Taoist Water Method Chi Kung and Meditation gently dissolves energetic blockages on all levels of a person's being. This differentiates it from the Fire Methods which burn or blast their way through energetic blockages. The more recent Fire Methods, better known in Asia and the West, include Taoist and Buddhist practices as well as Kundalini yoga from India and Sexual Magick from the West. The Fire Methods are known for powerful practices and speedy development, but may often make casualties of careless and weak practitioners. The Water Method is a slower, gentler, less precarious path to prime physical health, a calm mind, and spiritual development.

The Taoist Fire Method practices were developed in the second century BCE within the Neo-Taoist era best exemplified by the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove. The failure of the Taoist Yellow Turban Rebellion made it necessary for Taoism to remain unnoticed by local officials. Public displays of Taoism comprised of artwork and individual practices. Taoist Water Method practices come from China's Age of Philosophers in the sixth century BCE. This was the era of Confucius and Lao Tze. Neither of their teachings had coalesced into actual schools of philosophy or organized religions, but their teachings were revered by all. Even in the midst of chaotic and warring political times, all aspects of daily life moved at a slow and steady pace, like the ox carts that moved the nation. The energetic and spiritual practices of this time period reflect this pace, and in doing so, have become the safe and gentle way to health and human evolution.

The gentle Water Method begins with a solid foundation in Chinese energy based exercises often known as chi kung, and begins with postural training. Students are taught to stand with their feet parallel and flat on the floor. The knees are bent and aligned over the feet. The hips are down and back, as if beginning to sit on a chair, and tucked a little forward to flatten the sacrum. The spine is straight and lifted upward from the crown of the skull while the chest, shoulders and abdomen relax and drop. The tongue gently touches the roof of the mouth just behind the teeth.

While standing, the practitioner breathes from the nose, using the diaphragm instead of the muscles between the ribs. This manifests externally as breathing with the low waist instead of with the upper chest. This diaphragmatic breathing becomes a continuous flow with the practitioner never holding the breath. When open, the Water Method practitioner's eyes are relaxed, allowing the images to come in and not projecting the vision out to the images. This is the Taoist concept of Yin Vision. The practitioner relaxes the mind, fighting no thoughts out and holding no thoughts in. This unbroken flow of thought matches the continuous flow of breath.

After the basics of standing practices are understood, the student begins an exercise known as What's Alive and What's Dead. Before an awakened nervous system can feel energy, it must first learn to feel flesh. The student learns to think of the entire nervous system as an extension of the brain, potentially conscious and just waiting to wake up. While standing, the student shuts off visualization, and tunes up feeling. This helps prevent the student from thinking an area has been felt, when, in fact, it was visualized. The student starts at the fop of the head and attempts to feel the hair, the scalp, the skull and the places where the plates of the skull come together. The student feels as much as possible, keeping in mind that what is felt is alive, and what is not felt is dead. Hence the name of the exercise. Increment by increment the student feels his way down the body, much like visiting fifty floors of a building. At each floor the visit lasts long enough to determine what's alive and what is not. Students must be careful not to get hung up on a floor in an effort to feel everything perfectly. Nothing is perfect in life, so the student must recognize when a reasonable amount has been felt on a particular floor within that particular time period, then continue to move down to the next floor. The exercise is only over when the student gets to the bottom floor. With each practice session, more of the student's body will become alive and aware. Long before feeling the entire inside of the body, the student will begin to become aware of energy blockages. This will lead to the next stage of development, the Outer Dissolving Process.

The Outer Dissolving practices begin with a standing exercise that is identical in external content to What's Alive and What's Dead. In this practice, called Clearing Down, the student begins by feeling the top of the aura or energy field, which emanates beyond the skin. The distance between the outer edge of the energy field and the skin indicates the overall health of the practitioner, wider bands indicating stronger health. The student is no longer simply feeling, but continuously scanning for feelings of blockage, congestion, and places that are too tight, too strong, or completely out of sync with the surroundings. These are spots of congealed energy similar to log jams that need to be broken up and used. This process begins with the student locating and feeling this block of congealed energy until it seems to be a solid shape with definable parameters. The student's mind then begins to dissolve this solid shape much like water can dissolve ice, crystalline sugar, and, in time, even rock. As the solid shape begins to dissolve into an amorphous liquid with a less definable shape much like ice becoming water or sugar becoming syrup! the student's mind begins to further dissolve the liquid, transforming it into a vapor. This is similar to water boiling away to steam. This "steam," however, is without heat, and is more akin to alcohol or gas evaporating into vapor. This vapor floats out to the edge of the student's aura where it becomes usable energy.

