Hi all,

My friend and I are starting up a Chi Gung class here in the Bay Area (California), that will focus on the set known as Opening the Energy Gates of Your Body as taught by BK Frantzis.

Anybody here worked with it before? Any thoughts on it? I've spent quite some time on it and found it to be quite useful on different levels. But particularly as a shortcut to power training for martial arts.

Take care,

Jess O

I got the book a few months ago. I've just been belly breathing since. Maybe sometime i'll do it as a warmup. What benefits or changes have you noticed using it? I'm particularly interested in it as a shortcut to power training for martial arts.

Start there the rest will happen naturally. Apply to work first then rest after. Let go of the concept of power seek coordination and harmony, power follows like musical crecsendos.

I've just started this a few days ago. I ordered the matching DVD to go with it as seeing him give such extremely detailed pointers helped me understand the book instructions better.

I'm surprised at how difficult the Standing and Dissolving is for me. I can only last five minutes standing then I switch to sitting. And I never would've guessed I was such an uptight, anal retentive person until I started. I'm so uptight everywhere it feels like my muscles are frozen solid.

I get the depressed feeling it may be years before I figure out how to dissolve to water...let alone air.

make sure your knees aren't locked when you do the standing. They should be relaxed and open

Glad you guys are liking the book.

Agreed that the standing and dissolving is harder than it looks. But over a few months it gets easier, watch out though it can be addictive!

Relax each part one at a time. I think of it as a way to get to know yourself a bit better. You'll also start to notice your mind chattering, but that's another story. Let go of tension wherever you find it, that's the main point of dissolving.

The next stage is the simple Cloud Hands movement. You can use the one in the book, or from your own Tai Chi form, either way. The point is to combine the Dissolving work with the simple movement. This creates a whole new level of difficulty. It's amazing how fast we get sidetracked from something as simple as feeling inside ourselves! Trippy how our lives are so geared toward mental activity that our basic physical body becomes so distant to our experience.

Again, over time it becomes much easier.

My feeling is that by consciously dissolving and letting go of hardness, it becomes unconscious. So eventually you let go of stuff before it even gets stuck. I've experienced this a small amount in my life. It becomes your first line of defense against habitual tension and clenching, etc. You tend to notice more how you feel inside, which is a good thing.

Kumar teaches in a very detailed manner. You'll see in the DVD that he goes into pretty absurd levels of detail. At first it's too much. But over time you can spend a while with each alignment or requirement and they become more useful.

It's easy to get stuck in a sense of it being too hard though. Just take it easy, and spend a few minutes a day on it, is my advice.

-Jess O

The martial aspects of Opening the Energy Gates can be quite fruitful.

On one level, combining nei gung principles with the various exercises just plain increases your ability to concentrate. So if you can keep your attention on breathing while at the same time standing or moving, that in itself can help strengthen your concentration. The more complex it gets the more you train your mind to stay present.

This in itself is a huge part of the Internal approach to fighting. Under the stress of full contact fighting, if you can stay 1% more awake than the other guy, it's a big advantage. So by training that during nei gung on your own, you are creating the ability to increase your mind's strength under pressure. Of course when the punch lands on your face, it gets a LOT harder! And at first you tend to lose while attempting to do this. But again, over time it really builds on itself.

Another level is utilizing the Dissolving work while standing, moving and then fighting. It's very very hard to do at first. Keeping the flow of releasing tension going while you move fast means that it must be programmed in on automatic. If you have to concentrate on the dissolving during a match, you will get clobbered.

However, the irony is that by trying this stuff in sparring, you'll actually vastly increase your ability to do it solo. Like swimming in the deep end, it's scary and you might drown. But if you don't, the shallow, mellow end of the pool gets way easier to deal with.

That's why I like to say that martial arts is a shortcut to Chi Gung. If you can apply this stuff while fighting, doing it solo is much easier.

Dissolving during sparring is a whole new level of difficulty. However, if you can get the dissolving going, every little bit helps. It helps loosen up and release the weight of your body, so that each movement becomes more full, heavy and higher impact.

