Search the Community

Dear Dao Bums, I would love to hear your story and experience of serious, long term, daily standing practice The pros, the cons, was it worth while, what did standing do to you / for you? Physically, energetically and spiritually. In order to kick of this exchange of personal, lived experience, I will also share my own experiences. However, please refrain from sharing theories, opinions, views of different schools, your viewpoints, these are all interesting of course, but I would like to keep this thread completely clean of that, and instead solely focus on lived, personal experiences. The end goal is to collect actual "data" on standing from real people, and see which patterns emerge over time, with more and more people sharing their stories. My Own Experiences So Far, 4 parts 1) 2017, First Encounter With Standing I first heard about the idea of long, static, standing meditation in 2017 from Lam Kam Chuen's book "Way of Energy". One evening during my deployment to Africa with the UN, I couldn't fall asleep. I thought to myself "okay, let me try this standing thing". I stood up and did my best, and managed to stand for what felt "like a really long time", realistically it was probably between 10 and 40 minutes. My experience was that each time it felt like "it's impossible to stand any longer, my shoulders are burning too much, my legs are too tense" or whichever physical thing was annoying me, I used my willpower to keep standing anyway. Each time I managed to "hold on", it was as if a kind of breakthrough happened, and the physical tension was relieved by a surge of energy. This happened maybe 5-10 times, and each time I felt energy surging in my body. When I finally finished and laid down to sleep in my tent (yes, it was a primitive army camp), I had the best and deepest sleep since maybe my teenage years. When I woke up in the morning and felt so incredibly refreshed, I made a mental note to myself "I must remember this standing meditation, there is really something here, some day I will explore it further". 2) 2018, standing as a supplement to lovemaking In 2018 as part of a daoist lovemaking and sex qigong retreat in Asia, there were some general qigong exercises taught to supplement the sexual exercises. There were 2-3 moving exercises which took about 5-10 minutes, and the other part was 4 standing, static exercises, each held for 5 minutes, totaling 20 minutes. When I tried these 20 minutes of standing, the instruction was not to blink at all during the whole time if possible, but if the eyes started watering, you could blink. To be honest I didn't experience anything at all, other than it felt kind of weird to just stand still and stare. Every 5 minutes you switched position, which was a huge relief on the shoulders. At this point I made a mental note to myself not to explore standing any further, as I didn't feel like it did anything for me. 3) 2022, 1 hour squatting monkey standing challenge I heard that the fastest way to build the lower dan tien and open the microcosmic orbit was through 1 hour standing squatting monkey. I decided to give it a go. It took me about 1 month to work up to standing for 60 minutes. What I experienced progressively during that 1 month while practicing was that I would get warm, start sweating, I would feel qi surging through my body, I would feel warmth in my lower dan tien, I would feel vibration in my microcosmic orbit, and towards the end I started seeing a light between my eyebrows. So I felt a lot of stuff going on energetically and spiritually. However, the posture didn't feel healthy to me at all. It felt like I was training my body to be slouched over because of the way you're standing, and the shoulders are slightly forward too. Instead of putting my physical body into alignment, I felt like I was training it to be out of alignment. In the end my conclusion was that I would revisit the practice in the future if I ever became desperate to work on my third eye, but for now I would discontinue the practice, simply because it didn't feel good for my physical body. I felt other practices I knew were faster, easier and just felt better physically. 4) 2023, 100 days standing like a pillar challenge This is the most recent, and is in progress. This is also what prompted me to start this thread, simply because I would love to hear your experiences. I'm about 31 days in as of today, and have had some quite interesting experiences. The first 25 days were progressively getting more and more hellish. It felt like my body simply was not designed to stand. No matter what I did, I just couldn't get my body into proper alignment, and especially my shoulders were killing me, no matter what I did. I searched online (including on this forum), and read everything I could about standing. I actually felt like there was not too much quality information out there; most was people either bashing it as a waste of time or downright dangerous, or people praising it like the holy grail. That's also why I wanted to make this post, I want personal, lived experiences, not people ideologizing. I want us all to share our own experiences to over time build potentially build empirical evidence. The only reason I didn't quit, in spite of me feeling like I was going through meaningless suffering daily, was that I found a facebook group called "1000 hours of standing". I joined the group and started reading. Someone had made the general rule "10 hours of standing will give results, 100 will give good results, 1000 will give best results". However, I would say I found the majority in that group saying that long standing is meaningless and just creates more tension in the body, or even worse, injuries. At that point I had accumulated almost 9 hours of total standing time, and I wanted to quit. That 10 hour rule motivated me to try a bit more. Lo and behold, a day or two after reading that post, something happened during my standing. Suddenly I felt my left hip "pop open" is the best way to describe it. It was as if there had been some kind of tension in there, preventing my hips from "hanging", and thereby preventing my lower and upper body from being connected and aligned. That same day, just towards the end of my standing (about 40 minutes), my right hip popped open. I was shocked! It was as if my body had been multiple different compartments of tensions, and with this hip opening (thanks only to time and gravity, it was completely outside of my own volition to do), it felt like my entire body became one, connected, physical whole. The last 4-5 days or so have been shocking to say the least. The hips both now "fall" open by themselves after about 5-10 minutes of standing, my whole body falls into alignment, and I can just stand and stand completely effortlessly. Everything has fallen into place. I stood 60 minutes yesterday, completely effortlessly! I am shocked. So I have something physical to show for it, at least for my self. Before I started, I just couldn't stand no matter what I did, it was literal self-torture. However, now my physical body feels more and more like one integrated and well-aligned unit, making it possible for me to effortlessly stand. I am yet to see what will happen from here energetically and spiritually, but I can see now how standing lends itself to meditation. The body clicks into position, and I can completely focus on simply meditating. I also feel very grounded after standing. But there are still about 70 days to go, so I will just have to wait and see what will happen (if anything). However, I would love to hear your experiences from long term, daily standing The good, the bad, the ugly, everything, just your personal lived experience. If standing cured your cancer, I want to know about it. If standing killed your grandma, I want to know about it. Look forward to hear from you! All the best

