how I transitioned from a traditional corporate career in finance and management consulting lasting ten years (think "Mad Men" of the 1980's) to my livelihood of the past 20 years as a media producer that allows me the opportunity to occasionally express my comprehension and training in the Chinese martial arts and the underpinning philosophies of Taoism and Chan Buddhism: After getting a bachelor's degree from Yale in 1976 and an M.B.A. from Harvard Bus. School in 1980 (worked 2 yrs in between in fundraising), I worked 10 years full-time in a series of fast-track jobs in corporate financial management and then management consulting (specializing in financial valuations for corp. restructuring for a financial think tank based in Chicago called the Alcar Group). All this time in my 20's through mid-30's, I trained intensively (near-fanatically) in the kung-fu and Tai Chi Chuan--6 hours a day 6 times a week. (One of my private students, actor Don Cheadle, told me that that's what they call "wood-shedding" where he grew up...the period where one is "learning one's chops"--in music, acting, or whatever discipline.) My kung-fu training started in 1973 with Sifu Douglas Wong's White Lotus KF system (Sil Lum 5 Animals and YKM). In the 80's I was studying Tao Tan Pai as well as well, simultaneously with Yang Tai Chi Chuan with Abraham Liu and 6H/8M with Dr. York Why Loo. (Today,I am still a student of Master Chan Ching Kai of NYC in 6H/8M). I started learning a Tai Chi form in 1976 but didn't start real Tai Chi training until I met my first Tai Chi master, Abraham Liu, in 1980. After working 10 years in a corporate lockstep that gave me a very nice life-style but that bored me to tears, I engineered an exit for myself by producing my first two Tai Chi For Health videos on VHS in 1990, which are still top-selling today on DVD. (I had learned video production in the mid-80's from a good friend in San Diego who was a fellow student under Abraham Liu at the time, Victoria Bearden (she taught video art at UCSD--long before there was any MTV, etc.). I loved photography and film since high school, and I picked up video production pretty quickly from Victoria. She helped me produce my very first programs in 1985: Master York Loo's Yang Tai Chi Long Form, Tai Chi Sword (with Dr. Loo), and Tai Chi Ruler (coming soon finally on DVD). I made these videos purely as a hobby in my spare time while I was doing my corporate career. (Back then, Abraham Liu was coming up to teach in L.A. every other week and oversaw my classes; he also gave two retreats a year in San Diego area, and I also attended every one of his classmate Master Benjamin Lo's week-long summer retreats up north in La Honda, CA.) So I packaged these early videos and sold them through direct mail flyers and a few ads in kung-fu magazines just for sake of the art. Around 1998, I started getting really bored and restless (and a bit burned-out) with the job, so I started casually writing the teaching narrative/script for the Tai Chi for Health programs while I was on the road as the Manager of the western states for the consulting firm--traveling to S.F., Portland, Seattle, and Boise every single month. Back then there were no laptop PC's yet; I was typing my script out using a 35-lb. "Compaq"-brand mini-computer that required wheels to haul through an airport. Remember those? it was state of the art then!) When the script was finished about a year later (I had been rehearsing it up to that time for some 9 yrs by teaching my weekly TC classes) over one long weekend in late summer of 1989, I filmed the outdoor opening scenes on a rocky beach in Palos Verdes and the instructional segment at a friend's photo studio in L.A. that wasn't even sound-proofed. I called in all favors from my friends in Hollywood and most fortunately, my cameraman John Slagle gave me a tremendous look for my shoestring budget...and I made 2 two-hour programs suitable for the mass market that are still top-selling today. I first started selling the TCFH Short Form and Long Form VHS cassettes out of my bath tub (that's where I stored them) by direct mail and direct response (ads in Tai Chi magazine, Inside KF, Yoga Journal, and Natural Health). And then a small but aggressive distributor called Healing Arts Publishing, Inc. (that made the very first and most popular videos teaching Yoga (featuring Patricia Walden, Rodney Yee et. al.) saw my ad in Yoga Journal, bought my tapes, loved them and contacted me to cut a licensing deal. This distributor, HAPI, did quite an amazing job placing my TCFH titles everywhere throughout the 90's, they grossed more than the average independent film, and those high royalties in the 90's allowed me to start my own production company and leave the corporate world for good. That's how I got to put away my suits in mothballs back in 1990. I was very lucky: I had a creative convulsion that forced my Tai Chi comprehension outside of myself, and it took the form of videos that were the right products at the right time and became a huge hit for 10 yrs+ in the video industry and are still going strong. It wasn't a situation where one day I said to myself "OK, I'm going to quit my job now and just do martial arts"; I had done both in parallel for most of my adult life, but feeling most of the time like a frustrated artist. Then I made the 2 TCFH videos to unfrustrate myself, and fortunately, the public loved them and they did very well, so that I've been self-employed for the past 20 yrs. But,unfortunately, the phenomenal success of Tai Chi For Health made both HAPI and its successor, Gaiam,inc., very greedy and arrogant and I wound up in two big lawsuits against them, almost back-to-back. I won the first one in glorious fashion in 1998, and recovered 100% of a huge amount of absconded royalties plus my attorneys' fees--just in time to invest in the tech boom. The collection of my judgment against HAPI threw it into distress and in 1999, it was eaten up by Gaiam through a hostile take-over. This justice was quite karmic and thorough and I'll elaborate in some detail here because it's an interesting story and lesson about what happened to one very diabolical crook who tried to plunder a clean and strong channel of teaching that he of course didn't know was sanctioned and protected: HAPI actually had started the lawsuit by suing me pre-emptively in August 2004, just 2 days after I had started auditing their books as provided for by my contract!!!