TLDR: Chen Yingning and Hu Haiya advanced the thesis that the Immortality Studies school of Chinese longevity practices predates Daoism significantly and that its practitioners such as Ge Hong, Zhang Boduan et al chose to adopt Daoist views as a container for their practices. Furthermore they advocated the idea that in modern times it was essential to develop a view of Immortality Study as an independent school outside of the three major teachings of Daoism, Buddhism and Confucianism by adopting a scientific and research based view of the process of realization.
In order to advance this view I would like to present some of the observations our inner group at Peng Lai Fellowship have made since we met in 2020.
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I began teaching Internal Alchemy somewhat by accident and somewhat intentionally around 2013.
The genesis of this project was a post I made on the Rum Soaked Fist, an Internal Arts message board which in hindsight could be compared to the Monty Python view of Camelot (a silly place).
At that time I had been studying Daoism with my teacher Hai Yang for a couple years and since at that time there were not many voices in Internal Alchemy talking about practice I thought I'd do my friends a solid by making a short instructional post.
Later on a friend of a friend contacted me and suggested I should write a book about the subject for the upcoming Tambuli Media, a publisher seeking to revive the wonderful world of English language Chinese Martial Art instruction books.
Young, ignorant and full of passion I first checked with my teacher if he thought it was OK and for some reason he gave me the green light.
The little book called Internal Elixir Cultivation the Nature of Daoist Meditation is a concise and mostly correct view of the basics of Internal Alchemy practice.
It is missing many things which shouldn't be a surprise given that I only had a couple years of experience, but overall it was, as far as I know, the first English language Internal Alchemy instruction book which did not mix Qigong with meditation practices.
Even before publication I received plenty of criticism and pushback, some of which was done in good faith and some of which was part of the broader genre of self serving criticism that bloggers do to get people to read their work.
Either way, all the criticism was useful and pushed me to work harder to read and understand the genre of Internal Alchemy.
Luckily my wonderful teacher has compassionately helped me develop as a person since I started studying Bagua with him in 2005 and for some reason he has always put up with my total deficiency as a human being, so I had him in my corner and he helped me learn classical Chinese and interpret the ancient texts.
I was also lucky that some of the critics of my book became my friends and even though our relationships are sometimes uneasy due to conflicts in worldview, they are still kind enough to point the way when I make important mistakes in interpretation (some of these people are multi-decade practitioners with academic knowledge and transmission in Daoism that makes me look like a little baby). I am very thankful to everyone who has pushed me to move forward.
In my time learning about Internal Alchemy and Daoism, practicing up to a respectable level (not a master, but let's say an experienced student) I've come across a few notions that have made me consider the relationship between Daoism, meditation and the utility of Dao cultivation in our lives.
Let me start by saying that the term Xiu Dao (Dao cultivation) does not only apply to Daoism, it is also used by Buddhists, Confucians and even Martial Artists to describe the manner in which they cultivate the way.
I had the good luck to interview Dr.Livia Kohn for the DAOI podcast last year and she mentioned that in the discussion about who get's to call themselves Daoists there was a divide between the orthodoxy of Daoist priests initiated at temples in China and people who just wanted to cultivate the Dao and felt that this gave them a Daoist identity.
This is a useful idea because it leads us to understand that Daoist identity is not only found in temples, but among any people who practice the Dao.
My teacher always uses the term Xiu Dao to describe his practice and I think this is an intelligent ideas because it indicates that the Dao does not exclusively belong to members of the China Daoist association, but instead extends to any part of life the Dao touches, which of course is every part of life.
As you all know, Chen Yingning is my model in Daoism, he was the first person to invent an entirely secular and lifestyle based approach to Xiu Dao which could stand independently outside of Daoism, Buddhism and Confucianism.
Chen and his disciple Hu Haiya advocated that the school of thought they called Immortality Study was historically contained within Daoism, but that its ideas were also constrained by the religious teleology of Daoism which has subjective spiritual aspirations which cannot be measured through scientific analysis.
They thus felt that Daoist Internal Cultivation should be separated from the Daoist religion and stand on its own two feet as an emergent form of scientific research.
Chen can be considered as the first generation of that idea and Hu as the second.
In China today this view has been adopted as an organic aspect of Daoist self cultivation among lay Neidan practitioners who do not actively follow the Daoist religion, but perhaps as a result of Chen's line not being promoted by living students of his disciples it has not maintained the original power it had when Chen and Hu served as founders and leaders of the China Daoist Research Association.
