Ping Heng Gong

[Birch]

Tree pattern + you pattern?

 

Different from concrete pavement pattern + you pattern.

 

Cheating or not, it should be easy enough to figure out, at least theoretically, whether there's anything to practice with trees. Then you can test it.

 

Currently, people are discussing 'nature deficit disorder' or the downside of lack of exposure to nature/greenery

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nature_deficit_disorder

 

How close does something have to be to you to have an actual effect? Do you have to be concentrating on the thing? I'll bet if I threw you into a lake you'd have no problem explaining how it works. I'm not going to throw you into a lake:-)

[Taomeow]

i have yet to meet a cheater tree in my life.

 

Believe it or not, they exist. I have a huge old cherry tree growing in my front yard (on the East Coast). When we bought the house, I thought, wow, am I going to have cherries? Then in spring it was all in bloom, like a pink cloud, magnificent, there wasn't an inch not covered by the blooms. Then wind and rain came and the petals were all over the neighborhood and plastered all over my car, I drove a flowering "hippie car" for a week or so. Then... no cherries. Not one. Year after year, it's the same. Cheater cherry tree. All looks and no vitamins.

[Lao Tzu]

Thank you for your cooperation.

 

You know, it's a great idea to protect people who have asked for protection, not so great when you try to paternalize practitioners with (sometimes) years or even decades of practice experience. Do you understand what I'm trying to say?

 

E.g., I have learned from taoist masters who are most decisively not "cheaters," have benefited from practicing what they taught me, keep practicing, and keep gaining experience that makes it absolutely redundant to ask someone else who is not practicing this what they think of what they don't have any exposure to. My teachers are most decisively not cheaters, as I told you before, and I don't particularly care for empty accusations. If someone -- a master you can name -- cheated you, please describe how exactly. (No, charging money for instruction does not qualify, unless you were given a fraudulent price and then charged something that was not stipulated in advance.)

 

In fact, why don't you ASK instead of TELLING when we're dealing with subjects others are directly familiar with and you only "think" something about them without any exposure? This could benefit both parties. You stand a chance to find out what else people might be getting from certain teachers and practices besides confirmations of their gullibility, inability do form adequate judgments, and the rest of what you think the rest of us are about. While those of us who have something tangible to talk about will be grateful for a chance to share some of the knowledge of the subjects we love, which is always a pleasure. THEN you can doubt what we have to say, ask questions, express concerns, cite your sources, ask more questions... in other words, communicate. How's that for a new and improved plan of your participation?

I didn't say Qigong is wrong, Yes, everyone can definitely get benefit from the qigong exercises. But, one gets benefit not based on such "theories", but others.

The "theories" were used to make it attactive and make people willing to give the money out. The price really doesn't worth that. So I called it a cheater.

Why I am saying this? Because in all the taoism books written by the chinese immortals before, you can not find anything like these. And these conflict with the core spirit of Dao.

I started to learn Qigong from 13 years old, now I am 37.

At the first 5 years, I was deceived by lots of "theories" similar with this and saw lots of qigong cheaters in China. They collected huge number of money by this. Most chinese people have known this. So for the time being, the cheaters realize it is difficult to continue their jobs in China, so they came to west. They are still using these "beautiful" theories. I didn't know this untill I found this forum.

[Protector]

That why didn't you learn martial arts by then and kicked their ass?

Easier to see benefits of that then qi gong

[zerostao]

I didn't say Qigong is wrong, Yes, everyone can definitely get benefit from the qigong exercises. But, one gets benefit not based on such "theories", but others.

The "theories" were used to make it attactive and make people willing to give the money out. The price really doesn't worth that. So I called it a cheater.

Why I am saying this? Because in all the taoism books written by the chinese immortals before, you can not find anything like these. And these conflict with the core spirit of Dao.

I started to learn Qigong from 13 years old, now I am 37.

At the first 5 years, I was deceived by lots of "theories" similar with this and saw lots of qigong cheaters in China. They collected huge number of money by this. Most chinese people have known this. So for the time being, the cheaters realize it is difficult to continue their jobs in China, so they came to west. They are still using these "beautiful" theories. I didn't know this untill I found this forum.

 

much improved post! keep it up.

 

@-K-, "I'll bet if I threw you into a lake you'd have no problem explaining how it works."

well i did learn to swim that way.

 

nothing like a cheating cherry tree. and some trees are more aggressive than others too.

usually the birds got to my cherry tree quicker than i could. maybe Taomeow's cherry tree would best be used to make some nice piece of furniture? even if i am sure it is very lovely while in blossom.

edit> maybe the tree just needs some bees to visit it or it usually takes 2 cherry trees to do the wild thing.

http://www.ehow.com/info_7943373_pollination-cherry-trees.html

Edited January 5, 2012 by zerostao

[Wells]

--- Moderator's Warning ---

[...] Last warning.

