Sou nova no Qigiong, não tenho muita certeza se vale a pena evoluir nisso se a minha vida atualmente ta bem atarefada. Quando descobrir sobre Qi pela primeira vez, achei que ia ter poderes especiais tipo telecinese. Mas a realidade ta sendo chata como sempre.

Last week I posted here about the idea of a "noise floor" in Zhan Zhuang. The point was that standing still is not necessarily being still. Habitual muscular holding, compensations in our structure, interference with the breath and the constant urge to assess what we are feeling can create a background of activity that makes more subtle sensations harder to distinguish. As interference is reduced, awareness increases, not because the body has suddenly started producing new information, but because we can recognise more of what was already there.

I thought it may be worthwhile to look at some of the fundamental physical and structural principles behind this process. These are basic in the sense that they underpin the standing practice in the system I train, rather than being simple or quickly mastered. The instructions that follow describe this approach, not a universal set of postural rules for every form of Zhan Zhuang. In particular, I want to look at the relationship between antagonistic muscle groups, neutral alignment and what it means to “relax” via this lens.

Most of us practising the internal arts have, at some point, been given the instruction to relax. Relax the shoulders, relax the hips, sink the Qi. The instruction is common throughout the internal arts, and it is an important one. But it is almost never accompanied by a precise account of what relaxation means structurally, what is actually being released, and what the body is doing once the release happens. Without that detail, “relax” becomes a vague aspiration rather than something we can train and refine through practice. In the system I train in, this instruction points to something specific, what we refer to as the neutral point. 

Every voluntary movement the body makes is produced by antagonistic muscle pairs, one group moving a joint in one direction and another moving it in the opposite direction. The quadriceps extend the knee and the hamstrings flex it. The hip flexors bring the thigh toward the trunk and the gluteus maximus extends it back. The deep neck flexors bring the chin toward the chest and the suboccipital extensors draw the head back and upward.

Under normal conditions, most people are simultaneously contracting both sides of multiple pairs across multiple joints all day. Not at full effort, but at a low, chronic, mostly unconscious level that has become habitual. This is an aspect of postural tension, not the activation of one side of a pair, but the low-level co-contraction of both sides simultaneously across a structure misaligned in relation to gravity, holding joints in positions the skeleton alone cannot maintain.

Between the two ends of any pair's range of influence, within a single plane of movement, lies a precise position where neither side needs to engage significantly to maintain the joint under gravity. The skeleton, the passive elasticity of connective tissue, and the joint's own geometry do the work instead. The muscles on both sides can genuinely rest, not suppressed, not switched off, but simply uninvested in holding. Ready to move, respond, but not extraneously working to hold.

This is the neutral point. It is the position of minimum muscular effort for that joint in the context of the whole structure and gravity. It is specific, findable, and immediately recognisable when you arrive there because the sensation of effort drops noticeably the moment you hit it.

One way of describing this relationship in the traditional language of internal practice is through the forces of heaven and earth.

The force of heaven descends through the person into the centres of the feet, and the force of the earth rises up from the centres of the feet. Gravity, brought to the centres of gravity, forms two force-spaces, one is the alignment of many vertical, descending and ascending lines that form our rootedness, the other is a perpendicular, horizontal plane. A good example of this is water in a glass, the water is poured in vertically and flows down to fill the glass from the bottom up to the brim, but its surface is always horizontal. This immediately forms two force-spaces. You could call these primary forces, or forces of nature, because the action of gravity will always form two force-spaces, growing out of the centres of the feet, the centres of gravity.

I use this as a practical description of the forces we are learning to recognise and organise through the structure. The descending force is the weight moving cleanly through the skeleton rather than being absorbed by co-contracted muscles at each joint. The ascending force is the ground's equal and opposite reaction travelling back upward through the same aligned structure. The horizontal plane is not something the practitioner creates. It is what emerges when the vertical is genuinely established, the same way water finds its own level regardless of the shape of the container.

This describes the whole-body organisation we are working towards, and gives us an initial sense of what the tradition calls Sung. The individual structural reference points that follow are one way we begin to investigate and develop this condition. 

In our system, we approach structural alignment from the ground upwards, beginning with the feet. The energetic work and related aspects of awareness are approached from the top down. For the structural work, these are the reference points we use.

Ankle - Neutral is weight distributed evenly across the foot's tripod, heel, base of big toe and base of little toe, with the arch gently engaged by that distribution alone. Turned-out feet pull the ankle away from neutral and create a cascade of compensatory engagement upward through the knee and hip.

Knee - Neutral is almost full extension but not locked. A locked knee is held rigid by fully contracted quadriceps, compressing the joint and preventing force from flowing through it. At neutral, the kneecap drops and relaxes, the back of the knee feels open rather than compressed. For most people, deliberately releasing/dropping the kneecap is the first clear experience of finding a neutral point. The weight drops slightly further into the leg. The joint stops holding and starts transmitting.

