tao quest february_2013

Inner QuestThe Monthly Tao JournalIssue 10 | February 2013

In This Issue...

Five Element Theory: Old Taoism's Cycle of Transformation By Paul Cavel

Learning from 100 Days of Practice By Dan Kleiman

Paul Cavel, Editor

© 2013 Paul Cavel. All rights reserved.

IQ: February 2013

the most advanced Taoist qi gong ever de-signed. So why then essentially work back-wards to create what would appear to be an inferior method, requiring a lot more chore-ography to learn, and teach students via the Five Elements?

The answer lies in a deeper understanding of Gods Qi Gong, which integrates and pro-vides the container for the other elemental energies. Practically speaking, Gods not only integrates the Five Elements and everything contained within each one, as it represents the Earth Element, but also the entire 16 nei gong. So it's fair to say that Gods could be a tough nut to crack! Taoist adepts recognised the challenges inherent to the learning process, and therefore, through direct per- ception of the Five Elements, created a comprehensive system for isolating each of the five energies. Of course, what can be teased out can also be recombined in effort to understand the true nature of the universe. So one of the purposes of Five Element practices, is to directly perceive the nature of each individual element and the ways in which it behaves in tandem with all others. Obviously, this experiential knowledge can offer a huge advantage for the practitioner in life—whether applied to healing, medicine, martial arts, meditation or tuning into larger natural cycles on our planet.

As one of the three key streams of Taoist practice, Five Element Theory can be ap-plied to understand the manifest world in which we live, such as feng shui and astrology, music and military strategy, mar-tial arts and medicine, diet and therapy. There are many schools of thought and many dozens of systems available to work with the Five Elements. The Creation-Destruction Cy-cles—or Wood-Fire-Earth-Metal-Water and Wood-Earth-Water-Fire-Metal, respective-ly—were popularised during the first half of the Han Dynasty (206 BC-220 AD), and remain wide-spread today. However, Old Taoism's approach to the Five Elements is primarily concerned with transformation in body, mind and qi. The Transformational Cycle, which existed at least a thousand years earlier, is represented as:

Water-Fire-Wood-Metal-Earth.

The Transformational Cycle is all about de-veloping the human mind-body-qi energy matrix and beyond. The nei gong system as we know it today, which includes Ener-gy Gates, Spiralling Energy Body, Heaven + Earth, Bend the Bow and Gods Qi Gongs, is built upon its principles; although Taoist nei gong was actively practised before the Five Element system. In fact, Gods Playing in the Clouds predates the Five Element system by at least 1,000 years, which is curious as it is

Five Element TheoryOld Taoism's Cycle of Transformation

By Paul Cavel


IQ: February 2013

Making Direct versus Indirect Contact with the Five ElementsThe realm of the Five Elements is colossal as it engulfs the entirety of manifestation. Two ways to gain experiential knowledge of the elements are:

• Direct—making contact with the elements themselves, which requires deep meditation guided by a true adept. Both the transmitter and receiver must be adequately trained.• Indirect—creating specific weaves of neigong to uncover the underlying nature of each of the elements, which amounts to a far less challenging task—albeit requiring dedicated practice over some years (and possibly longer).

To directly experience the elements, you must either develop and refine sensitivity to them, or complete a good portion of the internal content available in the 16 nei gong. Otherwise, the transmissions1 will not have fertile ground from which to grow. Although you may have somefantastic experiences related to the teachings, they really will do little to help you grasp or engage on any genuine level your ability to work with the Five Elements.

Whereas, you can basically start playing with nei gong weaves that yield specific elemental qualities from the moment you begin learning a qi gong set or applying your mind's intent in sit-ting practice. This is possible because qi gong exercises bring alive certain neigong components, which is also why each set has a very distinct, unique flavour. Energy Gates should feel different to Heaven + Earth, which should feel different to Gods and so on. Likewise, in sitting, you learn how to tune into and release stagnant qi energy, which goes towards balancing the energy of the internal organs and their associated emotions.

1. Transmissions are the traditional method used by Taoist masters to impart knowledge and understanding of complex concepts to students. Carried by waves of energy generated by the adept, they contain the totality of any learning experience, which, when intercepted by a student's energy field, enables them to integrate the teaching into their being over time and with dedicated practice.


IQ: February 2013

The Five Energetic Principles↓ Water

Energy Gates QigongThe cleansing principle—the downward flow of energy clears blockages and initiates the root.

