I found this over at Stuart Alve-Olson’s site. He does a good job of describing some basic meditation and gives time frames for practice. The best part of it is the sitting/walking model that he advises for beginning meditation. I find that very useful. I try to meditate for 15 minutes then stretch and do slow spinal movements, then go back to sitting. I find this better than the forceful “just push through” method of non-stop sitting through the pain.
Chang believed that anyone seeking to attain tranquility must first keep in mind these three simple ideas.
1) It does no good to toil the body with long periods of meditation. Students should first begin with what Chang called the “Quarter-Hour Method.” Meaning, learn how to sit quietly for just 15 minutes, then if you enter a state of tranquility you will naturally sit for hours unaware of the time. There is no point, however, in forcing yourself to sit for long periods, rather it is a matter of the mind and body naturally entering tranquility and allowing this to happen.
2) Follow the three stages of practice, but the first concern is actually the breath and posture.
3) Sincerity of maintaining mindfulness and repetition of the methods are the only secrets of success. Life brings about many changes, but a student should always be mindful that success depends on his or her ability to be changeless within change. This means that you do not allow conditions to distract you, rather you remain changeless within those distractions. Always find time to practice, keep repeating the practices, and then you can experience the pearl dropping into your Lower Tan-Tien. This is what the ancient Taoists meant by “forming the pill of immortality” and “creating a spiritual embryo.”First Stage: Preparing the Cauldron
A student should begin with an 18-day period of just sitting, standing, and walking. Their only concern should be ridding the mind of emotional distractions and wandering thoughts.Second Stage: Forming the Pearl
The student then begins a 99-day period of just concentrating on their Tan-T’ien (in the lower abdomen) until they see a bright pearl being formed there. Chang did not believe a student should simply imagine or visualize this pearl, rather they really see it.Third Stage: The Waterwheel
After the 99-day period, the student enters a 9-month stage of just observing the pearl begin its ascent up the spine into the Pai Hui cavity on top of the head and then down through the Upper Tan-T’ien (Third Eye), through the nasal passage, down the esophagus and into the Bright Palace (Middle Tan-T’ien), where the student then waits for it to drop into the Lower Tan-T’ien.Even if you feel you have not been successful with any of these three stages—18 days, 99-days, or 9 months—you still go through the entire practice. Most students will continue these three cycles of practice many times in their live, and this certainly doesn’t mean progress isn’t being made. Within this method a student will begin to experience sensations of qi and their spirit will constantly be made brighter and stronger. Chang taught that the destination is not as fruitful as the treasures we find along the Way, and that the destination is easier reached if we remain mindful of each moment along the path. So being mindful during each stage is crucial.
7 responses so far ↓
1 Casey // Jul 8, 2007 at 8:55 pm
I’m not a fan. The way to reach the experience of sinking the qi into the dantian to make the “true qi” is by first learning to raise it to the head. I learned this with many hours of practicing “back breathing” and using various exercises Zhou Laoshi showed me for that purpose. Only once the feeling of qi in my head was quite strong (throbbing baihui, feeling of light behind my eyes, etc.) could I feel what it really meant to sink it back down the front. The action of sinking down the front and condensing the qi into the dantian feels much like allowing something to physically drop, albeit very carefully and gently.
The primary points to be mindful of in this are the third eye point, the throat, the center of the chest and the solar plexus. When it reaches the area where the abdominal muscles begin, a few inches above the navel, you have to a kind of inward rolling motion to make it enter the dantian. Otherwise, it will just kind of roll down the front–which is not bad, it just won’t help you make a dantian. Rolling down the front is for a practice called “yang qi,” (cultivating) or just for regular breathing. The feeling you get when you do the inward condensing motion (”lian dan”=training or “forging” the dantian/elixir) is very different.
I think a lot of people, myself included, confuse the area around the dantian with the dantian itself. The area around the dantian can encompass the whole lower part of the abdomen from belly button downward. However, the dantian itself is quite small, and very much in the center of the lower abdomen. It feels sort of like a tiny circular area within a larger one. Zhou claims it can eventually reach the size of an egg or so–but that’s quite large. As I’m just learning this stuff myself recently, it’s really only a little point. However, the qualitative difference between the feeling of just letting the lower abdomen expand after raising the qi and that of actually lowering it from the head past each of those points and then performing the “inward rolling” motion I mention is huge. It feels really intense and is unmistakable.
I think meditation is definitely integral to making progress in Qigong and I’m certain it’s because I meditated at least a half hour a day for several months that my qigong started to make noticeable progress. However, I’m not a huge fan of the above-described meditation plan for a couple reasons:
1. I think it’s overly simplistic. It’s true focusing the intent on the dantian is part of it, but the whole back breathing thing is even more important, imo. If you can’t raise the qi, you have nothing to sink and all the dantian-focus in the world won’t give it to you.
