"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
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The simple fact is that most people do not breathe well. There are numerous studies on the effects of poor breathing on your health.
If a person doesn’t breathe well then it contract their body and induces tension and stress…so learning to breath well is very important to solve this major health problem. But why do we breathe poorly and what is the cause? Read More
photo by kirtaphThis summer I’ll teach one of the most important trainings I’ve ever offered. It’s a three-week Instructor Training on Longevity Breathing or Taoist whole-body breathing on the island of Crete. My hope is to certify up to 100 breathing coaches/instructors.
Breathing is at the heart of Taoist arts and other Eastern practices, such as yoga and Buddhist meditation. Breathing well is also a key to success in Western athletic sports, including running, swimming, football and tennis.
Leading up to the Instructor Training this summer I’ll share a lot of important information about breathing to help you prepare. Whole-body breathing will make you feel more alive, improve your health and make your body conscious…bringing real value to your quality of life.
So in this first post I’ll talk about a classic Taoist phrase in the Inner Chapters: “The wise man breathes from his heels.” Well, if you haven’t got the faintest clue what Chuang Tzu means you’re not alone. Let’s explore some possibilities… 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