Thank god!

[thelerner]

Too bad. Perhaps it wasn't well nourished by the previous owners. In what ways have you tried to rectify its non-existent fruiting problem?

Sour Cherry trees can self pollinate. Sweet ones need more loving.

 

 

"All fruit trees need to be pollinated. Without sufficient pollination, they may blossom abundantly but will not bear fruit. Self-pollinating tree include quinces, sour cherries...

 

Sweet Cherry: Bing, Lambert and Napoleon (Royal Ann) cherry trees do not pollinate one another. Plant a pollinating variety, such as Black Tartarian, Republican, Van or Windsor, or a sour cherry, such as Montmorency, nearby. "

 

On Subject, at the Healing Tao and a Ya Mu Seminar I've tried Tree Chi gung. And felt nothing, no interspecies communication. May well be me and not the practice itself.

 

Still I stand under trees, relaxed and open. Sunshine, tree, quiet, earth, all good things. They may not talk to me or exchange energy, but they have lessons nonetheless.

Edited January 5, 2012 by thelerner

[ChiDragon]

exposure to nature/greenery

 

The advantage is to breathe more oxygen(people like to think as Chi) into the lungs(people like to think as dan tien).

[Ish]

exposure to nature/greenery

 

The advantage is to breathe more oxygen(people like to think as Chi) into the lungs(people like to think as dan tien).

 

[Friend]

Edited January 6, 2012 by Friend

[Taomeow]

Too bad. Perhaps it wasn't well nourished by the previous owners. In what ways have you tried to rectify its non-existent fruiting problem?

 

Nothing... I just gave up, like I did on a lot of things in and around that house, which is, as I know now, a feng shui disaster. Alas, I didn't know any feng shui when we bought it. Now would be a horrible time to sell it or I would. When the time was great to sell it, I couldn't. (A feng shui disaster permeates everything about the property, including the timing of its market value vis a vis the owners' circumstances. The nature of the beast.)

 

And as Zerostao mentioned the birds who get to his cherries faster than he does, so should I mention my squirrels. I also have a couple of fruitful (non-cheater ) apple trees in the back yard, generously covered with apples every year. But while we wait for the apples to ripen properly, so do the squirrels. I take a bite and think, two or three more days. They take a bite and think the same thing. Then one hot summer morning ALL the apples are gone all at once. That's the day of their prime, peak qi -- the apples, and the squirrels too, who obviously get up for this harvest earlier than I do, beat me to it every time. Last summer, however, two neighbors' girls came and asked if they could pick our apples, still unripe -- I think they were trying to get some exposure to some natural ways or whatever, I couldn't think of a reason why they wanted the unripe apples but said OK just to piss off the squirrels. The girls did a very good job. The squirrels are still pissed.

[Taomeow]

Oh, and on the subject proper. Master Wang Liping's routine is great, but requires really strong legs, otherwise it's pretty difficult. I keep promising myself to start standing ZZ again before resuming, otherwise I get too distracted by the burning in my thighs. It's a superb routine actually, coordinating everything with everything -- left-right, up-down, breathing-dantiens, and then all of it with all of it of the tree. I think someone recently posted an approximate (automatic and therefore very hard to understand) translation of the write-up of the routine somewhere on the forum, the original at some Chinese language Longmen site. Lao Tzu, Chi Dragon, everybody proficient in Chinese, if you wanted to make yourselves really sublimely useful and earn much gratitude from the forum's participants, you could perhaps offer a good translation? How does that sound?

[Birch]

much improved post! keep it up.

 

@-K-, "I'll bet if I threw you into a lake you'd have no problem explaining how it works."

well i did learn to swim that way.

 

nothing like a cheating cherry tree. and some trees are more aggressive than others too.

usually the birds got to my cherry tree quicker than i could. maybe Taomeow's cherry tree would best be used to make some nice piece of furniture? even if i am sure it is very lovely while in blossom.

edit> maybe the tree just needs some bees to visit it or it usually takes 2 cherry trees to do the wild thing.

http://www.ehow.com/info_7943373_pollination-cherry-trees.html

 

What's with the throwing people in lakes/seas to teach them to swim? I heard a lot of people's parents (tends to be fathers) did that. I don't know how well it works. There was a craze a while back (circa Nirvana Nevermind) with putting very young babies into swimming pools so they would swim 'naturally'. No idea whether that worked either or not. Anyway, I digress as usual but I'm a water person, can't help it (apparently).

