松永道

Not necessarily. There are plenty of students at school (a TCM college) that are clueless when presented with Qigong practices/theories. Not to mention that the way the Ren channel is taught traditionally would not allow for bringing qi "down" that channel. On the other hand, after studying some Taoist texts one can start to understand why you can tonify the Ren channel by needling at a downward angle, when that would normally be a reducing method.

TCM doctors who are clueless about qigong are best avoided. Chinese medicine is basically Daoist technology at it's best, and the writings of some clueless government flunky at worst. In other words, quality varies vastly. Most TCM texts are stripped of spiritual underpinnings. TCM theory is, after all, a product of Maoist materialism. Not that the materialist doctrine every really understood it, basically they just kept the literally material therapies: massage, acupuncture, herbs. TCM has been recovering and has reintroduced qigong, teaches Chinese cosmology, etc but these classes are emphasized nearly as much as cookbook acupuncture classes.

What that means on the Chinese mainland is you have two types of doctors. Doctors who practice qigong, neigong, a martial art and effectively learn via master/student education and doctors who just read the books, pass the tests, get the degree. For the first doctors, qigong and medicine are inseparable modes of cultivation. For the second doctors, Chinese medicine is just how they can make money.

Theres a saying here that middle level doctors have the knowledge to see the reflections of qi. Just as the moon (yin) reflects the light of the sun (yang). If you have been educated, the moon can tell you where the sun is. Reflections of qi are physical symptoms. They point tell you where the illness is. High level doctors see qi directly. The illness is entirely obvious, as the sun on a clear day. This is only accomplished through cultivation. Dao is the original liberal arts tradition. Medicine, martial arts, music, they all conform the law of nature. The emphasis is not on knowing but understanding. Understand the dynamic of qi transformation through one and it naturally translates (think of the natural connection between musical and mathematical mind).

Chinese medicine is (mostly) a product of these high level doctors. However, the knowledge of cultivation has always been closely guarded so even many classic books of medicine were written by doctors considered mid-level. And in the end, even texts written by the greats will never get you there. You need cultivation to reassemble their understanding. Without your own body laboratory you'll know a lot of words, theories, and methods without ever understanding what they mean. You wont know the "why", because it's not a word, it's an expanded experience of life. Of course, understanding is irrelevant to basic application, and so uncultivated doctors still get results through tried and tested cookbook methods. And as it's a 2000+ year empirical tradition, it's at least a pretty good cookbook. Nevertheless, cooking by recipe is hardly an art.

I digress. It really strikes me as silly though that you have people learning TCM, a medicine based on qi, could have no clue about qigong. That's like being an oceanographer whose never been to the ocean.

I can say with relative certainty that what you're doing is working with yang qi. In fact this is what most energy healers are working with. I person needs to be relaxed and/or receptive to feel it though. Sounds like both of you guys were in that state. It can produce a variety of sensations: magnetic, electric, pressure, pulsing, tingling, heat, one of my friends described laser. But that doesn't mean real electricity. Just like radio waves are EM but they don't electrocute us.

Mixing yin and yang requires actual physical transformation. Look at old Buddhist and Taoist paintings, you'll find a whole bunch of bumpy upper-foreheads. Those are exaggerated drawings, but the truth is your forehead will actually change shape if you achieve this. Now that bump is for physical spirit projection, I imagine the rewiring for yinyang gong is entirely internal. However, physically reshaping the body is painful. Really really painful. Even the more mundane reshaping required to get into lotus position will be, for many people, quite a pain challenge.

I mean, there is a small chance your body was already built for it, but in that case I think you'd have gone electric long ago. What you're using is yang qi. That's no slight. Yang qi is great. But it needs a yin conductor to have physical influence. In martial arts, yang qi has the yin physical body behind it. It works for healing too, your yang qi, their physical body. Honestly I'd be very surprised if anyone here has merged yin and yang and if they have... well they would be a very popular teacher like Mr. Verdesi.

That's my experience + hypothesis anyway.

P.S. My introduction to qigong was similar to yours. My advice, keep playing those kind of qi games and discovering things for yourself. Play games of sensitivity, play puppeteer. Your sensitivity and ability will grow with practice. I made great discoveries and mistakes (mistakes being the best discoveries) this way. Most importantly this playing around will develop your intuition and when/if the time comes you find a good master, you'll discover the core of the forms a lot quicker and uncover any mistakes earlier. And seriously, mistakes in energy cultivation are like the chickenpox, the sooner you get them out of the way, the better.

...my skull is being squashed by a silky but hard microfiber lampshade-like thing, that is also sifting through my flesh. Noone can say: OH, its THAT, yeah, I had that yesterday before breakfast.

