rideforever Posted December 24, 2018 (edited) Just noticed something a little strange with 5 Animal Frolics : there is an emphasis on expressing positive emotion with each movement, but in my view a taoist perspective must be to unite with both positive and negative emotion :  for instance anger&kindness in the Wood Element, otherwise you are forsaking one side.  This I have found to be very effective, doing 1/3 negative 2/3 positive emotion for each movement.  It is a habit for humans to do practice ... whilst just damaging them enough ... so they do not work.  Breathing practices are in my view extremely damaging as the natural breath in the belly is the means for learning to surrender and become natural, if you do anything with breath except naturalness it can have very negative long term consequences.  I suppose that if I was doing a qigong with breathing I might just not do the breathing part.  Some teachers / traditions are very proud that their qigong requires not understanding whatsoever and it still works.  Okay, works for what ? If it makes you healthy that's fine, but I can't see how you can return to the Source if you don't have any understanding or interest in what you are doing, and it's a strange thing to be proud of ... not understanding.  One way that a qigong can return you to the source is for instance with the 5 Elements practice, you basically return to the 5 Elements levels of Creation through your practice and then from their return to Yin-Yang then the Source then the Abyss, in that order, unwinding the wheel.   Abyss > Source > Yin-Yang > 5 Elements > 10,000 things 0 > 1 > 2 > 5 > 10,000  We are trying to re-merge with the Source at an appropriate point on its chain of creation, if we enter through the 5 Animals negative&positive emotions we can meet the chain of the Source at a place that is convenient for us, the 5<10,000 intersection, and from there work backwards to the root. In order to do this it is very useful to become one with the natural breathing, hence the need not to practice non-natural breathing modifications. Breathing is very closely tied to the vital force at the 1>2 intersection, don't mess it up.  Wuji Gong is an unwinding gong I know of that also could take you to the Source if used properly.  Anyway it seems to me that only certain qigongs used in a particular way will be effective to return to the Source, others might be good for health, others might be unhelpful.  Edited December 24, 2018 by rideforever Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
