Welcome to ⚠ Please read the rules below before posting. This is a place for discussion of practice and conduct concerned with Awakening: the direct, experiential understanding of the nature of reality, and the human mind, as it actually is. This is not a trivial matter, because those who investigate it deeply and sincerely invariably come to the conclusion that our most fundamental unconscious beliefs and assumptions about the nature of self, mind, and reality are false. Reality is not what it appears to be, and to fully grasp this is to radically transform our relationship to life. The destruction of illusion is not an intellectual exercise: it requires a categorical restructuring of the deepest levels of mind, and for most this is possible only through sustained hard work.
Bagua mastery program. I haven't seen the Bagua material by Bruce Frantzis. Before splashing out $1000 on the course I decided to torrent the old course to. Download the B K Frantzis Bagua Mastery Program Torrent or choose other B K Frantzis Bagua Mastery Program torrent. Bagua Mastery Program by Bruce Kumar Frantzis. An example of a commonly held Cheng style Bagua circle-walking posture is shown at right. When progressing to hold this position dynamically while walking the circle, one gains the double benefit of working on optimal body alignments in motion. Jones is the editor of the Internal Martial Arts journal published by Six Harmonies.
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To tag your post, write a keyword in brackets at the beginning of the post title. Recommended Resources. The, a practical workbook for starting out on the path. The guide explains what practice is about, addresses common questions and difficulties, and provides a complete 12-week starter course. An is freely available.
Also see the dedicated subreddit. For an alternative, freely-available guide to the same style of meditation, see Thanissaro Bhikkhu's (preview the main ). by, a deep exploration of insight for the experienced practitioner. Rob's many outstanding are also freely available. by (free online, also available in ). Also see the.
Also see our. Wiki. Practice Guides. Learning Resources. Several users have expressed interest in learning more about the Daoist dissolving meditation method, so I thought the best place to start would be an overview of the Daoist paradigm of the 8 energy bodies from which the dissolving practice springs forth. Daoist theory holds that literally everything is energy. The energy of the universe is organized into 8 distinct levels of increasing subtly, known as the 8 energy bodies.
Body 1 - The body of physicality. Body 2 - The etheric body, or chi body. This is the energy body that internal martial artists are referring to when they use the word chi.
Body 3 - The emotional body. Body 4 - The mental body. Body 5 - The psychic body. Body 6 - The causal or karmic body.
Body 7 - The essence body or body of individuality. Body 8 - The body of the Dao. The goal of Daoist meditation is to directly experience Dao. This requires that any and all blockages in the lower energy bodies be cleared and released so that perception becomes refined to the degree that direct perception of Dao becomes possible.
Like climbing any ladder, you start on the lowest rung. The easiest body to experience, and the one that needs to get more or less cleared before the other becomes accessible, is the physical body. With the dissolving process, the meditator seeks out blockages, starting at the physical level, and uses his attention to soften, melt, penetrate, and eventually release the blocked energy. As skill in dissolving advances, the meditator will proceed through the layers of the energy body, dissolving all blockages that are encountered along the way.
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Each stage has different techniques and approaches that can be employed to dissolve the material of that body, but the general process of dissolving and releasing bound energy remains the same. Dissolving meditation also employs precise bodily alignments and full body breathing techniques in order to maximize the total energy circulation of the meditator's body. As more energy is developed, it can be brought to bear in the dissolving practice, and deeper and more tightly bound blockages can be resolved. The intention that is used for dissolving also evolves as the practitioner advances in skill.
Beginners start with intention in the ordinary conscious mind, but the ultimate goal is to the access and liberate the heartmind, and dissolve using the pure intention that arises there, which is vastly more powerful than the intention of the ordinary conscious mind. For thise interested in learn more about these practices, my teacher, Bruce Frantzis, has two books (available on Amazon) which go into great detail and include many fascinating meditation stories and background on the Daoist tradition. Which would you recommend most highly? Depends on what topics are of interest. I have read pretty much all of them, and have found them all excellent. For meditators, I'd recommend the two meditation books, Relax Into Your Being, and The Great Stillness.
For those who would like to actually start practicing chi gung or internal martial arts, I would recommend the video based programs available on energyarts.com. I've found the movements are much easier to learn through video rather than text. The Power of Internal Martials Arts is also a really cool encyclopedia type book for those looking for a comprehensive overview of that topic. How essential to this system is it, really, to master most or all of the specific techniques, areas of knowledge, and stages of development? Nobody, except a formal lineage disciple, needs to master all of it, and that vast majority never will. Bruce has said that the only practice all Daoists do is sitting meditation. As for the others, it depends on your natural inclinations, what your intuition pulls you towards.
