Meow

Hi, I was trying to combat my state alone, but it isn't working out that well. So here I am asking for an advice. I've got serious yin energy deficiency, coupled with moderate overflow of yang. It's not a new situation, but recently it became worse. Right now I really need a lot of energy to do my job. I discontinued dynamic meditation, too, because it was less than helpful. And it's summer and the air temperature is at its peak. Symptoms: intolerance to cold, high tolerance to heat, anxiety, lack of concentration, inability to relax, etc. The only thing that helps more or less is meditation (not a dynamic one, though), but its effect only lasts that much. Certainly not more than an hour. And because of concentration level plummeting down it suddenly became hard to do it. I was trying to eat only yin food, since it was a no-brainer to do that. So lots of milk, grains, etc. I was tryng to sleep a lot, too, which didn't always work. Some usage of lukewarm water, but that's mostly to avoid heat. Result: high temperature for three days by now. No running nose or whatever cold symptoms, just high temperature. Mild pains in the area of upper stomach, it felt like a big chunk of ice got inserted there. Right now the ice chunk sensation is mostly gone, but high temperature isn't. So I guess my body didn't like the cold or found it too much to cope with. What would you do to add yin energy to your body if it kept resisting?

But why would you want to add even more yang energy if what you need is yin? Do I misunderstand something when I think that you need to consume something with yin energy if you want to get more of it? Maybe that's a little extreme, but I have an idea that one way is to eat and drink only yin food, deal with lots of water, meditate, have lots of sleep, and this way even though your body will react horribly at first (as it has shown to react), eventually if you don't stop it will be forced to adapt. Or maybe 2 days this, 2 days that, like a contrast shower, to minimize the damage. Stupid or not, I'm at my wits' end... thelerner, these are beautiful words, but I hate to see days go by like this, it feels like they pass by in vain, and that's not a good feeling. Surely I'm not THAT unique that I can't follow knowledge that others have collected. Experiments, if they turn out to be unnecessary, would only waste more time. joeblast and fizix, what sort of physical exercises do you have in mind? Any would do?

Physical activity and exertion produces yang energy.

Hello everybody, I want to incorporate Tai Chi into my own practices, and I'm trying to find out if that's a good idea. So far my understanding is a little muddled, I never was into tai chi before. So, as I understood, the purpose of it is to enter a special state of mind. I'm trying to find out whether it's something that I need or not. The teacher we have here said that you become empty by relaxing body and mind, and then you can enter that special state. He's a little hard to access to ask further questions for now, but I'm working on it. From other sources as I understand them tai-chi is about: - shut down your mind, learn to feel chi - condense chi to convert it into jin - now you can do "impossible" stuff So what exactly is that special state he talked about? It's sort of the goal of it all, as I see it. Jin is just a nice addition, helpful for creating proof that what you do is actually working. However, I'm not exactly looking to send condensed chi to others in whatever form. My interests are more "meditationary", and I'm basically looking for something that can either enhance my meditation or simply give me some health benefits. And so it sounds to me that tai chi does not provide for my interests that much, it doesn't go as far as something else would go, finding its ending in jin creation and manipulation. However, what exactly is that state that supposedly allows people to do all this stuff? Maybe it could be comlimentary if I understood a little better what it is and how it's different from others.

The Yang style, 24. ChiDragon, thank you.

I've never understood that. On the one hand it's traditional to hear that some paths, or normal paths practiced incorrectly, develop powers instead of bringing you "enlightenment". However, at the same time you keep hearing that the powers are a side-effect of enlightenment and won't work unless you've been changed in a beneficial way. You can't know what's what for sure, I think, because we can deceive ourselves that we're moving in the direction of one goal when we actually aren't. One can only try and hope

I'm going to talk to him but he's not easily talked to. I didn't want to mention that, thinking that in this case everybody will consider the problem solved and won't try to explain anything My sixth sense says that talking to him won't work out, but let's hope that it's wrong. And the truth is, I didn't get into this group from the very beginning, so I had to learn everything very quickly (they're two-thirds done) from another person who goes there. After all forms are learnt the teacher plans to start explaining each one in more detail, so I decided it should be ok even if I learn them like that. With an additional step forward, should the whole form take more time than normal, or would stepping back be half as long instead?

I'm so dumb about physical movement that I can't understand how to apply the "change door" in the video to forms that I'm doing The sequence is broken if I try, and there's an unnecessary movement. Maybe it's ok, or maybe this way it's totally wrong. If dwai can't demonstrate it then maybe somebody else can, for example how to avoid going back during repulse monkey? Applying it to such a basic sequence should be simple enough for people like me to understand

Sorry I don't really get it. Ok, I can step back but normally I don't step forward during that form. You say step back parallel to the right foot and then step forward, in that case the form takes more time to execute, right? Even a bad video of it would do, I'd be glad to see any!

Dwai, you meant changing directions, didn't you? I'm not sure what to think of changing doors. Great idea, though, I'm going to use it. There's enough room to make full repulse monkey sequence, but it's not enough. As it goes, you need about a meter more to execute some other forms, but it's going to work if some directions are changed, for sure.

