markern

I see. Good to hear you have gotten as far as you have in healing things:)

10-13 hours is a lot. Did you have some health problems before making you need that much sleep or do some people just need that much?

Does the amount of sleep needed (on average) stay the same or is the need diminished?

Very interesting. Can't the lack of fear respons also be dangerous? Say if you where on a high cliff, in a dangerous neighbourhood etc.?

In what way(s)?

A guy named Jeffrey Martin did research about awakening by interviewing lots of people that had achieved some degree of awakening. Amongst those he found six or so methods tended to have been used to get there. He then made a course based on teaching those six methods so people could choose the one or two that seemed most helpful for each individual. Through teaching the course he consistently found that people who had very little success with one method, say Vipassana, could have very fast results with another method, for example self inquiry. So his recommendation was to try out different methods and move on quite quickly if they didn't produce fairly fast results. Damo Mitchells Lotus Nei Gong and Michael Lomax`Stillness movement Nei Gong and Gift of the Tao series have gotten rave reviews on this forum consistently over time. Maybe try them out and see if they work out better for you? I am curious, have you done much physical qigong or internal martial arts? I keep seeing that people who struggle with success in meditation can still often get good results from more body based, movement based and energy based practices. And after achieving good results with such practices meditation often becomes much easier for these people.

Thank you for the thorough reply. This makes sense! So when Damo in the video says about 20 hours is needed he includes meditation in that but means a much higher proportion moving etc. in the beginning than sitting and more sitting over time as you have outlined here? I have usually felt drawn to a fairly even split between passive sitting meditation and more energy based practices like moving qigong, pranayama or meditations that involve working more actively with energy. Unless I got about half sitting quiet I felt like I didn't get enough digestion of things and not enough still, relaxed and equanimous aspects. And unless I got things moving for 40-50% of the time things felt like they would eventually stagnate too much. Not sure if this is "right" for me but its been how I've felt drawn. Stretching would come on top of this which would make for about a third of each I think.

What would you say is beneficial in terms of balancing meditation with Nei Gong and more dynamic work? Some form of regular percentage wise balance in terms of time spent on each? Change the balance according to what feels right? Or focus on one or the other at certain periods?

When he says 1 year to 18 months of daily training what amount of time each day does he think is needed?

Ok

What is the difference in terms of inner development?

I mostly perceive men to have hoter energy and women to have cooler energy. While the women you feel are not that physically attractive to you your energy body might find their energy body attractive to your brains surprise. That started happening to me once I started to perceive energy in myself and others.

I have recently become interested in Bruce Frantzis Water Method.However, there is one aspect of it that makes me skeptical if the system is a good fit for me. He describes his longevity breathing as a form of breathing where one breathes without the pauses between the in breath and the out breath and between the out breath and the in breath. And this form of breathing is used in his form of yoga. I'm not sure if its also used in his Nei Gong. I'm sure this form of breathing can have its benefits and I`d be up for practicing it for some of the time, but I am skeptical of using it as the general form of breathing in qigong as I like breathing with pauses and this seems the most natural to me. If I meditate by just watching the breath the pauses between the breaths become larger and larger until the breath almost stops and for some rare periods seems to have stopped entirely. This make me think the pauses are natural and important. As far as I have understood the goal of embryonic breathing is also to have the breath stop and this is seen as a very healthy and energetically powerful state. When I observe the movements and the pauses of the breath the pauses seem to have an energy of stillness to them. And this energy expands as I become aware of it. So it seems to me that the pauses are critical for stillness to increase. Which in turn makes me skeptical of breathing without pauses. In the Longevity Breathing Yoga book Frantzis writes that the pauses in peoples breath creates stress whereas the continuous circular breathing makes relaxation easier. I can see that the pauses in regular stressed out peoples breath could function like that and be based on tension. But the pauses that show up during meditation seems based on relaxation and seem to increase relaxation. So I don't really understand why breathing without pauses should be more relaxing then having them elongate. I`m fine with practicing this form of breathing as one part of and overall system. I'm sure it has some benefits. But if its a form of breathing to be used all the time both in his yoga and his Nei Gong I would find this unappealing. Can someone experienced in the Water Method explain how this works to me?