He's said you shouldn't take up a practice that doesn't make sense to you as a useful thing to do. If mastering the complexity is not essential, what's the 'crash course' version? Aside from sitting meditation being essential, this is totally contingent on personal factors. One thing to note though, is that Bruce has said that all his students who got very good spent at least a few years seriously practicing standing chi gung. This is the ideal practice for setting the energetic foundation that can lead to great accomplishment.
He has said that the san ti posture is the best standing posture for most people. He has said that bagua circle walking is the strongest form of chi gung there is when done at a high level. And he has said that tai chi and bagua form a powerful synergy. How do you reconcile that with the fundamentally simple nature of things, and instructions from certain other well known persons and traditions about throwing out technique In the end, spiritual development is about penetrating the nature of ultimate reality. That is literally the only thing that matters.
If you could just go straight to that, all the rest can be skipped. But that is really hard and unlikely to be pulled off! This is where technique comes in. One thing I will note is that all the great masters I have encountered have been absolutely fastidious regarding the most minute details of practices and teachings, while still affirming the above statement about the nature of emptiness. ⟹ Relaxation ⟹ Effort ⟹ Effortlessness ⟹ Everything you've laid out here is reinforced by Bruce's teachings.
He emphasizes the need to relax A LOT, recommends practicing up to 4 hours per day if you can, and explains that in the final stages the heartmind becomes extremely quiet and the state of complete effortlessness prevails. So the general template is - locate blockage - place attention on blockage with intention to dissolve - blockage softens and melts into a 'liquid' form' - if you are outer dissolving, the final step is the liquid dissolves into gas and then you dissolve that out to the boundary of the etheric body.
If you are inner dissolving, the blockage collapses inward into inner space and produces an experience of emptiness after it dissolves. The way Bruce teaches it, outer dissolving is the starting point and is best learned in a neutral standing posture with arms at the sides. Inner dissolving is somewhat more advanced and is best learned sitting. Eventually, the practitioner is able to dissolve both inwardly and outwardly at the same time, but this takes a lot of skill.
Lying positions can also be used, especially for inner dissolving. Blockages also tend to have multiple layers, so after one dissolves, there is usually more work still to do, and the next layer generally takes a lot more effort than the previous one. At high levels of skill it is also possible to use one blockage as an entry point into dissolving everything in the entire body. As a practitioner advances, eventually they are dissolving something or other at virtually all times, even when not formally practicing. With each blockage that gets released, it frees up that energy for the mind to use for productive purposes. Once you get into working with the higher energy bodies, the sensations involved become extremely subtle. You need to learn how to detect and keep your attention on the subtle stuff behind the grosser sensations of the lower bodies.
For example, being able to detect the distinct tactile feeling associated with a thought pattern and maintain awareness of that energy even after the 'inner voice' has stopped speaking is sign one is working with the mental or psychic body. The karmic body is associated with strong inner light. The essence body is that thing that is purely 'you' that is not a thought, memory, part of your physical body, or any other thing that is conventionally associated with identity. Thanks for writing this up. I find this all very fascinating and resonates in thinking about the work I've done with certain physio-energetic sensations that have arisen in my own practice, as we have discussed before.
If you are inner dissolving, the blockage collapses inward into inner space and produces an experience of emptiness after it dissolves. I've recently had a few mini-blips, possibly fruitions, but not entirely clear, that seem to be occurring in the heart area. By contrast, my first fruition clearly arose from a sensation that felt like it was traveling up to and out of the crown, and I've subsequently had lots of dissolving experiences in the head, out through the crown. I've had recent experience with certain tight, anxious sensations in the chest dissolving into these heart-center blips and disappearing. (Of course, others arise in their place, but these are very noticeable, distinct experiences.) I've also continued to have a lot of the head pressure stuff, but with increased concentration and clarity, it certainly feels much more liquid-like (like a lava lamp with hard spots and soft spots, typically much softer and dissolution like along the edges of where I experience the sensation). These sometimes seem to dissolve in place, but the entire sensation has a clear upward trajectory, with the sharp point right at the crown.
Sometimes it dissolves or disappears through the crown in more of a blip-like (fruition) fashion. Other times, it will feel like a release of champagne bubbles out of the top of the head. If I really focus on those bubbles, I can sometimes feel them pop completely, in what feels like thousands of mini-fruitions occurring all at once, creating a sort of flickering quality to all sensate experience. This has only happened on a few rare but memorable occasions. It feels AMAZING, lol.