That, my friend, is a brain fuggler.

(Couldn't resist.)

The palms are facing up slightly, angled towards the neck, with the head slightly down towards the palms -- this causes the lower tan tien to feed off the Big Accumulator energy going into the base of the skull.

So you're saying the hands act as a mirror would, same physical positioning and everything. Interesting, our optical interior.

Ok, thanks. So do these rituals happen while the sword is being forged? Or any time?

It's my understanding that it's the making of the sword that bestows it's ritual significance. However, maybe the sword is not dissimilar to us. You have the original, inborn, yuan qi and then you have the qi you acquire throughout life. Obviously having great yuan qi is quite an advantage. Yet, it seems that many masters out there became so because of early constitutional problems (childhood illnesses), early problem, early cultivation. And there are people who live a great long life, drinking, smoking, otherwise defying all health guidelines, but they never experience the feeling of qi or stillness. Different paths for different people. But I'm getting sidetracked.

I guess what I'm hypothesizing is there is inborn significance and then there is significance that gets imbued through use. Best have both, but as the first is hard to come by, I'd readily pursue the second. Of course, you could make make your own sword and have the best of both worlds.

By the way, those Raven Studio swords look great!

That's an amazing story you have.

So you can already do everything, meditate, gongfu, etc. And you can communicate directly with these guides. So your only problem is you need people to share with? Well then by all means share. This is definitely a good place to start. If your teacher chose well, then you must have pretty amazing virtue to inherit such a gift, so then you find other good people and teach.

Now if what you meant was that you get urges to meditate, gongfu, etc, unseen teachers guiding you and helping you develop and who are there to answer questions for you then that's also amazing 缘分 (yuanfen, destiny). Then you've just to practice. You don't need books or other teachers. We should all be so lucky.

Plenty of questions around here and you are more than welcome to give your answers.

Welcome aboard.

Yeah -- consider T.M. -- it's described as the sun is always there but it needs water to be reflected... but then T.M. states you can either calm your breath or your mind. That's true but let's be literal here -- refractive index -- if properly understood -- is immediate in its result. Effie P. Chow, qigong master, emphasizes precision in position as well -- we're working with lasers here and through experience I've realized that it's like playing pool. As soon as I figured out that the back of the skull is in direct line with the palms in front of the stomach then that position amazingly caused intense heat almost immediately -- it really is like turning on a switch. Nothing else is necessary.

I've noticed the affects of posture in meditation, particularly in full lotus position. Though my bodymind is still a bit too messy for contributory research. I wonder Drew, do you have a talent for drawing. While I enjoy your writing style, it seems your mind is a bit too quick for your fingers. Whereas a picture would let my better half participate in the interpretation. I don't mean to single you out for this critique, but with all your discussion of ratios, pyramids, refraction, wow a picture would be worth more than a thousand words. Wishful thinking anyway.

One question too about the hand position you mentioned. Are the palms facing lower-dantian/kundabuffer hands on the abdomen, or are the palms facing up, hands in front of lower-dantian?

There are full sized ones out here in Xi'an, China. They come from Northeastern China, I forget which town, I think not too far from Qingdao. The store in Xi'an is by the Big Wild Goose Pagoda, and being so close to a tourist spot, the swords are probably more expensive than they should be. Ball park around $100 but don't quote me on that. They are handmade of peach wood and have Taiji symbols, dragons, characters, etc on the handle and sheath.

However this one on ebay right now looks better I think because it is painted, the swords in this shop are original wood color.

http://cgi.ebay.com/CHINESE-OLD-PEACH-WOOD...7QQcmdZViewItem

If this one doesn't work for you, PM me if you're desperate, maybe we can work something out.

Aiya! Just when I had the no sugar thing down you gotta come along and take my soy sauce away!

I've noticed I now get a hangover the next morning if I eat more than a little processed sugar the day before, though fruit doesn't seem to cause the same effect. However, when I was back in the states visiting my parents I ate a very low sodium diet (my mother has high blood pressure) and it made me feel run down and edgy. Went out and bought a box of saltines and voila, back to normal. Drug withdrawal then? I know when I quit sugar I had to ride out a week of craving and low energy. But no soy sauce! No miso! Really no eating out. That's going to be harder. Eh, no rush other than the push of evolution.

What do you think of no grains? No simple carbohydrates that quickly convert to sugar within the body?

Also, do you think these are diets to follow after one's Jing is established or can they be beneficial while developing Jing. I love neigong and going deeper but having a well developed, strong, healthy body should be established right at the outset. This is the tradition anyway.

