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"Watching the Breath" as Alchemical PracticeFrom: Michael Winn
Subject: Practice
Date/Time 2006-09-05 08:25:16
Remote IP: 66.32.50.129
MessageFajin,
I don't know if you described the specifics of your breathing method, i.e. exactly what mental focus you use while watching the breath, is it concentrated in dantian only, or along whole pathway of the breath.
So I will just post some general comments. Taoists use hundreds of different breathing methods to concentrate the life force and focus it in specific ways. "Watching the breath" would be considered to be foundational method of self-awareness.
Benefits of Watching the Breath:
1. Calms the mind, which is most easily disturbed by insecurities and traumas of the lung spirit/po soul. This can be expressed by inability to breathe physically, or by ungrounded mental and emotional states.
2. Po soul is essential to integration with other shen. If Po is scattered, the others will be scattered. So practice induces a kind of pre-fusioin state, and fusion can also take place spontaneously if practice goes on long enough for adept to accumulate enough chi to jump to a deeper level of "breathing", i.e. subtle body breathing.
3. Breathing practice develops one's metal/gold element (does not exist in Buddhism, so accept this as outside viewi). Metal/po soul's virtue is ability to contract the essence of chi into personal self. In fact, heaven cannot descend and sustain itself in individual human without assistance from personal will to breathe, which keeps us in the physical.
On other hand, po cannot exist without "outbreath" that returns something to the macro/larger field, regulated by our Hun/liver soul. So hun and po keep each other in balance.
4. it gives the body an immediate source of greater or more pure (assuming one is breathing clean air) post-natal energy, and thus temporarily strengthens the body. That post-natal chi can be converted into more spiritual forms of chi by skilled adept, or simply spent in the daily necessities of life.
5. If one goes deep enough into any method, one may shift into "witness" state, i..e some level of yuan shen
watching what the lung spirit is doing. This shift is caused by spontaneous fusion that happens when great one-pointedness is achieved.
LIMITATIONS:
1. Adept can get ATTACHED to physical breathing, to physical energizing of breath or its physically calm state, and even though that is beneficial initself, it can become a "wall" that can prevent one from shifting to more subtle forms of breathing/functioning. One stays at an energetic frequency of physical yin-yang that one should eventually outgrow.
2. This is the main problem with ANY physical breathing technique, and why I offer a Blissful Breathing Qigong (Ocean, Sky, and Great Heart Qigong on DVD) to integrate energetic channels/3 dantian with physical breathing.
3. Even though one may "fuse" and shift to inner witness level, if one get attached to that state of passive tranquility, one may not progress to next level of "acting" in the world from that state, i..e using it to fulfill one's worldly and spiritual destiny.
4. Physical breathing method as the only engine of one's spiritual growth i think is slower than using other methods of qigong and alchemy simultaneously. But certainly not inherently inconflict with either.
SOLUTION/SUGGESTION:
1. I had my first major breakthrough in 1978 while watching my breath for up to 5 hours a day (while in Africa, on journalistic assignment). This activated a kind of kundalini-like explosion that suddenly activated my subtle bodies and made me aware of possibility of breathing in other dimensions.
This was achieved by watching the PAUSE between inhale and exhale, and gradually lengthening that pause or neutral state between the yin-yang of in-out breaths. I believe I accumulated great neutral force/yuan chi which eventually converted itself into higher level yin-yang pulsation, as it always does. (to focus on Pause as Emptiness or project it as "wuji" might produce different result, cannot say).
Key is to relax into the pause, not force outholding or inholding of breath. Eventually the neutral state betweenbreaths becomes longer and longer as you get more deeply relaxed.
This is simplest method. In Qigong Fundamentals 3/4 I elaborate ont his experience and my understanding of counter-force breathing, which is another way of "watching the breath", only you watch both your naturla breathing and your energy body's yini-yang pulsation and you hold attention (one pointedness) on their neutral point of intersection in the lower dantian. It is more complex to master and cannot be taught by email.
Hope this offers food for practice.
Breathing from the same chi field with you,
Michael
- "Watching the Breath" as Alchemical Practice: (866) Michael Winn (1588) - - 2006-09-05 08:25 am
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