From a practical standpoint, the name of the game is simply engaging these things with concentration and clarity and letting them do their thing. But there does feel sometimes like there is an element of intention that can contribute to the dissolution. For example, it sometimes feels like I can almost squeeze the sensation with my awareness and pop it like I might some bubble wrap. But it can't be forced, and I don't know how much control I really have other that process; if I relax and try and drop the intention, I find that the same 'squeezing' can tend to occur and often is more efficient or delicately done. (I suppose this is all part of the process of learning how to dissolve these things, either through dropping resistance or skillfully directing intention and attention in a particular way.) Cool stuff, man. Thanks again for sharing.
Would you be able to describe in more detail the characteristics of each of the eight bodies, especially the less familiar ones? I expect everyone knows how to recognize the physical body, and most people probably at least think they have some notion of what the emotional and mental bodies are (though perhaps the definitions in this system are less obvious than they sound?). The 'etheric/chi' body is probably also somewhat familiar to experienced practitioners from all backgrounds. The others are more mysterious, though, so it would be helpful to have some tips on how to recognize phenomena associated with them in actual experience. A related question is how the phenomenon of blockage manifests in bodies above the etheric/chi body on the scale. How can one identify an emotional, mental, psychic, causal, or essence blockage? (Can the Dao body even have blockages?).
Would you be able to describe in more detail the characteristics of each of the eight bodies, especially the less familiar ones? I can give it a shot, but Bruce has put relatively little information on the higher bodies (and practices that target them) into the public domain.
This is because the majority of people cannot feel them, so it would just promote fantasizing and LARPing about the higher stages, and also because there is some danger in activating stuff in the higher bodies before one is equipped to work with it. Mental - An exercise Bruce gave to work with this body is to pick a random number over 500 and count backwards by 5. Look for the energy that gets activated by the mental processing of the counting. Psychic - Psychic energy goes beyond spaces and time, and is able to traverse both instantaneously. When psychic stuff gets activated, it sometimes gets worked out in 'big' dreams. I also find that when I encounter other beings I get a 'reading' on them in some way, which is information being transmitted via the psychic body. It's possible to get readings from pretty much anything, but I've found things related to interaction with other beings to be where it is most obvious at first.
Bruce also mentions the psychic influence of 'the ancestors' and that it is also possible to have psychic interactions with all types of entities and beings not of this earth. The stuff gets spooky the psychic body is usually in play! Karmic - This is the energy that causes things to happen on the scale of a lifetime, or even grander, on the scale of civilizations and beyond. A huge amount of energy exists in this body.
Why do strings of events seem to line up and trigger certain things almost perfectly? Why did this major life change that had been building for years, finally come to fruition at a particular time? With enhanced perception karmic 'vision' develops where it is possible to observe this chain reaction in progress and gain insight into how it projects into the future.
Essence - Bruce shares a lengthy anecdote in The Great Stillness about the time he first perceived the essence body. He describes it has this sort of fluid that all his thoughts, perceptions, ideas, memories, etc. Were all floating around in. This substance is carrying all those things, but it is separate and distinct from them. I have experienced this body as sort of super pure kingofpop-ness, something that is just purely me, and that I could feel moving and swirling around everything that entered by awareness.
It has a sort of 'you' flavor. Dao - This is God-matter, and thus defies all conceptualization. There can be no blockages in the Dao body because at the level of Dao separateness does not exist.
Just stumbled upon on the DhO that attempts to summarize the same system. I'll quote it in full here for convenience: Here's a short summary of a Taoist model of stages of enlightment presented by Bruce Frantzis in his book “Relaxing into your Being”: Most of the taoist tradition is about energetic and physical practices. This one is no exception to the rule, but as far as I have searched, it’s the closest approach to buddhism and so interesting to compare.
This model was taught by Liu Hung Chieh (circa 1905-1986). He was declared enlightened in Mahayana Buddhism by Tan Hsiu Fa Shr, the head of the Tien Tai School. Latter he learned Taoist Alchemy from different meditation masters of Western China during a 10 year period. Liu Hung Chieh (LHC) taught about two different approaches in Taoism, the fire method and the water method. The first one is the most widely known, specially in the West, and involves forceful opening of energy channels through neigong (breathing, standing and moving practices). The second one was made public so far by him and his disciples, and involves a gentler “dissolving method”.
It covers standing, sitted and lying meditations, with body scans, but instead of just noting and moving on, the focus is on detecting and dissolving any blockage found. In order to dissolve, one has to deepen into the blockage, feel the sensations that conform it and let it dissolve. The transformation is “from ice to water to gas to space”. As far as I can understand, it’s a mix of vipassana and samatha practices, no just the former as there are visualization aids to feel the “granularity” of blockages (the term is mine) and later moving energy through meridian channels. Also, there seems to be a mixed bag of samatha jhanas and vipassana jhanas, related to the energy bodies described below. LHC identifies eight energy bodies (like a matryoshka doll) with different vibrating frequencies, which also define the stages of progress towards enlightment. physical body 2.
