Introduction
What Is Cosmic Healing Chi Kung?

COSMIC HEALING CHI KUNG is an important branch of Universal Tao, a system of Taoist practices for cultivating the body, the Chi, and the spirit. Chi means “energy” or “life force”; kung means “work.” Cosmic Healing Chi Kung is the cultivation of the ability to conduct Chi for the purposes of healing. We call this practice “Cosmic Healing” because we ultimately learn to use the forces of nature, human will, and cosmic particles to transform negativity stored in the body. This discipline can benefit anyone interested in forms of healing that are complementary to Western medicine, either for themselves or as a practitioner; any person who desires a higher level of awareness of the human potential; and any person who wants to heal a physical disorder.

Human beings exist because of the unique combination of the forces that are around and within us. The two main forces are electricity and magnetism. Bio-electro magnetism is the Western term for “life force,” or what Taoists refer to as Chi. Bio signifies life, electro refers to the universal energies (yang) of the stars and planets, and the magnetism refers to the earth energies (yin) or gravitational force present on all planets and stars. Bio-electro magnetism, or Chi, pervades all of heaven, earth, and nature. For the past five thousand years, practitioners of Cosmic Healing Chi Kung have used time-tested methods to tap into these unlimited reservoirs of Chi, greatly expanding the amount of healing energy available to them.

Human beings contain two types of Chi: Prenatal Chi, which combines Chi and Ching (sexual energy), is inherited from the parents and is visible as innate vitality, and Postnatal Chi, which is the life force an individual cultivates in his or her lifetime and is visible as the light shining behind personality and self-awareness. To build their Postnatal Chi, humans normally access bio-electro-magnetic energy through food and air. Plants take the universal energies of the sun and the magnetic energies of the earth and digest and transform them, thereby making these energies available to all living beings. Rather than connecting to Universal Chi only after it is processed through plants, however, Taoist practitioners of Cosmic Healing Chi Kung go directly to the source of this primordial energy. As we align ourselves with cosmic forces, we become a conduit through which we can absorb and digest these energies through the body, mind, and spirit, establishing a direct connection with the universe. Through Chi Kung and meditation, we are then able to direct this energy of the universe precisely.

Universal Tao views human beings as lamps filled with oil. Many people burn this fuel at very high intensity, without ever taking the time to replenish the oil in the lamp. Alcohol, drugs, tobacco, and promiscuity all quicken the depletion of this fuel. The exercises of Universal Tao strive to refuel the energy within. The Taoist recognizes that human beings have a limited capacity for Chi. However, if we are able to connect with the sources of Chi within the universe, we gain an infinite capacity for Chi, and we constantly fill ourselves, within the limitations of our human nature, with the unlimited abundance of energy around us.

According to Taoist belief, the root of most physical ailments is stuck or stagnating Chi. Practitioners of Cosmic Healing Chi Kung clear these Chi blockages by connecting to earth and universal forces and conducting the stronger, cleaner, more positive energy they provide into the body to move the negative or blocked Chi.

Through their internal quest, the Taoists discovered a doorway to the universe. The more readily we can conduct our internal energy, the more we are capable of conducting the forces of energy around us.

Human beings have amazing potential and capabilities. We are unique creatures in the way we use our minds and hands. Look at the world around us: the skyscrapers, the architecture, the technology, and the myriad creations of man. All have come about through the combination of the mind with the hands. In the Universal Tao practice, we use the mind and the hands, through Chi Kung, to connect to the forces of the universe. We use the mind to project a pattern of energy into the universe, to connect to the force, and to bring this energy back into the body. With the mind and the hands, each of us can journey into the boundless energy of the universe.

Cosmic Healing Chi Kung works very well with Chi Nei Tsang (internal organ Chi massage), another Universal Tao practice. Cosmic Healing Chi Kung, Chi Nei Tsang, and all the other Universal Tao practices play a unique role in working to heal the physical and subtle bodies. When you combine these practices in synergy, they allow you to perform many healing tasks.

 

Teachers as Students

An important part of Cosmic Healing Chi Kung is the cultivation of healing skill to share with the community. True to the Tao, a student of Cosmic Healing Chi Kung begins by learning about the self and facilitating change within. Once the self has been cultivated to a high degree, the student may easily share his or her knowledge with others, becoming in turn the teacher. Thus, in this book the term “student” may refer to either the Chi Kung practitioner or the receiver of Chi Kung. Ultimately, we are all potential students and teachers at any given time.