I recommend reading about "Immortal Breathing" -- chapter 10 of "Taoist Yoga: Alchemy and Immortality"

 

Essentially the breath is electrochemical while the chi is electromagnetic but consciousness enables breath to be converted FROM chi -- so you actually breathe through the conversion of electromagnetic energy. the whole body fills with electromagnetic bliss and the center of the hands and feet pulse as electromagnetic breathing while the brain produces water -- through reverse electrolysis -- that pores down the roof of the mouth. That's how samadhi works -- no need for water, nor food, nor sleep, and in deep levels you go past death.

Hey Drew, you have a lot of interesting hypotheses on understanding the alchemical body in terms of western scientific mechanisms. I'm studying in China now and I haven't the money to buy or time to read a lot of books right now. But I'm wondering, aside from Taoist Yoga, are there any other books you'd recommend on western physiology coming to understand esoteric practice? I've read a few, "The Tao of Natural Breathing" comes to mind, but I've also run into too many new age books that make pretty fantastic claims (like stimulating DNA, regenerating telomeres, activating "junk" DNA, etc) which, true or not, are not corroborated by any research whatsoever. They just seem to be buzz words to dazzle laymen and make a few more bucks.

As for metabolism, more efficient gas exchange and circulation doesn't mean faster overall body metabolism. Meditation, qigong, taiji, etc all, over time, slow the metabolism. The whole idea of fast metabolism being a good thing is relatively new in human history. A person with fast metabolism is basically like a car that gets terrible gas mileage. Sure it usually leads to a thin body, which we've deemed attractive, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Today's fatties were yesterday's hotties and thin tan folks were peasants. However it's natural that we are attracted fast metabolisms these days, in a way, they are an adaptation to our culture of excess.

It stands to reason that deep breathing, by way of restoring proper circulation would speed up metabolic function at first. And it's not uncommon to see new, sincere meditators sweating it out. But once the area is opened up the accumulated waste from poor circulation can be cleared away. And when the waste is gone, the tissues can become more efficient and metabolism slows. This is my theory anyway. I know Wang Liping does fine on a small piece of tofu every so often and other practiced meditators don't eat anything at all. Mainstream science doesn't understand the mechanism yet, and certainly neither do I.

But there are some theories anyhow.

This is kind of a cool post, nice to see the evolution of one's personality over 3 years. You were kind of on the asshole trip back then huh Max? And wow, Taobums was such a boys club!

I think it is a natural experience though. Qi is vitality and that's damn attractive. But just because you're radiating, it doesn't mean your Shen is in good shape. Like any power, it's tempting to abuse it or feel better than other people for having it. Certainly, there have been some damn despicable qi masters throughout history. Keep your qi, cut your cords, if you believe it, then sure, but that doesn't mean its not dead dogma. Sometimes when you give it away, more energy gets sucked into the vacuum it left behind. I know healing people and sex has made my system stronger. Every tradition out there has got it wrong (even if everything they say is right) because language cannot capture the essence of change. Words have a hard time with paradox. Definition separates yin from yang. How can something be both? How can one thing be two at once? How can two things be one? How can one thing be everything? How can everything be nothing?

At its best dogma is a pair of diapers; clean, tidy, and downright sensible. It does a great job of stopping you from making a real mess. But once you know what's going on, you gotta stop using it, because after a while dogma just stinks.

Anyway, well done Max, you've gotten a lot cooler.

[edit] P.S. I wonder what my three years from now self would say looking back.. probably, "man, I sure thought I knew a lot!"

What your nurse is not taking into account are the other very obvious physical effects of deep breathing.

First, deep breathing massages the body interior. Filling up the lungs, expanding the diaphragm squeezes the internal organs. Squeezing and relaxing brings circulation to these areas. These means more oxygen going into these tissues and more waste products coming out.

Second, not every breath is created equal. Short shallow breaths bring less oxygen into your system than long deep ones. It's a fact. Why? Our lungs are made up of little bags called alveoli and alveoli are connected to capillaries. This is the interface for gas exchange. Gas exchange works via osmosis. So the more in your lungs the more oxygen entering into your blood stream. Combine this with the dual benefit of having a higher concentration of carbon dioxide and other waste gases in our bloodstream (from the improved circulation) and even more fresh oxygen enters and more waste gases out!

Now with shallow breaths you barely get any benefit to blood circulation meaning gas exchange is less efficient. And you're not even filling up your lungs meaning the lower depths of your lungs don't participate in gas exchange at all! Relaxed deep breathing will with practice lead to full use of the lungs. Obviously 3 regular puny breaths a minute would achieve the opposite of deep breathing and starve the body.