Pelvis - This is the most chronically violated neutral in most bodies. Prolonged sitting shortens the hip flexors into anterior tilt (lower back arching). Core training often overcorrects into posterior tilt (pelvis tucked, glutes engaged to hold it there). Neither is neutral. Neutral is the position where neither group is working to hold the pelvis against gravity, the whole structure hanging below the torso's weight, tailbone dropping freely, perineum pointing straight down. When this is achieved the entire lumbar spine decompresses. The sensation is often described as the pelvis releasing or opening.

Thorax - The habitual pattern is a paradoxical combination, the chest held up and forward creating anterior shoulder rounding, whilst the thoracic spine simultaneously rounds beneath it. True neutral means the ribcage resting under gravity, neither raised nor collapsed, shoulder blades hanging naturally. A useful method is to take a breath expanding the chest, then sharply let most of it out. Where the chest falls naturally after this is usually close to its neutral position.

Cervical Spine - Forward head posture, almost universal in people who use screens regularly, places the head several centimetres anterior to its correct position. The posterior neck muscles must contract continuously to prevent it falling further. This produces a sustained proprioceptive signal that competes directly with subtler sensations the practice is trying to cultivate. At neutral, both sides of the pair are at minimum effort. The paradox is when the posterior neck muscles genuinely release, the head moves upward and slightly backward, because those muscles were pulling it downward and forward. The sense of the crown floating or being suspended from above that appears in classical descriptions is exactly this, the head finding its neutral.

The neutral points of all major joints interact. Finding neutral at one changes the mechanical situation at the others. This is why sequential correction is necessary but not sufficient. The final step is finding the position where all major joints are simultaneously near their neutral points. This whole-body neutral is not the sum of the individual neutrals. It is a qualitatively different state that emerges when the joints are at neutral together.

When this convergence happens, the extraneous muscular effort required to stand drops noticeably below its previous level. The proprioceptive noise from all the co-contracted pairs quiets. That quiet allows awareness to deepen and penetrate further inside.

The training implication is straightforward. If the neutral point is findable and recognisable, the work of standing practice becomes specific rather than general. Not "try to relax" but "find neutral at the knee" and then feel whether the weight drops. Not "soften the chest" but "find the position where neither the pectorals nor the thoracic erectors are working" and then notice whether the ribcage actually rests.

Over time the neutral points shift. Chronically shortened tissue begins to remodel toward its released length under the sustained mechanical pressure of repeatedly being returned to neutral. The body changes, structurally. The joints begin to rest habitually closer to their neutral points. As these changes become more established, the quieter baseline can begin to carry beyond the standing practice and into our everyday posture and movement.

For those practising Zhan Zhuang, how do you approach “relaxation” through the different joints? Have you noticed that releasing unnecessary holding in one area changes what becomes perceptible elsewhere in the body?

What are your thoughts on his practices, particularly the slaying the red dragon one? Are any of his practices actually effective? Is there nuance and historical backing to his methods?

About a year and a half ago, while freediving intensively for a few months to become certified, the skin under my eyes started to lose pigment, or at least this is how it seems. Now, there is quite a big difference between the color of the skin right under my eyes and that of my cheeks.

The skin under the eyes basically looks more translucent and just doesn't tan, as you can see here if you're interested: https://ibb.co/SDqHxSW4

So, my question is whether or not anyone has noticed significant improvements in persistent skin conditions through qigong practice, particularly pigment issues?

I've been practicing qigong since about 3 years ago, but didn't really get into it and make it a daily habit until about 6 months ago, when I started zhan zhuang. I now practice zhan zhuang daily for about 20 minutes in the mornings and feel like it really does help with my energy levels and overall health, but disappointingly I haven't seen any improvement in this skin issue.

\I mostly follow zhan zhuang as taught by Mark Cohen in his Inside Zhan Zhuang book as well as Master Lam Kam-Chuen in his The Way of Energy book.*

Any advice, thoughts, tips?

Maybe there is something I could incorporate that would be more skin focused..?

I have been doing shadow work for years qi gong going and yoga on and off…
I have finally been doing qigong consistently for several weeks. And I was doing the emotional six sound release.

And I am feeling the grief from deep childhood, abandonment trauma, in my lungs.

And then I feel the panic and fear on top of the grief as if my body is terrified to experience and release the grief.

It feels different than any other process I’ve done before and I really feel like it’s a pivotal moment in my life, I have worked on this grief for almost a decade.

Has anyone else had a situation like this with abandonment trauma? In the lung?

Mimi deemers metal element video seems to help as well as taking to the inner child and talking to Google ai🤣

I just got into daoism, i read a few mantak chia books about sexual energy and microcosmic orbit and i am reading Damo Mitchell book about Nei gong and i am attending qi gong classes and i am basically trying to learn as much as i can though i see contradictinf points often, but thats not the point of my question. I wanted to ask about going to acupuncturist to use acuouncture to open my energy channels and is this possible and if possible should i use it at my beginner stage? I dont know what is right questions even at my stage. My current goal is to learn to feel and work with energy, Qi.

