qi in the head

1- Stick your head in a bucket of cold water.
2- Stand comfortably and focus on earth breathing into your lower dantien.
3- Relax, Smile, laugh and don’t work so hard.
4- Find somebody whose orbit is open and sit with them so you get a transmission.
5- Have some miso soup to help concentrate your chi downstairs.

It is all a learning experience. When something happens to you it is telling you where your lifeforce is not flowing properly, where there is a resistance. Since I do not know you I cannot tell this for sure, but it is likely that you use your head too much. Too much thinking. The core of Daoism is that it is earth-centered. We have to bring IT all down here.

And, yes, “guys” is often used androgynously.

-Good luck, Alexander

-but,
since you say that resistance is against flow, is it advisable to concentrate on tense spots along the orbit, to unknot them? I noticed that attention automatically relaxes tight muscles.-

That’s right. It is unconscious tension that restricts flow. Once you get your awareness into someplace that resists you have the opportunity to let it go. But there are areas which do not let go even when you are “in” them with your awareness. This is armoring and needs patient work to transmute.
But that is another conversation…

-A

Hi Sly,

No problem with continuing this.

What comes to me is that you are focussing too hard on the orbit itself. The process of opening is a lot bigger than that alone. I think you should loosen up and allow the chi and your attention to go as it wants to. It is one thing to do some orbit practice for awhile to encourage its flow and another thing to try to make it happen. I think you are trying too hard and that is the probable cause of your headache and maybe some of the other tensions you describe. Proper control is really just gentle guidance accompanied by trusting your Self.

My experiences have shown me that I make the fastest progress when I am most relaxed with what is going on. This space of allowing is what the lifeforce is looking for from us. It is the door through which it can enter. Only a little coaxing and suggesting and directing on our parts is necessary to develop things and this point is very often missed. The lifeforce WANTS to flow. It doesn’t have to be made to. More than a little direction usually brings discomfort by aggravating resistance and implies an insistance on control rather than trust in the process.

I cannot understate the importance of how hooked into our psychological development these practices are. Our ego structures want to take all of this and do what they want with it much of the time. True mastery comes from the state of not being in conflict with anything that is going on inside or outside of us, and to teach our egos that is one swift trick. It is doable but takes a lot of gentle training.

My motto is: “The slower I go, the faster I go.” And I focus on what feels like balance and what makes my heart song open up. Egos have agendas until we take each aspect in hand and literally mature it into a state wise enough so that it wants to be cooperative instead of bossy.

So relax with this whole thing and breathe a lot. Let your smile be your guide, and when stuff comes up – tensions, conflicts…- deepen your openness to it all. Notice what your ego may be trying to do with any given situation as it presents itself in your body and then smile to that and let go of the trying. Stuck energy is energy that wants to move and is being somehow surpressed. It’s our job to get under that and hold open the space. That’s what transmutes most of our personal stuff. I think you will find that this opens your orbit nicely and will take you beyond that very effectively.

I like to remind myself of what Jeffrey Yuen said in a lecture of his once. It is about what Daoism and any spiritual pursuit really is aiming for. He said: “What really becomes immortal is the love you create.”

Blessings, Alexander