Oxygen is without a doubt our most important energy source. Food metabolism doesn't take place without it. There are more factors at work here but this is pretty much the gist of it. Your nurse doesn't understand the process.

Hi Guys,

 

Im at work (hospital) and asked the nurse what would happen if you slowed your breathing down to 1 breath per minute or 3 breaths per minute and he said that anything under the normal rate starves the body of oxygen and you have too much carbone which is not good for the brain.

 

So my question is what are the benifits of the very deep breathing of the Yoga and old daoist masters? Does slow breathing hurt you like modern science says?

 

Is it true or false?

 

WYG

I have a question, must the transmission come from Max? Mantra said that he and others have achieved or are on the precipice of dragon body which is the highest aim of Kunlun practice, am I correct?

So can Kan, Mantra, other high level students also give the transmission? If so the world benefit is tremendous to say the least. With Kunlun's purported quick results and self-as-teacher method, enlightenment would be exponential! I know if I could give such a priceless gift I would both free and frequently. I assume most of us out there feel the same way.

Scholarship fund is still a great idea, I'm just wondering about a long term solution where we don't need one or at most a few dedicated transmitters. Dedicated teachers who don't have time for a day job will never be in a position to give their teaching for free.

Practicing qigong along with changing the diet and lifestyle factors that are creating your problem will do the trick. Practicing qigong is not hard, though some people are naturally more talented (just like everything else). Practicing is really the important part. I have a professor who healed malignant cancer through qigong and chinese medicine, not into remission, I mean the cancer is completely gone. That level of healing really depends on you though.

As for the qigong. There are qigong exercises for specific organ systems, in your case you probably want to emphasize lungs and liver, a chinese medicine doctor could tell you for sure after they meet with you. But many types of qigong are for the whole body. If can find teachers in your area, go take a class. It's better than a book. Classes should not be expensive. Then if you like the teacher, like the movement, like the class. You're set. The most important, and hardest thing is practice. Regular, every day if you can, at the same time every day is even better. People talk about best times of day to practice, etc, at the beginning the best time is when you can. Just not right after eating a big meal.

Don't worry about how to manipulate your mind. Change your diet and lifestyle factors (any adequate chinese medicine doctor can help you with this). These alone can do the trick. Practice qigong, receive acupuncture and take herbs and the process will be easier. Then just take time to reflect. You will receive insights about your life. Quiet time is especially conducive to reflection. No music, no TV, no multitasking. When the world around you is still, your inner world really comes to life. For some people this can be very difficult. It's like if you've kept your room clean by shoving everything into the closet. Things have looked fine on the outside but there is a whole mess to deal with behind that door.

Illness is a welcome to clean house. I wish you well.

Well it didn't start with us, even animals suffer. Maybe it came along with life and the whole evolutionary urge. Natural selection needs some sort of obstacle, without it there is no criteria for selection. But hell, even planets and stars are in a battle against entropy. Are these obstacles evil? Who's to say.

Here's a Chinese fable:

塞翁失马 - The old man loses his horse

A long time ago, in a kingdom far far away there was a peasant man who lost his horse. All his neighbors came over to console him. "What bad luck!" they would cry. He said, "maybe." The next week the horse returned with a family of wild horses. His neighbors again came over. Astonished they complemented the farmer, "wow, what good luck!" He said, "maybe." He and his son spent the next days breaking in the wild horses. On the third day he heard his son's cry. He son had broken his leg, thrown from one of the wild horses. Story is story, the neighbors and doctor again all came to gawk and said, "what bad luck!" "Maybe." Days later the King's army came through the village in need of able men to go to war. All the towns people said good bye to their sons except for the farmer. "What good luck!" And what did the farmer say...

Good and evil, everything changes.

From my understanding, enlightenment breaks you out of the cycle of death and rebirth, at least as it pertains to being human. You say this is your ultimate goal. I don't think just any type of supernatural ability is a stepping stone to this goal. This seems to actually be one of the perils of having power. Having power here makes this reality more attractive. You can become more attached to it. Power is ego candy.

The goal of many traditions is to break the cycle of death and rebirth. More often then not they don't place a lot of emphasis on powers. They aren't the highest goal. Not that you can't use them, you just don't want to get attached to using them. Stick to your ultimate goal and you'll get power without chasing it.

If you want a very detailed piece of analysis from someone who has experienced both insanity and enlightenment, do check out this thread and follow the link to the blook.

 

Thing is, and this is just my opinion, you can never ever be absolutely sure you're not insane. But you can establish whether you're at peace or not.