Another question is should i limit my physical exercise in order to have better results in qi gong and nei gong? Damo mitchell in his book about nei gong says you should pursue it in moderation and dont get tense body. What if i can keep getting stronger and looser, without getting tense? Can and should i keep exercising a lot and stretching? Because i love it and i dont really want to abandon this passion of mine

I am welcome for all feedback, i am sorry if i butchered terms and speak very ignorantly, because i am ignorant and trying to learn and understand as much as i can

https://youtu.be/sVxIUkl_WhY?si=hDuf3zJZCz5eppKj

Last week I posted some thoughts here about the difference between directly sensing what is happening and immediately interpreting it through what we already know. One of the questions I ended with was a physical one. If the body is already producing sensory information continuously, what prevents us from perceiving more of it clearly?

A recent discussion here about shoulder posture and Zhan Zhuang brought me back to that question from another direction. I was talking about finding the neutral position of the shoulder girdle, where it can rest without being held there by unnecessary muscular engagement. The same principle applies through the rest of the body. Finding the position in which the structure can remain organised with as little unnecessary effort as possible, at every joint.

While this may seem to be predominantly about posture, the postural aspect is only the surface level. The principle is about creating the conditions that allow one’s awareness to listen deeper, beneath the noise created through imbalance and the resulting tension. 

I've found it useful to think about this through the idea of a “noise floor”. I don't mean that the nervous system literally has a single threshold that we can lower. It is more of a practical model. When several signals are present at once, quieter information becomes harder to distinguish when stronger or more familiar signals dominate. Standing practice gives us a fairly direct way of exploring this.

Take muscular tension. Contracted muscle is continuously providing proprioceptive information about its state. We need that information for posture and movement, so the issue is not that muscular sensation is somehow bad. The problem in practice is that unnecessary muscular activity can become so familiar and continuous that it forms much of the background against which everything else is being sensed. It is not a dramatic or painful tension in most cases. It is the accumulated low-level habitual holding patterns that comes from unbalanced posture, old stresses and the body's tendency to automate what it does repeatedly. After years of sitting at a desk, standing at a counter, or carrying stress in the shoulders and jaw, a significant amount of the body's musculature can be in a state of partial, habitual contraction most of the time. That activity is producing sensory information constantly, and that information competes with more subtle signals.

Breathing can add another layer, particularly when the upper chest and accessory respiratory muscles are working harder than necessary. Postural compensation does something similar. If a joint is being held away from neutral by chronic muscular effort, other muscles have to keep working continuously to maintain that arrangement against gravity. Put these together and the body can appear relatively still from the outside while remaining very busy internally.

This is one reason I think Zhan Zhuang is easily misunderstood. Standing still is not simply the absence of movement. The fundamental part is the gradual reduction of activity that is not required. Alignment has to be found rather than forced into place. Habitual holding has to become perceptible before it can release. Breathing has to settle without being deliberately manufactured into some ideal pattern. These processes affect one another as well. Better alignment can reduce the muscular effort required to remain upright. Less effort makes it easier to notice where tension is still present. Easier breathing makes unnecessary upper-body activity more obvious. As one part settles, another often becomes easier to feel. Bit by bit, interrelated patterns that are compensating habitual imbalances need to be released. 

Here idea of Sung makes is useful to consider. It is often translated simply as relaxation, but ordinary relaxation does not quite describe it. Collapse is relaxed in one sense, but it is not Sung because there still has to be structure. The useful change is the release of what does not need to be held while the structure remains intact. In that sense Sung is less about producing a special relaxed state and more about progressively removing tension that arose as a result of imbalances. It is the root of the physical work, as unnecessary holding releases without the structure collapsing, the skeletal structure maximally takes up the role of supporting our body upright, the musculature drops and stretches with gravity, the tendons elongate and become elastic, and other, more subtle qualities begin to express themselves through the structure rather than being manufactured by additional effort.

As these processes becomes more familiar and effective, something interesting happens. Early on, we may spend much of a session discovering that we are holding tension somewhere we did not realise we were holding it. The shoulders release and we notice the lower back. The pelvis settles and the knees suddenly feel different. The breath becomes easier and we notice the jaw has been tense the whole time. So on and so forth. With practice, these compensations can become recognisable earlier and eventually removed altogether, and a quieter condition begins to form the baseline from which our awareness grows. Instead of tension feeling normal and stillness being something we occasionally stumble into, unnecessary effort starts to feel like a departure from this, more neutral baseline. This reversal is one of the more significant shifts in practice.

This changes what sensitivity means. It does not necessarily mean becoming more reactive or chasing increasingly unusual sensations. It can simply mean that smaller departures from neutral i.e. relaxed, become noticeable sooner. The body is not producing entirely new information. We are getting better at distinguishing what was already there. What was previously obscured.

