Harmonious Emptiness

Useful ground to build on. Looking forward to the rest of the responses

Yes, if you're doing mo pai, see this thread (one of a few made for the same guy): http://www.thetaobums.com/index.php?/topic/23403-leaking-dan-tian-yang-embryo/ Basically seriously messed himself up. No idea what's happened since he went to the hospital. Mo Pai sounds sort of like becoming an astronaut.. Don't do it if you're not ready to go the distance. If you want to benefit from the advantages of qi gong in general and haven't found "the one" for you yet there are lots of people around here who could help you find one based on what you hope to get out of the practice and what you might be combining it with. If you do have an advanced teacher and you really want to learn what he can teach you, then you are in luck. Otherwise, just doing the breathing exercises you mentioned out of a book, there are a lot more fruitful paths you could take even before finding a teacher, and many people here with tidbits of advice to sift through in gettting a better start in Chi Gong, imo, if you're interested....

ba-bump. Does anyone know about XuanXue and/or Shengren?

One more difference of opinion here, all the more reason to get it checked out by a proper specialist in person, but it sounds like stress leading to tension leading to decrease in circulation and thus a general imbalance/lack of proper function, and need of some overall normalization. I can't speak from any point of professional expertise, but I think the meditation helps because good and proper meditation tends to normalize and even things out, "filling the gaps and leveling the mounds" so to speak. To approach it from a nutritional/herbal etc side one would need to know A LOT about your present balance of elements/internal organs etc., which would best be done by a TCM doctor who knows how to do pulse diagnosis (determining the balance of organ powers through feeling pulses in your wrist). You could try some more balancing chi gong, like Chun Yi Lin's system, instead of hard qi gong. This is generally a very safe approach to health, whereas building up tons of chi can be like, well, keeping a tiger as an indoor house cat if you don't have a full system set up to deal with it safely, with proper training etc.. you get the picture I'm sure. Sure having a tiger would be cool, but certainly not for anyone! "If you have a misbehaving bull, give it more space." -my 2c

That's why I suggested putting his hands like this, though should have mentioned that the purpose is to know that the breath is in the lower abdomen which moves up and down while the chest remains relaxed yet still.

Um.. you sure it's not just a fungus or something, like athletes foot on your hands? I would check it out at a walk-in clinic. Who knows, maybe it is related to some kind of detox, but maybe not too.

Yes, good for many reasons, used to store chi in dantien following chi gong as well. I suggest doing from ltd, up sides over just under chest (around the diaphragm) and down sides with right over left hand.. feels like this massages the organs nicely and improves circulation, digestion, etc. Do both directions. Don't be afraid to sway a bit with it too.

I'd suggest putting your right hand on lower abdomen, left on chest, and allow natural breath as Wayfarer said. While doing this, use vipissana/open attention to the feeling of the breath in the body, especially the sides and back. Eventually you can put your hands down when your breath is no longer in the chest

a distant bird calls wind shifts, earth moves as roots grow down, deep; here is good

precious moments gone one by one they pass, days long Here, back, there you are

I find playing guitar or especially flute around a cat teaches me to play more meditatively as they respond in various ways, sometimes meowing when I'm not making a good tone with the flute, or just the way they pay attention to guitar playing so long as I keep it in a constant vibe. People are more restrictive with their immediate reactions so it's a finer level of feedback about how the music feels. On the other hand, trying to do chi gong around a cat can be annoying as it's like they find just the right time to come up and steal the chi from you rubbing up against your leg.. like "oh, was that for me? Thanks!" lol.

On the way home wind wakes tired limbs, with new ease taste, smell, be, the breeze

Not sure if you've gotten to this chapter yet but you might want to skip up to it, especially the last part, before continuing from where you are as it sounds like some of your experiences are mentioned there though I can't be sure which ones they are. At least the answers in chapter 7 will give you some guidance to recognize "phenomena" and help you know what to pay attention to and what to let go of (like you would with thoughts, though personally I think some things are occasionally better to work out in order to progress beyond them, based on some reliable sources [which might be contradicted by others.. hence the need to know yourself as well - but who am I to tell you....])

Thank you for all your posts here ZYD. I was also at a loss to understand the location of the Yellow Court. You mentioned an interesting thing about prenatal chi traveling up the front channel and down the back while the postnatal chi travels up the back channel and down the front. Is this from a particular school? Have you read "Compass Center Directions" in Cleary's "Vitality, Energy, Spirit"? It seems similar maybe to the Yellow Court Classic and I know that Cleary's titles are often very different than others. Are these related, or do you know of an English translation for the Yellow Court Classic? Thanks again HE

By 5 element relationships I just meant "5 element relationships" rather than a book title, though you could likely find a book about them. You could start just by learning some "silk reeling" movements which is a stationary practice that gets you into the flow of tai chi.