[Lao Tzu]

Lao Tzu, Chi Dragon, everybody proficient in Chinese, if you wanted to make yourselves really sublimely useful and earn much gratitude from the forum's participants, you could perhaps offer a good translation? How does that sound?

Let it be.

[Lao Tzu]

Then tell us what you have learned in these 24 years.

Your good intentions to make people being aware of these cheaters is appreciated.

People here are aware of this danger and calculate the risk when they search in Qigong.

People here have different aims; some for power, some for health, some for fun, some for something else. Not everyone here is aiming directly for Tao. They share the common idea to find something useful for their life and to learn about something which is more than the average daily life of surviving this life. Can you add something that is not in the archive of this forum?

 

Friend Q

That a good suggestion. I will start a new thread to do so.

Thank you so much!

[ChiDragon]

Oh, and on the subject proper. Master Wang Liping's routine is great, but requires really strong legs, otherwise it's pretty difficult. I keep promising myself to start standing ZZ again before resuming, otherwise I get too distracted by the burning in my thighs. It's a superb routine actually, coordinating everything with everything -- left-right, up-down, breathing-dantiens, and then all of it with all of it of the tree. I think someone recently posted an approximate (automatic and therefore very hard to understand) translation of the write-up of the routine somewhere on the forum, the original at some Chinese language Longmen site. Lao Tzu, Chi Dragon, everybody proficient in Chinese, if you wanted to make yourselves really sublimely useful and earn much gratitude from the forum's participants, you could perhaps offer a good translation? How does that sound?

 

In general, ZZ does not require strong legs. Its purpose was to make the weak legs to be strong. It is true, at the beginning, is very painful but one must get over the hurdle.

 

I am glad to do the translation of the write-up if I can located the site. It would be helpful if I could read the mentioned translation that was posted here on the forum. Perhaps, someone may guide me to the source.

[ChiDragon]

[Ya Mu]

I think Ya Mu teaches a form of Tree Qigong in his Stillness Movement classes, it might have been talked about before but I would be interested in anyones experiences.

 

I often wonder if trees don't get the credit they deserve, for example Buddha gained enlightenment under a tree, Newton came up with his main ideas under a tree, there are probably other examples, I know some Shaman say the trees are the master plant teachers, maybe the trees had a bigger influence than people think in all this

Put in bold. Deserves repeating!

If you haven't tried it how can you know?

 

Plants may have more to teach you than you can possibly imagine, but if you are already closed off and your cup is full then you won't learn a single thing

Bold. Worth repeating.

OKOK, I will try to do that.

But you know, it is so difficult to attest my opinions. The reason is that the Qigong theory doesn't based on objectives, but feelings and subjectives.

I just want to protect the innocent people from being deceived, and let the cheaters fail.

You certainly have a good point. I agree with you that many "theories" don't hold water and some are pure bullshit; only experience can teach the true versus the false. I think what everyone has been trying to tell you is that specifics may be better than just saying that there are "cheaters" in qigong. This is a reflection our society. Name one area of "expertise" that does not have "cheaters"...it doesn't exist.

 

But what you should already know is that there are many legitimate teachers of qigong in our world; in the West and in the East. Most of them work very hard to help others learn the energetic arts and some make tremendous sacrifice to do so.

Yes, there has been quite a bit of deception. But there has also been a tremendous amount of good teachings spread in the qigong world.

 

I once attended a "qigong" conference in China with a huge stadium full of folks who attended. The "master" chanted and then had people rub the bottom of their feet. What was supposed to happen was that the qi was to eliminate toxins and the toxins would "ball up" into a dirty looking ball. The thing was the guy had no clue about qi and certainly didn't project any. But literally hundreds and perhaps over a thousand had little balls of "toxins" that "proved" it worked. Of course this was mostly simply dirt and sock fuzz.

Now did the guy "cheat" the people who attended? Yes and No. Yes in that it was not qigong that he did. No in that a lot of the people had a mind/body happening where they felt better.

 

evergreens are good. whichever tree you choose do so when the tree still has green leafs on. face the side of the tree where the sun is shining onto the tree. do the tree qigong before noon. use your lao gongs to scan the tree for where you feel the most energy and then begin your qigong session with palms aimed at those places of the tree. of course maintain your proper qigong structure. if there are roots from the tree that you can stand on, do so.

always introduce yourself to the tree and ask humbly for permission to exchange energy with it.

Bold. Bears repeating as this is a key to Tree qigong. A matter of respect.

 

I know Master Lam writes about it in Way of Energy.

 

I have direct experience with it from taking one of Ya Mu's workshops. I haven't tried it since though.

 

The thing is I don't know if you can "just" do it, since at the workshop your energy level increases A LOT because of the master being there.

 

It can be dangerous if you are stuck in the tree. I think Ya Mu has mentioned it somewhere here on TTB.

