When Chi corrupts
How to recognize and repair Chi sickness
Have you heard of Chi sickness?
If you haven’t heard of it, it’s an experience you can have during Taoist meditation through the incorrect cultivation of your internal energy. I experienced it and it’s an experience that stuck with me because of how it changed my approach to internal energy work and meditation.
Chi sickness is the stagnation of your internal energy. All of us have some stagnant chi energy, because of trauma and emotional blockages or because of physical health issues. Even a looping thought spiral can be a form of stagnant chi energy. We can dissolve the stagnant chi energy through meditation practices as well as Qi Gong moving meditation.
But what happens you are doing one of those meditation practices and you end up causing chi sickness? That is the story I’m going to share with you today.
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Chi Cultivation through Meditation
I was reading through some of Mantak Chia’s more esoteric books on Chi cultivation. In several of those books he shared elaborate visualizations and exercises that you were supposed to do create energetic structures within you that could be used to call in the cosmic and earth chi energies and essentially metabolize with your energetic system. I was curious, eager and open to trying the exercises. I had previously been doing a lot of work with Taoist water breathing meditation, which involved dissolving stagnant chi, so I felt pretty confident about my ability to work with my internal energy.
Quick note: In Taoist meditation, there are different breathing styles. Water meditation is used for dissolving stagnant chi. Fire meditation is used to energize you. Both can be used for internal energy cultivation, but they work in different ways as I’m sharing here.
I had also been practicing the micro and macro-cosmic orbit breathing. The micro-cosmic breathing is primarily used to circulate your internal chi. Macro-cosmic breathing extends the micro-cosmic breathing outward so that you can pull in the heaven and earth chi and start combining them with your internal energy.
I had been doing these meditation practices for a few years and I felt confident in my ability to practice and apply them. I had the basics down. So I cracked open the books that explored the more esoteric practices of visualization and creating energetic structures and started working with them.
Discover how easy meditation can be
If you’ve ever felt like you can’t meditate or you’re doing it wrong, this e-book is for you. In it you’ll learn:
What’s really stopping you from meditation (it’s not you!).
How to make meditation easier to apply to your life and have meaningful experiences.
5 simple meditation practices you can learn today that will show you results.
Needless complexity created stagnant chi
When I learn a new practice, I follow the instructions provided carefully. I don’t rush steps, especially when I’m doing work with my internal energy, because it is my life energy. Yet, even though I was careful, I still made a misstep. The visualizations and accompanying meditation practices were complex. I learned them in stages, but it felt I was juggling a lot, and the experience took me out of my body and into my head. That was the misstep I made. I disconnected from the experience because I was too busy trying to conceptualize the practices being described in the books.
I started to notice that I felt off. I didn’t have my normal energy. I was sluggish and not as creative. I felt sick, but I couldn’t explain why. Then it came to me as I continued to apply the esoteric practices to my chi cultivation. Whatever I was doing wasn’t working and if anything was creating problems that were manifesting on every level of my being. I either was doing something wrong, didn’t understand the material or was creating needless complexity. In retrospect, I think it was all three reasons. Fortunately, I was wise enough to stop and recognize that continuing to go down this path was going to create more problems.
I immediately reverted back to doing Taoist water meditation and started dissolving the stagnant chi. I dismantled the energetic structures I had built using the visualizations and I immediately noticed an improvement in my energy and creativity. Clearly what I had been creating using the practices I was studying had been causing the chi sickness. I didn’t exactly know why, but I knew enough to realize that what I had been learning didn’t work for me. It taught me a valuable lesson.
Master Meditation effortlessly and easily
In Meditation Mastery, I share 6 different systems of meditation and walk you through how each of them works. In this comprehensive class you’ll learn:
How to use different meditation techniques for cultivating your internal energy and releasing emotional tension so you can live a more harmonious life.
How meditation can sharpen your mind through discipline so you get better results with your magic.
How to pick the best meditation process for yourself so you get the benefits of meditation, while also enhancing your natural energy and health.
There are no shortcuts with Chi Cultivation
I hadn’t treated the practices I was trying to learn as a short cut, but when I think back to the experience what I recognize is that I likely needed to spend some more time continuing to practice what I already knew before attempting them. The other issue was that I was trying to learn these practices from a book. I don’t know if I would have had a different result if I had been working with an instructor who was trained in these practices and could identify what I was doing incorrectly, but chances are I would have gotten some pointers.
I have learned a lot from books over the years and I’ve always been careful when I learn a new practice, in taking my time and learning the fundamentals, because in this case, I was over my head. I got rid of the books and focused on the water breathing meditation practice. It is a deceptively simple practice and it’s slower going with cultivating internal chi and refining environmental chi, but if you stick with it the results are profound.
It took me about a month to fully undo the energetic structures and the stagnant chi that had resulted, but once it was done my internal chi flowed like normal and I felt much better in every other way. I resolved that I would stick with the water breathing practices and decided that if I did decide to learn more esoteric practices for breathing meditation I would study with a teacher who could observe what I was doing and provide adjustments.
Since that time, I’ve continued my studies with water breathing meditation and added Qi Gong standing and moving meditation to my breathing and energetic practices. Each of these practices has helped me with the cultivation of my internal energy, while refining the environmental energy. I’ve also been able to apply this work to my magical practices, which has changed the way I raise energy and practice magic.
What I ultimately learned is that while going slow with a new practice is a good idea, it’s also important to monitor how that practice is landing in you energetically and somatically, and make adjustments and changes. If you need to stop a practice then give yourself permission to do that as well. It’s better to be cautious and careful than foolish, especially when it comes to your health and well-being.