Another key aspect is that over time it creates a kind of soft Iron Body. When you get hit, you apply the dissolving to that area. You release, soften, let go of and "melt" the pain of the strikes. It's weird but the kinetic energy of the strike then kind of sticks to your field. It's like being a vampire, when they hit you, you use dissolving to "steal" their energy.

It sounds crazy, but if your mind is able to stay present during the impact, you can absorb and keep a small little bit of their energy when they hit. Of course, if it's a strong enough strike to really hurt you, you can't absorb it. But if you are able to stay with it, I think dissolving is a great way to decrease the pain of being struck, and indeed make it your own advantage.

This is just the tip of the iceberg really. I've learned a lot from this set, and there is much more to it. Then when you get to the swings, you get into the offensive power, which can be very very useful.

Just a few thoughts, take care,

Jess O

I would like to add to everything Jess said, that next year, from the 26th March to the 8th of April there will be an instructor workshop on opening the energy gates in Brighton. From what I heard no one ever, so far, had become an instructor in opening the energy gates with Bruce if he did not know the whole set before. (In contrast with *ehm* the Dragon and Tiger set, for example).

The opening the energy gates instructor training is given every few years. On the other side it is not unreasonable to study now with Jess, and then come to the instructor training, and become an instructor yourself.

Cheers,
Pietro

I've had this book for a while, came across an old version of it in the library of all places For me it was good reference...I like cloud hands et al but dont practice the stuff regularly because I've got plenty of other stuff on my plate.
Best thing I got from this book was longevity breathing

I had some questions about this book. I've got a lot of books on my table (literally) so I've pushed Opening the Energy Gates to the side. My Taiji lineage came through Vietnam and it's different from what I've seen online from other Yang style practitioners, so I had a question about the Cloud Hands that Kumar has in the book. I may pick up the DVD so that I can actually see how the exercises are supposed to look in the future.

If I were still in San Diego, I would definitely drive up the coast to attend the workshops. I don't consider myself a Taoist, but if I move back to the West Coast, I definitely want to learn Kumar's Neigong.

I found standing difficult and well boring. What really helped was listening to a certain guided meditation. The Archaeous series by Rawn Clark. It goes through a 4 element sequence where the legs & waist are earth, belly/gut are water, lungs to shoulder are air, head is air/awareness. By moving slowly into the feelings from solidity to lightness standing 15 minutes became much much easier.

The archaeous series is free at ABARDONCOMPANION.COM. Its part of a series, its not intended to be done standing, but works very well.

Michael

I practiced Zhanzhuang from the Yiquan tradition and never really knew how to improve... Mantak Chia's Iron Shirt book helped a lot for working on the outer and inner structure. But the real breakthrough came from a weekend course with Bruce about Neigong and following up with his book.
I could do standing and dissolving for 15 min after a month of training and would practice Bagua circle walking afterwards for 30 min. The double effect of Zhanzhuang and afterwards practicing basic training of Bagua or Taichi is breathtaking!
I consider the dissolving practice in general the most useful tool for every basic training of Neigong or martial arts - also as a precondition of non-moving energy practice.
My Bagua circle walking would squeeze and spiral Qi through all parts of my body after the standing and dissolving training - much more powerful than before. I would even sweat at my toes and smell like a bump after a while......

it's a treasure indeed!

Very glad to see the responses here! I think this set is a solid one and the book is a good resource, with a mix of inspiring tales and concrete instructions for forming a foundation of chi gung practice.

Also good to see people using it in conjunction with martial arts. Kumar did a lot of martial arts and worked hard at it. All of his chi gung material meshes really well with martial arts.

Working with him opened my eyes a bit to how martial arts and spirituality can work together.

At first I just wanted to be good and be able to fight.

Once I could do that a bit, I realized that the fighting was a way to make my mind and body work under pressure, it became a fascinating test to see how awake I could be under difficult conditions. And it continues to be a very challenging process.

One thing about these "internal" arts that I always love is how they mesh with each other so well. The skills transfer in useful ways and one can grow within their arts as they grow older and "wiser". Or so I'd hope!!

More to post on this set, will do so soon.

Take care,

Jess O