Damo Mitchell - Need Advice

[Rio]

I'm looking for a Neigong/internal arts teacher. At first, I was drawn to Nathan Brine because I liked his vibe, but I saw a post from @freeform saying that the foundations (which are of the utmost importance) are not well covered in his teaching.

He recommended Damo Mitchell, whose approach is close to what he himself is studying.

The thing is, I don’t really feel the vibe from Damo. I’m usually very sensitive to this kind of thing, and I trust my intuition—so it would feel wrong for me to ignore it and follow his courses.

At the same time, if I choose Nathan Brine, I’m worried I might miss out on important elements.
 

This topic on Reddit also didn’t really help me decide in favor of Damo:

 

So I’d really appreciate some advice.
 

For me, internal arts are a way to align more deeply with my spiritual beliefs and help me move closer to dao. But my feelings are telling me that Damo Mitchell might not fully embody this—at least not as much as Nathan does.

 

What are your thoughts?

 

[Lala Nila]

My thoughts are this- listen to your what intuition is telling you. I'm struggling with a similar issue right now. The advice I was given went something like this "normally a prospective student should watch his prospective teacher for 12 years prior to making any vows to him."

 

Meaning, you need to evaluate his character, look at his physical body, see how he interacts with other students, does he live his life with ethics, morality and honestly? How does he conduct his business? Does he talk about others poorly behind their backs? Is he (or she) consumed with lust, greed or other undesirable traits? Do they practice what they preach? How do their students fare-mental illness? physical illness, slobbery, death-and yes death is something to watch out for and Damo has had this issue-one of his students died of a heart attack (I read it on this forum actually just this morning on another thread.)

 

Internal Alchemy is no joke, you can die or seriously harm yourself if done wrong. Student-Teacher relationship is also never to be taken lightly-some say your guru and you are bound forever, likely stemming from a past life. 

 

Go with your gut and listen to those who have been doing this a long time, be grateful to the advice on this forum, and learn from the mistakes of others.

 

all the best to you.

 

 

Edited yesterday at 03:08 PM by Lala Nila

[liminal_luke]

One idea would be to do Robert Peng´s Yi Jin JIng (available ondemand online) along with Nathan Brine´s teachings.  I´ve taken the course and recommend it.  The Yi Jin Jing is a foundational practice and very physical, a good complement to the sitting meditation I believe you´d get with Brine.  Another option would be to do tai chi along with Brine´s teachings.  In any case, I think a well-rounded practice involves both movement and meditative stillness.  

 

I also feel iffy about Damo Mitchell.  He´s obviously very knowledgable and recommended by many...and yet, I don´t know, there´s something that stops me from becoming his student.  The vibe doesn´t fit me.

[Rio]

22 minutes ago, liminal_luke said:

One idea would be to do Robert Peng´s Yi Jin JIng (available ondemand online) along with Nathan Brine´s teachings.  I´ve taken the course and recommend it.  The Yi Jin Jing is a foundational practice and very physical, a good complement to the sitting meditation I believe you´d get with Brine.  Another option would be to do tai chi along with Brine´s teachings.  In any case, I think a well-rounded practice involves both movement and meditative stillness.  

 

Thanks for the advice. I’ve read that the foundations might not be exactly the same depending on which school you follow. From what I understand, Damo and Nathan come from a similar lineage.

I’m not sure what kind of foundations Robert Peng provides—I still need to look into that.

 

Maybe the best path for me would be to start with Damo’s foundations, and then, once I have strong basics, move on to study Neidan with Nathan.

[silent thunder]

I don't sense it's an all or nothing choice.

 

All paths lead up the mountain.  Damo and Nathan approach Source and process from different paths.

 

I've benefited from Freeform's sharings here, but his path is not necessarily yours, or anyone elses'.  Explore and find your way.  It's there. Why not give each method 180 days and see what arises within?

[Rebirthless]

It's always tricky when it comes to spiritual teachers isn't it.

Edited 20 hours ago by Rebirthless

[Rebirthless]

In the Reddit thread the OP linked, someone shared something that resonates:

 

Quote

Like anyone who gets famous, get also a lot of envy, and a lot of rumours spawn from that

 

It's hard to know which ones are true and untrue.

