Starjumper

Yup. The energy you give someone fades away over a period of three days or less and is the GONE, the firing should be repeated many times, each week, for years, synchronized with the exercising of the form, for it to really take and make a lasting difference.

No, I didn't know that Hu Yao Zhen taught neigong to Grandmaster Feng, I never bothered much with lineages as I can tell when a master is a real person or not. I think Ya Mu is a real person too, marketing just makes us do weird things sometimes. Concerning spontaneous movement, I didn't take Hunyuan that far, however I understand the benefits of spontaneous movement and do it as well. The ultimate goal of arriving at the formless, which is stated in the tai chi classics, is about being spontaneous, but it also says that such spontaneous movement should be based on extensive mind/body training and that this spontaneous movement comes from experiencing all the ways of movement. The goal of arriving at the formless is important in self defense in the internal arts as well. In spontaneous chi kung that is based on arriving at the formless it generally looks more like a soft flowing dance rather than flopping around, this spastic flopping around which has been popularized lately, which is based on lack of experience in the practitioner, seems to me like a scam, that is all. Sooo, depending on how the results look in the students I can get a feel for how this works in this case. I do like Ya Mu, he is straightforward and helpful, and I think he has good chi power. My question is, does he teach the way of power to others or is it taught for some healing effect? You seem to have quite a library of past posts and stuff could you provide some links to these videos please.

Well I'm not so sure I felt kind of like an idiot for ordering the book and now that I read Hundun's post I feel more like an idiot. Reading about how the chi kung can be done sitting in a chair and that it appears to be more and more like spontaneous flopping around kind of turns me off. I might cancel the order. I'm such a sucker sometimes, too impulsive, getting swayed by a good spiel. At first I even fell for Max's opening statement, but quickly changed my mind after seeing all the other untruths. I watched the video that Hundun posted and I must say it doesn't sit quite right with me. The reason is because the patient's movements don't correspond to the healing hand movements. I've seen plenty of hand/energy work by people with a lot of energy and the subjects movements frequently correspond to the actions of the projector. For example if you want to make someone do a flopping around chi dance then you give them a little energy for just a few seconds and they can dance for minutes with no additional input. However, when doing healing work they don't usually do that dance because the energy should be directed to and generally confined to whatever area is being worked on. Of course there is some overflow energy also. In general if I do energy work on someone: if I compress energy into their bodies then they will wiggle around and shudder, but they are sitting, so no dance. If they are standing and I push energy at them they will be pushed away, if I pull they will be pulled towards me, almost falling down if I do it to them when they aren't expecting it and have their eyes closed. However, when working on a specific part they usually just feel buzzing, pressure, heat, flowing, or extraction and it doesn't cause much moving. My kung fu teacher (not my chi kung teacher) can make people move in specific ways that he wants, as if they were a puppet on a string, with a great deal of control, whether they cooperate or not. My chi kung teacher can move his hand suddenly one inch while he is standing ten feet away and you feel like you were hit by an explosion, but it doesn't make you move. Anyway, long story short, I think Hundun had the right idea, that it is partly theatrics. What I can say from my experience, after having watched the video, is that the subject was very yin and sensitive to energy, and he probably had a history of doing energy work with Ya Mu. People who are very yin and sensitive to energy will have strong responses but the opposite type who has hard muscles and is very grounded and yang might not feel a thing and won't move. Just as an experiment I'm going to try to move someone with energy while their backs are turned to me. I want to find some musclebound worker type who is absolutely numb to energy and try it on them. I'll bet that even though they can't feel the energy that they can be moved. I guess I'm going off on a tangent here, I should be working Oh ya, I know, once I was visiting my next door neighbors down the canyon up at my place in the mountains. The neighbor's wife and I had just finished a bowl of primo weed and I decided to try to see if and how she could feel energy work and she was interested. So while she was sitting there I tried some different stuff like I do when my students are sitting and each time I did a different technique she exclaimed stuff like: WOW! Oh my gawww... Oooooh Wow That's amazing! Oh my and so on and so forth. It actually spooked me a little bit because that was the first time I tried doing it 'just for fun'. Then I tried it on the husband, who is a hard working building contractor, and he didn't feel nuthin'. Once I did a demo at a Reiki practitioner's meetup and when I did the thing that I call sprinkling stardust (or pixie dust) which feels like a gentle sparkly shower to the subject, she exclaimed: "What on Earth are you doing?" and had to look up at my hands So yeah, whatever, do you think I should still get the book?