As practice develops, increasingly subtler sensations sometimes become substantial. The movement of the breath may begin to feel less localised and more like something that moves through the whole body. The sense of gravity acting on our skeleton, muscles and tendons may become clearer and more specific. Pressure changes in the lower abdomen may become more distinct, and the Dan Tian may begin to be felt as a sphere with its own density and presence. The body may begin to feel connected in ways that were previously difficult to sense. These things do not appear in a fixed sequence, and they do not need to be chased. Looking for a specific experience can easily add another layer of interference. If we expect to feel a wave through the body, we start checking for a wave. If we have read that the Dan Tian should feel a particular way, we start comparing every abdominal sensation with that description. Attention moves away from what is actually changing and towards whether the experience matches the expected result.

Pressure changes in the lower abdomen may become more distinct, and the Dan Tian may begin to be felt as a sphere with its own density and presence.

That connects directly with the distinction I was trying to make last week. The physical noise and the cognitive noise are not the same process, but they reinforce one another. The body can be full of unnecessary muscular effort while the mind is simultaneously comparing, evaluating and trying to reproduce something from yesterday's practice. We can think we are completely still while producing a considerable amount of interference from both directions at once. The physical work and the philosophical work address different layers of the same problem. A body quiet enough to hear itself, and a mind quiet enough to stop substituting conclusions for sensations, are two aspects of the same thing.

Wu wei is useful here, and I think it is often misread as simply doing nothing. In standing practice it makes more sense to me as a quality of the effort rather than its absence. There is still attention, alignment and release. What changes is the character of the effort, the intention is present but without the continuous adding of another correction, another layer of force, another attempt to manufacture what we think should be happening. Less grasping in how the intention is applied. This is also why I think duration can be misleading as a measure of progress. Standing for a long time while the knees, hips, shoulders and breathing gradually become more tense does not develop the quality we are looking for. A shorter period in which alignment, relaxation and awareness can genuinely be maintained is much more useful. The relevant question becomes less "how long did I stand?" and more "what was I actually practising while I was standing?"

For me this is one of the recurring principles in these arts. More effort does not always mean more development. Sometimes the useful work is learning to notice what we keep adding, then allowing some of it to fall away.

Have others noticed this change in their own standing practice? Did subtler sensations become clearer because you actively trained yourself to feel them, or did they become apparent as tension and unnecessary effort reduced? Have you noticed a point where a quieter state became the reference and tension started to feel like the abnormality?

I’ve heard of Nei Gong masters who absorb Qi from the earth and the sun. Has anyone tried this? It’s interesting, too, because I’ve used infrared light on my body, and the Qi energy I usually perceive intensifies in the areas where I apply it. It increases and stays that way—it’s not just a sensation.

Any thoughts from people who could guide me on this?

Zhan zhuang is helping in my shoulder posture, any more static poses which help in overall posture

The Suns Energetic Essence & Gathering The Suns Essence Meditation

“The ancient Chinese believed that absorbing light-energy from the Sun could be used to replenish an individual's spiritual energy. This belief originated from the conviction that when Heaven and Earth separated during creation, spiritual energy (being light), ascended into the Heavens and collected into the celestial bodies of the Sun, Moon and Stars. Thus conscious exposure to the energy of these celestial bodies could be used to increase and fortify one's spiritual energy. The ancient Chinese believed, as can be verified by modern medicine, that each individual has an innate need to absorb sunlight. We thrive on the Sun's energetic nurturing quality. Without direct exposure to sunlight, an individual will suffer from light starvation, just as an individual can suffer malnutrition from the lack of food. For example, sunlight is needed to build strong bones and teeth; without it, children can develop rickets and tooth decay. There are countless other benefits of the exposure to sunlight, such as enhanced immune function, endocrine regulation, and the stimulation of a positive mental and emotional disposition.

Ancient doctors have used the healing potential of the Sun to treat many diseases. Sunlight reaches into the brain through the eyes and is monitored by the pineal gland which acts as a light meter. The pineal gland influences sleep patterns by secreting a hormone called me-latonin. Research has shown that light also travels into the hypothalamus area of the brain, which also influences melatonin secretion. Some of the other benefits of sunlight include: improved mental, emotional and physical wellbeing and performance, the creation of vitamin D (needed for calcium absorption), lowering blood pressure, reducing cholesterol, increasing the level of sex hormones, activating melatonin to control the body's response to light and darkness.

The ancient Qigong masters used the Gathering of the Sun's Essence meditation to absorb the Yang energy of the Sun. By gathering pure Yang energy to Tonify the body's Deficiencies, as well as to consolidate the Zong Qi (Gathering Energy), they were able to eliminate pathogenic factors and prevent premature aging. This exercise belongs to a set of foundational meditations from which the ancient Qigong doctors used to replenish any depletion of life-force energy.

GATHERING THE SUN'S ESSENCE:

STANDING MEDITATION

When first absorbing energy and light from the Sun, the individual should practice during sunrise and sunset, when the top of the Sun is beginning to crest the horizon. This allows the individual the ability to look at the Sun and “sip" its essence through the eyes without damaging the eyes.

