Forums IMPORTANT: PLEASE READ Spring Forest Qigong Joining Yin and Yan today.

Heartbeat

Thanks for this joyful post. I too continue to feel stunned by it and the power of 'just waving you hands around'. I wish I had heard of it when I was very much younger but I'm glad I encoutered it at all.

Ascending1

Thanks for your very thoughtful post. I felt inuitively that you were right - there is much more within the exercise for me to relax into and explore for all the reasons you mention. In fact I need to take the detail of what you're offering on baord for a while.

Love to you both

Kev

Aloha Iam2 et. al.,

The forming and moving of yin & yang exercises/meditations are very powerful (as Heartbeat attested). There is a lot going on and being worked on. The column is more than just the main front and back channels. We want to attach specific meaning of something to what we already know to help get our "brain around it". Consider that perhaps within the column, the front and back channels are joined as one and that the work done here allows for this, the chakras, one's life line and more than I can shake a stick at (or even realize), to heal and strengthen.

The following is an tweak to the column of light in the moving of Yin and Yang exercise that master Lin has mentioned a few times over the last couple years.

In the beginning, see the energy column narrow as a pencil. As you meditate, the column may grow wider. Let it grow to the size it will be. It may become as wide as the body, as large as the room, or even as big as the universe.

When ending the exercise, visualize the column of light gradually returning to the width of a pencil -brighter and stronger than before.

Of course women finish with the left hand over right, and men right over left in front of the lower dantain. Bring all the energy to collect there. Now continue with the next active exercise or end with the Harvesting of Qi.

One can look at and remember the image of a candle flame or a vertical florescent bulb, bringing the image into their body to help visualize the column of light.

Much Love, Shawn

Thanks Shawn. I will work at following your description.

Currently the column I've visualized is about 2 inches, or a little bigger, in diameter.

The closing of moving Yin and Yang has always confused me. I kind of just jump from visualizing column to pill. Should I colapse the column into the lower dantian?

Also the candle imagery give me a white model, not the transparent column. When I started with SFQ I used to visualize a hazey white column. Then watched the video a few times and it became golden. Then read the manual and one day it became transparent.... help. Or does it really matter? However narrowing a transparent column will stay transparent.

Oh, and the front and back channels within the column with help me. Thanks.

Thanks for sparing some time from your family.

You are perfection,
Iam2

Yes, thanks Shawn for this very helpful set of images. I now know more clearly why Chunyi Lin was referring to different sizes. My images sometines have quite a weak form and while that is in the nature of (my) images it is better to have a guide of the kind that you offer.

I hope you are enjoying your little one. I don't recall any details about whether you had a girl/boy (maybe even one of each, ho, ho!) but maybe I missed it

Love

Kev

Shawn

Just caught up with the Isaiah stories so no need to reply to the previous post. I didn't read that thread because UK to Twin Cities is serious money although I'd love to visit eventually. Great stories! Time for a couple more though, since you hint there are many? Not if you're sleep deficient though - I reveal my own experience of early fatherhood here!

Love

Kev

Aloha Iam2,

It's interesting that the candle flame is white to you. Light one up now and tell me what you see.

When it's coming to the end time of the exercise, that's when you concentrate the column to a thinner core (similar to the ball of energy into a concentrated pill), and then as the last hand (right for men), comes down, I collapse and bring the energy/column down to the lower dantain, do the breaths focusing it there, and continue with the next exercise or finish with the harvesting of qi.

As for story time with the (sleepy)Grim's...

[GRAPHIC READ AT OWN RISK]

Picture Darcie waking up with my alarm in the morning and figuring she'd use the bathroom before me, she gets there and boom -mucus plug goes, bags of water breaks, and is immediately in transition labor.

Well I hop on the phone to the Doula and then watch as the contractions go from 5-7 minutes apart to 2 in over the next 40 minutes and when the back up Doula get there and takes over applying counter pressure, she asked one question and we head to the hospital.

The story (other than the accelerated labor), comes on the 20 minute car ride to the hospital in which I'm qigonging her when the contractions and the pushing hits her. She then is immediately able to center until the next one. It was funny seeing the doula in the back seat with Darcie noticing her being able to quickly center herself and then notice me qigonging her from the driver's seat. What is he doing and why isn't the labor pain longer? (She was the back up doula and had just heard a glimpse of qigong Darcie's work from our regular doula).

I wouldn't recommend intervening as much as I did, other than recommending visualizing Mom and baby safe in the sun, but since the backup doula thought it best to get to the hospital rather than have it there at home, and the fact that Darcie already wanted to push... I needed to keep the channels open, energized, and protect the space safe and non traumatized for both Mom and the baby.

ps. We were lined up for a water birth, but when we got to the hospital and our midwife checked Darcie and nixed that -she was complete and +3.

[time to head home]
Much Love, Shawn

[This message has been edited by Shawn_Grim (edited October 01, 2003).]

Well that sounds like a marvelous birthing experience. Our first was somewhat longer... Posterior birth ===> Ouch.

For this poor Canuck +3 seem pretty small, until I realize you were talking inches.

I'll check the candle out later. My minds eye candle WAS white, until you asked that question. Now it has some yellow in it. I guess I need cleaner ear-wax for my mental candles.

You are perfection,
Iam2

Okay, there are some hints of colour around the boundaries of the flame. The main body fo the flame is white.

Looking back at the pencil of light I visualized this morning it was white. The column didn't change size on it's own. I consciously changed the size to several sizes. Why not, I consciously made it pencil thin. I went as far as exceeding the limits of my body and arm movement. No wows in any of it. I was probably to conscious.

I didn't appreciate the colapsing the column with the right hand.

Question: When you bring the right hand down do you stop at the lower Dantian or go to the bottom of the torso and back?

Do you compress the bottom of the column with the motion of the left hand?

I doubt they are important. It's just that I had stopped my left hand and realised the bottom of the column was still in place. I instantly shorted this. I don't like instant changes in visualization during Qigong. No bad feelings.... more like a sense I'm missing out on good ones.

You are perfection,
Iam2

Thanks Shawn and Iam2,

I'll try the pencil column and collapsing of column tommorow monring.

Love and Light to all

Michael

PS - IAM2 quotes "You are perfection". My response is "I know!"

Aloha Iam2,

+3 is a medical term describing how far the head of the baby is past the sitz(sp) bone notch, not how dilated -that was already as I mentioned, "complete".

With the expanding addition of the column, you visually start it the size of pencil, expand it with the incoming energy and then condense it back brighter and stronger than it began.

At the end of the exercise one brings/collects the energy back at their lower dantian.

What kind of polar bear candles are the selling you up there? Whether you see white or gold in your candle flame doesn't matter, it's just a tool. My first image and initial look at one sees a golden translucidity.

Enjoy the exercise.

Have you or Michael seen Alex K's website pictures from the retreat yet? Very fun.

Much Love, Shawn