 

Edited 20 hours ago by Rebirthless

[Gerard]

9 hours ago, Rio said:

I'm looking for a Neigong/internal arts teacher. 

 

Try here:

https://rumsoakedfist.org/viewforum.php?f=4&sid=b14356b6a60debe14041836b86c71abc

 

Personally I advise against ONLINE teachers. *Master to apprentice is, has always been and will be the best and correct way to learn internal arts & meditation.

 

Buddhist meditation requires retreat and a teacher will be assigned to you.
 

I have posted about it in various thread in the past.

 

Good luck!

 

 

*Edit: Oral transmission that is.

Edited 22 hours ago by Gerard

[idquest]

9 hours ago, Rio said:

I'm looking for a Neigong/internal arts teacher. At first, I was drawn to Nathan Brine because I liked his vibe, but I saw a post from @freeform saying that the foundations (which are of the utmost importance) are not well covered in his teaching.

He recommended Damo Mitchell, whose approach is close to what he himself is studying.

The thing is, I don’t really feel the vibe from Damo. I’m usually very sensitive to this kind of thing, and I trust my intuition—so it would feel wrong for me to ignore it and follow his courses.

At the same time, if I choose Nathan Brine, I’m worried I might miss out on important elements.
 

This topic on Reddit also didn’t really help me decide in favor of Damo:

 

So I’d really appreciate some advice.
 

For me, internal arts are a way to align more deeply with my spiritual beliefs and help me move closer to dao. But my feelings are telling me that Damo Mitchell might not fully embody this—at least not as much as Nathan does.

 

What are your thoughts?

 

 

Damo and Nathan teach different facets/approaches to internal work.

 

Damo's approach is primarily physical and movements. Everyone should do some body maintenance anyway.

 

Nathan teaches sitting meditations as taught by Wang Liping in the Dragon Gates framework. Sometimes Nathan might teach some LHBF or taiji, but that would be something incidental and not mainstream for him.

 

Damo and Nathan are not mutually exclusive, and I had a period of time when I studied with both of them.

[Creation]

13 hours ago, Rio said:

 

For me, internal arts are a way to align more deeply with my spiritual beliefs and help me move closer to dao. But my feelings are telling me that Damo Mitchell might not fully embody this—at least not as much as Nathan does.

I would encourage the following distinction: Trusting your intuition that Damo's personality, methods, and/or school do not resonate with you (ie your personal preference) is one thing, trusting your intuition about who embodies the Dao more (ie something that transcends your personal preference) is quite another.  

 

Damo's personality, methods and school are not going to resonate with everybody.  They are very physical and and exercise in discomfort tolerance for a long time, and the overall ethos is that developing competence/skill/mastery is in general is good, and neigong is not an exception because it is "spiritual".  If you've been involved in the pursuit of mastery at a physical activity where the training is uncomfortable previously, and feel "That was a good thing that I did", you'd be more likely to resonate with Damo.  

 

Re Reddit threads, as a rule, Damo's students don't proselytize for him on the internet, so internet discussions of him will as a matter of course be populated by people who don't like him.

 

Re foundations and Damo vs Nathan: let me give a very specific example.  Day 1 with Nathan is pore breathing.  But who can feel and consciously control their pores?  So you basically have to fake it till you make it.  With Damo, the analog of pore breathing he teaches is what he calls qi sealing breathing, and he teaches it at the end of year 3 of the academy.  The instructions he gives take as a given that you have built the dantian shell/yin field and have done a lot of work on song and ting of the tissues by that point and build off that.  My experience was "Ohhhh THAT'S what that's supposed to feel like".  But I don't and can't know if I would have gotten the same ah-ha moment had I went and practiced with Nathan in person.  All I can say for sure is that it's a difference in approach.  That was the first method where I could directly compare Damo vs Nathan.  The others I've found follow the same pattern.  (If this made you curious, Damo's qi sealing breathing method is actually on youtube, somewhere in his qi deviations course, though for reasons just explained it will be different to try it without foundational work.  But he put it on there, so he must have thought it can do at least a little something for someone without a foundation.) 

