Embryonic Breathing

[John the Monkey mind]

I am able to find my to polarity's and bring my chi into the centres. Is it necessary to go through the spiritual embryo conception and gestation proses before moving on to small circulation?
Is it ok just to store chi and come back to the more out of there aspects at a time of grater maturity of practice?
What signs are there you have increased your capacity for chi sufficiently to move onwards?

[taiji1983]

Well sir, for me, I just practice the Qigongs Im learning. I know people that achieved small circulation without embryonic breathing or sitting meditation. It all depends on the Qigongs and the time. When the time is right you will achieve it. Do not try to force it, just let it happen.
The sign I had that it was time to move on, is theres a Qigong where you circle your hands from the dantien in front of the heart, circle over the head, and back down to the dantien. When I done it, I felt the small circulation, both the fire and the water paths, without trying. Then I didnt have to move on, I was already there.
The embryonic breathing I learned is different than some of the stuff I understood from Dr Yang's book, so its kind of hard for me to comment on what his book said because it thoroughly confused me. :p but If you have any questions about what I know, I can answer them.

[John the Monkey mind]

I am half there. I have been doing chi gung for around 10 years but not very advanced stuff. I do feel the circulation along the yin and yang sides. It helped that I studied I Liq Chuan and it is the foundation of the style. Still its a feeling I have to focus on and it is not easy. It is easyer when doing moving chi gong.

I guess its hard to know what level you are at. I can feel the path through the dantian and around to the ming men up my back and then to the top of my head and down to my nose. I can also use it to an extent when I strike. I wouldn't say I am really directing chi more than letting it flow to my hands as I expand out as a continuation of its usual circulation up my back (I do this through controlling my breathing and a little bit of intention). I got this from the three wars white crane form.

My worry is that although my health has improved I am still prone to some miner health problems so feel my progress must be imperfect.

[joeblast]

I am able to find my to polarity's and bring my chi into the centres. Is it necessary to go through the spiritual embryo conception and gestation proses before moving on to small circulation?
Is it ok just to store chi and come back to the more out of there aspects at a time of grater maturity of practice?
What signs are there you have increased your capacity for chi sufficiently to move onwards?

No, Yes, and do you feel any qi-buzz in your hands, feet, third eye, baihui, any vibrations in the dantien? any glimpses of samhadi in meditation?

as to moving onwards, its an individual thing and will be dependent on what exactly you're training and how diligent you are with the technique and practice. what exactly are you practicing? done much EB?

[John the Monkey mind]

I have been getting a chi buz in my hands during practice for years. Now its more of a awareness of heat and slight tingling at the four gates so I guess thats some progress.

I find meditating difficult to do regularly alone so I generally combine theory and more active practice. Small circulation and embryonic breathing are very useful in the three wars set and white crane chi gong. I at times do seated meditation although not as much as I should. At the moment I am living in a very confined living environment prone to interruptions at any times along with insistence that I perform some task or other strait away so its not really a good place to get into deep meditation.

I do embryonic breathing quite a bit, and although I cant say I get a buzz in the third eye I do get some sensation at my to polarities, the real dantian and the centre of the spiritual valley.
I tend to do this standing after practice as part of a closing exercise or just to cool of when its hot. I will bring chi down and compress it in the lower dantian or do a bit of marrow breathing (or joint breathing if I am stance training).

[joeblast]

Ah...train your mind and get past that roadblock, then. Try meditating as a precursor to sleep in the evening, that works very well for me. At that time of day there is less going on anyway and less of a chance of being interrupted. Get some earplugs and focus on the physical mechanisms of breath - that is the best way to train your mind to 'get bored with' the random thoughts; it is occupied with the physical mechanisms. (One of my teaches suggested I stop trying to go to sleep and just meditate dont think I'm quite there just yet! )

Focus on that over enough sessions and it should quiet your mind down some so that sitting is not quite so much of a chore.

Again there's a string of things to learn as you go along, you'll most likely go from one to another and back again many times - refine one thing, and another becomes illuminated, refine that and you might just have a new outlook on the first phenomenon, etc. For instance as I made my way down this path I established abdomen, then huiyin coordination, smoothed out diaphragm inefficiencies and rolled it past them, cultivated the qi-ball at the lower dantien, let go of the air passgeways, coordinated it all from the ni wan, let the heart center interact to smooth out a discrepancy in how soft above/below diaphragm was evolving....and I went in and out and through all of these a ton of different ways...not everything, just a quick 'most of them.."

Calm, soft, slender, long, deep, gentle roll - when your diaphragm gets 'soft' enough and you learn to let go of your air passageways, then you are on your way to eliminating the turbulence in your breath, which has significant energetic gains for the breath itself, because anytime you can hear yourself breathe, that sound is the sound of circular currents sucking some energy out of the breath via vortex motion.

Keep your awareness down there on the dantien and breath mechanisms for a long time, until you have achieved real regulating. Regulating, without the Yi-oriented action of regulating. When you get proficient with that, "the spirit can abide at its residence" and you can basically keep your awareness at the ni-wan and the muscle memory you've built up will carry on and your bodily motions will be regulated "without the Yi having to make a visit to the locale."

I mention the ni wan and not the third eye because at early stages the third eye is nothing more than a distraction - there is so much other work to do before its relevant! The ni wan on the other hand is the secret square inch, the midbrain, where the pineal and pituitary reside - seat of endocrine function (well regulated endocrine function=happy disposition) and also where all of the cranial nerves stem from. (This point of assembly is why you restrain the senses during meditation, you are returning the vital energies toward core processes - by calming the 5 senses you're suppressing just about all the Cranial Nerves but the vagus, which goes down through your internal organs - actually the smoothing out of the breath seems to send a calming/regulating message up the vagus nerve - look a little more closely and in the indian and tibetan paradigms, the vagus nerve is the left & right central channels, also the maiden's weave in the nei jing tu.)

Once the spirit can abide at its residence, you've taken a good step towards becoming more integrated as a whole - in fact at that stage of regulation you usually dont distinguish any of these things anyway

You can get a lot of things going on without doing small circulation - in fact I havent really done much at all in the way of small circulation, perhaps because of the reason that I still have so much going on with doing embryonic breathing. (Then again, I do have other practices that I do, so EB or even getting to the point of residing at the niwan isnt the..."most advanced" thing I do per se, so I dont necessarily know how to reconcile that in light of another's practice regimen - but EB is excellent for just about any spiritual practice, and also one that can eventually be done at all times...)