Self-Preparation
How to Feel and Conduct Chi

Mastering Chi

One of the most basic foundations of Universal Tao is mastery of Chi. If you cannot control Chi, you cannot practice Cosmic Healing Chi Kung. In Universal Tao, there are five stages to learning to master Chi. Once you have succeeded in one stage, you may move on to the next.

By far, the easiest way to learn these five steps is to train under the supervision of a Universal Tao Certified Instructor. At the time of this book’s publication, there are over two thousand certified instructors around the world. Go to www.universal-tao.com and click on the instructor directory to find a qualified instructor near you.

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This book alone may help to bring you, the reader, a greater understanding of the principles of this particular form of Chi Kung. However, as has been the case for over five thousand years, the true way of Taoist teaching is through oral transmission. For a complete learning experience, both teacher and text are recommended.

Step 1: Conserve Chi
Our first goal is to learn to conserve our Chi. There are any number of metaphors you can use to visualize this concept: For example, when a battery is totally drained, it is harder to charge; in the same manner, when you are drained of energy, it is harder to regain energy. As another example, you have to have money to make money; in the same manner, you have to have Chi to make Chi.

To have more Chi, we need to maintain control of the gates through which energy normally leaks out and unwittingly drains our life force. We leak energy:

• through our reproductive system
• through negative emotions
• through constantly turning our senses outward

Without knowing how to conserve the Chi that we already have, what is the point of acquiring more?

Step 2: Balance Chi
We next must learn to balance our Chi; that is, we seek to keep a smooth and balanced flow of energy moving throughout the whole body. If our energy is imbalanced, we may have too much energy in some places and not enough in others; we may also be too yang or too yin. We may have excess or deficient heat, cold, damp, or dryness. This imbalanced energy tends to make us go to extremes.

Step 3: Transform Chi
Next we learn to transform our Chi into more beneficial energies. For example, through the Taoist Sexual Chi Kung practices taught in the Universal Tao system, we can transform sexual energy into basic life-force Chi. Through other practices (such as the Inner Smile and the Six Healing Sounds), we learn to transform negative emotional Chi into positive virtuous Chi. Thus Chi is not only the foundation of our health but also the basis of spiritual development.

Step 4: Increase Chi
When we have completed the first three phases of mastering Chi, we then learn to increase it by tapping into the vastness of Universal Chi. It is very important to master the stages of conservation, balance, and transformation before we emphasize increasing our Chi. Otherwise we may waste the energy we bring in, or we may inadvertently amplify the imbalanced or negative energies that we have not yet learned to bring under control.

Step 5: Project Chi
Finally, we learn to extend our mind to tap into the Universal Chi and project that energy to heal our body, mind, and spirit and to heal other people. The practice of Cosmic Healing Chi Kung sensitizes your hands to the feeling and movement of Chi; it uses the mind-eye-heart power to absorb Universal Chi into the palm and crown and to send it out through the hands and beyond, so that you can help restore balance in others without touching them or draining Chi from yourself. (This may sound fantastic, but recent researchers in Chinese Chi Kung hospitals have measured the energies emitted by Chi Kung masters and found them to be of different varieties and frequencies. This research has been corroborated by experiments in the United States at such places as the Menninger Institute.)

Mind, Eye, and Heart Power

The opening of the mind, eyes, and heart and the use of intention is vital for further activating and increasing your Chi. In Taoism we achieve this by cultivating our Yi (pronounced “yee”). Yi leads and guides Chi. With our mind we control thought patterns. With our eyes we control the senses of sight, hearing, smell, and taste. With our heart we control all our organs and their related emotions: the kindness/anger of the liver, the joy/impatience of the heart, the openness/worry of the spleen, the courage/sadness of the lungs, and the gentleness/fear of the kidneys. Yi controls all these things. It is mind-eye-heart power melded with our intention.

Every excellent achievement in our lives depends upon the quality and efficient operation of our Yi. Combining the awareness of the mind, eyes, heart, and intention into one creates a rich and rare alchemical mixture. The power of Yi is the magical catalyst that assures energetic results.

When you have control of Yi, you are inwardly aware of your mind, senses, and heart; you are outwardly aware of the universal energy. Now you are capable of receiving the abundantly available healing power of the universe; you can tune into everything, inwardly and outwardly in all directions. This is what we are here for: to heal and become whole again. We have higher goals to reach. The foundation for reaching our goals is a strong and healthy body.

