u/thecyberpunkmonk

With heatwaves striking many places around the world right now, how is everyone managing their practice around it? Lots of people like to practice outdoors on grass in the summer but are you still doing that this year?

Personally I have been doing it indoors with air conditioning (not directly blowing on me), especially when doing neigong as it tends to heat up my body and make me sweat under 20 degrees celcius already.

What about you guys?

For me it all started when I visited my wife's family. We were heading to the countryside to stay with her grandparents and there would be no wifi so I had to find a book to keep entertained. My father in law was cleaning his office and put two books on the kitchen table, The Magus of Java and Opening The Dragon Gate. If you don't know already, the first is about Master John Chang of Mo Pai and the second is Master Wang Liping of Longmen Pai.

I brought The Magus of Java with me and was completely mindblown by what I read. All these stories of qi cultivation and his healing abilities sounded so unbelievable to me so I set off to find out if it was all real, which led me to my current teachers.

What about you guys?

In Chinese martial arts traditions, lineage is considered a very important aspect in a teacher. You would normally check the credentials of your potential teacher, which school do they teach from, who are their teachers? Who are their teacher's teachers?

More importantly they have to be able to prove what they are teaching, show the direct line from them to the source of their teachings. For example in Wing Chun, if you claim to be teaching from Ip Man, you have to show that you learned from one of his disciples and then their disciples, for example Sifu Wong Shun Leung, and Sifu Gary Lam under him.

In qigong, neigong and neidan this is equally as important. If a teacher is claiming to teach practices belonging to a specific lineage, they have to be able to prove that they learned it from a lineage holder, and have permission to teach it themselves.

In my opinion, this is a very important thing to look out for when looking for a teacher. Can they prove they are who they say they are? Do they personally know the teacher that they claim to have learned from, and can that teacher verify their claim?

What are your thoughts on this? Is lineage still important today or is it a relic of the past?