"This qigong set is known for its powerful preventative and healing effects by working with the chi of your acupuncture meridians and your etheric body.”
-Bruce
Pregnant woman Martial Arts photo by dizznbonnThis blog is in response to someone asking about practicing Dragon & Tiger qigong during pregnancy.
Some pregnant women get stagnant Chi at various points during their pregnancy as a natural effect of having a child. It’s different with some women than others. There are many things that Dragon and Tiger can be helpful for in terms of stagnant Chi and Read More
During the Chinese New Year of 1986, almost 25 years ago, around February, I was asked, along with my wife, if we would do something for China National Television on their English Sunday program.
At the time, this program was approximately an hour long and it was watched by approximately 500 million people in China. A few days before this, I was trying to figure out what I would do for the TV show, even though I was being asked to appear because I was known as a western Tai Chi Master in Beijing. Read More
Sumatran Tiger Photo by Brimac the 2ndWe are now getting ready to enter the Year of the Tiger and there are several things that I think are helpful for you as an update. The first one is that we are nearing the end of winter, so within a month from now, during the winter period of time, the most valuable thing you can do is to rest so you have energy for the rest of the year.
This is so your system will regenerate, much like you leave a field fallow in the winter so in the spring it can grow again. Now that we’ve finished the bulk of the winter and we have less than a month left before the next phase starts, you want to start just like a person who has been very, very sleepy and is waking up, very slowly. Read More
Most people in the west just know about hatha yoga—very few are aware that China actually had an entire Yoga system. As Indian hatha yoga was classically a bridge to meditation (see previous article link here), Taoist yoga or what we call Longevity Breathing Yoga was a preliminary practice for other Taoist energy arts, including qigong and the three internal martial arts of tai chi, bagua and hsing-i as well as Taoist meditation.
What Taoist energy practice you started to learn or ended with was often determined by the teachers that were around you and your own interest in a subject. What makes Longevity Breathing Yoga unique (or any of the Taoist energy arts for that matter) is the incorporation of the 16 neigong (internal energy techniques) into the movements and postures.
Most teachers and masters of tai chi rarely teach the 16 neigong in the West, either because the students are not ready or because they were never taught the complete system themselves. I’ll write more posts about the neigong later because it is at the core of all energy arts and the concept of cross-training. In this posts lets connect many of the Taoist movement forms.
The main function of many Taoist movement forms such as tai chi and qigong (chi gung, chi kung) is really to get your mind fully conscious in your body. You can see how this would be really beneficial as you move deeply into meditation. Read More
Yoga in the Mountains (Photo by: lulumon athletica)The term cross-training is used frequently in the West. Sometimes it refers to cross-training an employee but more often than not it is in relation to increasing athletic performance. Wikipedia definition is:
Cross-training in sports and fitness refers to the combining of exercises to work various parts of the body. Often one particular activity works certain muscle groups, but not others, cross-training aims to eliminate this.
In the west fitness cross-training is associated with the popular physical or impact type exercises. So if you are a runner you might benefit from lifting weights. Within mixed martial arts, cross-training involves learning different martial arts systems so that you are prepared for anything in combat. I did this type of training extensively when I was younger.
What is interesting is the Taoists have been cross-training for thousands of years, finding connections between movement arts, healing and ultimately meditation. In these series of posts I want to talk about Taoist Cross-Training because it can accelerate your path in energy arts and meditation… Read More
A lot of people don’t know this about me, but when I was young I was an avid reader. I could read a 500-page book in a day and a half or two and actually digest it. Then, I went through a long period where I didn’t read at all, especially not in English.
I didn’t particularly like fiction when I was young. In fact, I almost exclusively read non-fiction with two exceptions. I actually really liked Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities, which is about the French Revolution. In junior high school, when I was 12, I picked up the book The Hobbit on a Friday afternoon and I had read the entire Lord of the Rings series before the weekend was out.
Even still, I really didn’t care for fiction. I still find most fiction novels boring as hell.
One of things that I did when I came back from China, at some point in the 90’s, was pick up the book Dune by Frank Herbert because a friend of mine said that it was really cool. I found that there are many ideas in Dune that mirror those in Taoism… Read More
I am responding to a common question that was asked to me about why you would put one hand in front of or on top of the other in qigong or meditation positions where this is required. Read More
Everybody who has been involved in tai chi in the West for the past 10-15 years has known that tai chi is probably going to reach a tipping point were it really reaches the masses; where tai chi really becomes known to the public rather than being some strange exercise that hippies practice.
The simple fact still remains most of the public know little of the tremendous benefits of tai chi, how tai chi works or how to learn tai chi. Lets connect Malcolm Gladwell, Swami Vichinanda,Jane Fonda and Bruce Lee with the Tai Chi Tipping Point… Read More
I will be posting and writing frequently here on a wide range of topics from tai chi to qigong, taoism and buddhism, meditation, current event and other things that I feel called to share and that I think will be useful for you.
Right now I am in Hawaii on Maui. Life is great and I am happy to be resting from a long year of teaching.
Monday was the winter solstice and the day before had parties on Maui to celebrate the solstice as was the custom in many traditional cultures throughout the world including the TAOISTS of Ancient China, Native Americans and the Hawaiians. Read More