Cosmic Healing Chi Kung is merely an extension of the universe within yourself. With your Yi, you draw the universe in through your palms, skin, heart, and crown, absorb its power, condense it, transform it, and use it for the benefit of all.

To learn to activate and control Yi, you must master the foundational practices of the Universal Tao system.

The Foundations of Universal Tao

A practitioner’s level of skill in Cosmic Healing Chi Kung will be based upon his or her mastery of the Universal Tao system as a whole. One can easily learn the simple movements of Cosmic Healing Chi Kung without doing any other Universal Tao practices. However, if one truly wishes to master the art of Cosmic Healing Chi Kung, it is important to have a firm foundation in the basic Universal Tao practices.

To attain skill in Cosmic Healing Chi Kung, one should know and practice the Universal Tao basic meditations: Cosmic Inner Smile, Six Healing Sounds, Microcosmic Orbit, Iron Shirt Chi Kung, and Healing Love. Most of these practices, being integral to the exercise of Cosmic Healing Chi Kung, are described in this book. Beyond this basic level, the Universal Tao System offers many other intermediate and advanced Chi Kung practices and meditations. The further one advances, the greater one’s mastery of Chi. Your increasing level of skill in the Universal Tao system will reflect immediately in your Cosmic Healing Chi Kung practice. Furthermore, you will discover that you can incorporate many of your Universal Tao practices directly into your practice of Cosmic Healing Chi Kung.

Once you have learned the basic meditations of Universal Tao, you can begin the unique preparatory practice for Cosmic Healing Chi Kung. The preparatory practice consists of a few parts; work through each part at your own pace and eventually join them together as a whole. Always start with Warm Up the Stove at the abdomen and direct the fire down to the sexual center to transform the sexual energy. Next practice Cosmic Inner Smile, followed by Bone Breathing, Marrow Washing, and Microcosmic Orbit.

Warm Up the Stove
This exercise teaches you to activate the Chi of your Lower Tan Tien, a reservoir of energy in the lower abdomen. (See chapter 2 for more information about the Tan Tiens.) It also allows you to transform potent sexual energy to Chi.

1. Sit on the edge of a chair with your hands clasped together and your eyes closed.

2. Begin “bellows breathing,” moving your abdomen in and out quickly. Emphasize the exhalation by breathing out forcefully. Take eighteen to thirty-six breaths in this manner. Then rest for a moment, covering your navel and feeling nice and warm.

3. Begin “inner laughing,” as if you were attempting to contain laughter, so that you feel your abdomen vibrate on the inside. Practice this for a few minutes, allowing the movement of your inner laughter to grow stronger.

4. Rest now, and use the mind-eye-heart power to gather Chi (now felt as a warmth behind the navel) into the Lower Tan Tien. Picture the Tan Tien as a stove with burning fire behind your navel. Feel nice and warm.

5. Once the Tan Tien is warm, smile down toward it and the sexual organs, and feel the warm or fiery Chi flow from the navel area to the sexual organs. Women should bring the Chi down to the uterus, and men should bring the Chi down to the testicles. Feel the Chi as sun shining on the water; the rays of the sun purify the water until it becomes rising steam. This transforms sexual energy into Chi, and this Chi rises up the spine into the brain, helping to activate the crown and mid-eyebrow energy centers.

6. Focus your awareness in the sacrum. At the very tip of the sacrum is a hole, called the sacral hiatus, in the coccyx. Breathe into this hole until you feel some activity—perhaps a tingling, numbness, or pulsing—there. Activating this point will generate suction. Feel the suction force pulling Chi through the sacral hiatus into the body; breathe into it until you feel it become activated. When the sacrum is activated, you will feel the suction easily, as well as breathing in the cranium and mideyebrow. Keep gently smiling and softly breathing into the Lower Tan Tien and feeling the suction into the abdomen from the sacrum. Focus 95 percent of your awareness in the Lower Tan Tien and 5 percent in the sacrum, the crown, and the mideyebrow. Be aware of the Lower Tan Tien breathing and observe internally the pulsing and breathing in the sacrum, the mideyebrow, and the crown. Breath in this manner thirty-six times.

