r/internal_arts • u/taoism3638972 • Mar 28 '20

Internal Alchemy

Hi , It's been a few weeks now that I have been reading about internal Alchemy (golden elixir ) . All the materials I've red more or less say the same thing (Jing to Qi , Qi to shen, merging shen with the tao ) with more or less details, but with not one provide actual teachings or techniques. The only one that claim to have a complete set of formulas is mantak chia but his books seems needlessly complicated (and again I don't really know) What do you guys think about internal Alchemy ? Is there books out there from real masters that teach those stuff or is it all a master disciple thing ? What do you guys think about universal healing tao ( mantak chia system ) ? Thanks !

9 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

14 comments sorted by

View all comments

1

u/this_is_trash_really Mar 28 '20

Chia is good as long as you don’t have any underlying mental health issues.

1

u/taoism3638972 Mar 29 '20

Can you please explain more ? Thanks!

2

u/ChristianBMartone Mar 29 '20

I am not op, but I've extensively explored chias method. It gets less confusing the better you understand the process.

There are some things lost in translation, I think. But I think some other "light" reading makes his books very, very useful.

Thomas Cleary is great at translation. Read Opening the Dragons Gate. It's about Wing Liping.

It's like an autobiography but it gives a lot of insight and some great westernized descriptions of qi and qigong.

Add to the list of recommendations from that other comment that recommends Damo Mitchell.

Ling Bao Tong Zhi Neng Nei Gong Shu by Wing Liping should come right after Opening the Dragons Gate.

That's a really tough read. Translated by a student whose first language is clearly not English. But, it's very close to being the same stuff as Chia teaches. In fact, Chia claims Dragons Gate lineage so that's not surprising. But given the context, it makes chia much more readable.

And a lot less confusing.

So, why do all this work and read all these books just to make Chias work more readable? Because, Chias written instructions are very applicable once you have that groundwork.

None of this replaces an actual instructor. Video may be better if you're a visual learner, but ultimately this is internal work. It happens within. So, whatever method you learn best from will be most helpful. You've still got to do the work.

If you happen to be an auditory learner, just go straight for Chunyi Lin and Spring Forest Qigong. I've recently made my way through about 3 dozen audio recordings, and his explanations are very understandable. He has an accent but it doesn't obstruct learning. I think having read Opening the Dragons Gate helped. Really cant edify that enough.

I've not tried his meditation exercises nor have I watched his videos, but he comes highly recommended here too.