Taiji Bum

Interesting....

If I ever teach Tai Chi again I am going to use those techniques. Thanks for posting this!

My mom too. She can watch tv from 5pm until 11pm, plus a few hours in the day and then think she doesnt watches alot of tv when I tell her she watches too much. Thats the woman who didnt allow us kids to watch more than an hour a day! I dont even own a tv now.

Unfortunately what is said here permeates everywhere. Energy will flow out and opinions stated here will be remembered elsewhere. It is of course the natural evolution of things to which I wont rail against. I am not a right winger or a lefty. I just try to avoid conflict. Just one mans choice and opinion.

I joined this site because it seemed somewhat politics free. If you start trashing the President I am leaving this site.

Dont know of Darin? He's the good looking bald guy. Amazing taijiquan ability and a source of profound wisdom! Wonderful person.

I've seen some join dates at or around this time in 2004. So when is TaoBums birthday?

I am interested in putting some money and time into a local temple. Are there any Taoist organizations that are dedicated to the spread of Taoism? Traveling Taoist preachers? Taoist revivals?

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=47...duration%3Along

I wasn't sure if you were being serious, thats funny. I try real hard not to say bad things about anothers beliefs. But I could resist that one. It happens enough to me as I am a devout Catholic who practices Taoist alchemy and taijiquan. I've had the taijiquan people look so disappointed when they found out I wasn't buddhist or something and the Catholic people look at me like I am a satanist because I practice taijiquan.

I think half the appeal of yoga are the superbabes marketing it. Do yoga and you too can have or be a superbabe. Yoga used to have a mystical quality but when it went mainstream that left it mostly. Tai Chi is marketed by old "mystical" Chinese men. Do Tai Chi and you too can be mystical I guess. I hope Tai Chi never goes mainstream!

By other teachers I didn't mean other tai chi teachers. Perish the thought! No politics in tai chi, no siree! The others teachers I was refering to was the chi gong guy, the various massage therapists and the yoga babes.

I would have said I practice and teach Yang style but we got excommunicated this year by the Yang family. My teacher John Wang was a Taiwanese student was Cheng Man Ching. Or at least he considered Cheng to be his main teacher since he also did Wu style and some Chen stuff. I am taking some time off teaching at the moment and got myself a day job. I am still meeting with students but I got disillusioned with the money in it. I was teaching for St John Hospital here in Detroit but towards the end I just donated my fee's back into the Hospitals alternative health program and becamse a volunteer. Then there was the politics of all the different teachers.....It got really bad when I started to not take money and so I left.

Welcome, I've been here only a week and it seems pretty cool so far. So whats your personal practice?

I don't do the microcosmic orbit and it wasn't the orgasm but the ejaculation. There was no pleasure/bliss except the kind you get on a roller-coaster ride there is only light. Also there is no presence of anything like a God. But while I never practiced cultivating the microcosmic orbit it happened to me many times spontaneously. My primary practice was the breathwork, then meditation on the Tan Tiens, and then formless meditation. I hear the kundalini people talk about the energy going up the spine with the vision of light and then unimaginable bliss. Also I have read about the reports of the Catholic mystics who talk about the same thing but they feel the presence of God. I felt neither probably because I didn't expect either one of them. That tiny body mini-me was so weird. It is supposed to emerge from the forehead first and then when it is mature it exits the top of the head. That hasn't happend yet. Thats what "Leaping into Eternity" is supposed to do. Then after the leap you are "Nine Times Nine Selves". There are two signs for the "leaping". One is seeing something like snow or white flowers falling. The other is the vision of the flaming golden cross like in the vision of Ezekiel. What your supposed to do then is go through the cross. Some say it exits the top of your head and then you are supposed to pull it in your forhead so it circulates like the micro-cosmic orbit but only in your head. Crazy stuff when you read it objectively, but thats where I am.

Anybody else do taijiquan? Anybody else want to describe how they learned the 8 & 5?

Hey! Welcome and join it the conversation. Theres a good one now about stiving vs non-striving going on now. Come join it.

Good topic. I am with the "it takes both" opinion. In my personal practice it has seemed that I strive, strive, strive and then when I get what I was striving for I have to "let it go" and once I let it go I seem to move to the next level. I see it as a succession of yin and yang phases. Hold your focus intently on the third dan tien to move the chi into it and then once its there let it grow on its own. Like preparing a piece of land for a garden. There is a lot of hard work before you put the seed in the ground but once its there its mostly maintenence with water, feeding and weeding.

This is called a Glory, rarely seen before the advent of airplanes. Sometimes Taoist monks standing on a foggy mountaintop with the sun behind them would see their shadow inside a glory and think it was their god and jump off the mountain into it's arms. The end stage of alchemy is often called "Jumping into Eternity" as I am sure you know. It starts with a vision of flaming cross with yin/yang like symbols in its arms and all that surrounded by a rainbow radiance and more little crosses. When you see it externalized and golden your supposed to pass through it using your intent. Thats aweful to hear folks have jumped into rainbows off mountains. Understandable though.

Its more likely just another Taoist technique floating around in various MA circles. I doubt its specific to White Crane. Liao may have learned it within the WC system though. Liao's site seems designed to make money so that makes me a little suspicious about his motives but the bone breathing definitely works. Buddy, you seem to know alot about Kumar and his system. I think I heard somewhere you have been with him for ten years? I have his internal martial arts book. I love him for putting out that book especially with the alternative histories, pictures of the old masters and the high level stuff. It is rare to find someone who knows the difference between ward off and split. Most study taiji 20 years and cant identify the individual movements. Thats like saying youve been boxing for 20 years and dont know the difference between a right cross and a jab. I saw a video of Kumar walking the circle and he moves like an internal person. Is there an online resource for his metaphysical system or do I need to buy his book? Is there a Kumar thread here?

Anybody into fasting here? Whats the longest you've gone? How do you ease in and out of it? I have the books and have done it for years but never talked to anyone else who has done it.

People have different ideas about this. I'll start a new thread.

Too late. I originally learned them from a taiji guy who learned them from his taiji teacher. He didnt say anything about White Crane. What makes you say they are White Crane?

Wayfarer65, By "local" I meant local to me. I was hoping to invest in something for the Detroit area. But I'll check out your book, thanks. Darin mYTHmAKER, He self identified himself as Catholic but it doesn't matter anyway since he unfortunately died in 2004. He picked up the Taoist Alchemy as part of his Taijiquan but never practiced it. Not because he was Catholic but he liked women and what he learned and taught me is a no-sex path. Darin