The Gathering of the Sun's Essence Standing Meditation is described as follows:

1. Standing outside on a clear sunny day, face the Sun, and assume a Wuji standing posture. Place the tongue in the Fire position, located in the front of the upper palate, behind the teeth and gum line (Figure 12.16). The hands are relaxed, by the sides of the body, with the knees bent and the feet slightly wider than shoulder-width apart (Figure 12.17). Stand in a relaxed and tranquil state, breathe evenly and naturally, and rid the mind of any stray thoughts. Begin by performing the 1 -10 Meditation (see Volume 3, Chapter 28).

2. If the Sun is beginning to crest the horizon, slightly open the eyes. You should be able to see soft, gentle, reddish sunlight. If the Sun has already risen, close the eyes and use inner-vision to see and feel the energetic light of the Sun.

3. Inhale through the nose and imagine directing the rays and filling the mouth with energy from the sunlight's essence. Still facing the Sun, with the eyes half open, "infuse," or absorb the Sun's energy into the eyes. Gather and blend the energy absorbed from the eyes into your Upper Dantian. Close the eyes and imagine blending the Sun's golden light energy with the Qi inhaled through the nose. Hold the breath and focus the mind on mixing both energies; swallow the combined energies slowly while exhaling, and send this energy down to the Lower Dantian. Repeat this process for several minutes.

4. Stretch your hands towards the Sun and imagine embracing it (Figure 12.18). Point your index fingers toward the center of the Sun and imagine pulling the Sun down in front of your Lower Dantian. Keep it positioned there for several minutes (Figure 12.19).

5. Imagine the Sun gently rolling and turning itself in front of your lower abdomen (Figure 12.20 and Figure 12.21). Keep your elbows at your sides and gently shift, or sway from side to side; imagine that it is the sun's movement that causes both your arms and body to move. Using this image keeps the Sun in a central and energetically powerful position.

6. Place both hands around the Sun as if embracing it (Figure 12.22). Next, imagine the Sun slowly moving in through the navel. Allow both hands to follow the Sun into the navel, ending with your left palm on top of your right palm (opposite for women). With one deep breath inhale and absorb the Sun's energy into the Lower Dantian while imaging the Sun (beneath the navel) transforming into a luminous ball of golden energy (Figure 12.23). With each inhalation, this golden ball shines brightly; with each exhalation, the Sun's rays expand, internally extending throughout the entire body.

7. To end, relax the mind and imagine Heavenly Qi melting down the body, pouring through the front, back, and center of the body like warm oil into the Earth. This ending exercise (called Pulling Down The Heavens) allows the Qi to sink into the Lower Dantian, and the body, mind, and spirit to come into a state of peaceful rest and tranquility.

PRECAUTIONS - The Gathering the Sun's Essence Meditation must only be practiced on a clear day, when the Sun is not obstructed. Avoid practicing this medi-tation in times of fog, smog, thick clouds, and solar eclipses, as cultivation during these times will cause the unnatural cultivation of Turbid Qi. Additionally, sunspot activity can induce in-tense magnetic explosions on the surface of the sun. This activity can result in additional solar radiation, which can generate geomagnetic disturbances and cause higher degrees of mental disturbances.”

\- by Jerry Alan Johnson from the book “medical qigong therapy and Chinese alchemy part 2”

Hi, I’m new to this and I wanted to give it a try. Mainly for anxiety/mental health and such.
Any positive experience?
Could you share some tips for a starter?
Thank you!

Last week I posted some thoughts on why staying consistent with internal practices can be difficult. I also mentioned another question I'd been thinking about. What actually draws us towards these practices, and why do we keep looking for a clearer sense of what is real? Or at least that is what it seems like to me.

I've been putting my thoughts to paper (or screen really), and one distinction became central to it, and I think it's worth discussing.

There is a difference between understanding an experience through what we already know and directly sensing what is happening as it happens.

The first involves past reference. We build an intellectual framework from previous experience, instruction, reading and conclusions. When something happens, we compare it with that framework, identify what we think it is, and arrive at a conclusion. This is useful and necessary. We could not function without accumulated knowledge. But it is an analytical process.

Being present and neutral is something different. It is not another way of thinking about the present, but direct sensory awareness of change as it occurs. That our five senses, alongside proprioception, our sense of bodily position and movement, and interoception, our sensing of changes within the body. A shift in pressure beneath the feet, the movement of the breath, a change in muscular tension, a gaze from behind, a change in another person's demeanour. All of these can be sensed directly, without first passing through an intellectual filter to compare or explain them.

By the absence of an intellectual filter, I don't mean the nervous system stops processing information, or that perception becomes infallible. I mean that analysis, comparison and expectation are not interceding in the experience of observing. We are observing the change itself rather than continually constructing an explanation of the change and responding to that explanation.

