Jetsun

Wouldn't attention on the lower dan tien make it a completely different sort of exercise? I have limited understanding but attention there would involve sinking your qi and making it a form of meditation whereas I thought in zhan zhuang was just standing with your mind free to do whatever it wants

Double post

I don't really understand the reason to discriminate in who gets taught a system now, originally when a lot of the energy and martial systems were developed many rival groups were at war or in competition with each other so discrimination of teaching were needed to stop your best weapons falling into your enemies hands. That is simply not the case now so it seems this lineage is stuck in ancient outdated modes of thinking or worse.

So what if your life circumstances prevent you from growing, or loving, or evolving or being happy, does that mean your life is worthless?

Sorry to hear you are suffering so much, it is hard to really give advice as each has to find their own path but what I know from my own journey is that no-one is born weak or as a victim, everyone is born with power and you can see that in young babies in how long they scream for and in their rages, there is immense power in everybody. But then to control you people manipulate you to turn your power on yourself creating contradictions and conflicting intents and people inevitably put a great deal of their power into defences. But the thing is that power is never lost or gone for good it has just been sublimated or misdirected but it still exists in your body right now and it can be reclaimed to service you rather than work against you. How to do that is probably unique for each person, personally I had to learn how to use my anger verbally to set boundaries so people knew they weren't allowed to treat me badly and also trying to let go of what else was using my anger in non healthy ways.

If you reclaim your own power you can stop all this stuff happening to you, the abusers may even thank you for doing so.

I can only talk of my path but the first step for me has been to reclaim my anger so that if anyone does come at me I now have the option to say no or push them away, this took years of psychotherapy but it means I have more options now and don't always follow the same road. The second stage is to try to let go of the patterns that keep me stuck and letting go of the secondary gains I get from staying as a victim such as identity, misplaced pride, not rocking the family boat and expectations etc. Letting go of this stuff is incredibly difficult and I cant say I have really done it yet but at the moment I am finding the psychological work of Stephen Wollinsky very helpful who approaches inner child work from a very good perspective and also all the energetic work I am doing such as Water Method Qigong and Shamanic Recapitulation (which I have now given up)has helped to some extent to show me it is possible to let go of patterns energetically once the secondary gain of keeping the pattern is prepared to die.

You can get original copies of "Beelzebub's Tales To His Grandson" and "Meetings With Remarkable Men" by G I Gurdjieff, although the original was written in Russian Gurdjieff helped translate it to English. Perhaps not regarded as a Sacred text by as many people as the classics this book was written with astrological laws including the law of octaves and the rule of three and is written in such a way using a certain method so that it actually can change your thinking, perhaps it is the only book I have ever read that can do that. It's not as poetic as some of the traditional texts but in many ways I regard it as more sacred than many of the others which have been modified by unconscious people and lost much of their intent.

Ah I didn't know there was a breathing cd, the one I was talking about is called The Tao of Letting Go which is 6cd inner dissolving set. I will have to try to get hold of the other one.

The cd set is really good but it's focus is nearly all on sitting inner dissolving. I tried to jump right into that and it didn't help so mastering the breathing and outer dissolving first is definitely recommended.

Theoretically you could probably dissolve in any posture but it should be remembered that it is the downward flow of energy which aids the process so any posture which directs the flow any other way could make it difficult in my opinion, I'm not sure if those other postures do direct energy another way or not though.

I don't believe in evil, only unconsciousness

Bruce Frantzis Water methods are all about Taoist methods of healing, that is the focus of that whole area of his work. Personally I think his methods are very good and he talks about healing in areas I haven't heard anyone else mention very much, such as healing on the non verbal level. It's not just shifting your weight from one side to the other, it may not be as externally active as some forms but internally it's all about using the mind to break up blocks in your system so it is very active internally. I haven't tried Wild Goose Qigong but the Water Method released a lot of emotional blocks many other forms of Qigong didn't touch.

When I watch serious films like The boy in the Striped Pijamas and Schindlers List I get motivated to try to elevate myself and conquer my demons

Someone from this website recommended me a meditation book by Daniel Ingram which I think could help, I was more into reading more primary texts before but this book is good imo. It talks about Vipassana a bit but it will give you advice one where to go whatever stage you are at, especially by analysing your experience of no thought to see whether it it is characterised by "the three conditions" of suffering, no self and impermanence. You can get it free from his website http://www.interactivebuddha.com/mctb.shtml

Those are some good questions

Is this a common well known opinion of him that he has a bad temper or is it just rumour? Not that I have ever met him but I got the impression from his Water Method books that he focused more on Yin compassionate methods now which I would have thought would calm such a temper, I studied his teaching on anger quite closely in his books looking for advice lol.