Microcosmic Orbit
I began my practice of Chi Kung when I was a child. After many years of practice with many Chi Kung forms, I started to forget the first form, so I learned it again. One day when I tried to practice and review all the forms that I had learned, I couldn’t remember many of them. I sat down and thought, “I only have two hands, two legs, and one head. Why are there so many forms to remember?” I said to myself that there must be one main thing that they all have in common. I started to search, and I found out that the most important thing is feeling the Chi within us, and being able to increase, transform, take in, and stay in touch with the universal, cosmic, nature, and earth forces.

Many people, including some Chi Kung masters, have come to me and said that they have been practicing Chi Kung for years but they don’t feel any energy. They think that they must be performing their Chi Kung incorrectly. I tell them that the hand movements of the Chi Kung forms are nothing by themselves. There are hundreds of different Chi Kung forms in China. You could spend seventy lifetimes just learning the hand movements. But if you do not also practice meditation, your Chi Kung suffers.

The practice of Microcosmic Orbit meditation will help you to feel Chi more easily inside, outside, and around the body. It awakens, circulates, and directs Chi through two important energy routes in the body: the Governor Channel, which ascends from the base of the spine up to the head, and the Functional Channel, which runs from the tip of the tongue down the middle of the torso to the perineum. Microcosmic Orbit also strengthens Original Chi and teaches you the basics of circulating Chi. It allows the palms, the soles of the feet, the mideyebrow point, and the crown to open. These specific locations are the major points where energy can be absorbed, condensed, and transformed into fresh new life force. Dedicated practice of this ancient esoteric method eliminates stress and nervous tension, energizes the internal organs, restores health to damaged tissue, and builds a strong sense of personal well-being.

Microcosmic Orbit meditation is the foundation of Cosmic Healing Chi Kung. Your Chi Kung practice is dependent upon the quality of your meditations and your ability to perfect the Microcosmic Orbit. In order to master Cosmic Healing Chi Kung, you must practice this meditation daily.

1. Focus on the Lower Tan Tien (the area where the Original Chi is stored, between the navel, kidneys, and sexual organs). Feel the pulsing in this area, and observe whether this area feels tense or relaxed, cool or warm, expansive or contracting. Notice any sensations of Chi: tingling, heat, expansiveness, pulsations, electric or magnetic sensations. Allow these to grow and expand. Let the Chi of the Lower Tan Tien flow out to the navel.

2. Use your mind-eye-heart power (Yi) to spiral the Chi in the navel point, guiding and moving it. Let the energy flow down to the sexual center (the ovaries for women, or the testicles for men).

3. Move the energy from the sexual center to the perineum and then down to the soles of the feet.

4. Draw the energy up from the soles of the feet to the perineum and then to the sacrum.

5. Draw the energy up from the sacrum to the Door of Life (the point in the spine opposite the navel).

6. Draw the energy up to the mid-spine point (the T-11 vertebra).

7. Draw the energy up to the base of the skull (also known as the Jade Pillow).

8. Draw the energy up to the crown.

9. Move the energy down from the crown to the mid-eyebrow point.

10. Touch the tip of your tongue to your upper palate; press and release a few times. Then lightly touch the palate with the tongue and leave it there, sensing the electric or tingling feeling in the tip of the tongue. Move the energy down from the mid-eyebrow to where the tip of your tongue and the palate meet.

11. Move the energy down from the palate through your tongue to the throat center.

12. Move the energy down from the throat to the heart center.

13. Bring the energy down from the heart to the solar plexus. Feel a small sun shining out.

14. Bring the energy back down to the navel.

15. Continue to circulate your energy through this sequence of points, making at least nine cycles. Once the pathways are open, you can let your energy flow continuously like a river, without needing to stop at each point.

16. When you are ready to conclude the exercise, collect the energy at your navel.

Men: Cover your navel with both palms, left hand over right. Collect and mentally spiral the energy outward from the navel thirty-six times clockwise and then inward twenty-four times counterclockwise.

Women: Cover your navel with both palms, right hand over left. Collect and mentally spiral the energy outward from the navel thirty-six times counterclockwise and then inward twenty-four times clockwise.

© Mantak Chia, 2004

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

A Student of several Taoist masters, Mantak Chia developed the Universal Tao System in 1979 and has taught tens of thousands of students from all over the world. He tours the United States annually, giving workshops and lectures. He is the director of the Universal Tao Center located at the Tao Garden Health Resort and Training Center in northern Thailand and is the author of nineteen books, including the bestselling The Multiorgasmic Man.