--i.e., they knew they were going to get caught in the royalty audit, so they did a pre-emptive first strike and sued me first based on a mountain of false allegations (all later proven to be frivolous), trying to somehow deter me from my claims. As a result, the owner of HAPI, who I don't need to name here (because he learned his lesson in spades), not only had to pay me everything he had withheld over 3.5 yrs, plus interest and my atty's fees, but he lost control of the company that he founded and ran for 10 years, that had successfully carved the yoga/tai chi/low-impact exercise niche in the video industry and was reportedly doing more than $10 million a year. The owner of HAPI unwisely refused to pay the court-ordered judgement but instead tried to dog me--for over 9 months. Thus I was forced to levy his business bank accounts month after month, send in Sheriff keepers to sit in his business in 12 hr. shifts to prevent anything from being removed from the premises--remember HAPI was a wholesale and mail order distributor). Still he wouldn't pay my judgment. When I went to L.A. County Sheriffs office in Calabasas, CA (who do the property seizures in W. Los Angeles) to enforce the writ of execution, the sheriffs recognized me from Ron Chapel's A.O.T.(Advanced Officer Training) Seminars for Law Enforcment that I helped Ron to teach from 1993 to 1995 after the L.A riots & Rodney King incident (back then we trained the LA County Sheriffs, Calif. State Police, UCLA police, LA district school police,and L.A.Safety Police--everyone except LAPD). And the Sheriffs there even had my "Arrest & Control For Law enforcement" videos that I had produced for Ron with my name on it as the producer! Talk about serendipity--or synchronicity : So I personally gave Sgt. Gary Clarke my seizure instructions, and he says to me "Don't worry, Terry, we'll hit him hard for you." A few days later, the HAPI owner wakes up and all of his company cars are gone from the parking lot. But still he wouldn't pay. About a week later, on Sept. 14, 1998, which I later found out coincidentally fell his birthday, my private investigator and the Sheriffs with Bekins movers marched into his business in Venice, CA, and hauled out 35 Apple computers, 4 xerox machines, 2 refrigerators, and 2 warehouses full of inventory and started loading it all for liquidation. (I didn't choose the seizure date; the sheriff's did). I'm across the street (Main Street in Venice) on the 2nd floor of another business complex with a pair of binoculars and a huge brick of a cell-phone (1998 remember), looking in through the windows of HAPI's offices, telling my investigator to "take that plant, take that time-clock, and take the the desk lamp and chair out of every executive's office." After 4 full years of thievery and being dragged through an incredibly unjust lawsuit, that day was a very cathartic healing for me. As it turned out, the owner of HAPI borrowed money from the president of Gaiam, Inc. in exchange for 51% controlling interest in his company in order to pay my judgment in full that very same day to stop the seizure and prevent his business being totally gutted. About 7 months later, in April 1999, Gaiam fired this original owner/founder of Healing Arts and took over his entire catalog of some 30+ successful yoga/fitness videos. Undeniable proof of the saying, "Karma's a bitch." (this hostile take-over of HAPI, btw, is how Gaiam, Inc., which had no experience whatsoever in videos, got into the yoga DVD business.) But my second lawsuit, which should have been a much easier victory than the first case, which was worth much more, had to be settled in 2003 in not-very-satisfactory fashion due incredible bungling and ineptness by my lawyers. In the first lawsuit, I decimated the adversary, but in second lawsuit, I dissipated the adversary's business practices that I had alleged by getting the rights to my videos back, but I didn't recover anything close to the damages that I had claimed it had caused. But back to the future and the Positive: As early as 1994, I had planned 4 new Tai Chi for Health programs, the production of which has been postponed all these years. But they will still come out soon--and be all that much better for the delay. I'm poised to produce next year my definitive DVD series on Tai Chi Chuan that should stand for for a long time--hopefully,for generations--because my TC and KF practice is far-evolved from what is seen on the 1989 DVD's. (Because while Master Abraham Liu gave me the green light to make my first Yang Form videos in 1989, and my teaching skill was far above average, my form back then was not great nor very advanced in terms of (a) "linkage" and ( the lower back not relaxed and filled-out and the chest not simultaneously "empty" enough), I plan to make my final DVD instruction series on Tai Chi Chuan that shows "before" and "after" an additional 20 years of training. One of my current project is a thoroughly perfected multi-year series for PBS called "Tai Chi for Health from China" that will be 26 half-hour episodes per year. I can't say anymore about the show here, other than the project has been highly endorsed by PBS and I am currently looking for corporate sponsors to fund its sizable annual budget. The ideal sponsor is a company that wants to advertise a strong tie-in to China to the PBS audience: 110 million of the most educated and highly informed TV households in the country. (co.s like HSBC, China Airlines, Cathay Pacific, Kaiser Permanente, etc.) If you happen to know of any senior people at companies like these in charge of advertising, Lloyd, let me know. You can instantly become an executive producer in the series. Is that an interestingly enough story for ya, Lloyd? All the best, Terry Dunn P.S. I hope you all out there aren't glazed over from all the talk of lawsuits and crap, but in answering Lloyd's question, I decided to elaborate on some of the interesting karmic firefights that I had no choice but to engage in to protect my Work. The point is not to roll-over when strong evil tries to steal something's that's essential to you.