 

EDIT:

 

Link here http://www.thetaobums.com/index.php?/topic/17819-do-trees-ground-energy/page__view__findpost__p__249922

I encourage you to go to country, park, or backyard and do standing and/or Gift of Tao movement with the Trees. You will do fine with this!

 

 

OP:

Learn the SYSTEM. Tree qigong is a part of many systems. But the system itself can be/should be a catalyst for the Tree qigong and shouldn't be separated. In other words, depending on anyone's particular sensitivity to energy they may or may not feel an interaction with Trees. But if they practice the associated system, everything should be amplified by an order of magnitude.

[gendao]

To oversimplify, I found Longmen Pai's tree qigong more methodical and theoretical, with Jing Dong Gong's more freestyle and "touchy-feely." I liked both approaches, and they can also be easily and compatibly combined (sort of like a bicameral brain). In fact, I'd say both systems appear to share a common foundational framework, and are very similar and compatible. JDG just then focuses more on healing and LMP more on neidan.

 

The other thing that's helped me a lot is hundreds of hours of zhan zhuang practice to keep refining my standing posture. And learning to shift into my "energetic bandwidth" has proven to be a real KEY to qigong, of any type...(for me)

Edited January 6, 2012 by vortex

[joeblast]

One of the best threads to have popped up on TTBs lately, imho

[johndoe2012]

To oversimplify, I found Longmen Pai's tree qigong more methodical and theoretical, with Jing Dong Gong's more freestyle and "touchy-feely." I liked both approaches, and they can also be easily and compatibly combined (sort of like a bicameral brain). In fact, I'd say both systems appear to share a common foundational framework, and are very similar and compatible. JDG just then focuses more on healing and LMP more on neidan.

 

vortex, did I miss something or did you really go to one of Ya Mu's workshops?

 

What you say about Ya Mu's approach, yeah it is mostly based on feeling the tree's energy body like what you would if the tree were a human being.

 

My impression of the tree was that is was a very friendly being with a huge energy body

 

I wonder how trees do qigong?

[zerostao]

this weekend i will also be doing some moon qigong, along with my circle walking.

i look at the moon as the most yang of the yin.

last time i did the full moon qigong the magnetic push/pull was physically moving me, a step back , a step forward.

sth i pulled off the net about this full moon.

"this first full Moon of 2012 highlights the opposition between the Sun in Capricorn and the Moon in Cancer, and speaks to the nurturing, creating and protecting aspects of life and society. It brings up the archetypal powers of mother and father, the issues of nurturing and protecting, and impacts our emotional body as well as our social body. The energies of family and state begin our new year, the structures that bind us together."

[Chang]

For those interested Mantak Chia gives exercises for collecting tree energy in his book "Chi Nei Tsang".

[johndoe2012]

Yeah, he did. Chris d, now you got me thinking -- vortex, have you been to a workshop with Wang Liping?

 

Good question.

 

Basically at this point, I think internal alchemy is too early for me. Maybe one day when the system has been purged of all the nonsense...and I can sit in full lotus

Edited January 6, 2012 by chris d

[Ya Mu]

For a bit of clarity, since Jing Dong Gong was mentioned, folks need to realize that "touchy-feely" (dang, gave me a weird feeling just writing the word(s)) is not exactly how I would describe it, but as described above is only the initial stage of Stillness-Movement (Jing Dong) Tree Neigong. MOST people definitely sense and are able to palpate the tree's energy field after charging up with the Stillness-Movement practice. When one delves deeper into the system we discover that it is more a shamanic method than a "methodology" method, but it has a real depth to the practice.

 

Also, the Stillness-Movement practice, while excelling in getting a person to where they can do medical qigong, is a true impeccable inner alchemy neigong method. After all, if a person can't get to where they can manipulate qi (medical qigong = wai qi liao fa), I would ask exactly where is the alchemy(?) and if they can then most definitely there IS inner alchemy happening.

I would agree that many of the neigong methods do end up similar in several aspects.

 

 

Good question.

 

Basically at this point, I think internal alchemy is too early for me. Maybe one day when the system has been purged of all the nonsense...and I can sit in full lotus

Yes you should approach these things at your own pace; everything works better that way.

HOWEVER, I would like to point out to you that you are already full on into inner alchemy, are doing quite well, and have made far more progress than you realize.

One thing all people on the path(s) should realize is that EVERYONE ELSE has had to go through the process of "purging of all the nonsense" and it is far easier said than done, is a process, but is entirely doable. Just don't try too hard - takes the fun out of it and is the source of most failures.

And full lotus is not needed or necessary; OK if anyone wants to do it.

 

Trees are awesome!