idquest

It's almost obvious for me that you need some good physical practice. Remember that physical practice performs a function of dissolving the same as a sitting practice. If you take Frantzis, his main interest and passion in life was martial arts and moving practices. This is why he succeeded in sitting dissolving - because he put in so much effort in the moving practices. Taiji, daoyin, or yoga for you, but no qigong as qigong will only cement your blocks even harder they are right now.

Richard Liao translated a first edition of the 'Blue Book' which is a somewhat disparate collection of WLP's teachings from the 90's. Mark Bartosh with the help of Livia Kohn translated the second edition of the 'Blue Book'. One should understand that 'translation' is not a good word for the process, it is rather 'interpretation' than translation. So both Richard and Mark contributed their own understanding of practice to how to interpret Chinese text into English. In my view, both did a good job. Mark's book is perhaps easier for an English speaking reader. If you want to build your practice, Nathan's book is the best. After you have practiced from it for a while, you can read either or both Richard's and Mark's books to expand your understanding of practice. But you won't be able to build your practice from scratch based on Richard's or Mark's books.

When people do yoga asanas, 100% of those people will hurt themselves to a lesser or greater degree. None of them faces any demons and such, this is just a natural way of training: you train your body - you will likely get hurt. When people are physically disabled or have some physical disadvantages and they want to do yoga or taiji, they will approach it with certain caution just because this is obvious. Why on earth meditation would be different from yoga asanas or any other physical exercises? Even more, if you think of it, the brain and the mind are fine tuned parts of our bodies and literally are pinnacle of the evolution on the planet. Still, random people jump the bandwagon and do whatever current fad meditation technique is there. Is it about internal demons? I don't think so. This is about a common sense and weighing one's capabilities with training challenges along the way. Start with physical, move step by step to more subtle, and then combine physical (asanas or taiji what's in your heart) with mind work. Otherwise, purely mind work is just a certain way to a disaster.

To help your friend, you might want to have a look at daoyin and/or some vigorous sets of yijinjing. While qigong is more about cultivating qi and directing qi along the meridians, daoyin works on more of the physical level and connective tissue. In some respect, daoyin would be similar to vinyasa flow as opposed to mild version of yin yoga or tha portion of hatha yoga. This daoyin can be fairly hardcore and it has the Chinese modality that your friend seems to appreciate.

I've had a similar experience for some years. I believe that increase in temperature of the body is a reflection of some internal processes likely caused by a digestive cycle. An indirect indication to this is how in daoism theory different internal organs become active during different 2-hours cycles of time. How to deal with the situation? I practice meditation and yoga for more than one hour a day. So I decided for myself that I would make my practice + sleep = 10 hours. I need 8 hours of sleep a day and the practice could take up to 2 hours. Now I go to bed earlier and if I sleep the whole night, I practice right after I wake up in the morning. If I wake up in the middle of the night and realise I will have hard time going to sleep again, I just get up, do my practice, and after that I go back to sleep. Whether I fall asleep sooner or not is not given, but at least I don't waste my time tossing around and feeling all frustration of the situation.

Deep abdominal breathing and good sleep every day.

In my experience, quite a number types of inflammations result from food allergies. Perhaps you eliminated some allergen from you previous diet and this is why your skin condition improved.

Generally he advises to eat enough to support your body for the change that happens during training. If you fast intermittently and feel good, should not be any problem. But if you are engaged in an intensive training and the body requires certain level of nutrition, perhaps listening to the body would be wise. Think yourself. When you train neigong, your body is getting rebuilt, especially connective tissue, tendons, etc. You need certain nutrients for that and if you want a result, you better supply.

If you read Nathan's book, he explains this a bit. As I understand, neidan is a sort of a stepping stone to apply in real life what you have learned . There are five areas of such applications - 5 daoist arts - and WLP teaches them in his retreats. It is not that neidan is inferior and 5 daoists arts are superior - it is just to practice 5 arts you need some foundation, and the foundation is neidan.

This book is best for somebody who has already taken WLP's retreats. If you need a book describing WLP's practice at a beginner level, you can look into this book: https://www.amazon.com/Taoist-Alchemy-Wang-Liping-One-ebook/dp/B084MCDF8Q/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=nathan+brine&qid=1590864160&s=books&sr=1-1

To have good qi, you need to stretch. As everything else, stretching can be more or less efficient. Find the system that works for you. The result of the stretching you can assess if you perform either sitting meditation on the floor or shavasana right after the session of stretching. It is for a reason that each yoga session must be concluded with shavasana.