I still get some frustration from time to time. However when I started to grasp the whole Dependent Origination\Emptiness teachings I felt sort of incapable of helping other people since most people have no interest in cerebral reasons for why they need not be angry since there is not them and there is no anger . Oh well . A regular mellow yet greatly effective qi gong practice can do wonders to safely dissipate negative energies so there's no weight to be imbalanced, ime. I've always liked this one, which seems it was put together with detailed instruction by Michael Winn, narrated by Solala Towler, and demonstrated by Michael Rinaldini and others: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1572962536605659291

Read the Tao Te Ching. Sometimes it helps to look at 5 element relationships: anger=wood, sometimes combined with fire which eventually burns out the anger. You can try to heal the wood element with water to turn it into ambition, however too much water will feed wood such as an angry person sensing that they are working on you and pushing harder. Or you can try to control wood with metal which is deep thinking. You can also put out fire with earth, so calm and deep conversation can magically effect the emotions of an angry excited person. You can also try to heal the fire element by turning it into joy , which may require some wood on your part to bring the fire to health. In this case inspiring some infectious ambition (wood is very ambitious, always moving up towards the light) could do this, though not so much that you are actually being water. Some real ambition, not being "a tigers head with a snakes body." It could take some work, but this is battle. Handled correctly, danger results in opportunity. Sounds like possibly you were miles away from actually hitting anyone and got tied up in a conversation about pragmatic moralities or wtv.. No doubt Osho can be very inspiring in the right way.. But I wouldn't hand over your mind entirely.. Seems a number of people tried this and it came out a strange hue of purple kool-aid.

Osho has made a good syncretization of teachings, but I think there is something to be said about the fact that a group of his followers tried to poison a small villiage in the US over political power in the region for the benefit of his Ashram or whatever it was (just google Osho poisoning controvery). Simply said, it's no more right to hit someone when you feel incapable to meeting their words with words, than it would be to shoot a family member who hits you because you are unable to meet their might with might. The adult thing to do is take responsibility for yourself and get out of there if the environment is so detrimental to you. If you can't do that, you need to step up your communication game. The best martial artists in history know that you do not beat a stronger opponent by matching strength, rather by deflecting, using their strength against them, using the environment, throwing them off balance with unexpected tactics, and subduing them with minimal effort, pull when pushed, push when pulled. Remember that your goal is not to defeat your mother, but to defeat the communication breakdown that has manifested. You can also learn a valuable lesson about your own strengths by doing so, and how to use flexibility as power. If she is yang you can respond with yin. If she is fire you can learn the tactics of earth and water. On the other hand, you might want to listen to her.. maybe you are being lazy and would benefit from her advice. She doesn't want to see you living on the street so she probably gets scared and reacts this way. By avoiding everything she says to not let her win you might be "throwing out the baby with the bathwater" as it might be a good idea to man-up or whatever she's saying. Mother's can be a pain and tactless, but they can also be insightful and right at the same time, making it very unfortunate to reject their attempted guidance. Look at most any sad sack digging through the trash and ask yourself if he likely got there by heeding his parent's attempted discipline. Sometimes a strong head gets you in trouble. Sometimes the convenient thing winds up with nothing to fall back on.

Looks really good - but the video only plays in Australia.. unless somebody can copy and youtube it, or maybe contacts the film maker? Seems a shame to make the documentary only to have it last one showing on tv...

This post is healthy as you are putting things in perspective enough to ground yourself in some reality beyond the insanity. I believe art therapists call it "writing your own story" which is important to be able to do especially for the disempowered and at risk. From this point you can make some progress from a position of confidence and health and try to bring your adversary to the same position by "being the change you want to create." I suggest writing it all out and writing your mother a letter. Verbal communication can be difficult and antithetical when feelings and emotions are chaotic, so there are times when calmly writing down your ideas is more effective. Rest assured, mothers can get emotionally chaotic and possibly for reasons beyond their physical command such as menopause (NEVER TELL THEM THIS, HOWEVER), and also maybe feelings of loosing control when their "babies" have grown up and think for themselves. When people are internally chaotic they often try to control the external things, and people, around them (says 18thC Taoist master Liu I Ming, long before Freud or Jung). However, keep in mind that her feelings of "loosing control" might be slightly well founded as young men and women are at least just as predisposed to playing control\independence games with their parents which they might not realize is more conspicuously offensive to the "breadwinner \ head of the household" than they think. I'm not sure what kind of Taoist practices you are doing but you could add some more Yin types of practice such as basics from Chun Yi Lin.

I think scriptures in this way are a lot like money. With both scriptures and money, you have to be able to benefit from them without expecting them to change you, since you are the one who changes you.

I really enjoyed this book. It gets quite deeply into each trigram and presents a different Taoist method of divination using trigrams rather than hexagrams, and I have found this method to be remarkably precise and consistent. How did I miss Ta Chuan, The Great Treatise? Thanks TM! There is a pfd of Wilhelm's version online..

So I've been practicing Gift of Tao for less than two weeks and noticed very easily that my energy frequency is lighter\higher. The only thing is that now I notice how turbid some people really are. Mostly I try to effect their frequency with my own, but maybe people have "tricks" to share about how bring others' frequency up rather than the "natural flow" down.. Not to be an energy frequency snob , I just know that there is much to missed when in low frequency regions Peace, Light, Love, and Social Harmony . Btw, I'm not a super bubbly type person, just speaking to the level beneath the "still water" sts (which is not always transcendent either, so I could be the "turbidater" at other times too, maybe. However, when I'm not, I want to stay up.). Aaight. Thanks y'all..

Not sure it could be determined since so many non-drinkers are shy homebody type people that the data would be squewed.