questions

[daodejing]

Don't do the secret sounds without a teachers instruction. I know them, they work, but don't experiment with them.

As for the whole not doing qigong between 10 pm and 4 am thing, (which you ignore if you can do qigong at all times) its because you're opening up all the channels in your body at a time when spirits are most active in the environment. Mainly, its to avoid the risk of possession. And laugh all you want about that, but I know several people who laughed at the notion and then learned why not to practice late at night through firsthand experience. It can attract things that shouldn't be in your body.......

[xing_jian108]

Spirits? Possession?

Where did you hear something like that?

[Shaolin_Disciple_8]

Ok so I'll keep only Ba Duan Jin. I was also thinking that Zhan Zhuang is a more advanced technique but in that book. they are talking like if anybody could start with these exercises without any risks...

And for Qi Gong, I think I will put my practice as a "warm-up" in the afternoon. Apparently there is an advantage to practice Qi Gong in the morning, when all the world is waking up. What is the advantage?

[zachsan]

why do i get the feeling that this thread is going to become an argument over which spirits are real and what times they're awake.

[daodejing]

Hmmm. Sometimes I feel like I'm attending Hogwart's School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

Trust me, just don't practice qigong late at night. after 4 am is cool, and before 10 pm is fine.

[zachsan]

sometimes, i feel like you are, too.

[LeiYunFat]

crap, sometimes I practice and/or meditate at 11 pm-3 am....

Because I will hardly practice before I finish my homework, so what I will do is after showering, I would go to the top of the stairs and meditate.

When I do chi gong exercises (the only one I do is hugging the tree for a long while), they are usually late, or early in the day. I didn't know that **** would be dangerous because I prefered that no one disturb me while I practice...crap.

Dao, you think you could go a little more in depth about it, cause if all this is bad, then I gotta knock it all off.

[xing_jian108]

Well, I'm a night time person. I like to train at night. I always went out at 11pm and trained until almost 5am with my Gong Fu brother. We practiced Qi Gong also during that time. And neither of us have ever been possessed with some kind of spirit. Maybe the spirit of our Gong Fu ancestors who just help us train even harder and benefit much more from it.

But anyway, I've done that all my life and I have yet to be possessed...

A mi tuo Fo
-Xing Jian

[Shaolin_Disciple_8]

I believe the hour is not important, the most important think is to not be tired when you practice Qi Gong...

[LeiYunFat]

I know what you mean, Xing. My schedule is more pleasureable when I train in the morning, but I just love the night. I like how no one bothers you, how everything is quiet, and how the air is still and light. I am just worried bout stuff is all.

[Asger]

well, many monks meditate all night through, so you're actually seperating meditation and qigong if you say that you can't practise qigong in the night. Obviously it's OK to meditate at night. I'd even say, it's a perfect pastime instead of sleeping.

[daodejing]

The time thing is just a reccommendation. You could do qigong every night at 10 pm for the rest of your life and not have any problems. Its just an issue that you should be aware of. In all the time reccomendations in regards to qigong practice that i've seen, there is the addendum "if you can practice unwaveringly, do so, and there is no time which you shouldn't practice at".

Its kind of like acupuncture and pregnancy. There are certain points we're not allowed to use on a pregnant woman because of the risk of miscarriage. But in many patients, you could needle every single one of those points and never cause a miscarriage. But if the pregnancy is weak, sometimes these points could cause the loss of the child. It's not an absolute, just a risk which you should be aware of. And because of that risk we NEVER needle these points in a pregnant woman (unless inducing labor...). Its the same thing with the qigong at night thing. Its a safety reccommendation.

Also, this comes from a teacher who taught medical qigong, not martial qigong. Non-martial artists doing non-martial qigong can, as beginners, experience emotional shifts during practice. Sometimes their minds create things which aren't there. But if the mind beleives that thing is there, it can become there.

There was a girl who had an unstable emotional mind, and was a smoker, and during qigong practice late at night she saw a black mass growing in her lungs. She freaked out. She decided she was in the early stages of lung cancer. Though in med school, she didn't talk to anyone about it and started reading up about lung cancer. Lo and behold, after several weeks she developed all the symptoms she had been reading about psychosomatically.

Sometimes spiritual possession is not an "external spirit invading" type thing, but a spirit from within your own body which has gone out of control and taken over the body due to emotional imbalance, in this case a preponderance of fear.

So, it's probably allright to do martial qigong at night. But early in the morning, and in the evening around sunset, are better times for qigong practice. This is because its the transitional period between heavenly yin and yang energies (day and night in this case).

I hope that helps.

[LeiYunFat]

Thanks, man. During meditation or chi gong, I don't really experience emotion besides annoyance of myself for going too short of a time, for being too tired, or for being distracted by petty thoughts. I usually control my emotions during these practices. Fear never really came to mind, but if it does from now on, I will identify and acknowledge it, and strike it from my mind. Thanks again.

[zachsan]

not to put you on the spot, dao, but is it because of spirits, energy shifts or our personal fears that we shouldn't practice qigong at night? and at what point have we practiced enough that it's safe? or are we safe as soon as we stop fearing that we aren't? and how the hell was all of this divine knowledge come across?

i wouldn't seem so annoyed if i didn't see these kinds of explanations all the time from alternative health adherents. specific claims are made (let's say, it's dangerous to do it after 10pm or before 4am), and reasons are provided. then, something happens which goes against the claim ("i do it all the time in the middle of the night and i'm fine"), and one after the other ad hoc hypothesis is provided for why their case was an exception, and reveal to the patient deeper and deeper truths as to what the previous claims really meant. at some point, the patient either resigns himself to just listen to what the healer is telling him without thinking twice about it, or throws up his hands in frustration and gets help somewhere else.

it would be one thing if you could give them specifics (this surgery has an 80% chance of success), but where there are no specific guidelines for all this information, and no discernable source for all of it, you can come up with just about any explanation you want to render your claims infallible. and any honest assertion has to be fallible.

anyway, you knew i was going to ambush this thread eventually.

[daodejing]

Zach, to answer the first question. All of the above.

To be scientific, a theory must be able to be proved wrong. What I said was neither scientific, nor a theory. It was a reccomendation made by one more experienced artist to another, which I then passed on.

The basic premise is, that if you only practice qigong once a day, the reccomendation is that you don't do daily practice late at night.

Now, at one point I was doing a half hour of standing form every night around midnight, and I felt great. No problems.

But one night something unusual happened.

Let me say first that many qigong practitioners can tell you all sorts of stuff about spirits and communicating with or seeing other entities, hell many people who do reiki will tell you stories about meeting their "spirit guides" and other such hocus pocus.

I'm not like that. My experience of qi is the sensation of currents moving through and around me.

So one night, while I was practicing, something wierd happened. I was doing standing form when I felt a very odd, uncomfortable current unlike anything I've ever felt come into my body through my right middle finger and start travelling up my arm. I got the sensation that this wasn't something I wanted in my body. So I said a mantra, did my best to blow all of my channels wide open and focused on the earth.

It was sort of like cleaning syrup out of the sink with running water. At first it sticks to the sides and tries to hold on, but as the water heats up, the black sticky mess washes out and down the drain, into the earth.

Now, call that what you will, but I stopped doing qigong at midnight after that.