u/Waltamoto

10. Microcosmic Orbit

Similar to the Bringing In The Light exercise as shown below, the Microcosmic Orbit uses the points along the spine, the neck, the top of the head, the third eye, upper lip, and then it continues down the front of the body to a point representing the middle Tan Tien near the sternum and a point in front of the lower Tan Tien and then back down to the perineum.

In order to get the best results, you need to understand the secret of reversal which I will explain here. This secret is not written about in most books about this practice. The Taoists always say, "Find a teacher" and the teacher explains this in person. But this has been out for many years. There are no more secrets.

So as you inhale, the Chi moves from below the the lower TanTien to the spine, then along with your inner vision to the points up the spine to the top of the head and the third eye at the point between your eyebrows and then to a point above the upper lip. And with exhale, the Chi continues down through the throat to the middle Tan Tien and down to the lower Tan Tien and back to the place it began. This is all with one breath.

To help the Chi move along this process we use something called Reverse Breathing. The way I was taught to do this is as follows: start with a full exhale, then clench your toes, squeeze your anus, pull ever so gently on the perineum and gently compress your abdomen as you inhale, and then relax everything as you exhale. This reverse breath will help move the Chi up the spine during an inhale and down the front as you exhale. (Where in normal breathing Chi moves up the spine during an exhale with reverse breathing Chi moves up the spine during an inhale.) To encourage this, we use the inner eye vision to watch the Chi move and we do the compression of the muscles to help move the Chi. You must be very gentle with yourself and only do three reverse breaths at a time.

So for practice, you do three reverse breaths moving the Chi along the entire Microcosmic Orbit and then you do three normal breaths to relax and restore normal Chi flow.

So much can be said about this technique. People have written books about it. This is where Taoist Alchemy begins, converting body into Chi and converting Chi into Spirit. Once you get it going, once you understand how it works, and it works for you, it can be a very fulfilling practice. But this is the beginning and there is so much more to come.

9. Expelling Bad Chi to Replenish Good Chi

Every now and then when I sit down to meditate I'm just not ready. I just don't feel it. There's something poisonous in my system or there's just something bothering me, so I do the very simple exercise called:

Expelling Bad Chi to Replenish Good Chi:

Sit comfortably in a chair or cross-legged and put your palms on your knees. Take in a nice easy breath. Then exhale it as you bend forward. Rise back up and inhale. Repeat this many times. Follow up with simple twisting of the spine and rolling of the shoulders. Then do three more expelling breaths. To finish up, lower your arms to the sides, inhale bring them up to the side over your head then exhale bring them down the center and palms on your knees. Simple but very effective.

Try it and tell me what you think.

8. Enter into Stillness or Bringing in the Light.

OK, let's get started . . .

Heading into understanding and working with the "Small Heavenly Circle" or Microcosmic Orbit, the internet is repleat with content: diagrams, videos, web pages, and terminology mostly in Chinese. But how to begin? How to get the best results from your time, really? You must take it slowly.

Even masters of meditation who have studied for decades often need a simple and relaxing approach to relieve stress and help with awareness. There is no need to always jump into the deep end of the pool. It is not about the destination but the journey. You will explore and discover the wonders of your body, mind and spirit as you develop these meditation exercises. And they are exercises which must be practiced, not just learned from an academic point of view but felt and engaged with deeply, emotionally and spiritually, and repeated for months.

So, to begin with, is this wonderful exercise I often return to for the ease and rest it provides.

It has two names. I guess my master could not pick which name he preferred.

Enter into Stillness or Bringing in the Light

Sit comfortably, light an incense stick, and prepare to begin. At each step, concentrate for several long breaths, perhaps 5 breaths. Form the Tongue Bridge (as discussed in forum below.)

1. Look out at the horizon for several long breaths. Breathe and relax.

2. Lower your eyes to look out at about 300 feet away (90 meters).

3. Lower your eyes and look out 20 feet away (6 meters).

4. Lower your eyes and look 5 feet away (1.5 meters).

5. Lower your eyes and look straight down right in front of you.

6. Close your eyes and with inner sight look at the perineum, the area at the bottom of your body.

7. Use your inner sight to bring attention to a point where the spine leaves the hips.

8. Bring your attention up the spine to a point opposite of just below the belly button.

9. Bring attention up the spine to a point opposite the sternum (mid back).

10. Bring attention up to a point where the spine leaves the rib cage and shoulder bones attach.

11. Bring attention up to a point where the spine enters the skull. (Base of the skull)

12. Next, attention leaves the spine and travels up the cranium to the top of your skull. Focus attention on the tip top of your head.