Okay Mr. Becker, you sold me on it. I never expected to, I've only bought a couple of books on chi kung and haven't gotten one in over a decade, I think.

Yeah, well sorry for spewing, i'm certain the NQA is full of very fine people; but mentioning NQA touched a nerve. I looked in to becoming an instructor member and they wanted to see a certificate. Well in my system we don't do toilet paper. You either have the goods or you don't, and teachers that pass out certificates are in my opinion not top level. I just checked and I see they now want to see documentation of hours of training, well I don't have any documentation, and what is training supposed to mean, hours of time with a teacher only or does it include hours of time with a teacher plus hours practicing? I have way over a thousand hours of instruction with a highest level master, and other top masters add many more hours, and I have many thousands of hours of practice. Two of these teachers wanted me to teach, my chi kung teacher and my tai chi teacher, but I didn't get no toilet paper from them. Then there's all this money the NQA wants to get THEIR certificate, they want like $250 for two years, so what's it all about? A bunch of people who deal in certificates patting each other on the back so they can boost their income? That's OK for them but it alienates me because I don't fit in to their tidy little system and having people with certificates think they are above you. This is common with many types of systems where top masters stay private and don't join public groups. Not to say that some top masters don't form little social groups, but those groups are private and they aren't put together for promotion or for making money. Take Bruce Lee for example. He taught what he called Jeet Kun do but none of his students 'got' it, he made sure of that by not teaching them the basics, and he specifically told his students that if they teach what they learned from him that they should not call what they teach Jeet Kun do. And yet there's all kinds of nuts running around out there who learned from someone who learned from someone who learned from someone who took some lessons from Bruce Lee and I sho nuff, some of them call or called it Jeet Kun Do. At least on Bozo gave certificates in Jeet Kun Do to his students. They all give certificates to their students but Bruce Lee didn't have a certificate to teach JKD. However, there are a few people out there who did get 'it', and the reason they got it is because they learned it from Bruce Lee's primary teacher, who taught Bruce a form called Jeet Kun, these guys spent just as much or more time learning as Bruce did, and they learned it later after it was more highly developed. Some of these people are now teaching this art and they really are 'the best', they really got it, but none of them have certificates nor do they offer certificates, nor are they members of the NQA although they could blow most members there out of the water with their chi power. aaaand, lo and behold the basics that were left out by Bruce, my chi kung system is those basics - along with a whole bunch of other stuff, but I don't have any certificates or documentation. That's what I think about the NQA, apparently not for me or my kind.

And then there's a lot of non major (major in this case referring to publicity, no doubt) teachers who are just as advanced, or way more advanced, who keep to themselves and avoid legitimizing stooges with contact.

You know, I learned alchemy without much being spoken of it, and I think that's the BEST way to do it by far, to get there without all the blabber and mind chatter; so I'm not familiar with some of these terms. I understand well the need for balance in all things, but terms like water method or fire school and lead and follow are outside of my dictionary. I can relate to the need for grounding and for ungrounding and how it's better in general to get people grounded first, particularly in this society. I can probably relate to them if I had a good explanation. It would probably be best to remain ignorant though There is upward and downward, inward and outward, gathering and projecting, stirring up and quieting down, but how does that real stuff relate to imaginary stuff like fire and water; and how is stirred up leading and dissolving following, and what the fork is dissolving supposed to mean anyway. It all sounds like a bunch of hocus pokus to me. Does Winn's fire method mean visualizing internal flows? If it does then that's bullshit.