Perhaps I should add that while a cemetery is the best yin location and midnight is the most yin time, visiting a cemetery at midnight might be not such a good idea mainly because of some vigilant citizens if they notice you there at that time.

The best yin location is a cemetery. The best yin time is midnight. Just visit a cemetery around midnight and you should be OK. With food, steamed veges should be good enough for yin. Have you tried doing yin yoga before going to sleep?

Recently, there is an increasing interest in China with 'web novels' and large part of it is 'cultivation novels' that focus on daoist cultivation. My favourites are 'I Shall Seal the Heavens': https://www.wuxiaworld.com/novel/i-shall-seal-the-heavens and 'A Will Eternal': https://www.wuxiaworld.com/novel/a-will-eternal The first one is more dramatic and bitter one, the second is more lighthearted. They are huge, about 1500 chapters each. You can read first several dozens of chapters for free and then you'll have to pay.

For sitting, I study Wang Liping's system. The system is far from what you wrote above. At home, I eat two times a day and I'm fine. When I go to Wang Liping's retreats, I eat three times a day and they are full nutritious meals. The reason for that is that at the level 1, the system works with all internal tissue in a highly intensive manner, so sometimes the impression is you just did a gym session. Although you can make a session as physical or as subtle as you want and as it suitable for you at the moment. So quiet sitting is not only relaxation. Damo Mitchell is open when he says he has had many teachers, both in movements and in meditation. In movements, he teaches qigong and daoyin (at least at level 1), so you choose what is best for you. As you have studied many systems, you already know that following one teacher does not always work for most students as bodies are vastly different and people keep looking for what suits them more. I mean marrying to one system could be good in theory, but in practice it may not work.

Damo Mitchell has pretty good material available remotely. If you manage to attend 1-2 of his events (that are fully booked 6 months prior) per year, you will be well positioned. But this is only for the movement part of the practice. It is unclear from your OP what exactly you need/want to focus on, movements or silent sitting. Silent sitting is another issue. It will depend on how you resonate with a system, being that dao, Buddhism, yoga, or something else. As well as your location.

That was a beautiful write-up from the daoist disciple, Yueya, thanks for posting.

The first and the third books are translations of the so called 'Blue Book' which is a Chinese edition of lectures and talks that WLP gave over several years in 1990-s and earlier 2000-s. The second book in your list, N. Brine's one, is a systematic outline of WLP's teachings. This is actually volume 1 in a planned series of books. As far as I know, WLP actually strong armed N Brine to write this book as WLP felt that endless re-editions of the same blue books are just confusing. If you want to feel how WLP's system works from the very beginning, start with Nathan's book. Also, the first book of R. Liao contains some translations of texts relevant to the lineage. I'm not sure if Nathan included any texts in his book or not.

WLP's retreats in the west are usually run from hotels' conference rooms which could be located on any floor, from 1st to 4th in my experience. All of the retreats yield tangible results regardless of the floor. Also, once you have developed enough sensitivity you will notice how huge the difference is between being in nature (forest with big trees) and in a building. So I'd say the difference is between practicing in a building or in nature rather than which floor in the building.

A usual transition is from 6" cushion to 2-3" buckwheat cushion to 1-2" wooden board. A wooden board is still cheating as traditionally a cultivator is supposed to sit on the floor in padmasana. Chair sitting is not good because of several reasons. First, your hip flexors become unduly strained, and second you won't be able to engage pelvic floor muscle group as it should be. So if you meditate for calming the mind and reflect on metta, chair is OK. If you goal is to move to deep internal work, you should be aiming at transitioning to the floor (see paragraph above).

What do you think would be a better translation of the title? Just curious.

After he tragically passed away, his students sort of disappeared from the public sites. At least I haven't come across of any of them mentioning his teachings since then.

In response to the highlighted section, this is not entirely true. There is an ongoing thread about LiuHeBaFa right now, for example. Also, let's not forget that Shaun does not hire somebody to post on specific topics. It is us, membership, who make the posts. Why don't you start with topics you'd like to see the most and maintain them to your liking? The forum is as good as its membership is, simple.

Your understanding of what jing and qi is will be changing with your practice, as well as jing-qi transformation and the role of xiatian/dantian. Best is not to think about theory too much and practice more. It is the practice that will give you the answers. To make it more clear, xiatian/dantian changes with practice, as well as its role in the process of transformation. With this, there is no one definitive answer to your and similar questions because the answers are dependent on your actual level of practice.