2. I don’t like the idea of set time frames. I think you should work on what you feel you need to work on for as long as you feel you do. When you can feel the qi at your mingmen, start working on getting that up past the shoulder blades. When you feel it sending shivers up your neck, work on lifting that up and focusing it on the baihui point. When you can do that, try releasing that and focusing on the third eye point to let it drop, etc. etc. Learning this basically consists of many, many little phases and while it is helpful to try practicing the whole thing at times (that is, it is a good idea to try the whole dantian sinking motion just to get used to it even before the feeling is really obvious), you also have to focus on wherever you are at that point.
3. I feel it encourages people to focus on creating a fantasy rather than really feeling what’s going on inside their bodies. Maybe if you imagine a flaming pearl at your dantian long enough you’ll actually convince yourself you’ve seen one, but that’s not the same as achieving the actual physical process.
I do agree that you shouldn’t try to force meditation. If your mind simply can’t calm and focus, sometimes it’s good to come back later. Same with the legs, if they’re getting really uncomfortable they’ll be interfering with your practice. On the plus side, it’s a good opportunity to practice your leg meridians. I generally practiced my meditation in half-lotus and depending on which leg was on top, one leg would eventually go to sleep somewhere around 15-25 minutes. I would get up at that point, rub my feet on my massagey thing and then immediately perform some of the “sinking to yongquan” exercises Zhou showed me. The feeling at these times would be super-strong because the qi “rides” the blood as it return into the leg which was asleep. Then, I’d switch the legs and meditate another 20 minutes or so. Zhou claims that the more open your leg meridians become, the longer you can sit without them going to sleep and that you should also be able to flow them when you’re doing the ren-du circulation, even in a full lotus.
2 C.J.W. // Jul 9, 2007 at 10:34 am
Doing Chi Gung without the supervision of a qualified teacher can be dangerous, especially when it comes to moving Chi through various accupressure points with intent.
3 josh // Jul 9, 2007 at 11:35 am
Nice post and good comments by Casey!
I briefly studied Buddhist meditation at Foguang shan in Gaoxiong and attended some retreats there. We never sat for longer than 45 minutes without doing 5-10 minutes of brisk walking (circumambulating an altar, usually) in between, and the usual meditation period was more like 25-30 minutes, although the more advance monks and nuns could sit for an hour or two at a time.
4 chessman71 // Jul 9, 2007 at 12:37 pm
Some people feel the need to have a very complex model for meditation, others very clearly do not. I think techniques are great at a certain stage, even essential.
But sometimes focusing on meditation techniques can be a useless diversion and can seriously get people off the right track. It’s easy to lose yourself in the minutia of qi channels and the highly technical aspects of some taoist meditation.
Other meditation systems use a few simple techniques, like vipasanna, or even none at all. Looking at Krishnamurti, he never talked about any technique at all, yet his level was very high and his teachings profound.
I think we need to see that simplification and complexity are both valid.
5 Casey // Jul 9, 2007 at 1:11 pm
Before doing qigong I tried to learn meditation on my own and had no success. That is, I just tried to sit quietly, clear the mind and be mindful of the breath. However, not only was it near impossible to reach a truly tranquil state, it had no effect other than making me feel drowsy and out of it or else annoyed at myself for my inability to block out extraneous thoughts.
The more strongly the qi flows, the more quiet the mind becomes. This is why I personally feel it’s imperative to train the mind and the body with qigong (in fact, it’s kinna like training the mind by means of the body and the body by means of the mind). That is, without the physical aspect of meditation (i.e. breathing technique, correct posture, etc.) it will not have the desired effect. Now it is very easy for me to achieve a state in which my mind is quiet and tranquil because flowing the qi naturally makes it do that.
Maybe some people can get benefits out of simpler “mindfulness” meditation, but that didn’t work for me personally.
6 Casey // Jul 9, 2007 at 1:17 pm
That being said, I do agree that not all meditation should be overly complex, focusing on many different points, etc. During my meditation practice I would switch around from meditation focused on specific goals (like, I’m really going to try to breath with the space between my shoulder blades this time), to more simple “I’m just going to sit quietly, breath and calmly observe what’s going on in my body”-type meditation. Both types are useful and have their place. I just think results will be very slow if you use only simple meditation without breathing technique, physical qigong exercises, intent, etc.
7 josh // Jul 9, 2007 at 7:19 pm
I think in all systems of meditation it is recognized that multiple different methods are essential because different personalities gravitate towards different methods. Vajrayana Buddhism has an especially complex system of assigning practices from basic breath-counting up to the highest yoga tantras according to the abilities and natural tendencies of the practitioner. Classical Daoism also had many different methods, from the physical practices (xiu ming, including daoyin, compounding elixirs, asceticism, etc) to contemplative practices (xiu xing, including many meditative practices that are virtually identical to Chan meditation) to the higher level of “xingming shuangxiu” which became the model for classical neidan; while people would often attempt to grade these practices (usually based on their own personal preferences), they are generally all recognized as having some basic value.
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