13. Bring attention to a point a little bit above and between the eyebrows.

14. Finally, bring attention to the tip of your nose, eyes half open, and grow your inner smile.

Sit and be tranquil with the knowledge that you have completed Bringing in the Light and Entering Stillness.

Do this every day for a month

Count to 40

I will say exactly what my teacher said to me in my first meditation class. "You want to learn meditation. Fine, first lesson, count to 40." And then he demonstrated -- deep inhale, deep exhale, 1 breath. Deep inhale, deep exhale 2. And so forth to 40. Then he said that if you lose count because you get distracted, then you have to start over again from 1.

It took me a year before I could complete 40 breaths without losing count by getting distracted. But here I am now 35 years later, and sometimes I know that the best thing for me is to simply sit and count to 40 breaths.

Why 40? Not 50 or 20? I don't know. But I can tell you this, your emotional response while deep into the counting can be surprising. It can teach you things about yourself that you never knew before. And once you reach 40, you can keep going, to 100 or beyond.

It is healthy.

(And remember, tongue, smile, eyes, nose, one incense stick, you don't have to do all 8 inhales, the first 3 is sufficient, just breath deeply but naturally.)

Sleeper's Breathing

When I'm tired and worn out after a long hard day and I want to sit and meditate on nothingness it is important that I try to not do anything or make sure I don't do anything because if I'm trying to do something then that is effort and it takes me away from meditating on nothing. So I sit comfortably and make the Tongue Bridge and the Empty Eyes and the Inner Smile and the Looking at the Nose, but I also use something I call Sleeper's Breath.

One time I noticed a person fall asleep, and right after they fell asleep their breathing changed. It became quicker, more shallow and more regular than it had before. And I asked myself, "What is natural breathing?"

During the day my breathing comes and goes as I go through my emotions, but I'm not really paying attention to my breathing because I'm washing the dishes or whatever. But I had to ask myself if I could breathe like that sleeping person on purpose.

So I tried and it was easier than I expected. I just let my belly do all the breathing it wanted to do and I just had to stay out of the way. So as I sat there with my breathing released and on its own I noticed that it quickened. Slowly I felt a tingling in my legs as oxygen was pumped in and carbon dioxide was pumped out. But my breathing kept on, until my whole body was re-oxygenated.

And then my belly did something I did not expect. It yawned. Breathed a few more times and then yawned two more times. After that, slower breathing would be interrupted with quicker breathing every now and then. But it would never even out entirely. (Only conscious breathing can be synchronized perfectly.) But I felt quite refreshed and surprised as well, because my body's Chi was replaced with fresh Chi, all by itself.

So when you are tired and worn out after a long hard day, I suggest that you try this:

Sit comfortably, make the Tongue Bridge, the Inner Smile, the Empty Eyes looking at the Nose, and begin Sleeper's Breathing while gazing outward into nothing, thinking nothing, and observe as your body replaces its Chi.

5

Discussion around Yi. Let us discuss more about Yi. Consider the following statements of idea.

Yi is easily researched and defined as 'mind intent' in several web resources. But let us delve, hmmm, Mind Intent?

Yi is not Chi, Yi comes before expression, before Chi. Our bodies' nervous system is a network of bio-electric connectors that cause muscles to do something. Perhaps Yi refers to those stimuli that occur a split second before something happens.

In Tai Chi we are taught to relax in movement. Perhaps what this is really teaching us is to relax all those impulses down to the fewest ones. This way, mind intent is connected more quickly to a result, without extraneous nervous activity causing unnecessary muscular actions. Thus, in combat the body moves as quickly as the mind with no thinking.

But what about in meditation? I believe it is only because of the Yi - Chi interaction that Taoist meditations are possible. (I have studied Buddhist Meditation and frankly, I don't believe they have harnessed this kind of energy. They might refer to it as attachment and something to be avoided.)

But in Taoist meditation it is said the eyes direct the Chi through the body. And best along meridian lines. (In meditation practice there are eight meridian lines called functional, which are different from the meridian lines of acupuncture treatment.)

The eyes accompany the breath and directs the Chi. Yi is in there also and directs the Chi as it is guided up and along the meridian lines, into the organs etc.

But there is also the Chi that is collected and feels warm, like warm palms, or organ healing. Here the Yi is accompanied by an increase of Chi, not flowing but concentrating, holding, then releasing. This is more likely in Chi Kung exercises which are numerous! For example, holding the ball, is an interesting expression of Chi collecting in palms and traveling between palms. This then can also be expressed outwards or inwards usually as healing palms.