Snowmoki, Thank you very much for this post. This is precisely the kind of info I was trying to get out of Pietro, plus a whole lot more. Thanks for bringing Snowmonki's post to my attention as I missed it earlier. All that he says is correc. Kumar definitely knows his stuff and I think Winn is trying to legitimize himself by mentioning Chia as an authority and by saying he discussed things with Kumar. Concerning using intent to gather into or project energy from any part of the body (and EVERY part). That is something that we gain the ability to do in my system and it can be done, however we develope power in our hands and use our hands and movement to do that, which can make it more effective (more chi, more flow, etc), but the essential part is to develope the power in your hands early on in order to have more ability with this. The hands are the best tools for energy work.

Sounds like kids in second grade arguing.

It is clearly stated in the tai chi classics (part of the Taoist cannon), that one must first study the forms in order to eventually arrive at the formless. Arriving at the formless comes from knowing all the forms and it takes decades to learn them. What's that sying in the TTC?: "Everyday, in in reaching for ----- one acquires more knowledge, everyday in approaching the Way one gives up knowledge" Knowledge is not wisdom. Formless chi kung is not shaking. Shaking is the same, not formless, there are many many specific forms of shaking that are not formless. Those who say their shaking is formless do so out of ignorance because they are simply copying what they have seen others do, which is a very limited form of it. Spastic flopping around is not chi kung! Nor is it Nei kung.

You have to go through hell to get to heaven, that's the Taoist way. Tao is not god.

Squirrels are much better at guarding their nuts than people are.

That was good! Can you work pecker tracks into a sentence? Concerning radiating energy, it makes the progress of the student much faster. Without the extra energy people end up just doing the exercises on a physical level for a long time, several to many years is common, but with the addition of the extra energy while they are doing the form then the energy boosts their own work, makes it more productive, and they get to skip ahead quite quickly with the results of their practice. Someone without a high energy teacher (which is most teachers) could still get to the same place of high energy but it takes much more work and much longer, and people are less likely to get there. Only a teacher with high energy can do this (radiate a lot of energy WHILE they are doing the form) and the reason they can do this is because their teacher did it for them. In my system the teacher also additionally boosts the energy of the student and does energy work on each one individually while they are in sitting or standing meditation, which is done after the moving part. Edit: another thing is that when you get blastid with energy you begin to comprehend what is possible and can reach for the stars.

There's a little problem with names here so I can't be of much help with your question. For example, I don't know embrace Horse but I know Horse Stance and Embrace Tree (post stance), those are two different but related postures with different goals. I know four levels of Phoenix Extends Wings so I don't know which you are referring too, but it is a lead in exercise to the inside and outside palm changes in Pa Kua. There's a fifth level but it's complicated and I didn't practice it so I forgot. I recognize most but not all of the other ones from tai chi, but of the ones I recognize I can't recall exactly which movement they refer to. I'm not very good with names. There's another thing, these movements can vary widely depending on the application, there can be several martial and several energetic purposes to it, depending on which variation you use, so it's hard to say which variation you are doing. However it is likely that most of these movements are in my chi kung system in one form or another, but different than they are in tai chi due to the focus on the energy cultivation aspect. I would probably recognize them if you could post videos that contain these movements and then I can comment on them. If the Owl turns head is what I think it is then that's a good one. The thing is that when the goal is that of arriving at the formless then you find that you can vary one movement little by little and eventually it is like a different movement but you get to see all the aspects in between. Due to this variability and formlessness it was the policy of my teacher to not use names for movements as this would tend to solidify a certain version in your mind. Arriving at the formless is totally different from and at the opposite end of the spectrum from the spastic flopping around done in spontaneous 'chi kung'. In any case Chu looks like a real person and so I expect what he has to teach is probably fine.

What are you harping about ten minutes for? I said it would be for ninety minutes. and I DO care about getting the good stuff out to people, which means I don't want to water it down. Plus, a very important part of this system is the student and teacher being in the same room, both for feedback and for the radiated energy the teacher gives off, which makes a BIG difference, it make all the difference, really. So is it actually GOOD to give away (or sell) something that is a mere shadow of it's true self and is missing the important part? If someone wants to learn the real thing from me they need to be living in Seattle. The DVD won't be the real thing. But I DO really like that double face palm picture! even though it didn't apply. Edited for speeling