Hu's disciple Wu Guozhong is an acclaimed Chinese Medicine doctor in Beijing today, but he is not active in the promotion of Chen Yingning's meditation system.
Chen's disciples in Taiwan carried on his method for a few decades after Taiwan's 1949 split from Mainland China, but today the vestiges of their school have declined into a smoldering heap of spiritual woo-woo, contemporary Qigong and a lot of empty talk.
Neidan itself is reasonably healthy and enjoying a popular resurgence in China as a result of relatively free and open internet communication, so there are plenty of people studying it and plenty of people interested in Chen's ideas, but no one has come close to amassing the cultural power required to truly promote his ideas on a big level.
Today the Daoisms (Daoism must be treated in a plural sense) of China largely fall into the camps of personal cultivation through philosophical inquiry, health and spiritual practice, and the Daoist religion both in orthodox schools and the many pretenders and side door schools which have always existed since the times of Zhang Jue.
Chen Yingning's view of Immortality Study may be dormant, but the actual school of self cultivation through Internal Alchemy and other Life Nurturing practices is alive and well and the process of its development continues even if you have to have special training to see its threads running through Chinese and global civilization.
Over time I have considered whether I should stay secular or become a Daoist priest and after much consultation with Daoist friends it eventually became clear that the goals of the Daoist religion and my own philosophical convictions are incompatible.
That is not a slight against the Daoist religion at all, in fact we are all studying the same core ideas about life and using similar techniques to cultivate ethics, personal health, and happiness in the world, but the required view of Daoism which places emphasis on communion with deities of a specific national origin which I have no connection to does not seem like a viable choice for me, maybe for others, but not me. In the distant future perhaps Daoist deities and religious ideas will be adopted into an occidental worldview in which our own local Gods take the place of Chinese ones, but even then the only way I could take such a view is through Jungian sleight of hand and adoption of them as logos. That seems unfair to the real Daoists who put their faith in the deities as genuinely existing entities so I choose not to do it (although I do sometimes visualize the dark castle of the Greek God Hypnos when I want to get to sleep, but that is another matter).
This essential rejection of the Daoist religion has reaffirmed Chen's basic idea that Internal Alchemy does not need to exist within the confines of Daoism.
There is plenty of historical evidence to back up this claim which I have written about extensively in other articles so I won't bore you with it right now.
The key point is that you can practice Internal Alchemy and Yang Sheng without being a Daoist. Hopefully you respect Daoism, you take some of its values as your own, and you keep an open mind and choose to be fair and kind to everyone even if they have different beliefs, but you making offerings to Xuan Wu has absolutely no impact on your ability to cultivate the Pre-Heaven Three Treasures and develop the Sage Fetus.
My little group of friends including Felix De Haas, Wesely Tasker, Ian Burgess, and David Wearley have been having a chat since 2020 about the nature of Internal Alchemy, its place in Daoism, Confucianism, Buddhism, and Western culture, and how we should organize to create an association dedicated to promoting those aspects of practice which are most beneficial and useful to the people of the Occident.
Why the Occident?
I am Canadian from a family who as a result of our participation in the War of 1812 on the side of the crown are qualified to seek status as Empire Loyalists. Even so, my family background dates back to Scotland and what is today called Germany.
Most of my students are from Western Europe and North America and we communicate in English, one of the major languages of the Euro-American world.
I do have students in other countries such as Vietnam and I sincerely hope they get benefit from our discourse, but as an Occidental person I can only speak in a way that is culturally possible for me, I am not Chinese, not East Asian and cannot pretend to represent China or East Asia in any way other than as a person who admires their culture and who was lucky enough to learn a few beneficial arts from China with masters who are ethnically Chinese and grew up in that country.
Thus as people with European heritage it is our job to communicate the knowledge we have learned in a way that can be understood by other people in our civilization. Although Daoist and Buddhist larping is doubtless lots of fun, as evidenced by the ongoing popularity of the capitalist hellscape that is Wudang and Shaolin, there are only a handful of Occidental Daoists who studied at Wudang that actually developed any modicum of understanding of the Daoist message (remember, that means there are some, many of them are my friends and they have dedicated their whole lives to studying and promoting Daoism, so please don't take this out of context).
We are who we are and we have a great deal of good faith to all parts of the Chinese world whether it be the Mainland, Hong Kong, Taiwan, or the diaspora, but over time if these ideas are to spread to the West they also need to be gradually understood from a mature perspective which doesn't have to wear Chang Pao and wax poetic about dragons in the clouds to obtain credibility.
Now let's talk about what to do with Immortality Study...