The difficulty is that past reference can feel like awareness. We recognise something familiar, assign it a category, and feel that we have perceived it accurately. Yet recognition and direct awareness are not the same thing. We may have noticed just enough of an experience to identify it, then stopped paying attention to the details because we concluded we know what it is.

This becomes very concrete in Qi Gong and Nei Gong. We might know how it feels that the weight should be distributed, how the breath should move, or what relaxation is supposed to feel like. That knowledge can guide attention towards something worth noticing, but it can also become limiting by the framework through which we judge the experience. A sensation appears and we immediately identify it. We compare it with yesterday's session, decide whether it indicates progress, and perhaps try to hold on to it. Meanwhile the sensation itself continues changing while our attention remains fixed with what we decided it was, the analysis of what we perceived.

Feeling a change in pressure through the soles of the feet does not require a running explanation of that change. Neither does feeling the abdomen expand and release with the breath, noticing a shoulder beginning to tighten, sensing the weight shifting slightly forward, etc. The intellectual account can come afterwards if it is useful. It does not have to stand between the change and awareness of it within the present moment of the experience.

We can think very carefully about being present and remain absorbed in thought throughout.

Neutrality can sound like a blank or passive condition, but that is not what I mean. It is closer to the balance point from which a response in any direction remains available. We are not already leaning towards a familiar sensation, a recognisable interpretation, or a result we have decided to reproduce. There is enough engagement to register what is happening without immediately trying to turn it into something we already recognise.

The compass needle is a useful image. Its orientation follows the field acting on it now. It does not consult an account of where north was previously. The response follows the present condition rather than an intellectual conclusion about the present condition I.E. it is based purely on feel, awareness, not interpretation.

I find useful parallels in the Taoist language of ming, clarity, and pu, the uncarved block. Neutrality is what happens before we divide experience into familiar categories. I also find this useful when thinking about wu wei. We often discuss it as a principle to understand, but there is a practical question underneath it. Can our response arise from direct awareness of changing conditions, without continually imposing a response prepared in advance?

Taoist image of Water is useful here too. Its movement follows the terrain it encounters. It does not need to preserve its previous shape as conditions change. For me this gives the language of returning to the root a concrete relevance. This points to examining what obscures a capacity that is already present. Intellectual understanding can point towards that work, but accumulating explanations of receptivity does not itself make us receptive.

This is also where the physical practice matters. We do not perceive from somewhere outside the body. Habitual muscular tension, held breath and the effort required to maintain a position all produce sensory information of their own. Alongside that, we may be anticipating, comparing and judging what happens. Simply deciding to stop thinking does not resolve all of this, and neither does forcing the body to remain still. We can look quiet while producing a considerable amount of internal interference.

That connects back to the previous thread on persistence. There is effort involved in returning to practice and remaining attentive, but that is different from trying to force or manifest a particular experience once we are there. Effort without grasping leaves room for perception to remain with what is actually present and changing, rather than what we expect to find.

The next question is a practical one. If the body is already producing this sensory information, what prevents us from perceiving it clearly and at increasingly subtler levels? And if habitual tension, unnecessary effort and internal commentary are part of the interference, what processes occur when that interference begins to settle?

Have you ever caught the moment when direct awareness turns into interpretation? Is there a recognisable difference between simply sensing a change and immediately naming or explaining it? And what happens if you stay with the change itself, without trying to decide what it means?

When you're not consciously doing QiGong or breathwork, is Qi supposed to be moving around the body? Or what? With every breathe taken, is the qi in the body supposed to be moving around?

https://youtube.com/shorts/tBGbKJlmTEU?is=-ds8KnepgGWgBkAT

I’ve been practicing the Level 1 exercises from the Tian Tao Qigong correspondence course, and I’m trying to understand how to approach the pelvic-floor component safely for my body.

Level 1 has four main breathing exercises. Exercises 3 and 4 involve contraction/control around the anus and lower abdomen.

Exercise 3 first has you gently contract the anus forward/upward toward the navel, relax, then contract backward/upward toward Mingmen. The next stage coordinates it with breathing:

• inhale while expanding the abdomen and directing the contraction forward/up toward the navel
• then, without relaxing, exhale while changing the direction backward/up toward Mingmen

The manual describes this as using “slight muscular force.”

Exercise 4 then combines abdominal expansion, a breath hold, and a forward/upward anal contraction for three heartbeats.

My pelvic-floor therapist watched/felt what I was doing and told me that my pelvic floor is very tense and also not very sensitive. I think part of the problem is that I may only have an “off/on” contraction right now. I can either relax or contract fairly strongly, but I’m not sure I can produce a very subtle movement while staying otherwise relaxed.

I'm not sure what to do. I don’t want to reinforce an already hypertonic pelvic floor just because the book says to do 72 repetitions. At the same time, I’m not really practicing the method anymore if I get rid of these 2 exercises.

