Reply:

Here is a partial list of our Chinese teachers.

They have all made important contributions in some way but in terms Taoism and Nei Dan, the following are most relevant to your question:

Li Laoshi: Technically from the southern Zhong-Lu school, he was also [...]]]> Question: Could you tell us a little more about your Chinese Internal Alchemy teachers?

Reply:

Here is a partial list of our Chinese teachers.

They have all made important contributions in some way but in terms Taoism and Nei Dan, the following are most relevant to your question:

Li Laoshi: Technically from the southern Zhong-Lu school, he was also a synthesizer and a scholar. His knowledge was encyclopedic. He answered a lot of questions and filled in a lot of holes. His teaching is the probably the most significant influence on our cultivation.

He Laoshi: Longmen and Taijimen (a secretive Taoist sect, not to be confused with some modern groups that use that appellation). An iconoclast, despite being the abbot of a Taoist temple, he prided himself on never having worn Taoist robes. His use of Qigong for healing and foundation building was a strong influence on our teaching. He organized and explained the principles of using Qigong for healing very thoroughly and systematically.

Chen Laoshi: Wudang Longmen (a branch of the Northern Quanzhen School) He taught a great number of classical Qigong forms, but we had greatest affinity with the Taiyi Qigong material. He taught a system of Nei Dan that most closely resembles Zhao Bi Chen’s system.

We also learned a system of martial alchemy. You can read a little background on it here.

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I understand that you are inquiring about the specific techniques of the Building the Foundation stage. I appreciate that you limited your question to that part of the practice. It is probably the stage of the practice that could [...]]]> Question: How can I start practicing Nei Dan? I am very interested in the foundation building practices.

Reply:

I understand that you are inquiring about the specific techniques of the Building the Foundation stage. I appreciate that you limited your question to that part of the practice. It is probably the stage of the practice that could most readily be described in writing, although it would take at least a small book to do it justice. To put it in perspective, we take three days to introduce the first stage of Building the Foundation (Ju Ji) in our Internal Alchemy course. This is only after preparing them with three days of basics and nearly a year of personal practice!

However, it is also important to understand that there is no single answer to your question. That Westerners, as part of our general education and conditioning, expect a single answer to a question is one of the great cultural barriers that has to be crossed in order to understand these practices. You will likely find that each school has a slightly different approach and even within a school there would be variation among teachers and their students.

If you are serious about wanting to study Nei Dan, but do not have a teacher, then the best advice I can give without knowing you would be to establish a diligent Qigong practice of some sort. By diligent I mean daily and committed. A committed daily practice is essential to success in cultivation. There is a saying “Those who start the (Internal Alchemy) practice are as numerous as the hairs on an ox. Those who finish are as rare as the dragon’s horns and phoenix’s feathers.” That is, many people learn it, but few are committed enough to follow through with the practice. If you have a good practice, you will have a good foundation to learn Internal Alchemy when the time, place, and people are right.

It is important to note that I made no assumption about the level of your experience or of those reading this topic. The Foundation practices are where most everyone new to Nei Dan will start. Having prior experience with meditative and movement arts, as well as language skills are all very useful, but in Nei Dan, that is only the starting point.

If you are simply interested in learning about the general principles of this stage, you might take a look at Fabrizio Pregado’s translation of Wang Mu Foundations of Internal Alchemy: The Taoist Practice of Neidan

It provides a rather detailed discussion of the principles and terminology. Although the texts in question are from Nan Pai, other schools will use them as well. You will also find his translations of Zhang Boduan  (張伯端)  Awakening to Reality: The “Regulated Verses” of the Wuzhen pian, a Taoist Classic of Internal Alchemyuseful as well.

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This reminds me of the instant vs. gradual debate in Buddhism, although I have rarely heard Taoist practitioners arguing about it. Many [...]]]> Question: I have heard that there are various stages of realization in Internal Alchemy 100, 10 month, 9 years. On the other hand I have heard that it happens instantly. Which one is it?

Reply:

This reminds me of the instant vs. gradual debate in Buddhism, although I have rarely heard Taoist practitioners arguing about it. Many of the Taoist practitioners I have met accept that the moment of realization is “instant” but it takes a lot of hard work “Kung Fu” to get there.

The above quoted numbers are merely a heuristic – that is, a general guideline which can vary greatly from person to person depending upon where they start and their own aptitude and dedication to the training. The varied practices expounded by the different schools of Nei Dan may also result in somewhat different models of progression in their training.

Question: Why do practitioners call the Dao De Jing a Nei Dan classic when the academics say Nei Dan was invented [...]]]> We’ll answer some common questions on the Taoist art of Nei Dan, or Internal Alchemy. For those new to the concept of Nei Dan, you might want to read this short introduction and this short post.

Question:
Why do practitioners call the Dao De Jing a Nei Dan classic when the academics say Nei Dan was invented much later?

Reply:

The oral history of Taoism states that what we call Nei Dan (Internal Alchmey) has its origins in the mists of Taoist history – dating back to Huang Di and Lao Zi (Huang-Lao Taoism). Although western trained historians and sinologists tend to base their dating of what we call Nei Dan practices to a much later period (roughly the Tang Dynasty), the Internal Alchemy practitioners recognize that alchemy practices are much older.

This difference in perspective is due in part to the conventions of academic research based upon the historical usage of specific terms and other indicators. For example, a western trained historical might ask “When did the specific language of Nei Dan appear?” and date it accordingly. In contract, actual practitioners tend to use the term Nei Dan less formally and apply it to a group of closely related self-cultivation practices.