↑ FireSpiralling Energy Body Qigong

The energising principle—the upward flow of energy energises and amplifies all that it touches.

↕ WoodHeaven & Earth Qigong

The expansion principle—combines the upwards and downwards flows of energy to create more internal space.

MetalBend-the-Bow Qigong

The condensing principle—periphery-to- centre and centre-to-periphery flows of energy, through the five bows, generates raw power.

EarthGods Qigong

The integration principle—the spherical, pul-sating flow of energy integrates and balances the whole mind-body-qi matrix.

Then, when you com-bine sitting and moving practices, you can build the momentum and ener-gy required to see through any goal. In the beginning, health and healing are the prime directives for everybody because with-out creating a stable and strong container for the higher energy work, you'll simply shatter your foundation when you make the jump—that's if you're lucky enough to tap into any greater energy flows in the first place.

If you tune into, focus and concentrate as you train any form, slowly and steadily you will begin to penetrate your body, access your qi and wake up your senses. Eventually, you can contact the subtle qualities of the elements themselves. Once contacted, the elements open doors to vast quantities of natural energies, and allow a merging with nature to occur directly—rather than through any mental construct. In fact, you may have experiences that defy and supersede all preconceptions.

Merging or blending with nature has always been one of the tenets of Taoism as, through this experience, you can directly perceive natural law. From a Taoist perspective, then and only then can you truly understand what goes with the flow and what pushes against it. This recognition is critical to adapting, reconfiguring and fine tuning your reality to tap into the peace inside of yourself, where the need to have or do fades and just being is enough. This ability is at the heart of what creates a harmonious life. When your insides do not resonate with your surroundings, by definition disconnection follows—the oppo-site of blending or harmonizing. By looking inside rather than outside of ourselves, we can change the state of our being and there-by reconnect to the natural world in which we live. This is just one aspect of following Old Taoism's path of transcendence.

~ Merging or blending with nature has always been one of the tenets of

Taoism as, through this experience, you can directly perceive natural law.

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All five elements contain aspects of all five principles, it's just that each element specialises in one particular aspect. Theintrinsic nature of each element lends itself to a specific energy. Likewise, each qi gong set in our system is predisposed towards one element, but can also help you develop aspects of all others. (If each qigong only developed a single aspect of training, many more sets would be required.) Names, titles and attributes really only act as signposts or indicators to help you along your journey, but they do help you step through the door.

↓ The Water ElementThe Water tradition gets its name in part from following the path of least resistance because that's what water does: it collects and descends from the sky in the form of rain, which falls upon hills and mountains, feed-ing streams and rivers that twist and wind through valleys, seeking the lowest point. Initially, through no will of its own, water

totally yields to the strong yet overpowers the weak, until eventually enough water collects in ever-voluminous flows to produce a tre- mendous force of nature. You can see examples in the greatest charging rivers, crashing waves on sea cliffs or tsunamis that rip across the land.

Naturally, Old Taoism starts with the Water Element, the clearing and cleansing ener-gy, since it removes stagnant chi and works like an earth pin or a ground wire to root and prevent energetic over-load from short circuiting your system. With the proper safety net in place and your root established, you can

begin mind-body-energy practices without the mind wondering, any stability you find giving way to anxiety, or blockages becoming energised and creating emotional frenzy. The Water Element allows you to cultivate chi in a safe and efficient manner—from the outset.

Water governs the kidneys, which gov-ern bodily fluids. The kidneys help eliminate waste by-products and regulate blood pres-sure by maintaining a delicate balance be-tween water and salt. From a Taoist perspective, your kidneys are supercharged with ancestral qi while in the womb and serve as a battery pack for your lifetime. When your batteries run out, it's lights out! The good news is that neigong practices are designed to recharge your batteries, which is why they are sometimes referred to as "longevity practices" in the East.

OpeningtheEnergyGatesofYourBodyQigongAletlesBains,SouthFrance

Venue of My Upcoming2013 Summer Retreat

© istockphoto/Eraxion


IQ: February 2013

approach is not sustainable and you can also literally fry your nerves. In the Water tradition, Fire practices are therefore only attempted after some years of tuning into and stabilising Water practices to ensure you can redress any imbalances in mind, body or qi. And, as you progress in your training, you never develop the Fire energy more than that of Water to maintain your root and stability.

