After speaking with many different practitioners and thinking about this topic quite a lot, it seems to be quite the conundrum.    From what I've learned there are basically two different types of systems. Traditional systems and Shen systems.    The first is the traditional Jing -> Qi -> Shen cultivation path. According to the traditions I've looked into it is based around firstly changing the body to make it a fit vehicle for later spiritual work. For instance, one way of looking at this schematic (in my preliminary understanding) would be something like:    Conditioning and preparing the physical body, herein both stretching the body, learning how to hang muscles and align the body properly, how to "sink the Qi" and eventually connecting/changing the entire fascia system. Usually takes many years of work just to get this step right to my understanding. This is a state of vibrant physical health already and there won't be coarse physical issues in my understanding.   Beginning the stage of jing to Qi, wherein jing is first stilled and consolidated. Usually, in my understanding, the 100 day virgin boy training or also known as the 100 day foundation.  Awakening/building the LDT, which becomes an actual physical structure that moves and twists in your lower abdomen and is now an actual physical structure that also holds immense energetic properties.  Microcosmic orbit Then movement of yang qi and yin qi and the mixing of fire and water Qi to Shen (leading to "white moon on the mountain peak") Shen stage where the yin-shen is created and erupts from the crown and then needs to learn how to move and behave independently from the body. This is said to take a long time before it is fully matured and is done in retreat and away from society.    On the other hand, we have systems that go the completely opposite way.    They say forget about the body, forget about physical body transformation, none of that is really most important part. You should directly work on the Shen stage from the beginning, then everything will follow nicely and your body will remain healthy and even transform to stay healthy. They say that the body is completely impermanent so spending time creating physical structures inside it like a physical dantien is not necessary nor helpful for spiritual cultivation, you're really only interested in getting to the Shen stage so you can begin refining your spirit immediately since that is the only thing that lasts and that you can take with you upon death.   On top of this, these types of schools also claim that you're basically skipping decades of hard gruelling jing -> qi -> shen work where every aspect of your physical and emotional nature is changed. According to them, you simply get to the last stage immediately and then everything is refined much faster that way.     So, my question is basically, are they just deluding themselves? Which of the systems is correct? Are they both correct, and if so, how or why?   Thanks