Wow. I trained in aikido for many years when I was younger. I have also been an on and off again mindfulness mediator. Now at 81 I am learning tai chi and qi gong. This conversation is so helpful to someone like me who understands that this isn't about learning how to fight or even how to get exercise. Its about body/mind and personal transformation. You point to how these practices can serve in this. Gonna watch more of your talks.

Another goldie! "Taiji is the physical expression of the mind" ❤️

Thank you for doing these Damo- as a Adam Mizner student (online primarily but clinic's too) the thing I love so much about your videos is you make clear in less then an hour what I still don't understand often when Adam teaches it. Not a slight to Adam- his teaching is excellent- but so often I find I just don't understand what he means- then I listen to one of your talks (like here and on Song and Ting etc) and after going through your Nei Gong course- sooo much of what Adam's been saying is suddenly clear. Thank you for that! I do believe Adam would agree with your points here- very clear and insightful.

25 years I practice tai chi and never before I understood all the deep meaning like you explain..Thank you

Thank you so much, Damo. I really needed this. Answers questions I have had for years. You a re a blessing. Can't thank you enough for your clarity and willingness to share your experience and wisdom.

Beautiful talk Damo! As a long term student of Ch'ing Man Cheng's form this really helped me to understand the quality of Song as expansive space and an emptiness in the mind that then get's expressed through the expansion of the body. Your explanation of Yang as structure and Yin as the internal sense of release is also very useful! I have been working through the first year of classes in your academy and even as someone with a lot of background (I have worked with many teachers over the years in both Tai chi, Qi Gong and Nei Gong as well as a little Ba Gua)I have found your perspective incredibly useful and refreshing. I particularly find your openness, humility, deep learning (!!!!), pragmatism and respect for the many different teachings and teachers that you have worked with to be unusual in these arts and highly refreshing! Thank you from the bottom of my heart. I hope that I will be able to meet you some time in person - I missed the class in the States as it was already full by the time I saw it advertised! I feel blessed to be able to absorb so much from you by paying careful attention to the classes in the academy!

I enjoy your “talks”. There is so much to take in from thousands of years. Thank you.

Thank you. I found this enlightening and helpful in recognizing the miniscule mind/body connection I have experienced within myself.

Wow. Thank you Damo for another extraordinarily clear insightful talk.

Thank you. The image of the mind moving into the innumerable crevices of the body, the body absorbing the mind, and the importance of this interaction in Zhan Zhuang practice is incredibly helpful. Your distinction/clarification involving Song and expansion rather than collapse of the structure is very timely for me. Having an English language speaker share their experience and understanding, based upon decades of personal development is a deep blessing. Thank you sir.

Thank you. You hit the nail on the head for me. I am at the stage or have been for 2 years now where i am feeling this internally and the confirmation helps as i am the only person in my city who studies Taiji . ✌️☯️ i began meditation practices a couple years before i started studying Sun Style. Your videos are an absolute blessing. Thanks again.

Thank you very much for this. It's helped me to understand and clarify what's happening in my body. Much appreciated.

I like your distinguishing between creating sung and relaxing, internal and external, very clear and useful. A lot of thought food in this discussion!

Thank you. Really appreciate your sharing of insights from so many years of devoted studies. Wonderful that the essence is communicated with such clarity.

Brilliant 👏🏼 love this explanation Damo! You simplify, and make more accessible, complex/abstract concepts of the internal martial arts space. 👏🏼🤙🏼Thank you for sharing 🙏🏼

I love these lectures. They’re very helpful.

I've never been able to listen to a podcast in my life. Not until I came across this one. I am fascinated!

Always enjoy and value your earnest insight(s) of the training - thank you :)

As Damo mentions, the quality of Peng can be exhibited through a range of physical body configurations (ironic considering how many chase it for decades without getting it). However, in my experience, the sufficient mental experience for Peng through pretty much all largely hydraulics biased movement methods is the perception of (empty) space, as self.

Thank you teacher. Your discussion is very clear and very accurate. I practice Master Huang’s Yang system through one of Patrick Kelly’s student. It took me almost 14 years of exposure to these concepts and the last 2.5 years of consistent practice to begin to understand the Release and Expansion. Ironically, I started to comprehend during the Pandemic and have not physically seen my teacher since early 2020. I learned a lot from several You Tube teachers like you, Guillem Bernardo, Adam Mizner. Now, I understand a lot better what my teacher was trying to teach me when we were in class.

