Chi Kung, Nei Kung practice

[MisterChi]

I've got a solid, three-year nei kung practice under my belt and have been using it as a meditation practice as well. Am I alone in here? Would love to share tales with fellow alchemists.

[jonno]

Hi I use my chi kung and tai chi excercises as a moving meditation. Both practices place the emphasis on the breath therefore it seems compatible with Buddhist Med . I find that at times I am in a state of intense mindfulness similar to that experienced in walking meditation. Happy practicing love JONNO

[Individual]

Like Indian yoga and ayurveda, it is superstition mixed with truth.

It has a powerful subjective, psychological effect that skeptical western minds don't often understand But the objective claims made without regard for western anatomy & physiology are nonsense. Eating cinnabar won't make you live forever (quite the contrary), if you try to live off a diet of air and saliva you will starve to death regardless of your mind, and swinging your limbs around and engaging in controlled breathing won't allow you to levitate, throw balls of energy, or heal your own or others illnesses.

Lots of western people are enchanted by these "mystical cures," because they are desperate. But they don't see that it's just the Asian version of what we had in the middle ages. In the middle ages, Europeans engaged in blood-letting through cuts and using leeches, to remove "bad blood", among other magical cures.

[Hoo]

...and swinging your limbs around and engaging in controlled breathing won't allow you to levitate, throw balls of energy, or heal your own or others illnesses.

Almost right, Individual I'll skip the puns that come to mind and just relate my experience with Chi Gung. The older I get the more I am bothered by stiff muscles, neuralgia, etc. For the last couple of years I've been doing a select bit of Chi Gung to stretch and maintain (or improve) chi/blood/oxygen flow and keep the muscles more flexible. When I've been unable to stand and do the routines, I do what I affectionately call "Chair Chi." Same concept, but sitting in a chair. Got the idea from a Scot Cole video where he does Tai Chi from a chair. If you try it, you notice right away which muscle groups are needing attention. Over time, my backache simply went away and neck muscles/pain are much more manageable. So healing my own illness of back and neck pain were "healed" in Chi Gung practice.

I also use my sessions as a meditation, though my balance doesn't let me do walking meditation any more. It's more like "staggering meditation." The Chi Gung helps with my balance, too, so that may change.

Levitation, balls of energy and healing others comes from a different source altogather.

Hoo

[Individual]

Sure, it can definitely help with pain, balance, posture, circulation, mood, and probably the immune system. But only to a certain extent. Aside from levitation and balls of energy, it can't cure cancer or AIDS either.

It's good for people with arthritis and similar forms of chronic pain.

[Viscid]

Tai Chi is actually the best therapy for reducing blood pressure without the use of medication.
(From a meta-analysis of studies, see http://www.ahrq.gov/downloads/pub/evide ... /medit.pdf pg 129)

Meditative blood pressure reducing methods from most to least effective:
1. Tai Chi
2. Yoga utilizing Biofeedback technology
3. Qi Gong
4. 'Contemplative Meditation' with breathing techniques
5. Only Biofeedback
6. "Relaxation Response"
7. Zen Meditation
8. Rest/Relaxation
9. Mantra Meditation
10. Transcendental Meditation™
11. Progressive Muscle Relaxation
12. Heatlh Education

[Individual]

Viscid: Similar to the discoveries by scientists that the effects of acupuncture are the same, regardless of whether the needles are placed in specific spots or not...

...What do you think the results would be of a study which compared the results of tai-chi's specific forms and movements vs. the results of similar practices involving slow, carefully controlled movements and breaths, while maintaining mindfulness? You could do a study, for instance, which takes a traditional tai-chi form, but then removes a certain mudra.

[Viscid]

blah blah blah

I didn't intend to dispute what you said.

It looks like the practices which most emphasize harmony between breath and movement are those that most reduce blood pressure. The 'energy' people tend to visualize is just a method of understanding how the body and breath should 'flow.' When people reify that visualization, you get the belief that the practitioners can shoot energy from their hands.

[Hoo]

....Similar to the discoveries by scientists that the effects of acupuncture are the same, regardless of whether the needles are placed in specific spots or not....

Hi Individual,

Are there some quoted resources for that one. Do you know the source material and where it can be accessed?

I'm aware that there are studies that show the effectiveness of accupuncture in various settings. I'm not aware of any that say that accupuncture has the same effects, regardless of whether the needles are placed in specific spots or not. I'm not a practitioner nor a patient of it, but the wife and I have had some referred pain issues in the past which gives rise to my interest.

Hoo

[Individual]

....Similar to the discoveries by scientists that the effects of acupuncture are the same, regardless of whether the needles are placed in specific spots or not....

Hi Individual,

Are there some quoted resources for that one. Do you know the source material and where it can be accessed?

I'm aware that there are studies that show the effectiveness of accupuncture in various settings. I'm not aware of any that say that accupuncture has the same effects, regardless of whether the needles are placed in specific spots or not. I'm not a practitioner nor a patient of it, but the wife and I have had some referred pain issues in the past which gives rise to my interest.