It's true, there are some good chi kung DVDs out there, and some not so good ones, but ten minutes? If I made a 90 minute DVD of my system, and I'm going to soon because my kung fu brother who is lineage holder of my system asked me to, it will be one little teeny snapshot of a vast ever changing thing, and it will be beginning style only. Nor will it explain how it applies to the philosophy of the principles of power ... no talking

continued from previous post: Those who want their dog chained to the dog house, fine, but having a lot of energy should be like a wild stallion running free across the open plains. it should be free to do any job at any time and not restrained. Movements are difficult to describe with speaking when in person, and that much more difficult to describe by writing, very difficult. You could take one single moderately complex movement and by the time you described all the angles of all the joints through out the whole movement, along with timing, intent, focus on stretching, strengthening, and energy, and the myriad benefits and warnings and all the variations you would fill a whole book up with one movement, and there are ten thousand movements in a 'real' nei kung system. (One must accentuate the word 'real' in a place such as this). So the MCO types learn a couple of exercises from a book or a verbose teacher, which are like 0.1% of a true system and they're good to go. There's only one way to learn the ten thousand ways: What real masters do is they do the movement and you watch them like a hawk and then you imitate it as carefully as possible (only a master attempts a true imitation of another) then you go home and study it a lot at home so you can fuckin' figure it out for yourself; and you better remember it, because next week it will likely by a little different or very different movement, and there are many such movement that comprise a form. If you're going to learn ten thousand techniques, even if you learn five new ways per week it will still take forty years to learn the system. What happens is that you might go for about eight years if you are lucky, and learn three to four thousand techniques, and then you have to extrapolate and figure out the other 6000 on your own. Real masters aren't spoon fed. Those who want spoon fed go to the book store. So obviously most people don't have any desire to do the real thing, that's why there are simplistic chi kung forms on DVD. Real Nei Kung includes all the chi kung forms, except for the hard style stuff, which is normally bad for your health. So the sage teaches without speaking because it's far and away the most efficient and quickest way to learn a vast thing. There are hundreds of chi flows in the body, and if you want to go to the mountain top you need to get them all racing and pulsing in unison and you need to do it along side the exercise which create chi and vitality to put it to good use. Just sitting is wimpy and how are you going to play the MCO game with all your chi flows, what if you miss something? You WILL miss something, in fact if you get it from books you'll probably miss a lot. With a full spectrum of movements done mindfully you can cover all the chi flows without having to bother even thinking about it. Why think about it, isn't no mind better? Isn't it better to listen to the energy rather than dictate to your dog? There's also the exercise aspect of movement. If you just sit around with your finger in your nose and visualize stuff then you are wasting time! If you want to cultivate high power you need to make efficient use of time. Therefore in a good Nei Kung system you do stretching, strengthening, energy gathering, blockage removal, energy cultivation and generation, and meditation ALL at the same time.

If your MCO started on it's own without you dictating it then that's fine. You were fine there until you said that moving it with your mind is Nei Kung. Nei Kung includes all chi kung methods, including all the moving ones, and it's the moving ones that are important, they are important for vitality, which is needed for chi and shen. This, the requirement for movement NEVER ends ... until you are ready to die. Well then Master Chu probably knows the 'real' stuff. I'm not sure why some of these supposed experts sell the MCO, and I've spent a few microseconds contemplating it and it seems fairly self evident to me. What I know is that my teacher, who is one of the top five most powerful Chinese chi kung masters, was adamantly against doing the MCO or ANY other forced flow where you arbitrarily direct it with your mind, whether it is visualization or intent. Also the other top masters don't teach it and are against it. I'll bet Wang Liping, who I don't think is in the top five, doesn't teach it either, nor do other chi power cultivation oriented masters. So why does Mantak Chia teach it? It is said that the sage teaches without speaking, and yet so many Bums here ignore the important stuff in Taoism. The sage teaches without speaking but what happens when you go to a Chia seminar? It's blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, etc, and that's just about one technique. So is Chia really a master? Really$$? He talks so much one simplistic technique that you only have a couple of minutes to practice it. I showed my teacher a couple of his books and he said it looked like a bunch of unrelated stuff that someone threw together. So let's examine why the MCO is so popular. It's quite hard to describe detailed movement exercises in a book, and most people are way too lazy to even make a half assed attempt - so - no money there. However, it's possible to write a whole book about something as simple as the MCO, and people who like to sit around and read stuff will eat it up if it includes some pretty color pictures along with plenty of other pictures of genitals. Then some other authors noticed how popular it was and jumped on the band wagon. True practitioners noticed that when you do good chi kung (good chi kung means moving chi kung) that the MCO starts up and goes on it's own so some people wrote about it, and then some other people decided to bypass the cultivation parts and just do the circle jerk with an empty tantien. So, not only is it getting it backwards, but it's forced and fairly useless (not mentioning the damaging part). The important thing is that doing something like the MCO with your mind is, as my teacher said, like training a dog to stay, and then when you want it to come to your aid it won't come because it's staying. It's like a stream that wears a groove in the rock, it gets deeper and deeper and the energy you have available for other more important things, like health and self defense, not to mention enlightenment, is sidetracked into this groove, and for no good reason at all. Those who want their dog chained to the dog house, fine, but when Edit: needed lots of editing =)