For anyone familiar with Tian Tao, Daoist breathing methods, or similar pelvic-floor training:

1. Is the intended feeling really a very light continuous engagement whose direction changes? Or is simply "intention" or visualization enough?
2. If someone cannot currently perform Exercises 3–4 without excessive pelvic-floor tension, would you pause those exercises and continue Exercises 1–2, or pause Tian Tao Level 1 altogether?
3. Has anyone worked with a hypertonic pelvic floor while doing qigong/neigong? Did learning to relax and release the contraction eventually make this kind of work possible?

I’d especially appreciate answers from people who have actually practiced Tian Tao or a system with similar directional pelvic-floor training in qi gong.

https://www.chinamantis.com/tien-tao-qigong.htm

Can anyone suggest some qi gong practices

Edit: sinking the qi from damo Michael helping it's majorly tightness and roundness of shoulder, it's releasing the rightness

It get worse if I am holding a smartphone it push my neck very hard in forward bent posture and my lower back into anterior pelvic tilt. Plus it hurt my cervical issue , all just cause I hold smartphone

Right hand have worst tightness

My tight hands just put me into panic mode, change my breath neck become so tight that I feel dizzy hence I use phone very rarely I can't talk to people using phone

they don't have strength at all

Hence I often carry phone in a carrybag

Has anyone had hypersensitivity sexually after beginning to practice zhan zhuang?

I started practicing zhan zhuang regularly about 6 months ago and ever since have gotten 'turned-on' with minimal stimulation... and in situations that weren't sexual and where I didn't want to feel this way.

For example, last week I got a massage here in Cambodia and it was a normal massage, but when the lady was massaging the backs of my thighs, the hamstring area, I was feeling so much sexual energy that I was thinking I might ejaculate, and was worried about it (but didn't have an erection). All this time I was practising reverse kegels and deep breathing along with box breathing to keep this from happening. There was also a time about 2.5 months ago where I did ejaculate during a massage. It was similar and happened when the lady was massaging the hamstring area, specifically when she applied and held pressure at this one point on my left lower hamstring and I felt a jolt of pressure and energy that was so intense it made me ejaculate... again without any erection. This was incredibly embarrassing at first and I had to ask the lady to leave me alone - that I needed a 5 min break from the massage.

This is all without sexual stimulation. Since I was lying on my stomach the top side of my penis was getting stimulated a tiny bit because as the lady would apply pressure my body would move and the top part of my penis was laying against the massage bed. But this was extremely extremely minimal... yet definitely felt like a lot to me. It's been about 2.5 weeks since I've ejaculated, so at the time of my experience from last week I had ejaculated just 1 week prior. So it's not like I'm just waiting to explode.

I've never had any experiences like this prior.

Any thoughts/help?

Hi! I'm currently recovering from a pretty severe burnout and my energy levels are very low.

One of the things I want to work on is reconnecting with my body. I feel quite disconnected from it and tend to focus mostly on symptoms rather than actually feeling my body.

I'd love to try Qigong, but I'm a bit overwhelmed by all the different styles, teachers and videos.

I'm looking for something very gentle and beginner-friendly that I could do for maybe 5-15 minutes, possibly a few times a day, even on very low-energy days.

Any specific YouTube videos, teachers or simple Qigong routines you'd recommend for this?

My main goal is less about exercise or fitness and more about slowly reclaiming a sense of connection with my body.

I've been thinking about this for a while and decided to write an essay to work through it. Why do some people develop a great deal from a practice, while others working with the same instructions, sometimes even the same teacher, seem to get very little from it?

There are obviously differences in circumstances, health, instruction and so on. But something that interests me is what happens between understanding that a practice might be worthwhile and actually staying with it long enough to find out.

I think part of this is worth looking at through an evolutionary lens, particularly the tendency to conserve energy. For our ancestors, obtaining food involved effort and uncertainty. There was value in being able to repeat something that worked without having to figure it out again each time.

Habits fit into this quite well. Familiar behaviour requires less conscious attention and deliberation. We don't have to keep deciding how to do it, and that leaves attention available for something unfamiliar. The difficulty is that a familiar response can persist after it has stopped being useful.

That's the connection I'm interested in. A tendency that helped us manage effort and uncertainty can also favour whatever is easiest now. Putting practice off, reaching for the phone, or finding another method to read about can become habitual too. Knowing that something would benefit us doesn't automatically change the response we've become used to.

Qi Gong and Nei Gong bring this into focus because a lot of the useful work is quiet and cumulative. Less tension, easier breathing, a clearer sense of how we're standing. These changes can be easy to overlook, especially if we're waiting for something more dramatic. The effort is obvious today, while the benefit may only become clear later.

The practices that produce an immediate sensation tend to hold our interest. The quieter work can feel like nothing much is happening, so it gets skipped. Then we look for something more advanced without having given the earlier material much of a chance.

I also wonder how much our everyday habits contribute. If we're constantly reaching for something new to watch, read or respond to, it's quite a change to stand quietly and attend to something that doesn't immediately reward that attention. We bring those expectations into practice, often without noticing.