Hey Damo, Thanks so much for this talk. Definitely needed to hear it

I find your talks valuable. Thank you!

you are never talking too much! I akways love you stuff

Fantastic talk! So helpful and insightful and obviously derived from deep experince. Thanks a lot for it!

Thanks Damo, really enjoyed this talk. Made a lot of sense. As a long time meditator of an Indian source I recently started Chen style and this info will I’m sure help me to soak the body.😊

Thank you , Damo, we like to hear what you have to say about these subjects.

Excellent 'talk' about his take on Tai Chi - as an "internal" practice ! Makes sense to me!

Thank you for sharing … what you presented here is a gold mine of knowledge and experience and wisdom 👍

The highest form of expression of internal movement arts (Taijiquan included) that is experienced so far is deep surrender, such that the illusion of the doer disappears away and one experiences movement as literally a movement within the fabric of consciousness (shakti) and the expression of the intelligence of that pure consciousnessness fabric (Shiva, if you will).

This is enormously helpful!! I need to work with this. Bless you for making these videos. ❤️

This talk is so entlightening,mind as a fluid filling the body.. amazing. Jeep on sharing♥️

Fantastic talk and perfect for where I am in my practice. Thank you:)

Great video Damo. IMHO, the infinite ways we interpret Tai Chi Chaun after the basics is very simple, regardless of style - we are all unique. No human is put together the same as anyone else nor is the mind the same. Unique and infinite in it’s own ways. I see this all the time with my students and patients - I work in healthcare. Without a holistic approach to a human we are missing essential detail. So when I teach a beginner it’s from that basis, this is the style, these are the movements - but you are unique so it’s my job to orientate you to the 13 principles. How you then realise them is up to you. The Mind soaks the body. I really like this. The obvious paradox is that we are one, so mind body connection is false but I get the point - we are so separated at this time of humanity, so traumatised by our culture that we have to re train our self to realise wholeness. I would enjoy training with you - thanks again. Wu Style Tai Chi Chuan

Thanks for the gifting of golden nuggets, to take on my journey, Damo

Cheers Damo, thank you so much for that....incredible explananation that will help connect my decades long meditation practice to my fairly new Tai Chi practice

Excellent information. Thank you.😊 It helps me to understand the written works.

Thank you. This is exactly what I have felt . Great to hear confirmation. 😉

Brilliant lecture🙏🏻 This really has helped me.

Gold! "Song is based in the mind" and "techniques are performed in the mind, not the body".

Very nice, Damo. Thank you.

Yes it might be a bit too long before we arrive at the main point of the subject, but the different things Damo has been talking about are interesting and useful for the practicioners to understand Taiji quan, even if they don't spot directly to the subject. I find Damo always very clear, and several times it has been very useful to me to listen to his podcast. Even if I already knew some stuff he was speaking about, listening to him putting them into clear words helped me to understand in a more intellectual and conceptual way (which is very interesting and useful, especially for the martial art nerd and teacher that I am).

Thank you, great talk & extremely beneficial.

Thank you Damo, really helpful because of the practice I'm currently trying to expand and dedicate too. Hearing about the internal mechanism and understanding the importance of the mind and the standing, song and expansion gives me some idea as to how to further the practice. Thank you /\

Thank you Damo.

I very much appreciate your comments and insight as I travel down my path. Thank you.

25:00 This is very interesting and enlightening indeed. I keep noticing correspondences between neigong and kriya yoga. This building awareness of the structure and what is going on in one's energy body is what is called interiorization which is a translation of the first stage of meditation: pratyahara.

Beautifully explained... Really appreciate it....

Thanks for this talk! Helped me a lot 🙂

Brilliant 👏 Thank you Damien

Thank you Dermott I really appreciate the fluid mind Chi and yin Yang. Structure Yang Release Yin explanation Timely Amazing explanation Thank You! Much validation And a new focus for my mind body connection First time listening Will follow 🙏🏼

Valuable info, thanks! 🙋🏽‍♂️

This is really good. Thank you.

thanks sir, very instructive.

