Basic Qigong and Tai Chi exercises?

Post Reply
User avatar
Haelos
Forum Member
Forum Member
Posts: 849
Joined: Sat Nov 08, 2014 11:36 am

Basic Qigong and Tai Chi exercises?

Post by Haelos »

Hopefully this will be my last new thread of the evening..

I've attempted contacting just about every dojo in my area, and none of the good ones reply to my emails. The ones who reply give me information that I really don't want to hear.

From how things are going, it looks like I'll never be able to properly learn any type of meditative martial art, under an instructor.

The net has also been very misleading, and the texts I've found vary between many styles of practice.

I'm seriously about to just start waving my arms around while moving energy. That seems to be the only real basics I've managed to get out of it. I've already learned the basics of energy work, so that's like, 5 years of normal-man Tai Chi exercise out of the way.

Does anyone have any good books or links, or videos, or something that I can use to self-initiate into some form of moving internal mediation?
Seriously.. *ALL* of my meditation has me sitting still, unmoving. I can't perform any ecstatic trance meditation normally either, because of my location and home style.

I'm seriously just looking for like, one or two sets of movements (something that flows into itself, that I can do repeatedly) and the appropriate mental visualizations to go along with it (or rather, lack thereof. I still call it visualizing, even though most texts explicitly say *not* to visualize. It's more like "feeling", or whatever. "Sensing the Dragon's Pulse.")

Any help and links would be greatly appreciated. I've been putting this off for a long time, and now, I'm just ending up in a poor situation. I'm trying to make my physical body better, because I'm sick of things breaking.
Thanks ahead of time for your assistance.


EDIT: Also, no one online seems to takes this from any type of mystical perspective. For as many people there are out there with the understanding of how to utilize Qi, very few of them seem to truly comprehend what it is they're doing, how it works, or why they do what they do.
I've found that a lot with Western practitioners of energy-related martial arts. It's like, they can use their Qi, but they don't actually believe they're using it.
I don't know. I guess I'm just nitpicky about how people explain things.
.
.
.
"God is an imprecise name for the only thing in the universe that actually exists."
.
Tell me what you know about darkness, and I will tell you about the light.
.
.
Selected Contributions;
Planetary Associations of Common Intoxicants
The Mysteries of Death

https://hdagaz.wordpress.com/

User avatar
Haelos
Forum Member
Forum Member
Posts: 849
Joined: Sat Nov 08, 2014 11:36 am

Re: Basic Qigong and Tai Chi exercises?

Post by Haelos »

Small update;

After shortly practicing the only video I've found that was reliably basic and informative, I realized that all it was teaching me to do was float around in energy. Is this all Qigong is?

Like, it's hard to describe this if you don't already know what I'm talking about.. The few movements I learned, all it had you do is relaxing and focusing on the movement. Now, I know this is like, 100% of what you're supposed to do, but all I was focused on was my breath, and then at that point, my focus was on obtaining a clear mind. Like, there wasn't any real "goal" with the meditations; Not even to obtain gnosis, or any other quiet state of mind (that I know of.)

I have an intense focus on the energy near my hands. Even now, they feel super heavy and over-saturated with energy. That may just because I haven't cleaned them in a little while, or because I use my hands so much for energy work, but it doesn't really seem productive to simply be swirling my hands around in the Qi in the air.

The post Shinichi shared in a previous thread of mine was of great help, and very similar to what I had in mind when starting this type of practice in the first place (long, long ago.)
From what I'm gathering right now, I guess this video is just trying to teach you how to feel the Qi, and not to actually utilize it. That's probably the problem for me, in that I already know how to both feel and use it, and I'm trying to move past what I know and understand.

Here's the thread I was talking about.
http://forums.vsociety.net/index.php/topic,22055.0.html

Show me some diagrams like this. I'll be able to figure out what they mean.
Image


I need to eat now, because all that Qigong did for me was stimulate digestion of the food I don't have in my stomach. It was interesting, and informative for sure, but not in any way that can offer me productivity.
I feel a bit lost, or something.
.
.
.
"God is an imprecise name for the only thing in the universe that actually exists."
.
Tell me what you know about darkness, and I will tell you about the light.
.
.
Selected Contributions;
Planetary Associations of Common Intoxicants
The Mysteries of Death

https://hdagaz.wordpress.com/

User avatar
Desecrated
Benefactor
Benefactor
Posts: 3223
Joined: Fri Aug 23, 2013 11:50 pm
Location: The north

Re: Basic Qigong and Tai Chi exercises?

Post by Desecrated »

Haelos wrote: After shortly practicing the only video I've found that was reliably basic and informative, I realized that all it was teaching me to do was float around in energy. Is this all Qigong is?
Yes and no.
Once you've gathered that energy you need to do something with it. qigong is mainly used for medical purposes. It is almost like energy acupuncture. you move your energy to the points that needs healing and then unblock if there is anything blocked or just add some goodness if it needs that.
You said something about seeing and feeling. It's easier to feel then it is to see, but if you can visualize it, you can absolutely do so. It's just that most teachers will recommend that you start with just feeling.

You can also use qigong to drain negative energy and remove it from yourself.

Unfortunately I'm not going to be of much help when it come to sources because all my books on qigong are in swedish. But try to find anything about biyun qigong. They work mostly with internal organs but have a pretty holistic view on the body and how it ties into emotions and thinking. So it's not just bout moving around gong with your hands but also with your mind and emotions.

Michael Tse works with both qigong and other martial arts so he might be worth checking out. he has 2-3 books in english and does a fairly good job about working with internal energy as well as external energy.

User avatar
Haelos
Forum Member
Forum Member
Posts: 849
Joined: Sat Nov 08, 2014 11:36 am

Re: Basic Qigong and Tai Chi exercises?

Post by Haelos »

I'm really tired of not being able to obtain proper teaching from an instructor in anything I do.

I've been watching a ton of videos, and from what I can tell, a vast majority of common Tai Chi has you just moving and feeling energy.
A few specific videos show demonstrations of more advanced techniques, but not particularly how to perform them.
After understanding a couple more important basic concepts, I've been able to learn a lot from the few videos, even though they aren't very detailed.

For instance, a video demonstrating "hard Qigong" showed a man seemingly just flexing, to the outside viewer. But, from what I could tell, he was using his breath to pull in energy and reinforce it against his aura. That would, presumably, allow him to withstand hits better than normal.
Something more, it seems the force he uses to "flex" is really just to force energy out through all of his pores, and past any internal junk that might be blocking up his system.

I guess I've kind of always been doing Qigong, and maybe even more advanced stuff than I could ever be taught. I just never knew it as such. I mean, I've worked with energy, but it's mostly just in attempting to pass my own energetic blockages, and trying to balance the elements (following Bardon's IIH).

I suppose for the time being I'll just continue working on passing my own internal nastiness out, yet do so using dynamic meditations. I won't really know what I'm doing, and any real Tai Chi practitioner will probably find it laughable, but hopefully it'll work nonetheless.
.
.
.
"God is an imprecise name for the only thing in the universe that actually exists."
.
Tell me what you know about darkness, and I will tell you about the light.
.
.
Selected Contributions;
Planetary Associations of Common Intoxicants
The Mysteries of Death

https://hdagaz.wordpress.com/

Post Reply

Return to “Life Extension and Immortality”