Dear Dao Bums, My post will be in 5 parts: 1) Intro to General Framework of Hindu Sadhana 2) Hierarchy of Beings 3) My Own Lifelong Orientation Towards Sadhana Being Challenged 4) Yakshini Experiences 5) Questions for You 1) Intro to General Framework of Hindu Sadhana In tantric Hindu sadhana, you connect with higher beings outside yourself in order to develop yourself step by step, until you also become a higher being. This is done using the 5 elements: Mantra Japa (space/energy element, throat chakra), Puja / Prayer Ritual (all 5 elements, focus on air element, heart chakra) Fire Ritual / Havan (fire element, navel chakra) Tarpanam & Marjanam / Water & Butter Ritual (water element, genital chakra) Bhojanam / Feeding people (Earth element). In each tantra, different combinations of the 5 elements and specific ways of using them are prescribed in order to connect with a higher being. 2) Hierarchy of Beings There is a hierarchy of beings from low to high. The higher the being, the more difficult it is to connect with it. The lower the being, the easier it is to connect with. However, higher beings are more spiritually evolved and therefore more benign in nature. Lower beings are less spiritually evolved. They can still be extremely powerful, but their nature is more malevolent. The hierarchy is something like (more or less): Deva / Devi (Devata) - literally light being, normally called Gods & Godesses Gandharva - bird-person, associated with music Apsara - celestial beauty, associated with sensuality, sexuality, attraction & beauty, sometimes dance Naga - snake people, often teach yogis meditation & spirituality Yakshini - female nature spirits, often protecting the treaures of the Earth Atma/Soul of Deceased Human Beings (people like you and I who are passed away) Bhuta - restless souls of deceased human beings Preta - hungry ghosts, souls of deceased people even more disturbed than bhutas Pisach - flesh eating demons, evil 3) My Own Lifelong Orientation Towards Sadhana Being Challenged My entire life I approached spiritual practice as a means of religious/spiritual liberation/salvation, in this life and the next. This would be called Fana Fi Allah in sufism, Moksha in Hinduism, Nirvana in Buddhism, Salvation in Christianity, Ren-Tien-He-Yi in Daoism etc. Of course each might differ slightly in how they define their "ideal end state", but my goal was always to reach the "ideal end state" proposed by religion/spirituality. However, as you know, this takes a long time, it can even take several life times! In the past couple of years I've been confronted by the fact that many people never care about this ultimate goal, they just quickly want either spiritual powers or material success, and use spiritual/tantric means to acquire that. And they actually succeed! This made me realize the intelligence of Hinduisms 4 goals of life: dharma, artha, kama, moksha. It's much easier to pursue the ultimate goal when your material life & wealth is settled, as is your needs for love and pleasure. It's like you're building on top of a stable foundation. So this idea made me more open to consider adding this as temporary "side projects" on my spiritual journey, of course never stopping the daily effort towards the ultimate goal. 4) Yakshini Experiences Lately one of my family members got yakshini mantra diksha for acquiring wealth. They even said on the course "this is nothing about spiritual advancement, this is only focusing on acquiring material wealth as soon as possible through tantric means". A remark I would have considered blasphemous just a few months back! As part of the program my family member got yakshini diksha, and related to me that the yakshini energy is extremely different and noticeably distinct from devata energy. This person has performed decades & decades of serious hindu sadhana for reaching the ultimate goal, so they have a lot of experience. Quite literally my family member said "it feels very active, very dynamic, very powerful & emotional, but also quite volatile. It feels closer to a human being. It's full of love, lust, energy, vitality & passion, but it also has anger & jealousy in it". Compared to what he describes as devata energy "settled, balanced, peaceful, benign, loving, accepting, Divine". Hearing this experience made me wonder and become curious about the validity & power of sadhana on beings lower than Devata in order to obtain quicker results in particular matters. Then I read the Uddamareshvara Tantra about the sadhana & siddhi of 36 yakshinis. The required sadhanas are extremely easy compared to the serious hindu sadhana I've completed daily for 10.5 years now (mantra japa, mantra chanting with a rosary, as well as innumerable rituals for all 5 elements). Yakshini Sulochana & Kapalini can give the siddhi of astral travel & lucid dreaming with as little as 30.000 & 20.000 (respectively) mantra chants, ending with a fire ritual (havan). This really allured me, because that is an extremely small & easy thing to accomplish compared to what I've completed over the last decade. But something inside me is still holding back, because of the "fear" of worshipping something less than "the highest" and the fear of "going down the wrong track" on my spiritual journey. Hence some questions for you! 5) Questions for You What have you heard about yakshini sadhana? What have you experienced from yakshini sadhana? All the best!