Thank you for sharing your knowledge much gratitude 🙏

Thank you for the video,myself & my fellow practitioners believe that verbal interaction is absolutely necessary ,yes some people think its boring but one won't progress unless these transmissions are discussed, its funny because when I was with my teacher his class was in a center where they had a bar & we actually said that we often learned more I'm there after the lesson 😋

Love your stuff

You certainly have a knack for explaining this stuff. You basically described my experience of studying sung better than I could have done myself. I was taught this way from 1996, but my teacher was never big on words, haha. So thanks for the validation. I will now double down on that aspect of my practice. I understood your explanations up to the point of yin/yang separation, but I know enough to be able to explore your description somewhat. I appreciate it. Do you ever get out to Northern California to teach? Unfortunately, I'm one of those dense people that need to be spoon fed; and that rarely happens. But once I get it, I'm tenacious with it. I was taught a chi gong or nei gong that I was told produces a lot of chi and jing. But I know I get a huge amount of vitality from it. That helps the water like mind soak the dry sponge like body a lot to make it juicy, pliable and packed feeling (engorged or whatever). Thanks again. Scott

I think thats the most important thing i have learn about taijiquan. Now I know i am in the right direction. Thank you!

I find this Really helpful thank you 🙏

True and brilliant information right here. Thank you so much! Please! Next about Bagua! :) Peace!

Good stuff - especially that the internal body mechanics remain just the body until you start working the way you describe (or similar versions :) - I think this is missed by a lot of experienced practitioners - just hosted a good teacher last weekend (Bret Hall, CMC lineage) who works this way, so was nice to hear your version of it this week too to reinforce those points.

For me taiji has been a good deal to get in touch with my inner world; the body has guided me inside. The static meditation has come after 15 years of this practice, it wasn't possibile at the very beginning. Isn't the intelligence of the body the best master to approach the process of awakening? 🤔 Thank you again for your generosity 🙏 you're a light ✨

Thank a lot 🙏 ขอบคุณ​มากๆครับ

Great video and explanation :) It is indeed confirmatory. I wonder, how often and for how long do you recommend your students to practice zhan zhuang? I've seen people recommend everything from 5 minutes to 2 hours a day.

Really excellent explaination

Sinking the chi from the way I understand it now is kind of what happens when we stop or slow down our thinking. When we are in our head having allot of thoughts it seems to stay up and this creates issues with our center of balance and our ability to anchor ourselves into emptiness. All kinds of emotions usually also bring up our center of balance.. It is the 'root' that we want to establish for greater alignment.

Thanks for this Damo, very helpful. Would I be correct in saying that you still want to have Yang Chengfu’s essential points set up such as dropping the pelvis to allow the mind to soak through the body more efficiently

Hi Damo. Enjoyed the video. While I consider myself a low-level practitioner, I found that one of the biggest obstacles to finally grasping "release" was the emotional states that needed to be embraced and prioritized. By that I mean concepts of generosity and lessening self-importance. For me, this changed the actual objective of the release and allowed the "crossing over". Otherwise the release was what I would describe as "one-sided" or incomplete I was wondering what your thoughts were on this

Great discussion! All forms of Song that produces the right results I've seen, in the past 15 years, fall under the class of phenomena we refer to as "pandiculating" in modern terms. So therefore, these days I refer to Song as "mindfully directed pandiculation (tm) of a particular kind", which is as literal as one could get, in modern terms.

good afternoon sir! in my opinion this watching the body frees the mind from watching the language, which is actually a phantasy, on the other hand is the body "reality" . this helps the Self/consciousness/qi, to get identified only with the body and feel the qualities of the Self, which are joy, peace, creativity/expansion etc. that s the way i see it. thank you for sharing your opinion on the topic. actually in the kathopanishad teaches Lord Death Nachiketa that one of the first steps to spirituality is that the mind watches the body/senses. it s very interesting that you teach somehow the same. thank you again. have a good evening and a very good tommorow.

Thanks - useful

Hey so of all the people you’ve met and worked with, who would you say was the most highly developed internally?

Hi Damo, why not begin the training process with letting go of intention? I study under one of your students and we began by opening the body physically and I am basically still at the stage of opening while attempting to sink the mind in the body. After listening to your most recent videos and practicing today, it seems I have been consciously, albeit unknowingly, training my intention into my tissues the past three years. Am I just densifying my intentions into my body under the illusion of creating a qigong/neigong/taiji etc body? Is this why some of the intention qualities have only seemed to intensify?

Hello is mindfulness leads to release, so just being aware of the body the body will release naturally?

Whaouuuuuhhh !!!! 🤩🤩🤩 Keep talking !!!!!!