Chan Buddhism is a good mix of Taoism and Buddhism so that is a good place to look at. Personally on a practical level I found there is a difference in starting point between Taoism and Buddhism in that Taoism starts by trying to bring a person into balance before developing them spiritually, whereas Buddhism generally presumes a decent level of health and balance in the practitioner already.

I think the Dalai Lama is a bit of a scamp, often if he meets someone with a beard he will pull it for a laugh

Modern psychology is pretty good at describing and mapping the early years of human development, Freud was just the beginning it has advanced since then, the problem with it is that it lacks methods to actually help and correct problems which is why many people fall back to using medication. If anyone has any information about Taoist psychology I would be very interested too

Hi, a while back I asked about comparison between the Stillness Movement and Water Methods and would like to get some opinions about these methods from experienced people if possible. Without trying to go into too much personal detail I have been searching for methods to help with mental health for many years and have experimented with many different things and methods, recently I have been using the standing outer Water Method after reading a post on this forum about how someone recovered form severe mental illness using this method. I think I have a decent understanding of the Water Method now, I liked and agreed with a lot of the theory about the importance of moving your energy down into the ground to ground you and the importance of letting go, as it appears to me the method is to try to get your body to go "hung" or fully relaxed releasing any tensions with the mind as you move down the body, there doesn't seem to be any cultivation rather more opening and letting go. I have had some success with this but as I encounter some difficult areas in my body I sometimes get a contraction afterwards which exacerbates my psychological problems and it appears some parts of my energy view this (and probably any form of healing) as a threat. It appears there are large parts of my body which don't want to let go, which are infact holding on for dear life and im not sure how to deal with them or convince them it's safe, even when I generate metta and use the lightest attention/intention on these areas they don't like it and contract often filling my body with what feels like ice cold energy. Perhaps this method makes me too yin as I am quite yin anyway and dealing with a lot of repressed fear and weakness. I was wondering how the Stillness Movement approaches healing especially psychological elements like I have described? I understand it's a more spontaneous form of Qigong and is more about cultivating Qi but is there great intent involved or manipulation involved? any sort of information about it is most appreciated, especially if there is an approach involved which could help heal areas which don't want to be healed (if that makes any sense ) Is there often an exacerbation of psychological symptoms before resolving them when using this method? is this even a method which works in this area or is is more of a physical healing method? Any advice or help of any sort is most appreciated Jetsun

That sounds great, I would love to get back to a state where my body and breathing is as relaxed as a child again. I wonder if that is even possible in a sexually charged "responsible" adult? I don't think the Water Method is about visualizations at all, the block in your body is described as ice only because that is how it is felt physically, and then it can be melted by presence of your consciousness which then turns it into water, what I think is meant by water is that once it is melted all the information and emotion which was contained in the block is freed and can enter the mindstream which feels like a flow of water, then the information/emotion can be let go into space for good like water turning into gas, or if you are unfortunate the water can turn back into ice and the block isn't resolved. I have tried doing this dissolving today using the much gentler method snowmonki recommended of just using presence without much intent and it felt better to me, it feels like the saying "less is more" is relevant, so the gentler you are the more powerful it is. Perhaps I just needed more faith in the dissolving to occur without my active participation, so I might start to worship the dissolving God whoever that is. Just wondering do you guys see any conflict or bad consequence of doing the Water Method and Gift of the Tao during the same day? Or if I should only do one which would you personally recommend for healing?

Hi, welcome, there are a few Falun Gong threads knocking about talking about these subjects. There are quite a few different people here with varied opinions, some dislike it, some like the exercises but hate all the rest of the guff that goes along with it, while others swallow everything said everything said about it. Personally I learned the Qigong of the system a while ago which I enjoyed but ended up moving on

The work Gurdjieff taught was all about becoming less under the influence of the stars and cosmic bodies, he described those people involved in war as under the influence of mass psychosis and much of the drive of his work was because of the horrors of living through two world wars and attempting to do all he could to uproot this mass psychosis or at least give some people the option not to take part in it. He described the will of people to destroy each others existence as an abomination of nature and one of the chief evils of Kunderbuffer/ego and the whole point of his teachings was so that mans hormones and drives could be expressed and transmuted without war.