Taoist Herbal Formulas for Martial Arts, Mediation, Alchemy and "Immortality"

Over the decades that I have trained in and taught Internal Kung Fu (Nei Jia) systems, there have been many injuries that I, as well as students, have endured. Over that time, as well, I have gone through many phases of the aging process in life, and have seen how the body naturally declines in Qi if we do not conserve, cultivate and increase out Yuan Qi (a subject about which this book will discuss). I have had to recalibrate my own body when injury or aging occurred, and at times, I learned to increase the effectiveness of both Martial Arts and Meditative training exponentially through limited – and usually temporary – supplementation of herbs used in Chinese Medicine. Sometimes new students have come to me, to learn meditation or Martial Arts, who had preexisting conditions that precluded their training being effective. I could chose to turn such students away, and leave them to their problematic conditions, or I could offer them advice to recalibrate and harmonize their body, often curing chronic conditions that they had since children, and other times dealing with new conditions as a result of physical or psychological injury. The causes of injury and states of chronic imbalance is not the issue that this text will deal with. It will, instead, deal with Chinese Herbal formulas that I have found myself repeatedly prescribing to new, and sometimes long-time students. Indeed, this text was not one that I sat down one day and decided I should write, it is one that I was begged to write by dozens of Nei Kung and Kung Fu students. It represents many things which I often keep to myself, or sometimes to a handful of students who thought to ask (while it did not occur to many others), regarding supplementation for already healthy students who wish to fortify their system in such a way that excess qi could be used for Iron Body training (packed into the bone marrow and fascia), or Dan Tien-centered Nei Kung, in which excess qi is packed into the abdominal Dan Tien. Read more