Thanks Damo great reminder. Do you believe that most of the eventual expansion that we're trying to attain, using preferred method, is by focussing on filling the Huang? Not sureif thats the correct spelling of Huang and what the chinese character is but you mentioned previously about 'filling the Huang' is critical to forming the dantien. Can the Huang only be filled with standing postures or are there other methods that you can use in addition to static standing postures?

well said, "the mind (water) fills the body (sponge), could also say "the mind permeates the body like ink in a blotting paper". The image of the sponge pressed and dried expandinggly when filled with water, is fascinated. When applied in taichi, magic starts.

Thank you

Thank you ta

I think the main reason people get offended when someone speaks of techniques that they don’t use or are the opposite of what they are doing is because it can be so hard to find a correct system or even have confidence in the one you are that if someone says something different it feels like the practitioner might be on the wrong path or practicing the wrong way. From my personal experience this can be very hard to deal with but in the end we must drop all of our preconceived notions and be ready to accept everything we have been doing or will be doing might be wrong. If we try to keep more of a scientist attitude when it comes to these arts then getting stuff “wrong” is not a problem but a closer step to a good working thesis.

Haha thank you for that video today i found i can do this my energy is sinking in lower dantian in pelvis thanks i can relax

not trying to be a keyboard warrior here :) but I think to kick start the internal expansion to open the body one needs to sink the joints first (while keeping the structure and not collapsing), so one can get the pulse from the ground to do the expansion. Later it seems that the internal expansion can be triggered by thought alone and the big sinking action is not required anymore.

🙏

Damo, how important are building the leg muscles such as through squats or leg pumping motions for the health and neigong benefit? I have heard some teachers say.muscle doesn't matter for energy and health but others say doesn't matter that they only relax

is starting with Nei Gong part of the solution to getting this stuff correct? easier to learn Song if you start with less physically intricate movements in Nei Gong? then move to your taiji course after?

mind body interface - a learned reflex - inward and outward opening - I like this vid. I truly hope to train with skillful people - I only released or fajinned a person twice in my life - PDynam in Antwerp

Have you ever learned or been exposed to Floating Sphere Taiji? My instructor passed away and I am missing the last bit of the form… unfortunately we have no connections left with the lineage

If yi is not there to spread throughout body Body doesn’t open up If body doesn’t open up Body can’t transform Our life, is constant suppression of emotions as well as triggering negative emotions as well as body movements or wrong repeated movements. Having mind set like Yi wondering around all body part then try to express any movements in stress full situations and body feels great , that positive input into brain with associated with events/stress etc, this in return makes brain less think about the situation as big deal. Mechanical movements itself like external methods can’t release this, the mind has to wonder around possibilities of movements and stay there for 1-2 secs if feeling extremely good. That position has associated memories to brain that Certain event suppressed the body. Freedom through movements originated from Mind is the way to freedom in body/mind. External methods like trying to move in one position to other position won’t release any mechanical and emotional problems

Patrick kelly. I did tai chi with him when I lived in Shanghai!

My First Exposure To your Page 👏👏👏New subscriber TY stay 💪🏼

Thanks for talking, it is easy to find movements on KZfaq but verbal expression is not as easily accessible.

And yes the correct term for Damos “stretchy bits” is fascia

I notice that Adam Mizner gets almost all of his mind techniques from Buddhism. Can you speak about the role of Buddhism in your teaching? can you get to the same level as Adam using just Daoist mind concepts? Or is the mental aspect essentially drag and drop replaceable as long as you have the physical exercises down? haha

the best way to know how to do Tai Chi is first study the Tao once you do this the understanding of Tai Chi , Chi Gong is realized

Is this filling emptiness something that can occur in a part of the body? Or is it only a whole body phenomena? Thank you.

Perhaps you can do a talk on the mind in Bagua?

Isn't stability more of a Yin quality, and the releasing capacity more of a Yang quality ? Yin is a matter of gathering all the body, and finding, going to the center. Whereas Yang is the force that expand from the center to the extremities. Am I wrong ?

Aggree with a lot of this, what's your take on the role of Wu Ji in relation to this release as you call it?

So basically are you saying the instructions in TCC just don't have solid references tghat are the same across the board?

I don't think you need to comment so much on people who disagree with your ideas, how much you talk, or even infighting so much. Youre wasting time with that. Just focus in your ideas and how you want to express them.