Balancing physical conditioning with internal cultivation

[Vajra Fist]

Haven't read through the entire thread but if you're worried about weight gain, minding what you eat is the most important thing. Generally exercise increases appetite and people are more likely to treat themselves with rich food as a 'reward' for a heavy workout. 

 

The only reliable way to lose weight is to practice intermittent fasting. Start by skipping breakfast and eating only between 12pm and 8pm. And then narrow the window down so you're eating one meal a day (preferably at lunch when agni is at its peak).

 

 

[KuroShiro]

On 8/31/2019 at 5:28 PM, freeform said:

Yi Jin Jing is the basis of all the internal arts - Qi Gong, Nei Gong, Taiji, Bagua etc. And it comes from Shaolin originally. It’s been heavily adopted by Daoists into everything they do.

 

Thanks for confirming this. Also Yoga?

 

On 8/31/2019 at 5:28 PM, freeform said:

What you call hard Qi Gong, is just conditioning with some elements of the YJJ present - I wouldn’t call it Qi Gong (the mastery of Qi) - it’s just using some tools from the Qi Gong arsenal to develop some capacity.

 

The hard Qi Gong I'm referring to is about Qi, Nei Gong not body conditioning.

 

On 8/31/2019 at 5:28 PM, freeform said:

The Qigong as applied to healing and spiritual cultivation, for me is of a far greater interest.

 

I understand what you're saying here but I think you might be underestimating the ability to direct Qi into one's hands and fingers. I'm not saying it should be an end goal but it seems to be a good signpost along the way.  It's not all about breaking rocks, it's very important for the healing arts. I don't know about spiritual cultivation but I suspect it might be important too. Here's what @MIchael80 said in another thread:

 

 

On 8/31/2019 at 5:28 PM, freeform said:

These aspects of Shaolin are not normally shared or demonstrated to the public. And these days Shaolin has become more of a physical training academy and athletic performance centre - rather than a spiritual school.

 

However there are still true masters from the Shaolin line around. They are not the ones breaking bricks or doing acrobatics or other feats for tourists (unsurprisingly)

 

Yes, of course, the true masters are the ones I'm interested in. I have another question (probably not easy to answer) for you (sorry ):

Master Peng is a true master from the Chinese Buddhist Tradition and his teacher, Master Xiao Yao, was from a different temple than Shaolin. Does this mean that what he was taught regarding internal practices can be considered to be Shaolin (regarding origin and type of practices/methods) or there might not be any direct connection between what is taught in different Buddhist temples in China?

(I now know that "Yi Jin Jing is the basis of all the internal arts" but I think I don't believe its origin is Shaolin Monastery)

 

On 9/2/2019 at 10:33 AM, Rara said:

I eat a lot of bread, rice and potatoes but still struggle to get over 155lbs

Can you tell us your height?

Eating a lot of bread, rice and potatoes is probably not good for you (everyone).

The best way to gain weight is to build muscle mass and for this you need an emphasis on protein, you need to eat a lot - several meals/snacks + protein shakes. Check out the diet of weightlifters/strongmen/some actors, I believe this type of diet is not healthy.

For someone practicing Qi Gong or Nei Gong gaining muscle mass should not be on the menu, when you see a Daoist Master they're not bulky and are usually quite thin.

[Rara]

23 hours ago, KuroShiro said:

Can you tell us your height?

Eating a lot of bread, rice and potatoes is probably not good for you (everyone).

The best way to gain weight is to build muscle mass and for this you need an emphasis on protein, you need to eat a lot - several meals/snacks + protein shakes. Check out the diet of weightlifters/strongmen/some actors, I believe this type of diet is not healthy.

 

5'10". I did all this before. Just ended up shitting a lot haha

[KuroShiro]

On 9/24/2019 at 4:08 PM, Rara said:

 

5'10". I did all this before. Just ended up shitting a lot haha

 

155lbs to 5'10" is good.

 

[Rara]

3 hours ago, KuroShiro said:

 

155lbs to 5'10" is good.

 

 

Sure. I was just going through that adolescent phase of aiming for 180+

 

I think genes are everything. Some people are just built big. My friend's a tank, barely eats and cycles a lot. No lifting or protein would get me anywhere near.

[dwai]

Been working with the trainer 3x weekly - this is the 3rd week now. Two workouts involve HIIT with body-weight and resistance based training. Between the two workouts I do fast vinyasa yoga. Interesting feeling in the body. Posture has changed, feel stronger without feeling like a cyborg. Qi sensitivity has dipped a bit, but the power seems to be there still. 

 

Other days I just do taiji practice. Still having to stand and release any tightness, but body is getting adjusted to the workouts progressively. Releases faster than the first few days of working out.

 

 

 

[Rocky Lionmouth]

Vis a vis hard vs healing qigong:

from where i’ve been standing and looking at things it doesn’t seem like healing and hard expressions differ much in the basic knowledge and training. Sure harnessing and using it has different application and the techniques aren’t the same but working with the energy develops both potentials. Specialization in one doesn’t exclude the other, in fact i believe they aid mutually, especially in practical martial application.