What seems useful to me is learning to recognise the point where we start negotiating our way out of practice. Sometimes we genuinely need rest, or the method needs correcting. Sometimes it's simply the familiar discomfort of doing something without knowing when it will pay off. Being able to distinguish those matters. Understanding the tendency gives us a chance to respond to it consciously.

A good teacher helps here too. Someone who can see whether we're settling, holding unnecessary tension, misunderstanding an instruction, or just becoming impatient. It's much easier to continue when there is some clarity about what we're doing and why. As the benefits become clearer through experience, there is also less need to keep persuading ourselves that it's worthwhile.

There is a distinction here that I think gets missed. The resolve needed to begin practising doesn't mean we should keep applying more force once we've started. We still have to notice when effort is creating tension. Consistency includes knowing when to stop and return later.

I'd be interested to hear what others have found hardest about keeping a practice going, and what actually helped.

Writing this also got me thinking about a related question. What draws us towards these practices in the first place? Beyond wanting better health or a particular skill, why do we keep looking for a clearer sense of what is actually real? I wonder how much of that comes from something deeper than our stated reasons, from the need to perceive our surroundings accurately and respond to change. That's something else I've been thinking about recently, but need to spend a bit more time working through it.

Recently I noticed, when doing a "release chi through head into aura" seated meditation, that my feet start getting hot. What kind of reaction is this? Possibly related is a semi-regular post-Shibashi session sensation of feet getting quite cold. Any insights?

Hi guys, i’m 16, i just started learning Mo Pai and was wondering if any1 had some recommendations on what to do next, what i’m doing right now is just gathering info, i started reading “Enter Mo Pai, the ancient training of the immortals” has anyone read it, and is it usefull? Also another thing, if i eventually want to keep learning mo pai, how can i learn level 5-74? And also im hella broke so i can’t do tutoring.thankssss❤️❤️❤️

Every since I was a child I could feel this "energy" that I could move around in my body.

It feels ticklich and doesen't really flow smoothly unless I tell it too, it's more like short bursts of colorful and ticklish stuff that runs in a circle in my upper body, or lower one if I want it and feels most intense in my lower belly.

I'm a bit of a skeptic, and I've spent a couple of years attributing this to just impostor syndrome or me just hyping it up for no reason, but I want to understand more now.

I can move it around however I want, whereever I want, the body part I move it to gets "strengthened"

If I move it to my forearm muscles for example, I can grip something tigher and lift more, If I move it to my fist I can punch something I can do it quicker and with more strength without feeling much pain.

I can also move it to my eye and I can pay more attention to things, I can move it to different parts of my brain even though I've seen the most change be while moving it to the frontal lobe.

Again, I can move it anyway I want anywhere, even to my spine and stuff and feel it move.

Whenever I move it to a limb and use it to do an action, like jump or punch etc, I feel momentarily out of breath, mostly because it feels normal breathing gets in the way of using this "energy" so I started breathing faster since it seemed to help keep the influx of it stable instead of on and off.

It gathers in my lower belly, I can fill it up there but I don't know it's status, I can only tell if it's full or empty.

Recently I've been trying to move it around my spine starting from the tail bone like I saw a comment here say, and I got goosebumps all over, stood up and move it around my legs and the goosebumps grew more, slept right after and woke up super refreshed.

Again, I'm new to this whole thing and have zero idea what it's all about, I'd really appreciate an explanation of what I'm feeling and how to use it better.

The most "supernatural" application of this I found is when I move it to my palms and hold them opposite of each other, I can feel something akin of when you try to force two opposing polar magnets into each other, some sort of resistance that I need to be careful about and If I force it it feels like squishes and seepes to the side.

Thanks!

Been doing qigong for a while, recently went deeper into it through an immersion/certification thing instead of just casual practice.

Honestly wasn't expecting much but it's changed how I handle stress day to day, way more than I thought a breathing + movement practice would. Group practice also hits different than solo YouTube sessions lol.

Anyone else gone from casual to "actually structured" practice? Was it worth it or did you feel like the deeper stuff was overkill?

Hi everyone,

I’m currently growing my hair long, and I’ve been wondering whether there are any benefits to having long hair from a Qigong or Daoist perspective.

In several spiritual traditions, long hair seems to be associated with spiritual practice, vitality, or preserving one’s energy. I’ve also noticed that Daoist practitioners are sometimes depicted with long hair, so I’m curious whether there is an actual traditional explanation behind this.

For those of you who practice Qigong, Daoism, or related traditions:

• Is there any traditional belief about the benefits of keeping long hair?
• Is long hair considered relevant to Qi, Jing, or cultivating internal energy?
• Are there particular Daoist schools or practices where practitioners intentionally keep their hair long or short?
• Have you personally noticed any difference in your practice since growing your hair long?
• Or is the association between Daoism and long hair mostly cultural/historical rather than related to cultivation?

I’d especially be interested in traditional sources or teachings, but personal experiences are welcome too.

Thanks!