Alternatives to Dissolving

Thanks Robert, always inspiring to hear you.

I am doing about 5 hours a day, weekdays, 3 hrs sitting, 2 hrs Chi Kung. Also starting to work with the sleeping phase of the day also. Ideally it becomes 24 hrs and integrated into life, it is life.

I did about 3hrs dissolving today on the right hemisphere of my head where I have many difficult blockages, in fact most of it is numb and I just can’t feel it. It works, but is arduous. I wonder if it is entities that are sucking that are stuck to my head.

Do the whole body…progressively work your way down. Do less. You don’t need to make it perfect and dissolve everything.. What’s likely happening is tension elsewhere, such as your gut, kwa, etc is creating tension that’s rebelling upwards into the head. If you focus only on the head you’ll be fighting the enemy when they invade you daily but you’ll never attack them at their base. There’s no need to be perfect. Remember the 2/3rds rule.. Maybe in your case do even less

I think Gafford is correct. Don;t overdo the dissolving things as it is counter-productive. the 2/3 rules apply. This is perfectly what the 2/3 rules means. I respect you for having the determination and persistence to work on your qigong and try to get whatever result that it promised to be.
I do 1hour in the morning and half an hour in the afternoon only. Maybe I don.t have immediate physical discomfort to compel me to try harder. I find dissolving boring but I believe it is a very good practice and so I try to dissolve by scanning down my body 3 times as slowly as I can, which is only about 5 minutes. In dissolving I am doing relaxation, standing qi gong and is directly conscious of qi which is very useful in the sense that when I have trouble in future I can easily engage the qi and work better on whatever I have then.
You must be very sensitive to be able to sense qi blockage all over the body. Memories are store in the brain as well as in the muscle and ligament. Negative memory are what gives the blockage. To remove them is a coaxing process. Like changing a bad habit, we cannot go about it too forcefully. We need good technique to change it but mostly we need persistence and regular work.

One example of the process involved is Meditation. In meditation we may want to sit still and concentrate the mind for 2 hours. But if the mind is restless and we sit for 2 hours dreaming or busy thinking about things which keep running through the mind, Then the meditation is almost useless in term of meditation.
If we try to sit in full concentration for the first time right from the beginning, we find that it is mostly impossible and is bound to be a failure.
After sometime we probably ended up sitting for 2 hours, having variable success in being able to keep in concentration. It is a tuck of war between concentration and the mind running wild and we keep going on because we know we are improving and concentrating better and more as time goes on.
In the same way, we checked that we are dissolving correctly and keep on concentrating more and more and be aware that we are improving.
I think it is possible concentrate too hard that it becomes counter productive. It is like the blockage rebels and try to harden up.
I will try to give my idea of relaxation which is considered as almost impossible to explain or teach and yet it is the corner stone of qiqong. Relaxation is the letting go of tension in the muscles and let the muscle let go of the built-in memory that it kept every time we want to physically do something or to move. To relax means to let go of the muscle to the minimum amount. The important things is that we stand and move because we have qi, ligaments and bones which are the main structure for the most effective movement.With this idea we will have something to work with.

I guess concentrating on a particular blockages for about 20 mins. should be enough and to persist on concentrating might feel useless. In the book BFK say to concentrate until you feel that it is not responding and then move on to the next area. Also always move from top to bottom which is the natural flow of the cleansing qi. If you want to do more, then you should repeat after going one round. Each blockage must be clear of the body either by turning into gas and out and also go all the way under the feet and into the ground.