Caveat: with this i am speaking of the soft version of hard qigong, meaning nei gong and building a conditioned body with constructive exercise, not just banging your fists on rocks to dull the sensitivity. Nei gong work develops hard skill without sacrificing sensitivity or health, when done right. Nei gong does not however exclude working with pain and conditioning, but the approach is less blunt and force oriented. Neigong it’s about technique, power and cultivation, the result is power, graceful technique and surprising resilience. 

 

Knowing what to treat and reinforce means knowing how to attack and weaken and in a way both pairs (treat-attack, reinforce-weaken i mean) are necessary for healing and fighting. 

 

Practical example: no profession is more suited to train an assassin than being a doctor. A doctor knows all the ways to heal and damage, a doctor is knowledgeable in hurting somebody in very subtle ways that cause much pain and injury. Likewise a skilled assassin would know enough about the same subject matter to be a more than decent trauma-medic.

 

On topic:

i’ve just recently come back out of a longer hiatus from kung fu training. Comparing how i felt and ached when i was only going to the gym and complementing with doing qigong and doing kung fu and qigong has me noticing that gym work game me a tiredness and ache that i identified as being a symptom of injury or overexertion. I did 1:1 body to weight deadlifts, leg presses, weighted squats and warm-up cardio and my body was feeling exhausted and pushed to a spot of grave discomfort.

Doing kung fu training and rebuilding my gong in footwork, posture builds muscle but simultaneously works with healing and strenghtening connective tissue and oxygenation. I ache because of good, hard work and my body has pains of development, there is a replenishing quality to it.

Just two cents of anecdotal evidence

[freeform]

On 23/09/2019 at 4:09 PM, KuroShiro said:

I have another question (probably not easy to answer) for you (sorry ):

Master Peng is a true master from the Chinese Buddhist Tradition and his teacher, Master Xiao Yao, was from a different temple than Shaolin. Does this mean that what he was taught regarding internal practices can be considered to be Shaolin (regarding origin and type of practices/methods) or there might not be any direct connection between what is taught in different Buddhist temples in China?

(I now know that "Yi Jin Jing is the basis of all the internal arts" but I think I don't believe its origin is Shaolin Monastery)

 

 

I'm sorry but I don't know.

 

I've long stopped searching for historical or scholarly understanding of the arts. Much of Chinese history is a mixture of legend and fact. There is so much confusion and misinformation that getting anything like an objective truth is impossible... Is Taiji really an ancient art? Or was it developed in the 1800's... Was Lao Tzu using internal alchemy or was he practising a form of meditative training? Was there really a Buddhist dude called Bodhidharma that went to Shaolin and taught YJJ to the monks? I'm not sure...

[dwai]

 

3 hours ago, freeform said:

Much of Chinese history is a mixture of legend and fact.

The problem is approaching history from a western perspective, not with Chinese history per se. Indian History is much like chinese history. In the indian context, we don't have what one might call "History" as in the western sense of taking chronological records of past events. In the Indian context, and I think it is similarly the case with the Chinese context, there are narratives of royal lineages along with major events that occured. Since the concept of time is cyclical in the eastern traditions, the sense of time was very different for the Chinese or Indian ancients. 

 

For instance, I'll give you what is considered *itihaasa* (loosely translated to history in english) in the Indian context are the epics such as Ramayana and Mahabharata. These were records of events where historicity was considered improbable because of the antiquity they pointed to. Internal references of chronology therein are based on astronomical/astrological data which point to Rama being born as early as ~ 14000-12000 BCE, Mahabharata's occurrence ~ 5000-3100 BCE.  So they got relegated to "legend" and "Mythology" by western academics who tried to interpret the naiveté of the "unscientific" indians with a western lens. Similar is the situation with Chinese history as well.

 

Add to the mix the tendency of Indian and Chinese history of infusing lessons (moral, spiritual etc) in their narrative, and the method in which the accounts were transmitted (orally, generation to generation) - that cements the tendency of reject their validity from a historic perspective (in the western/western-educated eyes). 

 

[Earl Grey]

14 hours ago, dwai said:

Been working with the trainer 3x weekly - this is the 3rd week now. Two workouts involve HIIT with body-weight and resistance based training. Between the two workouts I do fast vinyasa yoga. Interesting feeling in the body. Posture has changed, feel stronger without feeling like a cyborg. Qi sensitivity has dipped a bit, but the power seems to be there still. 

 

Other days I just do taiji practice. Still having to stand and release any tightness, but body is getting adjusted to the workouts progressively. Releases faster than the first few days of working out.

 

 

 

Which Zhan Zhuang postures are you doing and for how long as you’re relieving tension? I do all eight of the Yi Quan ones for an hour, a half hour each side for Trinity, and occasionally 5-10 minutes when I do Big Basin.

Edited September 27, 2019 by Earl Grey

[dwai]

5 minutes ago, Earl Grey said:

Which Zhan Zhuang postures are you doing and for how long as you’re relieving tension? I do all eight of the Yi Quan ones for an hour, a half hour each side for Trinity, and occasionally 5-10 minutes when I do Big Basin.