Astralc, thank you for caring and for relaying your own understanding. I've already taken up tai chi, although I must say that I discovered a small flaw in practicing it. It's a flaw of convenience mostly, though, so it's really small. It takes too much space! So now I'm trying to practice at home after classes, and there's not enough room. There's a big room in my house, however, even that big room isn't big enough. I have to stop and backtrack quite a lot once some particular movements have to be done, which isn't very good for doing tai chi forms at all. There's also a matter of pratice in the streets. It doesn't look normal at all, so as of now I do not do it. I heard that you can do tai chi with a fan or a stick, though, surely that would look more normal. Exotic enough for people not to think that you're insane.

Thank you all for your helpful replies!

That's the most attractive thing about it, it can be checked one way or another. I've been looking for something that wasn't limited to being a purely subjective experience and could be observed by others. Oh, so they're written differently! In that case any time I mentioned it in my first post, it was supposed to be jin, not jing. I'll have to fix that. steve, thank you for the explanation.

Thanks I'll follow your advice.

Let's put it this way. I've described what I think about tai chi in the first post, is something wrong, is something right? I'm not a fan of tai chi in particular who's looking to get as much info on it as possible, in order to do it better. I'm just a person who wants to know if it suits my wishes or not. Here's a clarifying question: The state they talk about, is it, for the lack of better word, enlightenement? It's supposed to be a slightly different thing in different teachings, so even answering yes is not really enough. What sort of enlightenment is it like? And is it one or not? In alchemy they talk about converting chi into shen, but I don't see this being done in tai chi at all, which puzzles me. They locate chi and convert it into jin, and that's it.

That video doesn't address my questions, it shows a form.

Which one of those videos can answer my questions?

As I don't know anybody here, and it would take a lot of time to read through the whole personal experiences forum, I decided to ask: who at this forum has had an experience of getting some kind of knowledge not from the mind, but from another source? For example, that would include chi awareness for taoists, or any other sensations, revelations, and memories for people in other traditions. But with one caveat: it shouldn't be mind knowledge for sure, i.e. in the very least it's a knowledge that can be checked by most secure methods, like chi awareness giving an ability to see people's diseases (correctly) or manipulate energy in order to cure them, or revelations about the future being later turned true. Of course, there can be a lot of information that comes form such an alternative source that cannot be checked and seen to be true so easily, but this is why I do not mention it: I tend to think that any information or experience without evidence or proof should be observed but not taken seriously or talked about, to avoid mistakes and delusions, and to avoid accidentally making others believe things. I can tell about my own experience with such knowledge, but they aren't of much interest, because they belong to the category of the unproven and unevaluated, they merely happened and that's it. I'm more interested in those of others, those that didn't merely happen but can be talked about meaningfully. And I'm interested in what constitutes such a fundamental difference between one and another, and what I or some people I know could possibly be missing when it comes to that.

Thank you all, that was a good thread

XieJia You're nice and a bit strange , I come here having questions and looking for something in general, and you tell me I should not care for knowing it? I understand from which perspective that makes sense, but if you please, I did things without much thinking before, and this is what made me doubt them. It's complicated, really. Let's say that not only I did not get the result I wanted (but theoretically I could wait indefinitely till it comes), but I started doubting that those were right methods to obtain it in the first place! So now what I need is some clarification on the methods, however, I'll probably obtain it in a different place Even if you aim to quiet your thoughts, you have first decided to do it, right? That's what I mean, my problem now is rather general, not specific. But thank you And posts here show a different direction than the one I was taking. True, going to church is more of a consolation, if you live a good life you'll go to heaven, at least I can see no other benefit than relief from thinking of your own good future and good future for those you care about. The god figure is important, too, as I gather from religious relatives, it helps explain fate when something bad happens, much like the law of karma.

Nice story for sure, even though it's about martial arts Well, now I see where you're coming from. What does that mean, as in, voices talking in my head? Or (lol) threads in various online forums? I understand. True, all this seems like inevitable evil, a price for aligning experiences. But this is good, because we can communicate. I share your dislike for abrahamic ones. Whether or not they had any merit originally, right now they're empty structures devoid of any useful instructions. People go to church and nothing ever changes.

That's certainly unimaginable, being raised in the atmosphere of a cult. I'm not sure how that post addresses each religion having a different perception of reality? Well, texts aren't supposed to help that much, none of them could just propel you to some kind of ability to perceive a high truth. There's no delusion about it, everybody has to create the way to it anew, whether it turns out to be true or false, and whether it even exists. The chance is slim, though, if you consider that there are no Buddhas or Jesuses nowadays, and that those might've been greatly exaggerated, too. Where are all those people who practiced all their lives and were supposed to be able to show themselves here later and help? It's almost like trying to discover something, using hope without belief, that has a very small chance to exist. I hope I don't come off as jaded, but if so, then it's ok. Being realistic about the object of search should be helpful rather than hindering. -K-, what do you mean by religions? Abrahamic religions?

Sun is yellow and shiny You're a human being People age as they grow older That's an interesting idea. I have a problem with all those truths being told us as real, though, not only "right". Did I offend you somehow?

Atman and anatman (from the yoga vs. buddhism example) are quite different things. If you think that all traditions in the world are truthful and lead to the same result, why?

Very impressive. Both the description and your blog I found online.