Hi Nic, Outside of the FP meditative practice, just breathe naturally--i.e., however you breathe without thinking about it. If it's natal breathing, all the better. It's always good and healthy to recover the natal breathing pattern (for those who deviated from that pattern for whatever causes). But I wouldn't worry about it if one isn't always breathing that way. Sifu Terry

Hello RR: Perfectly OK, although not ideal. It's quite alright to open your eyes from time to time to adjust your hand position or posture. Very few can adhere to perfect meditation form with every practice session. The "forearms draped over a giant egg" position in the seated Monk Gazing at Moon meditation is a most natural position, and with more practice, your body will naturally conform to it. But for quick improvement: just spend more time holding the static position (5 to 10 minutes, even) before you start "tweaking" the forearms. And every time you feel your arms go out of alignment, just open your eyes and bring them back to the proper position. It's only a matter of time before you perfect the form of this exercise. Best, Terry Dunn

Hi WTM, For MHP to be 100% effective, you want to have your hands in the proper position. And doing just the breathing without the correct posture will over time dilute the effects when you do do it properly. So don't cut corners in terms of form. I have not had time to redo Vol. 6 on DVD. I have do have plans to do so. But I can't estimate at the moment when I can get to it. Answer: No, the exercises in Vol. 6 are all Bok Fu Pai meditations and are unrelated to BDG. Regards, Sifu Terry

Hi Junbao, Answers are below in bold italic: Enjoy your practice. Terry Dunn

Hi MJJ, You're welcome. 'Glad you found the info to be interesting. What's a blog for, after all? Regards, Terry Dunn

Hello Nic, Sorry for overlooking your question when you first wrote this...and taking so long to find it. But better late than never, I guess: The FP energy reserve that you create through long-term, proper practice is actually quite difficult to squander unless you drastically change your lifestyle to an unhealthy and self-destructive one, and such a change is normally caused by a dramatic shift in mentality and psychological health. In general, it boils down to what types of forces you expose yourself to--positive or negative. Specifically, you can deplete the FP energy reserve by developing any type of excess or imbalance in your physiology through bad diet, substance abuse, over-eating, under-eating,sleep deprivation,exposure,lack of exercise, too much exercise, prolonged physical exhaustion, and knowingly or unknowingly absorbing extremely high levels of stress. Trying to heal others with FP energy without sufficient training in the FP Qigong as well as the delivery method can also have depleting affects. It's called being a "wounded healer." As stated in an early post, best results in FP Qigong and pretty much all of the internal arts under the White Tiger banner depend on a foundation of regular and sufficient sleep, as well as a decent diet. Thus if you somehow become seriously sleep deprived for a long term, the FP energy will quickly deplete--especially if you cease practicing it. Also as stated in earlier post, the FP Qigong practice is not affected by sexual activity; celibacy is not required during its practice. So you really have to knock yourself out with excessive sexual activity in order to undo the gains made through FP practice. But I guess anything is possible... Regards, Sifu Terry Dunn

Hi Nic, Bending the Bows is one of the most important moving FP meditations. It first massages all the organs in one's body mass physically with its symmetrical opening and closing movements that first appear to b--and feel to b--on two planes. With more refined and slower practice of each round of the exercise, the FP energy will manifest and its cultivation will be tangibly felt...and the opening and closing of the FP energy will be felt to occur on more than the initial 2 planes. Thanks for sharing. Enjoy, Terry Dunn

Hi Junbao, I'm glad you're experiencing nice results from the FP practice. My answers to your questions are in italic-bold below: The feeling of the physical body "dissolving" (with relatively little practice)is a trademark of the FP Meditations. Enjoy, Terry Dunn