I have done a lot of six healing sounds and the liver sound cleansed out anger very effectively. It also allowed me to dig deeper into the wounds that caused the anger. I used to do all six sounds 3 times as is a standard small practice and do more on one or two organs where I felt more pressing emotional issues or felt like working more to get things resolved. I also remember a user on the forum here writing he used the liver sound to overcome a pretty deep anger problem. It took him two years of practice to completely overcome it.

Excellent!

Healing first and awakening second. Martial arts skills are a nice bonus but not something I am looking for in the way many here seem to be looking for the most powerful IMA for fighting. I like tai chi and want to have it as a regular part of my practice but its more important to me that I like the way the form looks and how it feels to move in it and the way the teacher moves than that it cultivates the most internal power for push hands etc. So for example I really like the way the teacher Hai Yang moves in his Chen tai chi on youtube but find the Wu style forms of Frantzis totally unappealing and would prioritize learning from someone like Hai Yang rather than Bruce even if Bruce had much more internal power and could teach that better than Yang. I am more of dancers in my desire for Tai Chi than a martial artist though I do practice Muay Thai and hope to have Tai Chi help my fighting skills there. I prioritize healing first because I have some serious traumas to work through and my physical health has taken a toll from years of burnout coupled with unhealthy living. I also have had some very serious grounding issues which have gotten a lot better but I still need a lot of grounding. After that is in order I care about awakening. Very fire based systems are probably not a good place for me to start. I live in Norway and there aren't many teachers around but I am willing to travel and learn online. Its important to me that its possible to get certified to teach after some time and that I won't have to spend many, many years until I am maybe allowed to do so.

Would you be willing to say who you would recommend instead?

Thank you so much for the reply Sifu Dunn:)

Great! Thanks for the help:)

Thanks for ute reply Earl Grey. I figured there might be something in the thread but its size was a bit daunting to read through:) Can you tell me more about the teacher training? How much classes are there, how long is it, how much experience do you need to qualify?

Thanks a lot for the replies everyone. Much appreciated! I will get back to this thread in a day or two.

Terry Dunn, do you ever hold workshops in Flying Phoenix Qigong? And is it possible to become certified to teach FPQ? Do you hold teacher trainings?

Thanks for the reply! But isn't the goal of embryonic breathing for the breath to stop? And isn't that considered an extraordinary healthy state to be in? I dont like controlling my breath much. I could do it every now and then but as my main practice I would never do that. And wouldn't this form of circular breathing always require some form of controlling the breath? Even if very subtle?

This thread is for discussing Eric Yudeloves teachings and only that. Only the practices. Any discussion about him as a person should be done in the other thread about him: http://www.thetaobums.com/index.php?/topic/13867-master-eric-yudelove/ I have read both your books Mr Yudelove and enjoyed them both. One thing I took with me from them is to visualize the kidneys as black instead of blue during healing sounds. That finally made the kidney part of the practice start to work. The kidneys seemed to enjoy being black. But sometimes the energies and colours change as I do a sound and they become more bluish and white. When that happens I tend to just let them be that way for as long as they want to by themselves. It feels wrong to make them black at that point. After some time they often want to go back to black. Can you say anything more about the black vs blue colours? They seem to relate to different aspects of the kidneys psychology in my limited experience. I also did a very short atempt at doing fusion after your instructions. It was a real WOW experience. Soooooooo balancing and cleansing and uplifting. It also made me instantly cool whereas normally I am too hot. I did not continue because I felt I should prepare properly through other practices first. What are the differences between your teaching of fusion in the books and that of Chia? WHat about stilness meditation? One of the things about chias teaching I am sceptical about is that his practices tend to involve doing and moving things arround all the time and almost never letting things happen by itself and being digested by sitting in stillness (I have taken a retreat with him and he did not emphasize this at all. I don`t think anyone left with any understanding that this might be a good idea).

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