The Fire Element governs the heart and nervous system. Sensible use of the Fire Element can clean out your channels, increase the circulation of blood and chi, and rein- vigorate your body. However, when too much energy overwhelms your system, you can become agitated, anxious or unsettled, which causes the heart to race. Water quenches Fire and enacts one of the most fundamental balances of life. If you want to cook rice, too much water will prevent the fire from cooking it, while too little will scortch the rice and cause the pan to dry out and crack. Neither scenario provides sustenance, so finding the balance becomes the quest for students of the Tao.

Theancientpictogramforchiisacauldronsittingonafirecookingrice,whichdenotesthebalance

betweenWaterandFiretoproducesteam(orqi).Photo courtesy of Cornell University Library

↑ The Fire ElementThe nature of fire is to rise, and rising energy invigorates the body, mind and chi. Fire survives by consuming fuel: when the fuel runs out, the fire dies. So fire will jump from one fuel source to another in effort to perpetuate its existence. Practically, the energy of Fire can therefore enliven practice, making it fun and exciting. Fire also has the power to change a solid into gas, which many ancient traditions have regarded as symbolic for transforming their insides into spirit. Like the radiating sun that allows life to flourish on our planet, Fire enlightens, warms and heats its immediate environment. These qualities make Fire practices extremely enticing, but there's a reason why you are not meant to play with fire!

While it's true that the Fire Element can help you generate abundant energy for clearing blockages, excessive Fire can cause burnout or, worse, energise any blockag-es you have not totally eliminated in body, mind or qi. The body's energy channels can become deranged, which causes the mind to run wild. You might feel invincible or able to go on much longer than normally possible but, underneath, your reserves are being exhausted as you must burn up your qi to maintain your output. Long-term, this

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IQ: February 2013

↕The Wood ElementWood, in the living form of a tree, grows by projecting roots down into the ground (in search of water) and, equally, climbing upwards in search of light (Fire energy) to create photosynthesis—the source of energy for most forms of life on Earth. In this way, the tree, and all vegetation for that matter, unite the yin, sinking energy of Water and yang, rising energy of Fire, holding the capacity to balance both. When the nut or seed germ- inates, first the root is initiated, then up comes the shoot.2

The energy of the Wood Element is all about growth, expansion, generating internal space and balance. As the tree grows roots equiv-alent to that of its branches and leaves, the roots plunge yet deeper, while the branches continually reach higher and the trunk broad-ens. Although the descending, yin energy of Water and the rising, yang energy of Fire find harmony in the Wood Element, it remains predominately yang as the guiding principles are growth and expansion.

2. So again, this points to the elements beginning with Water, where the down initiates the up. This principle comes into play on many levels of nei gong practice, as dedicated practitioners will note.

Applied to the body, the energy of Wood re-ally opens up every nook and cranny of your physicality, creating internal space for unre-stricted blood and qi flow, as well as optimal functioning of the organs and nervous sys-tem. The more you can open up your body, the more tension you can release, which in turn strengthens circulation of the life force and bodily fluids—all that nurtures your physical being.

The Wood Element governs the liver, which governs the muscles, fascia, ten-dons and ligaments. Through highly re-fined techniques that target the soft tissues of the body, you can learn how to expand the body to generate and maintain elasticity and internal space in a safe, soft and sustain-able way.

MarriageofHeaven+EarthQiGongGreekIslandofCrete

© istockphoto/Janulla


IQ: February 2013

The Metal ElementThe process of ore forming in the Earth's crust and transforming into the metals we tap into and use on a daily basis is all about densification and purification. In the veins and caverns that trap the flow of mantle, metal deposits form, collect, sink and con-dense into a variety of metal ores. In metal production, ore is crushed, metal deposits are extracted and further condensed into useable forms. The whole process, both nat-ural and manmade, involves combining and densifying mineral deposits (metals) into their pure forms.

In contrast to the Wood Element's expand-ing, yang energy, Metal is condensing with the motion of energy moving inwards. So the energy of Metal is yin by nature. When ap-plied to physical exercise, significant internal pressures are created in the body, especially through the joints, spine and organs.

Care must be taken to:

• Properly prepare the body before any Metal Element practice via prerequisite Water and Wood practices.• Over a period of time, observe the quality of Metal, and the way it feels and influences your body; once you have a clear understanding of your parameters, you can gradually increase the internal pressures in a manner to which your body can adapt—without causing strain in body, mind or qi.