So Yi follows the eyes with the breath and Chi follows the Yi. Ah the Golden Light!

Any comments or observations? Anything I got wrong or off? I am sure I missed something.

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At my first meditation class, I was taught a meditation cycle called bringing in the light. And there were three parts to the concluding of it where you're sitting comfortably in silence with

1: Empty Eyes,

2: Gazing at the Tip of your Nose, and

3: Maintaining the Inner Smile.

Here I will explain all three.

1. Empty eyes means that you're not seeing but light is entering, and eyelids are half closed. (This half closed eyelid thing is hard, your eyes either want to shut or open. You need to train them to be half closed.)

2. Gazing at the Tip of your Nose means basically that you are not focusing on anything. Your eyes are pointed downwards and you are not focused. If you were to take notice, your focus would only extend to the end of your nose. You are not actually cross-eyed but the nose is a distance measurer of your sight.

3. The Inner Smile means that you take the corners of your mouth and just tug on them a little tiny bit to form an almost imperceptible smile. This can stimulate a chi flow all over your whole body, just that inner smile.

This posture and concentration represents where you should find yourself pretty much at the beginning and end of every meditative exercise. And just doing these three while also allowing Focused Breathing is actually good enough for a long meditation practice.

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2. The Tongue Bridge:

When I was younger, a student at a Tai Chi Chuan class, we would always start with some gentle Chi Kung, and stretches, and then learn Tai Chi Chuan, three moves each week. With reviews, it would take a year to learn it all.

And each class ended with meditations. One week, our master offered a weekend all day meditation class where I first learned about Reverse Breathing and the Microcosmic Orbit Chi circulation. And because I practiced Tai Chi every day I started meditating every day as well. But I got headaches. So at class the next week I told our Master that I had been practicing but I got headaches. So he said, "Headaches? Hmmm, do you place the bottom of your tongue against the roof of your mouth?" And I thought about it and said "No." So he smiled and walked off. I never got headaches again because I place the bottom of my tongue against the roof of my mouth when I practice the Microcosmic Orbit.

Explanation: The Chi got stuck in my head causing headaches. The Tongue Bridge is needed to help the Chi return to the body.

So at that time, I was not sure that any of this Chi business was real or not. But after the lesson of the Tongue Bridge, I have never had any doubt about the realness and power of Chi.

The next five days, from June 19th through to the 23rd sets the Solstice time apart from all other times of the year.

This is truly the turning of the wheel, and we (in the north) are at the high end. Like at the top of a ferris wheel, all things are in view. Like a sponge that has soaked up all the water it can. The time is great, and we are great in it. If you can stop for a moment and allow it to enter your mind and body. All things are a wonder to behold.

The other day, it was a beautiful sunny day, not too hot, I decided to meditate on my deck under the deck umbrella on a chair that was relatively flat so I could sit cross legged on a cushion. And as I sat there doing my Macrocosmic Orbit breathing I was reminded of a lesson where one of my fellow students asked "How long should I meditate?"

Our Master replied," How long? How long should you meditate? One incense stick."

So I got up and went inside to the cupboard drawer and pulled out a stick of Tibetan incense and lit it, placed it in a jar of sand, returned to the deck, placed the jar on a table and I sat back down.

I took a deep breath before getting started again. I watched the smoke released from the stick waft up and around me. It smelled good.

I realized then that there was no time, no clock, no timer, no expectations, no right or wrong. Just a simple stick of incense to show me the way. I was free from artificial constraints, free to meditate. And as I meditated, I journeyed through my body with each breath. I lit my mind on fire with Heaven's energy, and sunk my spirit deep within the Earth. I turned my Chi and filled with white steam that turned to golden light. All the while, the smoke continued until it ceased, the stick was gone. All but a pile of ash. How long had I meditated? One incense stick.

Then I was released. My spirit was enlivened by my meditations, and my awareness of time returned. I simply unfolded my legs and started out again on my day.

May your work and your body and your mind all progress at the same speed, influenced by the heavens and the earth through your breath and awareness of spirit Chi.

May your Chi always Circulate through channels of joy throughout your body that raises your spirit to meet the challenges of the day.

Hey everyone! I'm u/Waltamoto, and I have created this Taoist meditation group to share and discuss issues relating to Taoist Internal Alchemy, Seated Meditation, Brocades, Breathing and Chi movement toward Spiritual goals Etc as opposed to Tai Chi or Qigong groups which are related but different.

I hope you will feel free to post questions and concerns, struggles and triumphs here. Taoism is for everyone.