For discussion, I think “ice to water to gas” is a very clearly structure process, a clear cut technique to change blockage into gas or volatile form that can be expelled. Maybe you might ended up concentrating on a spot and willing it to disappear. This becomes a case of relaxing the mind in order to concentrate and trusting your higher mind to clear the problem at hand. Strictly this is not BKF’s method. This is relaxing meditation where you might stick on for a length of time.
Also remember that the intention must ended up in a positive note. that is, intent the qi to be there and to work and always ended with the qi clearing away the blockage. Don’t harbour thought that the blockage is difficult to remove. Start afresh every time and believe the qi will clear away the blockage.
To say BKF work 6 hours a day is fine, but he is working professionally knowing exactly what he is doing. It is like saying a person do meditation 4 hours a day. That person must definitely knows what he is doing and not be someone knocking around thinking he is going to get some thing great.He will more likely ended up worst for his effort.
BKF mention that he did “opening energy gate qiqonq” for a few years before he progress to doing taichi. He have a beautiful explanation saying that qigong sets are like nursery rhythm and folk song while taichl is like playing read sophisticated music, Taichi is the highest standard in beauty, and health and martial art attainment but it need not be suitable for everybody. And then to learn taichi require a minimum ability and acquiring proper technique. Qigong may be what most of us want and is sufficient. Sometime I was thinking if you spend 4-5 hours on qigong he should belong to the taichi category.
You mention working on qigong from other school, I believe BKF have a well thought out and complete system of qigong for everybody’s need. Experimenting with other school can help us to understand and improve overall if we are not satisfy with what is available at hand in energyarts materials. Overall my take is that BKF teaching is a correct system and we should keep it as the core practice to stay correct and hence be most effective.

All the best Ride

Don’t know what he meant by staying for hours. However it must be quite impossible to really to do that and is not the way to do qigong by putting 100 % effort.

I check out the ‘opening the energy gate of your body’ book and find he mean it to take it easy.
Page126 no 4 B quote ‘Do not strain by working too hard or dwelling too long on one spot’
and page 127. conclusion quote ‘ Do not force your chi. Taoism is the path of flowing. Do not try to push the river. If you have a block that you cannot dissolve, go around it and dissolve the rest of your body. Eventually, you will be able to dissolve it–there is absolutely no rush.

Have a good ride.

To the original-poster, as well as any others reading this that have worked on this.

-How did the search go for finding a different way? -some time has passed, were the results you achieved as you wished?

-and/or did what you found revise what was posted in various comments on this forum?

(the Fire-make it work-method is different from the Water-method as Bruce teaches.. as long as the two aren’t confused.) Always good to reexamine/reeval one’s method, and perhaps “back to the drawing-board”

(I just saw trailer regarding documentary about how the Traditional GungFu isn’t as “accessible” and thus not trained- at least according to some teachers. -hope to keep it alive, but delving and discovering..)

re:
In terms of the ‘hua’ that might-be found, like gold from dirt.. (it does take a while to find.. and yet might the Art be lost- not knowing if it is possible to really express these Arts)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=997aRsGSvfU

a clip from it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjvZUFxJ3R8
Each is for “a purpose” .(.. and what is that for each?)

SOLUTION

Along my travels I have discovered a radically faster dissolving method that I wanted to share.

The instructions as they stand is to wait lke a cat outside a mousehole. And this is the approach to dissolving, although some instructors now talk of letting the dissolving happen for you.

But basically what happens when you take this adversarial approach is that you feel the disturbance very strongly … and this gives you the impression something is happening. But in fact it is a very slow approach.

Instead it is possible to say to yourself “Soften, and flow” and saying this to yourself softening the disturbance and following it as it softens and starts moving. Actually no longer try to stay in one position or to direct the location of blockages, but to let them flow and watch where they are flowing and then dissovle there, also dissolving where tehy want to go. Soften & flow. Until they reach the edge of your body somewhere where you feel them discharge, often hands feet or head.

This is much more Wu Wei in the spirit of Laozi, flowing with.

Also the mantra ICE – WATER – GAS; well you see ice and water is quite a cold image isn’t it.

I prefer to use soften or the feeling of clouds getting higher and higher like hazy light clouds … which has a warm energy that is more friendly and less adversarial.

And what difference does all this make ?

Well I have spent many arduous months inching my way through rock solid traumatised blockages.

But with these new softer flowing ideas, I opened up say 1/4 of my entire body frontside in about 3 hours. Not perfectly but it’s a vast change and because it is more pleasant you can do much more.