All safety risks aside, the Metal Element can develop incredible physical and energetic strength, forming the essence of fa jin, the martial technique for releasing condensed, stored power in an instant to uproot and send an opponent away from you. The re-lease is created by the opposite, condensing energy. So Metal practices develop the ability to direct chi flow in the body from periphery to centre and centre to periphery through the five bows (arms, legs and spine). Metal practices are power-generation techniques at their finest, creating resiliency and core strength.

The Metal Element governs the lungs, brain and spinal cord, which is why the energy of Met-al is linked with thought, or produc-ing and refining a focused and con-centrated mind.

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BendtheBowSpinalQiGongGeneratesRawPower

Until you have properly integrated the three primary aspects of the spinal bow in Heaven + Earth, Bend the Bow offers little additional benefit with a lot of added risk!

Did you know? AlllinksintheIQ journalareactive—simplypoint+click!



IQ: February 2013

The Earth ElementThe Earth, through its gravitational pull, draws together, coheres and provides solidity to our reality. Therefore, the Earth is the inte-gration point for manifestation and, without it, there is no containment field for life as we know it. The playground we call Earth allows us to live, grow, develop and evolve.

However, there are two aspects to Earth: the crust is yin, solidifying and integrating, while the core is yang, radiating and energising. So Earth is neither yin nor yang, and instead in-tegrates the two. The Earth sits in the middle of the Chinese compass, balancing the four elements that lie in opposition around it with:

•Water—representing winter in the north;

•Fire—representing summer in the south;

•Wood—representing spring in the east; and

•Metal—representing autumn in the west.

In this way, Earth balances the cooling energy of Water with the warming energy of Fire, and the expanding energy of Wood with the condensing energy of Metal. Earth not only balances, but integrates the four elements within itself and the entire 16 nei gong into one coherent whole, as a single piece of woven fabric. The energetic movement in Earth becomes a spherical pulse from centre to periphery and periphery to centre, throughout the whole body-energy matrix; that is from the central channel to the etheric field and back. This work completes qi gener-ation and circulation.

The Earth Element governs the spleen, bones and bone marrow, controlling and develop-ing the deepest aspects of our physicality and that which lasts the longest of our manifest-ed selves after our death. The bone marrow produces: red blood cells, which carry oxygen to the tissues; and white blood cells, which support immune function (together with the spleen). So from this perspective, Earth both sustains and protects. Old Taoism regards our bones as the house of the deepest aspects of our being—namely, our karma and our essence. In the realm of manifestation, the Earth Element completes the human being.



IQ: February 2013

3. The system I teach originates from the Water tradition, described by Lao Tse in the Tao Te Ching over 2,500 years ago, which has been directly passed down from teacher to disciple in an unbroken lineage to Taoist adpet Liu Hung Chieh and from him to my teacher Bruce Frantzis.

Studying the Five ElementsEvery spring, Paul offers a Five Element Qi Gong retreat on the breathtaking Greek Island of Crete. Typically, the retreat takes place during the second week of May to take advantage of the Bank Holiday Monday in the UK.

Find out the specific subject matter and complete details by visiting:

http://www.circlewalking.com/tao-retreat/

Transformation through Study of the Five ElementsThe Five Elements shed light on the five-phase nei gong system of Energy Gates → Spiral-ling Energy Body → Heaven + Earth → Bend the Bow → Gods Qi Gong, including the basis for the learning progression and the safety precautions warranted when working with Fire and Metal. This cycle of personal development and transformation has stood the test of time, and helped mil-lions of people in all aspects of their life. The material has become the source of many spin-offs, hy-brids and, unfortunately, dilution. Ancient China (and what is now Tibet) was a melting pot of Taoist, Buddhist and Confusion thought, practice and philosophy, so most of what is available to us today is a mélange of the three. The saying is: In China, everybody wears Buddhist sandals, Taoist robes and Confusion caps! Even after all that time and all the comingling, we have been fortunate enough to receive the gift of a pure Taoist stream of teachings,3 which seems well worth pursuing consider-ing just how rare, complete and potentially beneficial the lessons can be for ourselves, our fellow beings and our planet.

We'll look at the ascending path of transcendence and practical methods for balancing your body in the March 2013 issue, available at

http://www.circlewalking.com/2848/taoist-energy-arts/

http://www.circlewalking.com/tao-retreat/

http://www.circlewalking.com/2848/taoist-energy-arts/


IQ: February 2013

I'm 63 days into a 100-Day Practice Challenge. In a 100-Day Practice Challenge, you pick one practice and repeat it daily for a hundred days. Depending on how much practice time you have, you might be practicing other things as well, but the point is to repeat the same practice day after day, noticing subtle shifts and chang-es that you would miss otherwise.

