Steps to Effective Embryonic Breathing

[matt2132]

First off, I want to say that this forum has some excellent posts and I'm really glad I found it.

After reading the embryonic breathing book, watching the DVD, and reading any posts talking about EB I have a few lingering questions.

The steps in the book are:

1. Recognizing the Yin center of the Upper Dan Tian and the Yang Center of the Lower Dan Tian

2. Condensing the Shen and Condensing the Qi to their centers

3. Conditioning the Bio-battery

4. Increase the quantity of Qi

5. Embryonic Breathing

I have done Zazen for a long time and had positive results, but would really like to understand what one has to actually DO to carry out these step (aside from #5). One example - does the first step mean to meditate focusing on the upper dantian until recognized and then the lower? Is one to use normal abdominal for this step? I understand that to get the feel for something is a part of the journey, I would just like to start out on the right foot.

One other question regarding normal abdominal breathing - is one to squeeze all the air out of the upon exhalation? Not to let the abdomen just relax, but actively (gently) withdraw it inward?

Any help in laying this out for me would be great.

[joeblast]

Good questions Glad you are deriving benefits.

While "condensing the shen at the upper dt" is relatively accurate verbiage, it didnt really do it for me either. Although in retrospect, yeah, having learned it now it makes sense. Here's some other analogies: from taoist yoga, "fixing the spirit at the seat of awareness," or another, "finding the source of the I-thought." So basically, bring the awareness in and keep it at the upper dt, niwan, pineal gland...the "real" "location" is for you to find, it being "neither inside, nor outside of yourself." I also came up with the correlation of setting a lamp in the middle of the room and letting it shine. This should not take any force or tension whatsoever to do, it'll give you a headache if you do it forcefully. Basically what this does is arrest the energy potential going to your cranial nerves and extending out to the senses. Usage of them requires a lot of energy, so when you withdraw the senses, it has the natural byproduct of calming those nerves and all of the resultant propagations of neural firings.

It is the combination of that + what's going on at the lower dt that leads to the manifestation of jhanas and meditative states.

For the lower dt...you will have some work to do first in harmonizing all of the structures that make you breathe. Having done so, you will also quiet the mind, because rough uneven breath stimulates the vagus (sufficient feedback will increase heartrate, breath rate) and olfactory (it is like the air meter in a car, faster flow will trigger feedback for more heartrate & breathing.) So basically your goal with breathwork is to drop the flow of air beneath the threshold of turbulence for your air passageways - so dont use your sinuses or anything above the diaphragm to breathe (may take a little while to get there, once I had that idea it basically took me a further 3 months of diligent nightly practice.)

Once the breathwork is smoothed out, once again you've attenuated signals, reduced noise in the system, and you can therefore have more clarity in picking out other signals. The lower dt is 2 inches below the navel and front:back 3:7 due to the spine. When ready you can use a slight visualization to help in perturbing the energy dynamic there - imagine a ball of light, grow and shrink with the breath from the size of a quarter to a golf ball and back. Eventually with enough other signal-noise attenuated you can get a better feel for this and you can both fix the spirit at the seat of awareness and grow/shrink the energy-ball-dynamic at the lower dt. This is a very special combination indeed!

Normal ab breath is easier to do more coherently.

Dont squeeze all the air out, it takes too much energy. Work with the middle 70% of the lung's range, because at the extreme ends it consumes energy and will make the practice less efficient. It is ok to use the front of the abdomen to assist, but as you get deeper in practice it will be less so - if you recall dr yang mentioning "the breath externally disappearing" then this is what that is referring to - troubleshooting all of this for myself led me to conclude that the fundamental 3 breath mechanisms are the diaphragm, psoas, and perineum - the front of the abdomen is really a sort of "martial modifier" that adds power when necessary. Which may sound odd at first, but to get my breaths over a minute I had to use only those 3 mechanisms and basically shut everything else off. Imagine lying down, your spine is a train track - drive the train down to the bottom of the spine (~dantien height, breath should not go as low as the genitals or as high as heart) and then back it up on exhale. So when beginning an inhale, you pull down at the lower rear attachment of the diaphragm and continue that for the duration of the inhale. This will help you rely on the diaphragm and then you wont need to buffer the incoming air with your sinuses to help balance out the pressure from uneven motion. Start relying only on those bottom 3 structures Time them all so that they reach their energetic culmination concurrently - and time that energy potential at the lower dt. That becomes the basis for perturbing the energy dynamic there!

(This also serves as a basis for micro and macrocosmic circulations...)

[matt2132]

Wow, thank you Joeblast for such a great response!

In regards to slowing down the breathing, I think I understand what you are referring to when you talk about turbulence. From doing normal abdominal breathing meditation without drawing in or pushing out the anus it feels like I am filling my lower belly, but can't feel any air movement going in. Incidentally after doing this for about 6 months and concentrating on my lower dantien I had an experience which was much less subtle than any other feeling I've had during meditation . The way I could describe it in words is it felt like a non-genital orgasm occurring in the lower dt area and somewhat above and lasted about a minute. I have not felt quite the same since (like a cool breeze or water flowing over my face just slightly when I'm giving it my attention) Any comment would be appreciated.

So let me see if I understand the progression here.

- One should recognize the upper then lower dantians after smoothing out breathing (more so for lower dt).

- Condense the Shen by raising spirit to upper dan tian and keeping it there. According to EB this should be done using reverse breathing and imagining your head as a ball and that the ball is shrinking toward the Mud Pill Palace. (Or finding the source of the I-thought)

- Condition the real lower dantian through normal abdominal breathing and then at some point (?) reverse abdominal breathing to generate the production of Qi

- Move on to EB breathing techniques to store Qi in the real lower dantian


I am in no hurry here, but is this doable? Are the above points an accurate unfolding of this in real life?

[joeblast]

heh, comment - those are good signs, keep up the effort! that's the initial stages of alchemy, as the generative force becomes full that happens. so the filling of the belly without any feeling of air, that's what I am talking about when I say drop the flow of air beneath the threshold of turbulence. turbulence are these little circular vortices of air that form in the nooks and crannies, it requires energy to generate them, and they spontaneously manifest when the conditions are are right - and disappear when those conditions are right.

no need to reverse breathe to focus the spirit at the seat of awareness - that is a separate phenomena than breathing...its just that neural feedback from the olfactory nerve perturbs that to a certain extent.

once the lower is well conditioned you can start to perturb the energy dynamic at the ldt directly and place less emphasis on the physical aspect - best done after the physical aspect has sufficient habit-energy (think practice-inertia) - then do the energy ball practice for "ldt work."

I practice reverse more when doing standing practice or walk bagua circles or stuff. but if you do reverse, note the fundamental mechanisms and dont focus too much on the front of the abdomen to make it as soft as possible. quite possible to get very deep with reverse, but you wont go super deep by using the front of the abdomen too much anyway.

dont worry about storing. work with the energy flux density, when you're done, disappear into stillness, utter and complete stillness. do that any time you actively work with energy, it may sound paradoxical but stillness is the way to do it.

sounds like you are progressing well, you appear to have a good amount of these prerequisites down

[Silkreeler37]

That response was absolutely flawless.

[joeblast]

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