I have a set from Temple style. First is standing in Wuji and simply releasing down. Second is raised hands stance (both sides). Third is Taiji stance (tree hugging). then I do some standing in ward off with focus on different things (up-down vs front-back). Also we have sets called the prayer hands set  which I circle through. Usually I circle through the postures 10-15 mins each. 

[Earl Grey]

11 minutes ago, dwai said:

I have a set from Temple style. First is standing in Wuji and simply releasing down. Second is raised hands stance (both sides). Third is Taiji stance (tree hugging). then I do some standing in ward off with focus on different things (up-down vs front-back). Also we have sets called the prayer hands set  which I circle through. Usually I circle through the postures 10-15 mins each. 

 

Nice. I find embracing for an hour is adequate for releasing most tension.  That’s the main one I advocate for release of tension.

[Rara]

Is there much point in doing strength exercises as a Taoist? When we live in a tense world, surely internal forms take priority? I'm curious to know what people think, because I currently feel that lifting is counter-productive to a practitioner. But I change my mind a lot.

[Earl Grey]

53 minutes ago, Rara said:

Is there much point in doing strength exercises as a Taoist? When we live in a tense world, surely internal forms take priority? I'm curious to know what people think, because I currently feel that lifting is counter-productive to a practitioner. But I change my mind a lot.

 

Strength exercises are not just lifting weights. And yes, they are quite necessary for BALANCE.

[Creation]

12 hours ago, dwai said:

The problem is approaching history from a western perspective, not with Chinese history per se.

Actually, the Chinese have a long native tradition of historiography, separating historical truth from legend, separating original strata of texts from later additions. 

 

Disparate Chinese lineages claiming to be the teachings of Lao Tzu, Huang Di, or Da Mo in unbroken lineage are sort of like how many disparate Indian Yogic traditions claim to be the original yoga of Patanjali: they certainly can't all be, because they are so different, but how would you know which one actually is?  If it actually works, does it matter?

[Rocky Lionmouth]

16 hours ago, Creation said:

they certainly can't all be, because they are so different, but how would you know which one actually is? 

 

This!

 

But even moreso: whats to say that the majority of them arent true in their heritage? I mean just looking at some southern kung fu styles development under one and the same living grandmaster show great variation in emphasis, footwork and technique. In that particular case all variants are true to the lineage, even if some arent looking like the latest students version, because they all adhere strictly to the underlying principles as embodied and developed uppn by that current generation.

 

Different students inherit different aspects too, depending on their character and disposition, and thats still just talking about a visibly physical art, lets not even get started on more orthodox religious and philosophical lineages where the influences and updates are even less obvious.

 

Also thanks for clarifying about chinese historiography, your take on it rings true with what i can remember about chinese history, they were among the first groups to preserve facts, narratives and data, besides organizing pretty good beaurocracy, standardization of education etc.

 

Oral traditions are another thing, their passing on varies greatly in execution and detail from line to line, lineage to lineage, some require verbatim recall and others transmit a certain narrative, sometimes gaps are filled in or become disorganized because of human memory not being 1:1 in fact to recall ratio... or thats what i’ve gathered at least, consider it hearsay.

[freeform]

18 hours ago, Creation said:

separating historical truth from legend,

 

Really?

 

I suspect you know better than me... because I’m no chinese history buff.

 

But I remember looking into Lao Tzu - and it was certainly not clear that he even existed as an actual person... certainly not on the back of an ox

 

Then there’s the Yellow emperor... 

 

18 hours ago, Creation said:

If it actually works, does it matter?

 

Quite right. That’s exactly my approach. The cultural or historical aspect is not of much interest to me.

 

But it’s important what ‘works’ means.

 

Rocky Lionmouth says a lineage isn’t necessarily its outer form... Which I agree with.

 

In my experience lineage is more a sort of line or process of specific transformations one goes through. The particular tools used to create these transformations will change and adapt depending on teacher/student/circumstances etc... but the results and ‘achievements’ or ‘signs’ along the process are the same (or should be).

 

[Creation]

On 9/28/2019 at 4:08 PM, freeform said:

 

Really?

 

I suspect you know better than me... because I’m no chinese history buff.

 

But I remember looking into Lao Tzu - and it was certainly not clear that he even existed as an actual person... certainly not on the back of an ox

 

Then there’s the Yellow emperor...

Chinese historical scholars starting with Sima Qian were concerned with separating legend from fact, yes, though not necessarily with the degree of skepticism that modern Westerners use (case in point Lao Tzu), and scholars like Wang Bi worked with different recensions of texts like the Dao De Jing to produce authoritative versions, Buddhist scholars debated the authenticity of purported Sutras such as the Shurangama Sutra, etc.  Medieval Indian culture did not have this tradition of critical historical scholarship; I was mainly responding to Dwai's claim that such critical inquires into tradition are exclusive to the West.

 

However, these were scholars at the imperial court, so not every lineage in the mountains claiming to be the secret oral tradition of Da Mo was being critiqued in this way.  I agree with what you said about lineage at any rate.