Now, it might not seem like this is different than normal practice. Often, we do the same forms, or same exercises all the time.

But there are three things you to to make the 100-Day challenge different:

• Choose a very small piece to practice• Isolate it from your other practice • Record observations about it, daily if possible

For this particular challenge, I chose to focus on connecting my arms and legs to my spine, through a spinal qigong bowing exercise. I wanted to stabilize the feeling of the spine leading the arms and legs, instead of all five parts moving independently.

Let me share some of my journal entries with you and then I'll tell you what I think they mean.

Day 1: Worked the bow, feeling each seg-ment, bottom to top in sequence, to activate each piece. Repeated sitting down, feeling a sense of release from occiput down to sac-

rum, changing focus eve-ry few bows.

I could feel the big undu-lating wave through the whole length of the spine while seated.

Finished with whole-body pump, playing with arms and legs versus the spine leading. Sometimes needed to prime with the limbs to activate spine.

For future practice: open left side occiput, unwind right forearm, internally rotate right ankle to plant right foot.

Day 3: Practiced driving into work today. Felt re-ally interesting to try to activate the lower spine

in a seated position. Played with single-hand and double at different angles. Got some good bowing going...now off to do a com-plete practice.

Day 5: Really got the right leg connected and noticed, while doing Tai Chi form work, increased sense of unification in the legs of opening and closing with tissue turning.

Also, seemed like the breathing I did during bowing practice was loosening the guts more today. Noticed the kidneys during first swing and lower back really dropping during cloud hands.

What's Your IQ?

Learning from 100 Days of Practice By Dan Kleiman


IQ: February 2013

Day 9: Noticed today that the hands really tense up, so while the whole bowing connection isn't as strong at first, if I focus on keeping the hands/wrist relaxed, the overall feeling is much better.

Also monitoring achy upper thoracic/base of neck as practice goes on. That's definitely one of the areas that needs to open up, but I end up tired and sore there each day.

Right elbow is also opening, especially around the joint capsule.

Day 14: Today, in addition to activating the bowing with more sections engaged, I'm start-ing to feel the up/down and center/periphery flows that become engaged with the bow. Not trying to make anything happen, just seems like they are move active as a result.

Day 19: Started working with arms out at 45 degrees and it feels like there are new spac-es that need to stabilize, like it was when I started straight: left side space between neck, spine, and shoulderblade. That one might need to be re-stabilized again.

The right forearm rotation feels pretty stable at this point.

Curious to see if the new arm angle changes what the spine feels like. Seems to, but it's going to take a few days to see what that actually does.

Day 23: Started focusing on the feet, going into the bubbling well on the bend and back to the heel on the open—tough to run along the line between them and organize every-thing around that movement.

Day 31: Lately been focusing on the con-nection through the legs, and evening out the bowing around the sacrum/pelvis. Definitely some rotation going on.

For the arms, there is an imbalance that is more obvious when they are out at 45 de-grees, height of the heart. Not sure what the solution is, but I'm working on letting the movement go out the arms softly.

Day 45: Been focusing on making the whole body feel as smooth and even as possible each time I practice. The basic shapes feel stable, so now I have to work on making the insides feel comfortable.

Day 50: Got some feedback from a Senior In-structor. Have to scale my movements way back and focus on more integrated practice. Frustrating, since the new level of precision is making me feel more tense when I practice.

When I look back over the entries, I notice a few patterns:

• The observations tend to move from external or more peripheral feelings (hands, wrists, forearms) to deeper, core alignments (winding in the pelvis, connections through the legs).• There are cycles of tension and relaxation—each time something new is introduced, I tended to hold more tension. When it stabilized, I could focus on relaxing into it more.

These are two surprising patterns that I'm more and more convinced are only revealed with consistent practice combined with ob-servation.

On our first approach to any exercise or inter-nal connection, there is a lot of extra noise.

Your nervous system is sorting out what it needs and what it doesn't to perform the pattern in the most efficient way.

As the sorting is smoothed out, two things are revealed: deeper internal connections and subconscious motor patterns.


