Nei Dan (alchemy) and the MCO

[Uncle Fester]

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Edited September 19, 2021 by darebak

[小梦想]

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Edited August 10, 2018 by 小梦想

[Taoist Texts]

  So if no water reaches the bathtub because the pipes are not opened and at the very beginning the bathtub is empty then how can you use water from the bathtub to unclog the pipes later? 

All these things in qigong, their metaphors and their results are literally figments of the practitioner's imagination.

[小梦想]

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Edited August 10, 2018 by 小梦想

[TheDustAutumn]

I think the problem is that most westerners understand and experience these practices form a religious faith type of standpoint. They think they just have to believe and keep doing it regardless of results, that qi and all those "esoteric" things are something "outside" the real world, something subtle, personal and undefined, not something that can be physically experienced and has physical characteristics. They think the dantian is a "concept" instead of a physical ball inside the lower abdomen that can be felt by touch by someone else and that physically pulsates when it activates. They think qi is this magical thing that you must believe in order to experience instead of something that can be felt by anyone regardless if they believe in it or not and that interacts in a real and evident way with animated and inanimate matter. They think blockages are euphemisms instead of actual coagulated blood that physically clogs the areas. It's this western idea of separation between rationality/physical world and spirituality/energetics and the fact that they expect for those things to be unquantifiable and somehow outside the material framework that causes all those confusions.

[Mudfoot]

I would not be a follower of the actual coagulated blood theory.

 

Nor would I say that it is either siddhis or placebo. The physiological mechanics behind low-level qigong is known, and can in it self produce quantifiable, reproducable results on physical, emotional and mental levels.

 

But beside that, I agree that there are watered down methods. Been there, moving upp.

[TheDustAutumn]

I would not be a follower of the actual coagulated blood theory.

 

Nor would I say that it is either siddhis or placebo. The physiological mechanics behind low-level qigong is known, and can in it self produce quantifiable, reproducable results on physical, emotional and mental levels.

 

But beside that, I agree that there are watered down methods. Been there, moving upp.

Blood and qi are a pair of yin-yang. You can't have qi blockage without blood stagnating and viceversa.

[Mudfoot]

Stagnated and coagulated are not the same, I have no disagreement with the first. The later is a poor choice of words.

[TheDustAutumn]

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Edited February 5, 2017 by TheDustAutumn

[Mudfoot]

I would still disagree with your choice of words if you use coagulated.

 

Or you know of a major blood issue that seems to be overlooked by Western medical science.

 

Coagulated, as in bruises and bloodcloths. Doesn’t sound like a mild blockage.

 

Have any references to this kind of physiological problem? Since we are not taking about poor blood and lymph circulation with excess metabolic waste products here, nor a poorly functioning autonomous nervous system.

 

Btw, english isn't my mother tounge either, so some of what I write probably sounds awkvard.

[Enishi]

Referencing the discussion on physical/nonphysical, although falsifying materialism is a big part of my goal, I agree that when working with Qi it's not really one or the other. Actually, I've found that my practice goes much better when I stop analyzing whether something was physical or supernatural, and just "be". Qi is about transformation, it's not any one specific "thing". Movement of blood, shifting body alignment, heat in the abdomen, a remote viewing experience, it can include all of those things.

 

As for MCO and Stillness Movement, speaking as someone who has been doing SM for awhile, I have over time gotten better at sensing what's doing on around the Dan Tien. I can feel movement around the belt channel, and sometimes get surges of energy going upward (and also down through the feet when doing standing SM). Also the building of LIGHT (separate from usual descriptions of Qi) at the Dan Tien.

 

When reading descriptions though of alchemy and the Dan Tien from other Daoist systems, although there is some overlap, it's not exactly the same for SM, so even if long term goals are similar, individual "stages" for the Dan Tien don't apply quite as much.

Edited July 17, 2016 by Enishi