These practices are described in the Chinese classic texts such as the Yi Jing, Dao De Jing, Zhuang Zi and Nei Yeh. The Tang Dynasty Nei Dan texts use a slightly different metaphorical system, one based on the language of External Alchemy. However, they are describing the same thing. In other words, to the practitioners, “A rose by any other name is still a rose.”

For this reason, the Dao De Jing (DDJ) is considered the most important foundation Nei Dan text, in the common usage of that term. That is because it is an internal cultivation text which describes methods that ultimately produce the same effect as Nei Dan, which is “uniting with the Tao” “perfection” or “immortality”. In this case, the text does indeed stand alone. For example, Chapters 2, 3, 5 and 6 are thought to provide fairly specific advice on how to cultivate. Some practitioners consider that Chapter 3 “…The sage empties the heart and fills the belly…” is the basis for the two major lines of Taoist internal cultivation.

This, of course, does not preclude the text from being read as applying to all other activities in this world — “As above, so below.” If anything, its application to other areas strengthens its value as a guide to inner cultivation. That is because ordering your life’s affairs is one of the major prerequisites for an aspiring practitioner to begin their training.

To state it a little more formally, you can consider the practices of cultivation aimed at “uniting with the Tao” in general as an umbrella concept. Underneath it you can recognize various subsets of this cultivation. These subsets may consist of methods characterized by historically specific identifiers e.g. Nei Dan.

Following this line you could even say that Ritual is itself one of the subsets of “immortality” cultivation. One of the many “vehicles” to borrow a Buddhist term.

Cancer patients and their families recently enjoyed a free meditation and Qigong class at Life with Cancer in Virginia. They experienced a powerful self-healing meditation, designed to enhance the effectiveness of their body’s natural healing functions. We taught them Qigong movements to help relax and open the body.

Our meditation series [...]]]>

Ready to begin Qigong forms

Cancer patients and their families recently enjoyed a free meditation and Qigong class at Life with Cancer in Virginia. They experienced a powerful self-healing meditation, designed to enhance the effectiveness of their body’s natural healing functions. We taught them Qigong movements to help relax and open the body.

Our meditation series is based on an ancient Taoist tradition. It uses guided imagery and visualization, as well breathing and relaxation techniques. Our teacher, an abbot on Lo Fu Shan, China, used it to great effect on cancer patients, even those with end stage cancer.

The class at Life with Cancer was taught in both English and Espanol.

Cancer patients experiencing a self-healing meditation in Spanish

As one might imagine the slides were of the children playing together on the playground, going to the library, learning basic [...]]]> I recently attended a function at my daughter’s kindergarten class themed “A Day in the Life of a Kindergartner”. Her teachers put together a slide show with pictures of the class during their daily activities.

As one might imagine the slides were of the children playing together on the playground, going to the library, learning basic skills and all the typical things 21^st century kindergartners do these days

It was great to see my daughter engaged with her classmates through the photos in the slide show. All pretty typical and ordinary stuff that any parent loves to see. Then one very specific slide transitioned into view… it was all eighteen of the children sitting on the floor on their mats cross-legged in an almost lotus position with their eyes closed and their hands resting palms up on their knees.

One of her teacher’s remarked that “The children are now able to sit in silence for up to two minutes after recess and before they start their school day.  The class room is much more peaceful and the children seem to be more cooperative.”

At this point I’m grinning from ear to ear. For you see, last year I was teaching meditation to a group of teachers from this very same school and of course my daughter is blessed with having one of those teachers this year leading her kindergarten class.

So important has the notion of stillness become to these teachers, that they are also using one or two simple Tai Chi moves that I taught them to help settle and ground the kinetic energy of the kindergartners.

What is so remarkable about this? The next time you have eighteen children together in the same room, take the challenge and ask them to close their eyes and sit still for two minutes. Let me know how you make out. This is a gift that these teachers are giving these to kids at such a young age.

For those of us that have come to meditation and the energy arts later in our lives, we know that these treasures require discipline to integrate into our day. Just imagine how it might be if somewhere a kindergarten teacher makes meditation or stillness so ordinary and so matter of fact that it becomes a part of our children’s lives and they are able to settle into it without any resistance. What a gift!! And I am still smiling about it.

There are indeed times the ancient Chinese considered better for certain types of practices. But the answer we give usually surprises them. “The best time to practice is whenever you can!”

“But, I’ve [...]]]> One of the questions we often get, especially around the Equinox and Solstice, is “When is the best time to practice Meditation and Qigong?”

There are indeed times the ancient Chinese considered better for certain types of practices. But the answer we give usually surprises them. “The best time to practice is whenever you can!”

“But, I’ve heard you should practice meditation at Midnight!” They’ll often say.

That is true, but what if you cannot practice at Midnight? Suppose you fell asleep, or you are a nurse who works third shift. What would you do? Would you not practice?

You see, what they are really asking is “when is the ideal time to practice?” But that question is not easy to answer.

In the beginning, practicing when you can is better than not practicing, even if it means you cannot practice at the “ideal time.”

In the end, all your daily activities should be a form of cultivation, no matter what the time. Ideal practice times simply have no meaning at this stage.

It’s the middle stages where timing the practice can be helpful given the right set of conditions. To practice during the ideal times means that you have enough influence over your lifestyle that you can reliably set those times aside for your practice. This is hard for most people to do in the beginning. But it is a worthy goal.

For those of you who can structure your life in such a way as to set up a practice routine, you would ideally practice 4 times a day: 11pm to 1am, 5am to 7am, 11am to 1pm and 5 to 7pm.

For most people it will be a great task to get even one or two of those times allocated for dedicated practice. If you can only practice one time per day, then the 11pm to 1am time is ideal for meditation or Internal Alchemy.

So don’t worry about it if you can’t practice at the ideal time. Practice whenever you can! You’ll see the results for yourself.