I understand too. MCO is forced, it is a hard style, and it's not that good for you, and you guys are ignoring Ya Mu and other experienced ones, ignoring the important part and nit picking at details to make yourselves feel right. We understand that.

Lui I Ming said that? What a naughty boy he is, in any case, he wasn't talking to you. It's true, only sitting quietly and only doing tai chi are side paths, but they are far better than wimpy chi kung. They may be side paths but they will prepare you well for the real path. Keep in mind I'm prejudiced. By 'real' path I mean the way of cultivating purified energy, which is at the foundation of the Taoist paths that lead to the Way. If you just want some teacher to teach you verbally to be virtuous, then that's totally different and I don't think you'll ever find a true Taoist master that does that. The sage teaches without speaking, and there already are ten billion religious words that are all variations of 'be good', and they don't do much good, do they? A person needs the clarity and enlightenment that comes from true cultivation in order to excel at virtue.

I would recommend that you stop if by 'doing it' you are referring to the mind game way as taught by Chia and praised by great masses of misled Bums, which is considered to be a 'hard' style. If by doing it you are referring to the physical movement way then that is perfectly fine, as long as you do it both ways and combine it with all the other hundreds of flows in your body. It is much easier to cover all the bases with movement than with your mind, plus doing it with your mind is just plain WIMPY as it doesn't cultivate vitality. Wimpy is as wimpy does, wimpy chi kung causes wimpy energy, and you can take that to the bank. One needs to cultivate the vitality that comes from relatively strenuous exercises as you find in tai chi and zhan zhuang in order to cultivate chi power. Really, all you need to do is cultivate more chi through movements and standings and the orbit flows will go by themselves. Having more chi will blast through blockages on it's own. Maybe the MCO is OK for some old men who already cultivated for sixty years and who just finished working in the fields for eight hours and just want to sit, but for office workers with flats butts it's just killing yourself softly.

Well yes, tai chi is a type of chi kung, in facts it's quite a good chi kung, it's a true nei kung, better and far safer than most of the mind game stuff out there. For example, I won't have someone as a student who does the MCO as it is very detrimental to energy cultivation, and it would be advisable to not accept one if they did it much in the past either, because the damage runs deep. As someone said in another thread, maybe only 10% of the people will show ill effects, but that means that another 80% are hurting themselves on some level but not feeling the effect.

No, it means you start learning tai chi NOW (not chi kung!) from the most authentic teacher you can find and work your ass off and get really really good, in addition to sitting no mind meditation, then some true master may think you're worthy to accept as a student. Also, there's no need to got to China, there are just as many true masters in the West. It's just that for every guy you read about in books or on the internet there are twenty who you never hear about, and they are usually more powerful. It's better to work through referrals, networking, but don't wait, grab the bull by the balls and run with it. Just stay away from most chi kung, as it's reeeeally pathetic. Edited for spelling

No it's not correct, your tan tien is in your lower abdomen, not upper.

No, it's not just you. You can count the number of good chi kung systems in this country on the fingers of one hand and have a couple of fingers left over. The Way of Energy is a best book, I recommend it.