humbleone

Great thread. I also have similar questions that came up recently, mostly due to the success I have had with brainwave technology. You are able to articulate my concerns really well: 1) Cheating 2) Is the progress real? I am able get into alpha state within 2-3 mins, then theta within 10+ mins. I wrote about it in my personal journal. good people like Chang made comments. http://www.thetaobums.com/index.php?/topic/22676-qigong-and-brainwaves/ The doubts still linger. I think one of the concerns I have, perhaps misguided, is that meditation is associated with spirituality. So getting into a theta state for example, will it also translate into the spiritual progress? The progress is real for sure, on the physical/mental level. I am able to 'retain' the benefits and make progress, build upon previous success.

So i have been practising kunlun for little over a year, and will continue to do so into the foreseeable future. learned it from an apprentice. despite some of the negativity, the last few pages of this thread have been a good read. chock full of good information. I also really liked reading scotty's posts. some thoughts to share by a newbie --kunlun does deliver on its promise of rapid progress --red phoenix, imho should not be practiced by most. very high level and extermely dangerous if NOT done correctly. I have first hand experience of this. best to learn it directly from Max. --I believe most of the problems associated with kunlun are caused by the students themselves, ie not practising it correctly with proper guidance. --kunlun is like driving a formula one racing car, you need a lot of caution if the driver is a newbie. slow down, space out the practice sessions. spend a lot of time in closing. do lots of physical grounding exercises. --best to have an active student-teacher relationship. in the old days people would learn kunlun type practices directly from the teacher in a monastery like setting, where the student would be a resident. so lots of student-teacher interaction. fast foward to 2012, where you fly in for a day or two day workshop and then fly back . very little further student-teacher interaction. that is why it is very important imho to seek out other advance students and teachers. --I have done a lot of research into this, talked in person with students, met people online, hours upon hours of website surfing. I must say there is quite a bit of anecdotal evidence the students who stick with kunlun over the years are more prone to running into issues, qigong psychosis and entity attachement. both extermerly serious. --most of the people who are attracted to kunlun(including myself, are slightly off). we seem to be attacted to it by its promise of rapid progess and block removal. frankly speaking, most of us who are attracted to qigong in general are wounded birds, we are trying to heal ourselvs or fix some issue in our lives. so it is hard to say the problems we run into with kunlun are a result of the baggage we already carry or is it just kunlun itself. I would tend to say the student is more of an issue, what he/she brings with her to the practice --then there is the issue of sifu jenny lamb. she is the one who taught max what he now calls kunlun. very similar practice but two very different teachers, so the lineage is very different, thus the practice feel and results. your choice... --in closing, I would say there is much gold in kunlun, but it needs to be mined properly all the best

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good informative reply John. just curious if you have concerns about practising both,kunlun and SM? I know max in his book talks about just sticking with kunlun after about a month. something about magnetizing the energy system a certain way, and he says not a good idea to mix in other methods that also move energy.

great to see effective use of technology to get a student started. If I may ask you about your friends who are long time kunlun practitioners, have you seen their lives imporve over the years? I myself practice kunlun, about a year. I also learned it from a apprentice, book and dvd. all the best

I finished my mentoring with @snowmonki. It started in March and flowed into the first week of April. He has also made himself available for any further questions and clarifications. With about a year of Qigong, my original intention was to help me further my practice. and @snowmonki sure did do just that. He patiently answered my endless questions, did a in-depth review of the various components of my practice. PHYSICAL-QIGONG-MEDITATION. I am very sensitive, so @snowmonki taught me some unique cooling grounding practices to remedy the problems I was having with my practice. I find that he is extermely intuitive and has a way of chanalling just the right information. I couldn't have asked for a better mentor! Thanks very much indeed @snowmonki. also thank you Michael(aka thelerner) for coming up with the idea of 30 min 30 day mentorships. I am surprized that more bums don't take advantage of it, there are certainly some unique and interesting methods and teachers in our forum. but you do have to ask

Mark, I am glad you are participating in this thread. I would urge you to focus your high octane mind and explore this Stillness movement. I for one would be curious what you make of it. imo there are common elements between your practice of "waking up and falling asleep" and Stillness movement. I have publically stated elsewhere that kempomaster worked on my five year old daughter(distant healing). She suffered from eczema, small patches would show up on her hands, arms and legs. After just one session, the eczema stopped. I have before and after photos, I don't know what to make of it, it is all quite remarkable. The distant healings took place while my daughter was asleep. So no placebo effect etc. To be fair to kempomaster , I should mention the healings were quite complex. my daughter also has a speech impediment(in speech therapy via her school) and tummy aches. All three areas are showing improvement, but eczema is the most striking due to its visual impact.

