What are your experiences with internal alchemy? Have you seen any results from it?

[الضفدع الحكيم]

I am interested in Taoism and inner alchemy, so I would like to know about your personal experiences with inner alchemy and whether you have seen any results from it

[ChiDragon]

Good luck!

[الضفدع الحكيم]

18 minutes ago, ChiDragon said:

Good luck!

Thank you. Do you practice Neidan and Qigong? Have you noticed any results or had any personal experience with it?

[-ꦥꦏ꧀ ꦱꦠꦿꦶꦪꦺꦴ-]

3 hours ago, الضفدع الحكيم said:

I am interested in Taoism and inner alchemy, so I would like to know about your personal experiences with inner alchemy and whether you have seen any results from it

I’ve been practicing qigong and neigong for around 4 years now.

 

My results are an active dantian, which heats up a lot during practice, and sometimes my wife has felt electric when she places her hand on it.

 

In terms of being able to emit qi myself, nothing major yet, just a little heat from the hands.

 

The eventual goal will be to emit qi and be able to heal like these masters:

 

I have met two masters who are able to do this, one is a TCM doctor in Singapore and the other is a Sufi healer and Sheikh in London.

 

Here is a video of the Sheikh emitting qi into my wife:

 

 

Here he is providing treatment to one of his students:

 

 

Edited December 30, 2025 by -ꦥꦏ꧀ ꦱꦠꦿꦶꦪꦺꦴ-

[Apech]

4 hours ago, -ꦥꦏ꧀ ꦱꦠꦿꦶꦪꦺꦴ- said:

I’ve been practicing qigong and neigong for around 4 years now.

 

My results are an active dantian, which heats up a lot during practice, and sometimes my wife has felt electric when she places her hand on it.

 

In terms of being able to emit qi myself, nothing major yet, just a little heat from the hands.

 

The eventual goal will be to emit qi and be able to heal like these masters:

 

I have met two masters who are able to do this, one is a TCM doctor in Singapore and the other is a Sufi healer and Sheikh in London.

 

Here is a video of the Sheikh emitting qi into my wife:

 

 

Here he is providing treatment to one of his students:

 

 

What exactly is your wife placing her hand oh?

[-ꦥꦏ꧀ ꦱꦠꦿꦶꦪꦺꦴ-]

2 hours ago, Apech said:

What exactly is your wife placing her hand oh?

Lower dantian

[Gerard]

You are wasting your time with "fairy tales."

 

Those who follow this path are bound by their egos, and the "ego" is one of the biggest hurdles of this path. 

 

The key to successful practice is to loosen up the entire body, then you'll access EVERYTHING contained within yourself. 

 

Ba Gua Zhang plus foundation work (grounding exercises) did it for me. 

Expect a lot of hard, consistent and disciplined work though. 
 

Finally, you'll need to find a competent real life teacher, not books and online courses. You won't go far if you don't. 
 

Good luck. 

 

[idquest]

12 hours ago, الضفدع الحكيم said:

I am interested in Taoism and inner alchemy, so I would like to know about your personal experiences with inner alchemy and whether you have seen any results from it

 

There is more of attunement to the body and to the environment. This has direct physiological and psychological benefits.

As for the spiritual development - I don't know how to quantify it, and nobody really knows what it is anyway.

 

Repeating walkers with more experience than mine, I'll say that you either have a call or you don't. If you have a call, you just do it. Simple as that.

[TaiChiGringo]

I’m not sure my experience fits neatly into how inner alchemy is usually categorised or transmitted, but at a personal level it absolutely feels like an inner alchemical process.

My background is primarily Chen Taijiquan, and what I value about that context is that internal change isn’t happening in isolation. Standing, silk reeling, and form all reorganise the internal landscape, but pushing hands in particular provides constant external feedback. If your internal organisation is off, too tense, too vague, too collapsed, too disconnected. it shows up immediately. That makes it much harder to drift into imagined states or self-confirming perceptions.

Over time, the practice has led to things that overlap strongly with how inner alchemy is often described: a progressive quieting of internal noise, clearer interoceptive perception, spontaneous changes in posture and breath, and a sense that movement and force arise from a more integrated, whole-body organisation rather than conscious effort.

What’s also been important for me is that this hasn’t been purely “meditative” in the narrow sense. There have been clear regulatory and therapeutic effects as well; changes in baseline tension, emotional tone, and how old holding patterns (both physical and their psycho-emotional correlates) unwind. Some of that feels less like cultivating something new and more like allowing previously embedded patterns to reorganise once enough safety and clarity are present.

So while I’m cautious about imposing labels, I’m comfortable saying that for me this has absolutely functioned as a form of inner alchemy, one that’s grounded in sensation, constrained by physical reality, and continuously tested through interaction rather than imagery alone.

