| WHICH Qigong I have a manual of roughly 100 pages, text only, describing a lot of ancient qigong forms, some of them on a very high level having a cycle that lasts one year.
ONE page of that is dealing with concentrating, making up three exercises called "exercise of the three secrets".
I have a strong suspicion that a whole bunch of exercises is mainly made up from fantasy, misinterpretation, mistranslation, willingly false instruction, and emotional disorder, making exercises that mix valid and functional parts with ceremonial or "idea" stuff.
You can influence a lot of things. Somehow, there is a brain in the top bone of the body called head, which knows it and can influence all that suiting adaptive stuff on base of steering information. With no idea, imagination, perhaps, and bla told me sort of following the herd. There are Yogis which can control their body temperature at will. Wow. There are 6 billion people on earth for whom their mind does it automatically, raising it during fever, dropping it during the night and rest periods, with no "education".
I have done a lot of control stuff for HATE during the early years. I still have to recover from the "rulez" I declared valid with an iron fist on myself making me a weapon, someone that can fight a lot of people in a row with a rage endurance of a herd of bulls, the speed of a lightning and the mercifulness of a stone. I had no feelings apart of rage, vengeance and hate, and I can assure you that you do a lot of things in this emotional state which I would no more do. I give you the strict advice to think about ancient china, the beliefs, hazards, life conditions in general, often violent and cruel behaviour, and the mind state that evolves from those having lived at the receiving end of this, and how they tried to cope that. And how they would rate qigong that can destroy feelings in a few years, knowing that they are lucky if they survive the next few months.
There might be a state where you are that highly integrated in your conscious mind with the deep feelings knowing truth on oneself, so you no longer differentiate between "conscious" and "unconscious" as it is and feels the same. Such people can demonstrate they can steer something on demand with no problem, since they just "ask" their inner mind of doing it. And it works as long as there is no consequence not making it a wise interest. I often do something "conscious" a short while, forgetting about it when I feel no need anymore for this. A kind of exercise is like playing with jings to learn how to develop going along with it, and avoiding mistakes, overuse, and underuse of that inner mind abilities. Playing is not using, when it is the moment to react fast and with 100% reliability for a life or no life question, I let my inner mind achieve what I feel is necessary, and it "happens", faster and stronger as I could do that.
The work for it is partially active playing, just not "controlling" it. As your reflexes need to make use of that in a fraction a conscious thought needs to get aware of what is happening and how to react keeping measurement, you have no time to think. So you have a big brake inside from controlling that, not letting the inner mind choose the right answer and care for consequences.
The other thing, the health issue, is so complex you cannot replace all the fundamental and well-working processes from childhood days with some easy up/down flow procedures from conscious "guiding". Tell me one person who can control the blood flow into all the cells of the body. How do you expect this is possible or even "necessary" for the qi or jing flow Many exercises are no jing control, they are just working with the inner pressure mechanisms, that can distribute pressure all around the body into joints so they get locked and expand a small range with a giant amount of power. Others are muscle tension work, letting some parts of the mechanisms get worked on, like push-ups. This all is just playing, and workout on limited parts of the bodies power management, it cannot replace inner control, and doing that stuff on deep parts of the management is no gain, it is a mistake coming from overpowering the "greed" for destroying power. A lot of people have fallen into that realm, and it is not a healthy one, although exercises of this sort WORK, just not to the output desirable. It is difficult to tell the bad sort of influencing inner structures from the good one (playing and listening), if you speak of "controlling qi" with no way to explain how to really influence the right and not the wrong structures. With the examples of very old enlighted people having done such sort of stuff, you often hide the lots of people having not found enlightment but a bad life and probably early, unhappy death. Have a look at how many people you find within the martial arts doing "energy work" dieing from cancer, or having problems with their metabolism glands, for example the pancreas, not in their 80s, but in their 50s.
True qigong works inside out, once you have allied with your inner feelings and needs instead of fighting or ignoring them, you learn by their guidance how to do good for your body. This is the way all qigong has developed. Or, as other taoists explain this, once aligned with the universe, the struggling ceases. Ones actions are always correct. It is listening to inside, not telling something to it other than ones feelings. You can tell your inside your pains and fears, and it will provide answers. You cannot tell something to it it doesn't know. There will be no answer other than "I know", or "That's not right".
Play with it, and let yourself free, don't fool around with it or force yourself. Often the reason for having to force oneself is amorality or needlessnes. If it is according to inner moral, and it is good, inside will always do it from alone.  |
chi kung practice 
