Home › Forum Online Discussion › General › Thanks! & My 2007 In Review
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December 30, 2007 at 9:30 pm #26747skateParticipant
Id like to take this time to thank you all who have helped me out this year on this forum, including Michael Winn and Julian. A belated Merry Christmas to you all (especially my friend Paul Zistl). Id also like to thank the life force and the Tao Immortals who seemed to have helped me out of late. Im also posting this to share my experiences, which I hope may be helpful to someone, pose some questions to the members of this forum, and solicit any advice if you care to offer it. Your postings have all been valuable to me.
At this point in time Ive been practicing Qigong for about a year. What a period of discovery it has been. Ive worked my way through Fundamentals 1-4, as well as Fusion of the 5 Elements on DVD/CD. Ive started the Healing Love course on DVD as well. Here are some of the things Ive learned:
Relax, Play with the chi (thanks Julian and Michael!), Take your time, let the life force unfold you,
Open up to the life force and any helpers who are willing to assist you, Be persistent, the life force wants to see if you really are interested in growing, Smile!
I learned that there is a great deal of Qi stored in emotions, especially stuck emotions. This was a surprise to me, emotions were always something that needed to be controlled or suppressed.There have been some great high points in the last year:
My blood pressure dropped over 30 points this year- my Dr couldnt believe it (what have you been doing, it seems to work??). I stopped taking the drugs he prescribed, which can induce kidney and liver damage. I now feel many years younger a majority of the time.
My flexibility is greatly improved. I can lay my hands flat on the floor. That may not seem like much to you all, but it does to a man in his fifties! I was able to lift a heavy object the other day and used Qi to assist my muscles. That was very cool.
On a humorous note, I applied Michaels teaching on grounding to win a friendly wrestling match with my 22 year old son and 25 year old son in law (yes I know, too much yang energy at that family gathering). Grounding their pushing forces into the earth was kind of amusing ..
Fusion practices allowed me to discover and integrate several separated parts of myself. Both times my energy level went up demonstrably. I am no longer terrified of public speaking.
Fusion practices will give you emotional stability and help you get rid of stuck emotional patterns No joke! People can be all emotional and out of control around me and Im much more stable, centered and grounded. Ive had numerous people at work comment on my new lack of reactivity. You will be calm like never before!
The sexual energy cultivation practices work! I can still hear my wife of 28 years saying , whats gotten into you? 🙂
I learned that energy cultivation, especially sexual energy cultivation can be very powerful and that we must be careful to use it responsibly and in harmony with the life force. The other day I had gone Christmas shopping with my wife. That morning I had been circulating sexual Qi in the Orbit, and following up with circulating golden Qi (fused pearl of the 5 organ spirits coupled with original presence) in the Orbit. This all generated a tremendous release of energy as we were shopping. I was pulsing and radiating sexual Qi like never before. I noticed that my wife was rubbing up on me like she used to when we were dating back in the 70s. About the same time I noticed that the female sales staff and other lady shoppers were unusually friendly, even flirtatious. It dawned on me that this form of power needs to be balanced and used responsibly, it can have unintended consequences.
The bottom line is Qigong works. Im an engineer and quite a skeptic. Part of me really did not think it would work, but it does. In an very strange way I was drawn to it, and Im still not quite sure why.
Have there been frustrating down times? You bet. There are times when I just dont feel any Qi in motion. Im not sure why. Several times the down cycle seemed to correlate with fragmented parts of myself absorbing Qi or stopping the flow. Fusion helped with that several times. There were other times where nothing at all helped.
Question: In your opinion what causes the times of low Qi? What do you do about it in your practice?
Question: What forms do you do in your daily practice and for how long? What do you recommend?Peace and Harmony
Bob
PS if you dont want to post this, please feel free to correspond with me at bobmayberry@hotmail.com
December 31, 2007 at 9:06 am #26748Michael WinnKeymasterLovely sharing, Bob – sounds like 2007 was pivotal year for you. The good news is that the best is yet to come – you’re still in the foundational 1st formula of One Cloud. The riches of Kan & Li beckon….the opportunity to dive deeper into your soul reality. But as you’ve learned, it is practice that drives the pace of change.
I thnk “down times” often occur as necessary plateaus for digestion of previous changes. That trains your yin aspect, to learn to wait and watch and receive. There may be other explanations, changes in seasons or relationships that you have unconscious resistenece to. We seem to alternate between strugglng with internal and external forces in our life.
I have gone through long periods of down times, or periods when I chased after other methods/paths because I wasn’t getting fast enough progress with my core Tao practices. Those sometimes gathered useful info, but I always found myself coming back to the core Tao methods to ground and digest deep change. There is food in all spiritual paths, but I haven’t found anything as consistently deep as Tao for dealing with embodiment.
Enjoy your journey in 2008!
Michael
December 31, 2007 at 1:27 pm #26750DogParticipantBob it is great to hear from you. I am glad I had something to offer you. Blessings and a warm smile to you, and your family.
December 31, 2007 at 1:33 pm #26752skateParticipantYou are welcome! I think the biggest lesson I had to learn was to stop working hard at Qigong, and just play with it. The next lesson was surrendering to the life force and letting it unfold me. It was difficult givng up being a control freak….
January 1, 2008 at 7:23 pm #26754StevenModeratorHi Bob,
What an inspiring review . . . Thanks for sharing!
Maybe these doctors need to start prescribing qigong instead
of blood pressure medication. It almost sounds like it works
better and without the side effects.As to your question about low chi flow, I concur a lot with what
Michael mentioned. I’ve personally found that sometimes
periods of low chi flow seem to be coordinated with being
too rigid in my idea of what practice should be–and not
being more fluid, more in the moment, more spontaneous, and
more fun. Sometimes shifting to another qigong practice
I haven’t done in a while can cause a shift–although
I’m not sure if it is the practice itself so much as the
fact that I’m breaking out of a rigid mold I created.
Other times when I’ve experienced low chi flow, it turns
out to be kind of a calm before the storm type of thing,
where my being is in the process of gathering and
restructuring due to some kind of powerful, but delayed,
effect. Reactions I get after these periods of calm
can sometimes be really intense–yet I realize that it
was caused by something before–in that the seeds had
already been sown, and the calm was the germinating
process.At any rate, best wishes to your continued progress!
Steven
January 2, 2008 at 7:50 pm #26756skateParticipantthanks for the advice Steven, I gave it a try.
I went back to the Fundamentals again yesterday just to see the effect, and wow, was it pronounced. Suddenly Ocean Breathing became much more powerful and resonant with the earth. I had always struggled with that form previously. I’ve never experienced my lower DT so large. My favorite form, Blissful breathing, is now much more powerful. Even embracing the tree and Internal breathing have blossomed.
It’s as if some barrier has been broken and now I’m much more energetic all around. For awhile this past year I was wondering if I was making any progress at all. You may be correct about some internal structuring having gone on.
January 4, 2008 at 3:23 am #26758StevenModeratorCongrats on your results!
I can understand the feeling about “wondering if I’m making progress”.
Sometimes it’s hard to see changes on day-to-day basis . . .Oftentimes if you step back and look at how you’ve changed
over a period of months, then you get a better view of your
progress.Cultivation often tends to be more of an up-and-down motion with
an overall upward drift–sort of like the stock market–rather
than just a line sloping upward.The irony is that even when you appear to be stagnant or “moving
down” in practice, often you are in fact moving upward in
a deep internal way that you’re not really realizing at the
time (i.e. the internal restructuring).Congratulations again,
Steven -
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