Feeling this dissolving process can be an extremely subtle process. Water Method teachers often give the students an idea of what to feel by having the student tighten the muscles of the hand into a fist until the knuckles become white. The student then relaxes the muscles of the hand without moving the fingers or thumb. The sensation of relaxation that slowly spreads out from the center of the palm and beyond demonstrates and mimes the feeling of the dissolving process.

At the center of each blockage lies the feeling that initially shocked the person's energy system, thereby creating the block. When the blockage is completely dissolved, this core feeling will be set loose. At this initial stage of practice, what is felt is usually a physical sensation or even an emotional feeling. This feeling must be recognized and let go. To either repress or hold on to it will re-create the blockage, and the dissolving process will have to be done all over again. Only very small blockages will be completely dissolved in one or even a few practice sessions. Most blockages will be worn down over a period of time as water wears away a rock. Some of them might even be lifetime projects. The practitioner must recognize within each practice session his own limitation at each increment of the body, and continue to move steadily down, and be sure to practice daily. The search for perfection will only cause stagnation. When the student has been working on exactly the same blockages for many practice sessions and stabilization has finally been reached, it is time to move on.

After developing the standing practices, Outer Dissolving is initiated within several practices that involve movement. Seated and lying down practices are usually reserved for the practice of Inner Dissolving. Chi kung exercises are the most common moving vehicle for Outer Dissolving. In fact, the standing dissolving practice is the first exercise in a chi kung set known as Opening the Energy Gates of Your Body.

The second exercise in the set is a variation of Cloud Hands which activates the fluids of the body. It shifts the weight to pump the blood, lowers and raises; the hip crease, and squeezes and releases the lymph nodes in that area, thereby pumping the lymphatic fluid, expanding and compressing the joints of the skeleton to pump the lubricating fluid of the joints.

The third exercise is called Swings. It is comprised of three variations of weight shifting and arm swing exercises, which include the health benefits of Cloud Hands while adding three levels of organ massage. The Clearing Down Dissolving practice can be integrated into the mental work of both these exercises. The Energy Gates set ends with a unique spinal stretch. This exercise is designed to open the spaces between each vertebrae, moving from the bottom of the spine to the top in both bending over and straightening up movements. Dissolving can be done in each of the spaces between the vertebrae.

The second chi kung set in the Water Method is called Spiraling Energy Body. In this set the practitioner learns to be able to clearly think two things simultaneously. First, the student learns to access his own secondary consciousness. The secondary consciousness is the part of the mind that can sing along with the radio while the primary consciousness carries on a conversation, for example. When the Clearing Down practice occupies the secondary consciousness, a safety ground wire is created that protects the practitioner from all kinds of energy blowout or burnout. In Spiraling Energy Body the student learns to use the primary consciousness to pump energy up through the body, and to practice External Dissolving of energy which another living being has projected toward the student. The student may also eliminate energy which has been projected outward (and thought better of!), and begin to move spiraling energy between his energy storage bank and each and every one of the energy gates in the body. Doing each of these practices, the dissolving downward ground wire within the secondary consciousness is maintained.

The third Water Method chi kung set is called Marriage of Heaven and Earth. It is a single exercise that can contain the entire Taoist Internal Power Nei Gung System. This is a sixteen part system in which all three sections of the dissolving process (outer, external, and inner) constitute only one part. The fourth set of Water Method chi kung is a method of pumping the cerebral spinal fluid and releasing power from the spine. It is called Bend the Bow and Shoot the Arrow. The fifth and final set in this chi kung system is called Gods Playing in the Clouds. Like Marriage of Heaven and Earth, it can contain the entire Taoist Nei Gung System. To this the six exercise set adds a number of twisting and coiling motions that are indigenous to the martial art called pa kua chang.

The martial arts pa kua chang and tai chi chuan also serve as moving vehicles that can carry the Dissolving Process. Tai chi dissolving practices specialize in dissolving through specific patterns of organs and glands. The unique dissolving practices of pa kua chang involve dissolving from the edges of the body into the center and back again. Dissolving in the adrenal glands during fighting practices helps to remove unconscious reaction, fear and hesitation. Similarly, dissolving in the gonads during sexual practices can help eliminate hormonal drive for completion and serve to lengthen the process.

The Outer Dissolving practices help remove block ages from the Physical Energy Body, the energy in the flesh that enlivens it. It also removes blockages from the Chi Energy Body, the energy that runs in channels through the flesh and emanates from the flesh to the aura level. These are the first two layers of the Eight Energy Bodies, which in Taoist belief are the outwardly expanding energy bodies that comprise a human being. The others are the Emotional Energy Body, Thinking Energy Body, Psychic Energy Body, Causal Energy Body, Energy Body of Individuality, and Energy Body of Tao. The Energy Body of Tao is a person's connection to everything else, and is usually accessed only after the Physical Energy Body has been left behind. This means that the average person only accesses seven energy bodies at a time, leaving only enlightened masters with the ability to access all eight bodies at once.

