For Bagua –

Levitation and Light Body
my favourite daoist fancy

I have an interest in levitation and light body since a long time. (One could probably deduce some psychological issues from this. Why does someone think flying is cool? Following Leary‘s model, I prepare for the next evolutionary step of mankind: conquering space ;-). Freud was more into sex here, as far as I remember.)
What partially lead to my interest in this topic is a series of dreams I had over the years, very realistic dreams, very vivid, colourful and irritating in their sense of the physical. In these dreams I am able to either float some minor distance above the ground in the position of a ski-jumper, or run very fast in a way that my steps become longer and longer, or am able to jump very high, almost like floating. Always these actions in my dreams feel like an actual physical feat or knack, they require some skill and are quite demanding. The necessary power and concentration in every case is clearly brought forth by the power of my dantian. In the dreams my dantian sends out power or activates this force that lets me float. I really love that special feeling of these dreams!
(In my real life I am not so talented for jumping high or even being agile. People will recognize me by my clumsy gait. Skateboarders and parcouists that move themselves so lighly and fluid I‘m always amazed at.)

In my view there are two different principles here. The one is true floating, meaning levitation, the other is making the body very light and agile.

How are they done? Franz Bardon mentions two basic ways:
One is by accumulating the air element inside the body, which will make you very light.
This in some cases can happen as an accidental imbalance: it‘s not by accumulating and storing the air element, but -through trance or elswise- your body looses other elements, especially the earth element, so you get more and more weightless. (Bardon speaks about sleepwalkers in this regard)

The other way is by gathering and condensing the magnetic (yin) force in your body. At a certain level this magnetic force equals the pulling force of gravitation (that is also magnetic) on your bodyweight and your body will start to detach from the ground. Another variation of this second principle would be to project a kind of energy cushion of „magnetic“ force (or also earth element) beneath you, that then would support your body in the air.

(of course there‘s also a third way discovered by Douglas Adams: you throw yourself to the ground and miss. You will only be able to miss when you are distracted by something startling while falling. You eventually can be starteled by s.th. so much that you completely forget to hit the ground. There are schools where odd-looking aliens are employed that will jump at you from behind bushes while you try to perform this feat : 🙂

The chinese method of „qing gong“ (lightnessd ability) or „qing shen fa“ (light body method) clearly is from the first category. The most etailed explanation of the traditional qigong, kungfu and mediation exercises that will develop this ability I found in Shou Yu Liang‘s „Kung Fu Elements“. It has a own chapter about it! Among many others he‘s describing „classic“ physical excercises in this field like learning to walk on the rim of a large pot filled with water. Every now and then a little water is poured out, so the whole affair is on the edge of loosing it‘s stability. Same thing: walking on the rim of a basket filled with stones. Another one is about digging a pit and jumping in and out, every few days the pit is dug a little deeper. Shou Yu Liang tells about legendary practitioners who focussed their life long training begining from early childhood on it. They were able to jump from standing onto the roofs of houses, even carrying people on their backs.
The shaolin monks are also known to have cultivated this. There are photographies of monks that obviously could jump vvery high.

On Wudang mountain (damo-qigong) there seems to be on teacher of this art?
Running along walls, being able to crawl up walls very quickly, running on top of bushes or grain fields, or even walking on snow without leaving footprints are other legendary applications.
Taijimasters are also reported to have performed these feats.
In tibet you had the longgompa(?) runners, who prepared by a 3 month long special meditation to run like the wind trough the mountains, often wearing heavy chains so they would stick to the ground. (reported by Alexandra Neel, as far as I remember)

Then there is the real levitation category. Kosta Danaos decribes how „John Chang“ demonstrates it for him in a hotel room. He mentions the negative influence of the synthetic carpet which would make it harder to perform. This would confirm he above theory because the carpet acts as an insulator to the yin force of the earth. So he is not able to draw in the yin from the ground as easily and second making the meeting of these two yin-forces (the earthes and his) less distinct.
Then again in Wang Liping‘s biography is described how his teachers start floating above he ground while meditating in the mountains. Wang Liping then is said to have played a trick on them snatching away the energy they sat on, so they all of a sudden fell to the ground.
In the theravada text of … is described how you could learn to sit on a projected mass of the element of earth .
In the west levitation is reported to have taken place quite often, during religious extasy, or being posesed by spirits. Holmes is the most known man, you repeatedly floated around wh wh
many witnesses were around.
Schroeder /Ostrander report about experiments performed in Russia. People would sit inside a cubicle made out of mirrors. Some of them showed reduced body weight when meditating in there. Russia! I also posted this story about the flying insects freak from Siberia some time ago at taobums.

shabd

>>On Wudang mountain (damo-qigong) there seems to be on teacher of this art?
Running along walls, being able to crawl up walls very quickly, running on top of bushes or grain fields, or even walking on snow without leaving footprints are other legendary applications.<>In tibet you had the longgompa(?) runners, who prepared by a 3 month long special meditation to run like the wind trough the mountains, often wearing heavy chains so they would stick to the ground. (reported by Alexandra Neel, as far as I remember<<

*My Tibetan teacher's former teacher was one of the runners. I learned this art.

>>I know of some of these. I do not know how Wang Liping did it in that book since it didn’t sound like the earth element. It might be possible to sit on the earth element alone but you wouldn’t be able to move – it would be like you’d built a little hill.<<

*In deep damadhi states it can happen, your natural connection with the above is stronger and you get pulled upwards.

Yes, the heaven force pulls the earth force upward. It is the earth qi of the body going upward as there is disconnection from the earth. Best is to cultivate both forces with the dantian as mediator. If you’re interested, try Taiji!

>>My Tibetan teacher’s former teacher was one of the runners. I learned this art.

**
hey i’m honestly impressed. (but also feel a litlle stupid: now there’s someone who actually learned it while I idled away my time reading books…)

is it about cultivating your upward-moving prana? what center is mainly practiced
in this art?

maybe you’d like to share.

thanks
shabd

Air = Fire element, not metal.

Fire has the characteristic of rising and that’s what air does when it fills something up, the object rises. Lower dantian connects jing/physcial body. Pack with air and physical body is like a balloon. Packing there is dangerous, best to just jump up and down many times and do deep breathing there separately not integrated together like in Tibetan.

Air does not equal fire… Tibetan elements are not the same as Daoist…
I tried to find out which equals which, but couldn`t. When I thought I have the solution I found new differences… The correspondences are just different, some are similar, but they are obviously not the same.

The way I finaly “appeased” them was by the theory that the Buddhist elements are more subtle than Daoist. Each of the Daoist elements contains the Buddhist 5 elements. So for example Daoist Fire contains Space, Air, Fire, Water, Earth. Maybe it can go the other way around as well, but not sure.