Mark,i plead ignorance. Q1) could you please explain it in layman's terms? couple of other questions for you. while visiting san francisco about ten years ago. driving a rental car in the industrial area to the south, where there is a chaotic mess of local roads and highway ramps. I was stopped at a red light, there was a car to my left and two cars to the right. I didn't realize the left three lanes were turning left onto the highway ramp, but I wanted to continue straight on the local road. When the light turned green, I stepped on the gas, was looking straight ahead to go straight. unbeknownst to me 'something' slammed the brakes next, avoiding a collision. It happened in milliseconds without any awareness on my part at all. without any outside clues or warnings. Q2) what is that 'something' that slammed on the brakes? Q3) Is this 'something' the same mind you talk about in your example of location of mind to catch yourself when falling? Finally and perhaps somewhat unrelated. do you recall reading Eugen Herrigel 'zen in the art of archery'. Herrigel gives an account of his mystical experience, when the teacher asked him to return that night. the teacher blindfolded shoots two arrows in total darkness at the target. the first arrow lands in dead center. the second arrow pierces the shaft of the first arrow and also lands dead center. The master turns to herrigel and says, just now 'IT' shot. Q4) what is that 'IT' in herrigel's account? all the best

It is if you have a regular job most employers are not that forgiving about employees taking afternoon naps at work!

good to hear from you Mark. interestingly, I locate 'IT'(the mind, consciousness whatever you like to call it) always above the waistline, never in the legs or feet. not sure why. face area, cheeks, jaw,nect is OK. but the brain also seems to be off limits. What are some of the places that you are able to locate it? The only one time, that I located 'IT' towards the back/side of my brain, immediately I had a flash of imagery. I recognised it right away as a long forgotten dream I had almost a year ago. The little snippet of the dream now is part of my conscious memory. i was quite startled by it and felt I was intruding upon IT as it went about its business I would really encourage you to spread the word about your practice, have others share in their experiences. all the best

thanks dawei. hypothalamus reset sounds interesting. One of the biggest issues with diets is the body's natural response to go into a protective mode, starvation response and start to eat away muscle and actually lower the metabolic rate. when I google hypothalamus and Qigong, some interesting stuff shows up. i wonder if there is a way to reset the hypothalamus via qigong. reading up on hcg however, it appears now to be banned by the FDA and the original 1950's research disputed. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_chorionic_gonadotropin

I find weight loss issue quite complex. aren't there internal and psychological issues? I mean millions of people each year lose the excess weight, then gain it right back in few years. I am six foot tall and about 11 pounds overweight. Qigong seems to be helping and Gerard got me hooked on pu-erh tea however I feel these is some internal thremostat that needs to be reset lower. despite my best luke warm efforts, no reduction in the past five years...

I found the above while researching sleep disorder research centers. Living in New York City, over the years I have seen small newspaper ads, mostly in university newspapers, sleep clinics looking for volunteers. Once I get a little further ahead, perhaps this summer, Mark I think it would be cool to do your "waking up and falling asleep" practice all hooked up in a lab setting! See the shifts in Brain activity while doing your practice. What I experience is a deep meditative state and not so much a deep knocked out sleep. However the end result is almost the same, I wake up refreshed... http://www.cumc.columbia.edu/dept/pulmonary/4ClinicalPage/Clinical%20Centers/Sleep%20Lab.htm

Newsweek Magazine ran an interesting article a while back about Laura Day. She lives in New York. Hedge funds, large corporations(Seagate Technology, the $11 billion-a-year maker of hard drives for the Playstation 3 and Microsoft Xbox) pay her $10,000 a month for her advice. She takes on upto four(4) clients a month, so $40,000 a month is pretty good pocket change . She has earned around $10 million. http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2008/06/21/the-10-000-a-month-psychic.html Just curious if Qigong offers any techniques to develop intuition? I could use some pocket change.