The Outer Dissolving Practices of chi kung releases the congested chi in the body and its direct energy power system, and allows the body to utilize this energy, resulting in freedom from weakness and poor health.

When the Dissolving Process is moved into the third Emotional Energy Body, the practices enter the realm of meditation and leave the work of chi kung. The Emotional Energy Body stretches from a person's center outward to the stars that can be seen with the naked eye. The other five bodies extend even farther outward and are rarely accessed without the presence of a Taoist Master. The emotional layer can be reached quite easily after the Outer Dissolving practices have been stabilized.

"Meditation is that which puts the individual in touch with the Infinite," states Taoist Master B.K. Frantzis. Accessing and feeling the Emotional Energy Body falls within this definition of meditation. Frantzis is the master who brought the Water Method to the West. His story is the classical tale of hard to soft: a young fighter who became a master of healing and meditation. Bruce K. Frantzis began to study martial arts at the tender age of twelve, having been highly impressed and more than a bit frightened after seeing a deadly New York street encounter. Being an extremely bright lad, Frantzis eagerly sought out and studied the healing arts that helped him recuperate from sparring injuries, and studied meditation to remove fear and hesitation from his sparring. By the time he graduated from high school, Frantzis had black belts in karate, judo, and aikido and introductions to external and internal Chinese kung fu.

While attending college in Japan, Frantzis re-earned all his black belts in the best Japanese schools and fought on an "All Japan" championship collegiate karate team. He also continued his studies in shiatsu massage and Zen meditation. During his senior year and after college, Frantzis began to travel to the island of Taiwan to study the Internal Martial Arts of pa kua chang, tai chi chuan, and hsing i chuan. He also began to study tui na/Chinese energy massage and Taoist meditation. In the early 1970s, Frantzis also spent the better part of two years studying Pranayama and Kundalini yoga in India. In the late 1970s, he began to travel to the island city of Hong Kong to study with one of the highest level masters of Yang Family tai chi chuan.

While in Hong Kong, Frantzis met and began to study with a young Internal Arts Master who had emigrated from Beijing. This young master, named Bai Wa, was the only student of Liu Hung Chieh, one of the last of the great Taoist Masters. Liu was the last member of the original Beijing Pa Kua School; a winning entrant in the 1928 All China Full Contact Tournament. Liu was a personal friend and private student of the founder of Wu Style Tai Chi. He was also the leader of a Northern Chinese Taoist Sect, and a formally declared Enlightened Being. Bai Wa studied pa kua, hsing i chuan, and Fire Method chi kung and meditation from Liu during his teen years in Beijing.

In 1981 Bruce Kumar Frantzis traveled to Beijing for instructor training in the 24 Posture Yang Style Tai Chi Form at the National Sports Institute. He carried with him an introduction to Liu from Bai Wa, but this did not mean that the old master would agree to teach him, having not taught anyone since Bai Wa. Strangely, the night before Frantzis arrived at Liu' s door, the old man dreamed of a Westerner coming to learn from him. The dream and the introduction compelled Liu to make Frantzis the second and only student since the 1930s. Liu decided that this large, young kung fu fighter needed to learn the gentle water method of chi kung and meditation, along with the highest levels of the internal martial arts. Frantzis studied with Liu for a few months, then returned to America.

In 1983 Frantzis returned to Beijing, where he worked in a hospital as a tui na therapist to cancer patients and continued to study with Liu on a daily basis. The old master grew so fond of this determined young American that he adopted Bruce Kumar Frantzis into his family and also made him a lineage holder in pa kua, hsing i, wu style tai chi, and Taoist Water Method chi kung and meditation. When Liu Hung Chieh passed away in December 1986, Frantzis returned to the United States and began to spread Liu' s teachings. From his home base in Fairfax, California, Taoist Master Frantzis teaches workshops, seminars, and retreats across America as well as in Western Europe. He has also produced a series of videotapes, and has written books on the Internal Martial Arts and Taoist Water Method chi kung and meditation.

Taoist Water Method meditation deals with stillness and inner space and is mostly practiced in a variety of seated postures both on the floor and on chairs. The beginning practice which is akin to What's Alive and What's Dead in Chi Kung, is Following the Breath to Calm the Monkey Mind. This practice recognizes that the mind often hops from thought to thought without even finishing most of them, like the hopping of an agitated monkey. By concentrating the mind on feeling the breath as it enters and leaves the body, the mind begins to slow down and any remaining thoughts begin to drift to the edges of consciousness and begin to eventually disappear. This creates an unbroken thread of consciousness that begins to still the mind. The Water Method meditation practitioner must develop an experiential grasp of the vast amount of space that resides within the central energy channel. This inner space reaches to a vastness equal to the outer reaches of the universe. Inner stillness is reached when a calm mind accesses the vastness of inner space within the central channel.