Hoo

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acupuncture

A systematic review of acupuncture for pain found that there was no difference between inserting needles into "true" acupuncture on traditional acupuncture points versus "placebo" points not associated with any TCM acupuncture points or meridians. The review concluded that "A small analgesic effect of acupuncture was found, which seems to lack clinical relevance and cannot be clearly distinguished from bias. Whether needling at acupuncture points, or at any site, reduces pain independently of the psychological impact of the treatment ritual is unclear."

Source cited:

Madsen, M. V.; Gotzsche, P. C.; Hrobjartsson, A. (2009). "Acupuncture treatment for pain: systematic review of randomised clinical trials with acupuncture, placebo acupuncture, and no acupuncture groups". BMJ 338: a3115. doi:10.1136/bmj.a3115. PMID 19174438

If I dig out my anatomy textbook, it's likely it might be mentioned there also. But I'm lazy.

[Hoo]

Thanks Individual Looks like I'll be reading for a while.

Hoo

[Guy]

I practice Yang Mian, its exercises include both Chi Kung and Nei Kung. It has helped my mental and physical health a great deal. Master Yang is a Buddhist too which is always nice. It is a fighting system, but its main aim is the happiness and well being of the student rather than competitions or beating people up.

[adept]

I've practiced Xing Yi Nei Gong daily for over 8 years now. Unlike Tai Chi, it can be learned from a book. It takes about 20 minutes to do the set.
I'm rarely ill, and my flexibility and strength is better than it was when I was in my twenties. (I'm in my forties now)
http://www.amazon.com/Xing-Nei-Gong-Maintenance-Development/dp/0865681740

[Kim O'Hara]

Tai Chi is actually the best therapy for reducing blood pressure without the use of medication.
(From a meta-analysis of studies, see http://www.ahrq.gov/downloads/pub/evide ... /medit.pdf pg 129)

Meditative blood pressure reducing methods from most to least effective:
1. Tai Chi
2. Yoga utilizing Biofeedback technology
3. Qi Gong
4. 'Contemplative Meditation' with breathing techniques
5. Only Biofeedback
6. "Relaxation Response"
7. Zen Meditation
8. Rest/Relaxation
9. Mantra Meditation
10. Transcendental Meditation™
11. Progressive Muscle Relaxation
12. Heatlh Education

This looked interesting but when I finally got round to looking at the source document I was disappointed.
The list presented is indeed given in the report but its significance is low. The main conclusion of the whole report is that there is not enough evidence - anywhere - to arrive at any firm conclusions about any of the meditation/movement practices.
Here's the conclusion of the 'Executive Summary' (emphasis added):

The field of research on meditation practices and their therapeutic applications is beset with uncertainty. The therapeutic effects of meditation practices cannot be established based on the current literature. Further research needs to be directed toward the ways in which meditation may be defined, with specific attention paid to the kinds of definitions that are created. A clear conceptual definition of meditation is required and operational definitions should be developed. The lack of high-quality evidence highlights the need for greater care in choosing and describing the interventions, controls, populations, and outcomes under study so that research results may be compared and the effects of meditation practices estimated with greater reliability and validity. Firm conclusions on the effects of meditation practices in healthcare cannot be drawn based on the available evidence.

It doesn't mean, of course, that these practices are useless - just that we can't know how useful they are, and that any comparison between them is very unreliable.

Kim

[Individual]

I think I have to possibly retract my previous skepticism in this thread.

Because I think I just felt my dantian for the first time, after doing this:



I do weird stuff like that (I guess I'd call it freestyle yoga?) because it just makes me feel good -- no superstitions about it and no particular emphasis on learning and memorizing particular forms.

Anyway, after doing that, after the ninth pose... In my stomach, for several seconds, I felt a strange sensation. Might've just been indigestion combined with a tired and over-imaginative mind, but I'll experiment with it later on. In the past, I just thought the dantian was people being really mindful of the fact that belly fat is such a big source of stored energy (that maybe with deep concentration you could actually be consciously aware of belly fat being catabolized).

Others describe it as cosmic energy, a "vortex," etc.. For me, it reminded me of a toilet flushing.

I was thinking a bit earlier today that my thoughts on chi might be a bit mistaken. As lately, I often do feel this kind of tingly energy in my body. When I'm really energetic, it feels like a really minty vapor in my nostrils. When I say "energetic," I mean the energy that overcomes laziness, like when my body and mind tells me to sleep, but I refuse, and it's like I have to drag around a tired and lazy corpse. And when I meditate or concentrate throughout the day, of course, I'm often feeling various spots in my skull tingle.

Still think a lot of Chinese alchemy, etc., is nonsense, though. Lots of foolishly materialistic interpretations of mind medicine that result in emperors getting cinnabar poisoning.