I have heard that red phoenix dramtically increases intuition, you more experienced kunlun guys would know more. I find this woman laura day quite interesting. She is very precise and also has been put through rigrous scientific testings. A daughter of a doctor, I like the fact that she is able to bridge the corporate world and world of intuition.

I read somewhere, for men Left side is yang, right is ying. for women Left side is ying, right side is yang I know when I learned the falun dafa exercises the closing for men and woman were different. men always right hand over left sifu lamb closes with hands on the thighs red phoenix right over left I have noticed that both Michael Lomax(stillness movement) and Chunyi Lin(spring forest) have elaborate closings. After 1 hour of meditation, both spend 15-20 mins massaging various accu points to make sure energy is not trapped anywhere and moves away from the head.

hi don, so here is a pdf - Inner chapters of Baopuzi http://www.taoiststudy.com/content/inner-chapter-baopuzi-%E6%8A%B1%E6%9C%B4%E5%AD%90-master-who-embraces-simplicity-ge-hong-%E8%91%9B%E6%B4%AA-0 sorry it is in chinese. however google translate puts an interesting twist to it I would recommend getting Fabrizio Pregadio book, Great Clarity. http://www.goldenelixir.com/publications/great_clarity.html

Thank you for heads up on this movie. It is available via Netflix. so just added Bab Aziz and the other movie by the same director(Nacer Khemir) Wanderers of the Desert. good luck on your travels. please take lots of pictures of the wandering sufi's and share them here. all the best.

As a former Ambien(Zolpidem is used to treat insomnia) user I can tell you that insomnia is a huge problem. About half of Americans surveyed in the National Sleep Foundation's 'Sleep In America Poll 2005' indicated that they experience at least one symptom of insomnia a few nights per week http://www.sleepfoundation.org/ To make it a little easier for people to practice "Waking Up and Falling Asleep", I would urge you to come up with and list the formal steps of your practice. As in step 1, step 2 etc. The way it is currently, it reads more as a description of how to go about doing the practice. In closing I would say, please don't be dissuaded if you don't generate much interest here. Sleep deprivation may generate an interesting state of consiousness for the tao bums

I started a similiar thread a while back, downward flow of energy. Many good folks including sloppy zhang and others gave great advice about BK frantzis. It opened up a whole new world for me. I find Mantak Chia's old classic a gem. He also talks about kundalini damage and how to undo it with a reverse orbit. run the orbit down the back to feet and then cool flow via the front channel. http://www.scribd.com/doc/2672168/Mantak-Chia-Awaken-Healing-Energy-through-the-Tao

per Gerards recommendation in another thread picked up some Pu-Erh tea last week. This one place I shop, in our local chinatown had bewildering choice of Pu-Erh. Tastes really good, I have been adding some cardamom to it. also picked up Ti Kuan Yin tea, the description says 'Iron Goddess of Mercy' http://www.tenren.com/tikuanyintea.html does anyone here know the benefits of Ti Kuan Yin?

Reading your blog, I too have noticed your infatuation with the Sacrum. A close second would be cranial-sacral osteopathy and the ilio-lumbar ligaments so after a week of your Waking Up and Falling Asleep, I am pleased to say it works for me EVERYTIME without fail. Nights of insomnia, tossing and turning, hopefully are behind me. This has made me much more productive during the wakeful hours. These are quite significant results Mark, I would urge you to get others to try out your practice and report back. frankly speaking, the waking up part I don't have much of an issue with. however i did try the waking up portion of your practice and it seems to work fine for me. The real challenge for me is to practice it during the day. As you mentioned there is something special about the early morning hours, the state of mind/body after a few hours of sleep that makes this practice very condusive to working. [This practice is also useful when I want to feel my connection to everything around me, because my sense of place registers the contact of my awareness with each thing, as contact occurs.]

so I am pleased to say snowmonki has volunteered to mentor me for month of March! Given his broad background and depth of knowledge, I couldn't have asked for a better teacher.