mirrors and qigong

[blooming lotus]

I was just checking out the latst issue of kfm (yay..I found one)
and there was an article in there by Craig Reid about 10 things you kight not know about qi...

no.4 says "don't practice in front of a mirror. The traditoional reason is that when your eyes see yourself, the qi will be sucked out of your body".....etc etc

but I was reading a book of koans a while back and it was describing a mirror qigong practice that nuns used to do going way back....and


no.1 re smoking etc...didn't we already aruge a while back that folks used to use tobbacco and other smokables in their meditative practices???

and I'm not sure his bloated stomach theory is valid either...look at xing hao and the wheel of life boys etc etc....maybe it's just with the older practioners...

hey...look at Gene

anyway..does this guy know what he's talking about or what???

[Repulsive Monkey]

Sounds like hearsay things that I've heard before to be honest. Mirrors can be handy but it doesn't suck your qi out at all.

Smoking isn't too clever in meditational practice due to the deformation of Lung Qi by the heat and how it over stimulates the qi mobilising the blood when the nicotine seeps into it.

Are you sure you don't mean Daniel Reid? If so his Tao of sex what pretty crap in places. I mean where in the hell does Colonic Irrigation come into Taoist Internal Alchemy. When he banged on about the fact that everyone should be doing it, I realised at that immuttable point he was flaky.

Do they have an electronic version of it on the net it would interesting to see what other stuff he comes out with and what his sources are too?

[blooming lotus]

no Craig reid.....

clonic maintenance is crucial to my daily health, so I guess there's tie there....

when you smoke your lung qi stagnates..when you actually have a cigarette it makes that qi circulate and get a feeling of un-blockage ( if that word even exists)... until it settles you crave and so on and so on...

but I did hear Gene give a satifactory explantion some time last yr??? ( of how and why it has been used??)

as far as sex and qi goes.../we all know that to practice iron skills you need to have abstained from sex for min 45 days???? I have no doubt sex comprimises your qi but the committment here is a non-judgemental each to his own objective

[blooming lotus]

on mirrors though...I often do sets, especially brocades etc in front of mirrors..first to check form and second in the same way as dude on pg 58 mar / april issue kfm has previosly told us he detatches from music, I do the same visually detatching from my own physical aspects to "ride my sprit " and acheive a deeper level of focus

[GeneChing]

He does know what he's talking about but it's still his opinion. Dr. Reid is one of the oldest living people with Cystic fibroses. By western medicine, he should be dead. But he's healed himself through his practice of qigong. So he must be doing something right.

As for mirrors, this is discussed in yoga too (although a lot of contemporary yoga schools are all about mirrors). The 'scuk the qi out" is more metaphoric. Really, when you're doing something internal, you want to concentrate on what's going on inside, not how you look in the mirror. It's one opinion - there are certainly those who present the counter argument (look at yoga).

As for smoking, well, thanks the one gift the west gave to the east - tobacco. Now was that a fair trade or what?

As for the belly, I'm sticking with Craig's view for entirely personal reasons. Actually, while some monks keep a six pack, there are others who don't - Shi Guolin for example. Did you know that there's no word for 'muscle' in ancient Chinese?

For more on Craig, check out this LA Times review I posted on the Martial media forum.