I’d be interested to hear how people with more formal neidan or Daoist training recognise (or don’t recognise) these phases within their own frameworks.

Edited January 3 by TaiChiGringo

[cake1234566]

Without getting too much into it (as its a bit taboo to talk about the later stuff) there are very tangible results from successful neidan practice

If you find a proper teacher you should develop the capabilty to feel the "real" lower dantien 24/7 fairly quickly, once you're past that point you'll always know that what you're doing is real

[chuangzu]

.
 

Edited January 10 by chuangzu

[Mark Foote]

On 12/30/2025 at 4:01 AM, الضفدع الحكيم said:

I am interested in Taoism and inner alchemy, so I would like to know about your personal experiences with inner alchemy and whether you have seen any results from it
 

 

 

"Inner alchemy", sort of like?

 

That's from “The Secret of the Golden Flower”, of course.

 

Found this:

 

fire phases; fire times

 

A name of the main practice performed in the first stage of the Nanzong (Southern Lineage) codification of Neidan and in other varieties of Neidan. Fire—whose function in Neidan is performed by Spirit (shen)—is progressively increased when the Essence (jing) first rises through the Three Barriers (sanguan) in the back of the body to the upper Cinnabar Field (niwan), and then progressively decreased when the Essence descends through the three Cinnabar Fields (dantian) in the front of the body to the lower Cinnabar Field. 

 

(https://www.goldenelixir.com/terms/huohou.html)
 

 

On the "Three Barriers":

 

The Taoists refer to these areas as the Three Gates---the sacrum (wei lu), the occipital area (yu chen ku), and the headtop (ni wan).

(“Cheng Tzu’s Thirteen Treatises on Ta’i Chi Chuan”, Cheng Man Ch’ing, tr. Benjamin Pang Jeng Lo and Martin Inn, p 96)

 

 

Is that something like what you meant when you said,  "internal alchemy"?

 

Yes, I practice something like that, more in sitting practice than in the portion of a Tai Chi form that I know. The notion that the Spirit (shen) is applied increasingly upward and decreasingly downward I find especially interesting--that's in the writeup from the "Golden Flower" website. I hadn't thought of it that way, but there is certainly a parallel in my practice.

The benefit is really in the freedom of consciousness to take place anywhere in the body, yet there is definitely a process in opening the sacrum and spine to allow the nerve exits between vertebrae to conduct sensation from the surface of the skin:
 

With this method of circulating the ch’i, it overflows into the sinews, reaches the bone marrow, fills the diaphragm, and manifests in the skin and hair.

 

(“Master Cheng’s Thirteen Chapters on T’ai-Chi Ch’uan”, Cheng Man-Ching trans. Douglas Wile, pg. 17)

 

 

 

 

 

Edited January 10 by Mark Foote

[ChiDragon]

Just now, Mark Foote said:

Those who think that they know all about Neidan. If they don't know what 踵蒂吸呼 means, Sorry, they don't know what Neidan is all about!

[Mark Foote]

21 hours ago, ChiDragon said:

Those who think that they know all about Neidan. If they don't know what 踵蒂吸呼 means, Sorry, they don't know what Neidan is all about!

 

 

踵蒂吸呼--Google translates this as "heel-to-toe breathing".

Looks like the passage I quoted was authored by one Fabrizio Pregadio. A website titled "International Consortium for the Humanities" offers his credentials:

 

Fabrizio Pregadio has taught at the University of Venice (1996-97), the Technical University of Berlin (1998-2001), Stanford University (2001-08), and McGill University in Montreal (2009-10). His work deals with the self-cultivation traditions of Taoism, their doctrinal foundations in early Taoist works, and their relation to Chinese traditional sciences, including cosmology and medicine. He is the author of Great Clarity: Daoism and Alchemy in Early Medieval China (Stanford University Press, 2006) and the editor of The Encyclopedia of Taoism (Routledge, 2008). His translations of Taoist texts include the Wuzhen pian (Awakening to Reality, 2009) and the Cantong qi (The Seal of the Unity of the Three, 2011), both published by Golden Elixir Press.

 

I'm guessing he's a good man to go to for an explanation based on the historical literature of the Daoist tradition.

Can you place "heel-to-toe breathing" in the historical literature of the Daoist tradition regarding Neidan ("internal cultivation", literally "internal elixir")--I've heard of breathing to the heels or to the "bubbling spring" in Tai Chi, but not heel-to-toe breathing in Neidan.