The Inner Dissolving Process of Water Method meditation consists of the conscious use of inner space. When blockages of emotional energy are dissolved, the process becomes solid to liquid to vapor, which then implodes into inner space instead of floating outward as in the Outer Dissolving Process. Emotional blockages are smoother and more subtle than physical and chi blockages. It takes a highly awakened nervous system to detect them. Emotional blockages dissolve away in layers, like peeling an onion and unlike the steady wearing away of water on rock, which is the process of Outer Dissolving. Each of these emotional layers must be liquefied, vaporized, and imploded into one's inner space. As with outer blockages, only the tiniest of emotional blockages will be totally dissolved in one session. Most of them will slowly peel away, layer by layer, session by session. The body can be generally scanned for emotional blockages, or specific emotions can be targeted and specific body areas can be scanned. When the emotional shock which is at the center of the blockage and is responsible for the blockage is released, a powerful rush or blast of the emotion is produced. Special care must be taken to see that this rush of emotion is neither repressed nor dramatize but, rather simply recognized and released. Only this will free and release the practitioner from the shock and the resulting emotional energy blockage. Water Method practitioners must realize that positive emotions may also arrive in shocking doses and create their own energy blockages. These positive emotional blockages must also be found and dissolved.

Emotional Energy Body blockages are literally a person's emotional buttons. When pushed by an ad, word or thought, these buttons trigger an instinctive emotional outburst. It is these emotional blockages and the stimulation of them which drag many people through a life of reactive behavior, a life that is never quite in control, and often consists of bouncing from one emotional reaction to the next. By lessening and removing these blockages of emotional energy, the Inner Dissolving Process releases a person from a life of reactive behavior and gives the freedom for clear, spontaneous action without residual guilt, shame, or merit.

There are periods in a person's life when the shock of loss and/or pain becomes overwhelming. Times of contracting a serious illness, having a serious injury, the loss of a loved one or home, as well the loss of employment may drive a person into depression, inactivity, and overall stagnation. Ancient Taoist Water Method Masters taught that through the use of the Inner Dissolving Process the intensely shocking time periods of a person's life can be transformed into stages of great personal evolution. Dissolving practices that are practiced during times of shock will accomplish amounts of clearing within a couple of weeks that may take years of meditation during calm periods of a person's life. The Inner Dissolving Process can release a person from the anxiety of emotional shock, and bring him or her freedom from long-term trauma.

When a student has become familiar with the personal practices of the Dissolving Process, the two person variations are learned. Most of these practices use a dissolving loop which travels down the practitioner, loops under and up through the partner/opponent, around the top, and back down again. A few other patterns may be used in certain martial and sexual practices. The most common method of practicing the Two Person Dissolving Loop is during the practice of various slow motion martial arts practices of tai chi's pushing hands exercise, pa kua's soft hands exercise, and the various slow sparring exercises of free fighting. When applied to sexual practices, the Inner Dissolving Two Person Loop can help to dissolve the emotional triggers which cause many differences within a relationship. With this method, a partner may work on one's own blockages, and also help those of the partner, and vice versa. The Two Person Dissolving Loop can be used in martial arts to find an opponent's weaknesses, and to read every nuance of their energy flow before they manifest into physical action. The Two Person Dissolving Loop is also extremely useful in grief management. When a partner is overwhelmed with grief, the practitioner can use the Two Person Loop to help the partner dissolve the overwhelming grief while being sure not to absorb any of it.

The Taoist Water Method Dissolving Practices give the practitioner practical techniques to work on balancing all aspect of life. This is the major goal of all schools of Taoism. Being released from reactive triggers, and allowing energy to freely flow, the Dissolving Practices bring the practitioner to freedom from imbalance.

THE EMPTY VESSEL, Fall 1999

Frank Allen & Sally Kealy

Frank Allen is a senior student of Master B.K. Frantzis and the director and chief instructor of the Wu Tang Physical Culture Association in New York City.

Sally Kealy, CSW, is a senior student at the Wu Tang PCA, an ordained Zen Peacemaker Priest, and has a Gestalt oriented psychotherapy practice in Manhattan specializing in Taoist Dissolving practices.

They can be reached at The Wu Tang P.C.A., 71/2 Second Ave. 3rd Fl., New York, NY, 10003; Tel. 212-533-1751. Master B.K. Frantzis can be reached at Energy Arts, Inc. P.O. Box 99, Fairfax, CA, 94978-0099; Tel. 415-454-5243.