Very cool Ian, very cool. I first started meditating with vipassana and greatly informed my practice of neigong to this point. Hmmm, I wonder if they can be practiced concurrently...

---

And mwight I don't think you're insane. I've been on both sides of this debate. I was taking off like a rocket ship for better and worse before I got to China and was knocked out with some old wisdom. Slow is fast, fast is slow. Very traditional, conservative, pragmatic; I know. But I have definitely gotten benefit through learning not to rush for the result. Anyway, you've heard enough of my opinion. Do your dao. Right hand, left hand, follow a plan or make one up as you go. Everything works itself out.

On an academic note though. I'm not familiar with OBE's myself but I'm told in the context of my school's cultivation there are two types. One path is ghost immortal (literal translation), the other is the way of the sage, actualized person, real person. They say ghost immortal practice gives you OBEs without form, the other path gives you OBEs that can take form. So one is just a yang projection, the other is both yang and yin. The first path takes much less time but if you follow it its practice prevents practicing the other path. To practice merged yin and yang projection takes longer but is the real secret to immaterial immortality.

I have no personal experience on the matter so as far as I know right now it's just a very interesting possibility.

 

Perhaps if there is something real about all of this, its our experience.

 

Bingo.

I think we have the same aim. But, well, a tall tree needs deep roots. Agreed? The higher you want to go, the bigger your foundation needs to be. I'm not saying you should be healthy, emotionally balanced, and otherwise grounded just to lead a happy life. I'm saying it because the other option is unbalanced, difficult, and invites disaster. A balanced life is the root.

The thing is, awakening is everything and everywhere. The profound universe is at work when you do daily activities just the same as when you're in meditation. The difference is your state of mind. There's a reason your conscious came here and I'm guessing it's not just to run back into being formless awareness. Plenty of time for that when you're dead. In the mean time, you've got a life and that's a lucky thing, best use well while you're here.

Here's one translation of Daodejing chapter 36:

If you want to shrink something,

you must first allow it to expand.

If you want to get rid of something,

you must first allow it to flourish.

If you want to take something,

you must first allow it to be given.

This is called the subtle perception

of the way things are.

The soft overcomes the hard.

The slow overcomes the fast.

Let your workings remain a mystery.

Just show people the results.

sure you are very welcome to ask any questions. True cultivation means - to follow methods preserved in genuine texts and to achieve tangible results ("powers" as put in the differnt thread).

Then I don't find conflict. At least in terms of the many ways cultivation has been practiced in China, every method of traditional cultivation be it martial, medicine, calligraphy, music, etc is rooted in neigong and have texts going back 1000+ years.

However, the genuine knowledge has been preserved in people, not books. You can certainly develop powers from self study but even then it's tough to gage without a guide. That said, once you've got your foundation cleared up self-study is a very viable option.

I have no real power yet unfortunately. Any ability I may have can only manifest after about 3-4 hours of deep trance. I am not even finished with filling my lower dantein (level 1), So please don't think I am claiming I currently have any real power, I don't.

 

I will be leaving this year to do just as you suggest. I am leaving on a 5 year meditation retreat, to be in solitude, and focus on my training. I also agree with you on the development of the physical body and eating as the best grounding methods.

All I'm saying is it sounds like you've got enough power flowing that you're overloading the circuitry. And 3-4 hours of deep trance is quite an achievement. Is this in sitting meditation without the gamma waves? If so, highly achieved people generally don't sit more than 4 hours in full -lotus at a time unless they have a special reason to do so. They say more than 2 hours of thoughtlessness gets you noticed in the universe.

天 Heaven; Consciousness; leaves, flowers, fruits

人 Human; Emotion; trunk, branches, bark

地 Earth; Body; seed, roots, shoots

This is an important breakdown in daoist cultivation. You're too top heavy. If that's the case balance is found by developing down. Improve your relationship on the human and earth levels. Solitude may not be the best medicine.

That was definitely interesting to me, most things are.

謝謝

This is how 龙门派 (Dragon Gate) theory categorizes things anyway. I'm not sure if this is unique to them or common to other daoist systems. I was told exercise, diet, qi gong all build and use the 炁 but specifically 内功 (neigong) must be practiced to transform 炁 into 气（火）.

Food for thought.

not that i have requested any clarification but since you asked -no, the statement above makes no sense and it is just as well. however that "The qi used used in the image of the article you've linked to is 气 with a 火 radical inside" is correct, it is also stated in the linked article.

 

like doing jumping jacks or visiting bingo parlors often.yeah whatever.

You've got quite a superior attitude but haven't actually said much of anything. May I ask, what is your definition of cultivation?