[ChiDragon]

On 1/10/2026 at 11:31 AM, Mark Foote said:

First of all, we must understand the diagram of heel and umbilical breathing, 踵蒂吸呼圖. It show two paths of Chi flow. The front path is 通蒂(umbilical passage ) and the back is 通踵(heel passage). Neidan is the emphasis on breathing. Without breathing, nothing works in Neidan. Breathing is analogous to fire in (外丹)Weidan

 

1 hour ago, Mark Foote said:

 

踵蒂吸呼--Google translates this as "heel-to-toe breathing"

 

踵蒂吸呼 is heel and umbilical breathing. It was assumed that the breath(气) is flowing through the two virtual passages during Neidan meditation. Sometimes, we can't rely on Google translation too much.

 

1 hour ago, Mark Foote said:

Can you place "heel-to-toe breathing" in the historical literature of the Daoist tradition regarding Neidan ("internal cultivation", literally "internal elixir")--I've heard of breathing to the heels or to the "bubbling spring" in Tai Chi, but not heel-to-toe breathing in Neidan.

The proper Taoist term for the method of Neidan is 內丹術. Neidan(內丹) by itself is internal(內) pill(丹); AKA elixir, golden pill; golden elixir; Xin Dan(仙丹) AKA Immortal pill. The names are the same pertaining to the method of Neidan.

The breathing to the heels or to the "bubbling spring" in Tai Chi, but not heel-to-toe breathing in Neidan. I wouldn't pay too much attention to those term. They are just some made up names to please the English speaker. 

Edited January 11 by ChiDragon

[Forestgreen]

On 2025-12-30 at 1:01 PM, الضفدع الحكيم said:

I am interested in Taoism and inner alchemy, so I would like to know about your personal experiences with inner alchemy and whether you have seen any results from it

I recently saw a podcast from Nathan Brine, where he basically stated that there are many practices out there that are called neidan. They leads to very different results, and could as well be called qigong, neigong, or meditation. The past 30 years, I have tried a handful of different systems, and at the time they were probably useful. At least they got me to where I am now. These days, I practice a pre heaven method. So, no ldt, no microcosmic orbit, no experiences of light. It's all about zooming in on pre heaven reality. 

What I do is what is described in the WuZhenPian (the 16 regulated verses), which differs from the methods described in for example the zhong-lu chuandao ji and the lingbao bifa.

[Spotless]

 "am interested in Taoism and inner alchemy, so I would like to know about your personal experiences with inner alchemy and whether you have seen any results from it"

 

 

From the standpoint of "Qi Gong" (as a term encompassing more and not less of these types of practices) and inner alchemy:

 

At some point your embodiment moves from primary awareness of the Gross Physical and Gross Subtle bodies to the Subtle bodies that have come into being. This becomes sustained and does not fade from a lack of practice but continues to grow. It is best described as a biomagnetic field that is beyond what can be imagined without experience - and it is not something that one can have an "experience of". You can have an embodiment of it and it may take considerable time to acclimate to it as it is not a grasped state but one that is ever expanding and unlike the former bodies.

 

In initial practice it is hard to understand the importance of little things and get lost in the more heady arguments and judgements as is seen here so often. The practices themselves have small simple elements that if missed make enormous differences in results but they are skipped over in putting the cart before the horse.

 

The breath is an example of this: Like the tides, Inhale (to high tide) Hold (slack tide), exhale (to low tide) hold (slack tide).  Nearly everyone skips the end of low tide and the slack tide in which energy finishes the movement. It is like skipping the end of a song.

In movement after movement, the end is skipped and one does not embody the finishing of the fine energies as they settle.

 

A full bended movement forward will create a low pressure up from the back, fully finishing the movement will allow for the low pressure to taunt the energies of the leg channels, this is also true of other movements that increase the energies of the inner side channels - they will require the leg channels to greatly expand in order to proceed in the conversion of channels to fields. The feet must be stretched and worked to facilitate this.

 

Many of the movements create these high and low pressures, this will lead among other things to the radical opening of the MCO. More so, the finishing of the breath allows for the energies that have been projected into the bones to settle in the myelin sheath as well. 

 

Simply skipping the adequate 3rd and 4th stages of breath will make a large portion of what one might accomplish only fantasy that will not be fulfilled. It is one reason some view the possibilities of these practice more along the lines of "exercise" and are clueless to the miraculous nature of the transformative powers of such practices.

 

The movement of ones consciousness to the left eye or the right eye in many head turns is paramount but mentioned rarely. 

 

The arms are often held slightly forward when raised, entirely missing the compression of the side channels in the head area and not scrunching the muscles of the back near the base of the neck. The result is that long time practitioners have next to no fine inner head development. Fields that should come about in conjunction with other fields are stunted and out of balance with the other transforming areas.

 

Truly understanding reverse breathing is a great asset, it will help one more fully feel the lower Dan Tien. It is done passively in many of the postures though this goes unnoticed for the most part. The LDT will fully feel like a fist of sorts, at a point this will not fade in sickness or in sleep.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited February 4 by Spotless