IQ: February 2013

How You Get Access to Deeper LayersAs you perform an exercise like this one, the obvious layers of information are the move-ments of the arms and legs. To start out, you have to synchronize them. Once you can coordinate the movement, you become more stable, and can access deeper, more difficult movement, in this case, the movement of the spine.

At the second layer, you play with leading and following. Do the arms and legs initiate or does the spine? We want to use the spine as a driver, but you can't play with this connection until the arms, legs, and spine are linked through rhythmic practice.

Finally, you start to uncover other internal connections, like threading the joints of the legs so the spinal energy travels to the feet or whole-body flows that are activated by the spine bowing.

What I was reminded of from this practice challenge, though, was that the 3-stage pro-cess outlined above is not only unfolding developmentally. What I mean is, that every time you practice, you go back through these stages.

As you practice, the speed with which you move through the layers on any given day of practice accelerates. In other words, you can “drop in” to the deeper layers faster. I make this point because we all have a tendency to want to physically manifest deeper practice, simply because we understand that deeper practice exists conceptually. By practicing consistently in this manner, you have the real short cut to deeper practice.

What You Didn't Know You Were DoingYou'll notice in the diary that many of the observations were about alignments. When you do solo practice, your body either feels

well-aligned or out of alignment and the mis-aligned parts can either feel stuck, collapsed, twisted, strained, or otherwise damaged, or they can feel like nothing at all.

In this practice series, I started to uncover the “nothing at all” misalignments. The tension-based misalignments are easy. You feel them right now, because they hurt. But only when you start to revisit a symmetrical, repeatable movement on a consistent basis, do you have a chance at feeling things that by their very nature almost cannot be felt.

Normally, identifying and correcting these alignments is done by someone else. They can see them and you can't. But what I found in this practice process was that clues were left, and by returning again and again to the same territory, I began to pick them up.

Similarly, the energy flows that are activated by the physical movements can be hard to de-tect. In fact, in most of our neigong practice, the energy rides right along with the physical movement. In my experience with a practice like this, though, the physical movements be-

DanDemonstratestheRepulsetheMonkeyTaiChiPosture


IQ: February 2013

come so familiar, without becoming rote, that you can detect the energetic patterns more thor-oughly.

Too often, we use the mind to direct the body. That's not the way it's supposed to happen in qigong. Remember, the mind moves the chi and the chi moves the body. When you practice this way consistently, you start to feel how this three step process of mind-chi-body really works.

Pick the Right PracticeIf you decide to set out on your own 100-Day Practice Challenge, choose your subject carefully. Here are a few I would choose in the future and some I would avoid:

• Don't: I will practice Tai Chi every day• Do: What does it feel like when I practice 4 Short Forms in a row? Or 2 Long Forms in a row?• Don't: I will Stand and Dissolve• Do: Can I stabilize my feeling awareness in my lower tantien when I do standing qigong?• Don't: I will work through my basic Taoist breathing routine from belly, side, and back.• Do: Can I activate my diaphragm over 20 minutes of breathing per day?

When you choose your challenge, pick something that has a narrow focus and give yourself pa-rameters like time or number of repetitions. Then find a way to record your observations. I used a simple form attached to a spreadsheet so that I could make the daily entry without looking at past entries and getting in my own head about it. Each observation was fresh and to be completely honest, until I sat down to write this, I hadn't gone back through and really looked at all the data and patterns. Observation has its role, but don't turn it into a head game.

∞Don't look where you fall,

but where you slipped.

—African Proverb

DanKleimanhas trained under the tutelage of Master Bruce Franztis since 1998, and is a certified qigong, tai chi and bagua instructor in the Energy Arts System. Dan is also the host of Qigong Radio. Check out his latest interviews atwww.DanKleiman.com.

http://www.DanKleiman.com

www.PaulCavel.com

IQ

Thank You to:

My teacher, Taoist Lineage Holder Bruce Frantzis, who has openly taught me about the depths of nei gong; Heather Hale for editing, design + photography; Gee Loose for photography; and Elena Ray for cover artwork © istockpho-to/elenaray; and the Tao Arts School Members who made this report possible.

Health+SafetyNotice:Any mind-body-energy exercise may carry risks. Do not attempt any exercises presented in this publication if you have any physical, emotional or mental conditions that may make you susceptible to injury without first seeking the advice of your health-care professional.

©2013PaulCavelAllrightsreserved.Reprintingorsharinganyportionofthispubli-cationwithoutexpressedwrittenconsentisstrictlyprohibited.

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tao quest february_2013

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