Dear Dao Bums, I have searched and read all of the stories about Master Yuanming Zhang on this forum. I read some stories/reports/controversies, which stated that he was actually one of the teachers of both Master Zhongxian Wu (Master Wu) and Spring Forest Qigong founder Master Chunyi Lin. Supposedly, they then took some of his teachings, went to the west and became big stars using his teachings. I personally know nothing about this, but it's a pretty juicy story. I hope to engage with you on the following three points (regarding Master Yuanming Zhang): 1) can you either prove or disprove the idea that both Master Wu and Chunyi Lin copied Yuanming Zhang? Or share some stories related to these reports. 2) do you have any personal experiences or stories about Yuanming Zhang ? 3) if any of you are interested in his teachings, he hosts a 2 hour zoom meeting this Sunday (17th of July 2022) on meditation. I look forward to hearing what you guys have to say Be blessed!

Experience: Are you awake? I was on the couch, had been sleeping. There had been a late party and this is where I drifted off. I heard a voice, recognized as a young woman I was acquainted with, her brother was my roommate at the time. The voice: “Are you awake?” I opened my eyes, and said “No… I’m not awake.” At that point I realized how different sound was to me now, in comparison to just a moment ago. I looked at her, and that look was astonished, frightened, shocked. So I realized she had not said anything, but had thought about asking. She ran out of the apartment before I could question her about it. It took me quite some time to get her to talk to me about the experience. When she did, I confirmed that she saw my eyes flickering and moving about under my eyelids, so she thought about asking if I was awake so she could run the vacuum cleaner.

Hey, Long story, short. Tried 8 brochades randomly on youtube. And had strong calming, and centering effects straight away. After lurking on this forum, i narrowed it down to Ken Cohens, and Spring Forest Qigong as a next step. (SPQ had way too strong effect on my body and emotions, so im waiting a bit after some scary moments ) I've had eczema and candida albicans issues since i was 2 years old which only got worse in time to severe social anxiety and neurosis, bells palsy (losing contact with half of my face), clogged sinuses and digestion issues. This stacked with a imbalanced family dynamic and some dark clouds, made my life feel worthless. I am now about 3 months in of cultivation and practice everyday (Two 30 min sessions), and i have never been healthier, or remembering feeling better. After about a week in my practice, my body didnt want meat, so ive been a 'vegetarian' since then round about 2-3 months in.. This happened very naturally, and was effortless. Have had a spiritual/occult inclination since i was a kid, and since then (now 28) ive tried Yogic/Buddhist practices, which did nothing for me compared to the Taoist systems, which i find deeply mystical and practical to say the least. Never had results like these. Love it that this forum exists, and reading posts from people with experience both negative and positive. Cheers