[jgd]

My 2 cents here!

 

Regarding Damo's method:

 

-It's not expensive, so paying a year in advance it's not dauting.

-The syllabus is huge, way too much for the average student, if you want foundations, I'd stick to the wuji and dantian gong, with a dash of jibengong, daoyin, and five elements. There are so many exercises and ancillary methods that it would be easy to get lost.

-The weekly leak of content is a bad idea for qigong. Foundations need doing the same thing for a lot of time. Weekly content is always adding fluff to keep you interested, but being easily bored is a bad thing for a cultivator. Half of the lessons arent really needed, they are filling space.

-Damo itself is the reason I decided to put the method aside. I'm not a monk and dont care about his antics with alcohol and cigars, but if you compare stuff from a few years ago, you can see his body deteriorating. He had a worm that made him go through a scrawny phase, but now he is recovered and that cant be an excuse anymore. He has issues with his physical body

 

Regarding Nathan's

 

-The method is expensive, each course costs you more than a year with damo.

-The online courses are poor. The books are way better. The courses are basically Nathan's audio files of training sessions. If you are willing to spend a few days, you could do your own files by recording the instructions in the books. The end result would be almost the same at a fraction of the cost. If you want to join his method, I'd do retreats with him, ignoring the online stuff.

-Same as Damo, Nathan is the reason I didnt go further into the method. Nathan looks extremely weak and emaciated. I don't understand how he could develop yin yang fusion and advanced microcosmic orbit and not look healthy at all

[Antares]

3 hours ago, jgd said:

Damo itself is the reason I decided to put the method aside. I'm not a monk and dont care about his antics with alcohol and cigars, but if you compare stuff from a few years ago, you can see his body deteriorating.

 

That is the typical issue for those who do the modern northern schools methods

Quote

Awakening to Reality by Zhang Boduan

Poem 9

The Yin essence within Yang is not a firm substance: if you cultivate only this thing you will become ever more weak.

Toiling your body by pressing and pulling is certainly not the Way, ingesting breath and swallowing mist is entirely foolish.

The whole world recklessly tries to subdue Lead and Mercury ­ when will they be able to see Dragon and Tiger submitted?

I exhort you to probe and grasp the place where one comes to life: return to the fundament, revert to the origin, and you are a Medicine King.

 

[Apech]

7 hours ago, jgd said:

My 2 cents here!

 

Regarding Damo's method:

 

-It's not expensive, so paying a year in advance it's not dauting.

-The syllabus is huge, way too much for the average student, if you want foundations, I'd stick to the wuji and dantian gong, with a dash of jibengong, daoyin, and five elements. There are so many exercises and ancillary methods that it would be easy to get lost.

-The weekly leak of content is a bad idea for qigong. Foundations need doing the same thing for a lot of time. Weekly content is always adding fluff to keep you interested, but being easily bored is a bad thing for a cultivator. Half of the lessons arent really needed, they are filling space.

-Damo itself is the reason I decided to put the method aside. I'm not a monk and dont care about his antics with alcohol and cigars, but if you compare stuff from a few years ago, you can see his body deteriorating. He had a worm that made him go through a scrawny phase, but now he is recovered and that cant be an excuse anymore. He has issues with his physical body

 

Regarding Nathan's

 

-The method is expensive, each course costs you more than a year with damo.

-The online courses are poor. The books are way better. The courses are basically Nathan's audio files of training sessions. If you are willing to spend a few days, you could do your own files by recording the instructions in the books. The end result would be almost the same at a fraction of the cost. If you want to join his method, I'd do retreats with him, ignoring the online stuff.

-Same as Damo, Nathan is the reason I didnt go further into the method. Nathan looks extremely weak and emaciated. I don't understand how he could develop yin yang fusion and advanced microcosmic orbit and not look healthy at all

 

Damo had a worm?  You mean an intestinal parasite?

[Annnon]

I like Damo's BOOKS.

 

In the theory part he seems to be everything you need to get started, but I also don't like his vibe so I follow other practices.

 

But yes, if you need the theory behind qigong and what to expect he can be a good source.