Chi (etheric) body 3. Emotional body 4. Mental body 5. Psychic energy body 6. Causal body 7. Body of individuality 8. Body of the Tao The physical body stage is about getting consciousness of it with increasing levels of depth.
The chi body vibrates vibrates at a slightly higher frequency, and fuels the physical body. These stages involve breathing methods, moving and standing practices. In my opinion, these stages are related to the first and second vipassana jhana. Besides energy circulation and energy releases, there are some odds experiences I could mention like viewing the outside from the tantien (as it is the primal point of concentration), stepping lightly as if walking on water, and feeling your body enlarge and/or shrink tied to the breath cycle. The emotional body cover what chinese call “ghosts” or “demons”, negative emotional residues from childhood or later experiences that are dissolved through sitting meditations. I would relate the stage to the third vipassana jhana. Work on the mental body enhances the mind’s ability to discriminate between what taoist call “the real and the false”, the capacity for clear, instantaneus decisions without the laggage of negative emotions.
It’s a stage I relate to Equanimity, the fourth vipassana jhana. Then, at the 5th and 6th stages, there’s a shift towards samatha jhanas. The psychic energy body is about developing the powers and the perception of the spirit world, and seems to whirl around the fouth samatha jhana. The casual body is also related to psychic powers, but involves understanding of “time and space” and thus seems to refer to the fifth samatha jhana, and probably the sixth too.
The body of individuality is where the taoist said that “The Great Stillness” ocurrs, and Frantzis explicitly relates to “enlightment”, that is stream entry. 'It’s a stage where the separate energies of the first seven bodies become unified. The energy of the ego first reaches its full potential and then completely dissolves'.
The body of the Tao cover the the later paths (don’t know if third and fourth only or second too, as taoists see everything as an ongoing process), towards joining the human consciousness to the whole of the universe. This last stage is where taoist alchemy is introduced, which involves visualization and vibrational sounds practices. It’s a widespread belief that taoist meditation methods appeal to those inclined towards kinesthetic processing of information (NPL).
I would add that there’s a trade-off in this approach: it’s an easy going softer method that probably is easier to integrate with daily activities, but at the expense of shallower insights, (much) lesser concentration skills and with a longer process from day one to stream entry. Firstly, each of the energy bodies is not it's own stage that you proceed through in order. You are dealing will all energy bodies at all times, it's just that before perception is really high powered, you remain unaware of the higher bodies - they are still there though. It is also not as cut and dry as a blockage existing in a given energy body - the bodies interact, and blockages can overlap.
Blockages in higher bodies tend to effect lower bodies more than vice versa. So the 8 energy bodies are a grand paradigm for explaining the patterns of manifestation. Jhanas are concentration states, which is a very specific thing. Although I have no doubt there is some Daoist corollary to these states, my guess is that this is more of a Fire Method thing, which Bruce does not generally teach, though he has said that he entered a one pointed concentration state while doing a fire method practice and ended up meditating for 2 days straight without realizing any time had passed. Really though, Bruce's teaching never tries to put concentration in a box, or label it with such discreet categories as the jhanas.
He says there are all different types of extraordinary states that are encountered, but these are never the goal of practice, and he says it's best not to dwell on them or try to reproduce them. Personally, jhana practice, though something I feebly attempted a few times, was never a practice that really stuck with me, or that I ever made any serious headway with. So I am definitely not the best person to try to bridge this gap. I do feel that dissolving practice develops extremely strong concentration, but it is never fully one pointed, since the mind is always actively scanning and open to a certain degree. I feel that placing concentration as an end in itself is somewhat misguided, and that it makes more sense to use it for stuff that will lead to enlightenment as soon as concentration is adequate. My experience with the 8 jhanas has been similar to my experience with the 'cycle of insight' model, in that I find both models do not match up with experience in a way that makes it easy to discern exactly which jhana or part of the cycle you are in at any given time.
The descriptions are too complex and the range of experiences that could possibly be fit into each category too wide that it was often quite unclear exactly which jhana (or part of the cycle) I was experiencing at any given time. The confusion of trying to figure out where I was seemed more distracting than the insight gained from the model seemed useful, so I abandoned both and primarily use the 8 energy bodies, blockage vs flowing, dharmas vs defilements, and 3 characteristics to contextualize experience.
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