First, Penglai Fellowship is not one worldview, it is not my association, it is definitely not my standalone school of thought (I'm not smart enough to make an entire system, let's leave that for the real masters).
Penglai Fellowship is a discussion between friends about how to present Internal Alchemy and Yang Sheng in the Western World and it is a resource for people who want to see a number of innovative views about Xiu Dao under development by experienced practitioners.
In today's article I will specifically discuss the conversations between myself and Felix De Haas relative to the works of Chen Yingning. In the future I will introduce my project with Wes Tasker, and what Ian Burgess is up to in Penglai UK, the first of our groups to offer classes in Life Nurturing Methods.
Felix and I have been speaking now for almost four years, he was one of the first people to join my early ZOOM seminars about Internal Alchemy and he is a profound figure in the Chinese Medicine and Buddhist world who had decades of experience in those fields already before I was born.
Although I am a registered acupuncturist and have an interest in Chinese Medicine as well as traditions such as Unani/Greek Medicine, Felix is actually an expert and is one of the most profound people I have ever met. To paraphrase another friend, when Felix says something about Chinese Medicine or Buddhism the correct internal response is “yes sir,” since his knowledge and real world experience in both fields is unassailable.
Because of our mutual interest in medicine our discussion over the years has moved toward integration of Internal Alchemy and Yang Sheng with Chinese Medicine practice and we have undertaken initiatives in Holland with the Qing Bai Academie to teach both systems since 2022.
Over time we have developed a view together about how these methods can be introduced to Western practitioners of Chinese Medicine as a means to cultivate their own health, better understand the nature of the Qi physiology of their patients, and provide important lifeskills to their patients within the scope of their treatment models.
This discussion has been organic and based on real world experience as well as leading me to adopt several important Yang Sheng practices such as the Wo Gu/Balling the fists like a baby method of meditation to my own clinical practice (I have several patients who use this method to treat their anxiety with a high degree of success).
Over time we have the goal of developing Xiu Dao as a medical practice in a systematic way which is both true to the original nature of these practices in its accuracy and authenticity, but also adaptable to the complex needs of practitioners and their patients.
This is a multi-year, maybe multi-decade project, but now the ball is rolling and we are seeing results.
Since investing myself more into the works of Chen Yingning I have come to realize that Chen laid down the basic ideas for this type of practice in the later years of his life.
Chen spent time in a medical institution as a result of long term lung issues contracted as a result of working with an alchemical furnace during the early decades of his Daoist research.
During the time he was in hospital he developed a rudimentary method of quiet sitting to help patients regain their energy and obtain better health.
He also paired this with modern ideas about lifestyle, nutrition, and society that deeply impacted the development of modern Qigong.
In Chen's view the first half of Internal Alchemy practice should be about attaining health and longevity, then after this is achieved one may naturally incline toward spiritual pursuits in later practice.
In actuality there is no difference between practicing for health and spiritual purposes, but it is generally true that until the end of the Large Heavenly Orbit the practice of Internal Alchemy is relatively more beneficial to body and mind and that only much later in practice does the genuine realization of Spirit begin to become more apparent (that is not to say that there is no spirituality early in practice, just that it becomes stronger as your experience increases).
This model fits quite well with our idea of Xiu Dao as medical practice and we are continuing to discuss, research and integrate this secular worldview with our own practice and teaching.
Furthermore, Chen and Hu both advocated that modern practitioners should not restrict themselves to traditional knowledge, but instead learn from any branch of science or philosophy which can positive impact the study of Immortality cultivation.
A few years ago I was exposed to the writings of Canadian Psychiatrist Dr. Norman Doidge, author of the Brain that Changes itself and How the Brain Heals Itself, as well as Iain McGilchrist, author of The Master and his Emissary.
Both authors write about the nature of the brain, its hemispheres and neuroplasticity, the idea that the brain changes itself by making new connections between neurons and changes structurally and functionally as a result of human behavior.
The essential argument of Norman Doidge is that people who undergo crippling physical injuries have sometimes been able to treat themselves through neurological intervention which can take the form of external stimulation with medical technology as well as the power of their own thoughts and intentions.
This is a relatively new scientific field and we cannot take it as proof of the utility or function of our own doctrines, but it does make some things come together in an intuitive sense.
Before Internal Alchemy there were Daoist Yang Sheng techniques such as Tu Na, Dao Yin, and Visualization and the famous doctor Tao Hongjing established the idea that if a part of the body is painful you should practice sealing the breath and imagining that part of the body.
He said “where there is pain focus the attention,” and that this could relieve pain and heal the body.
Internal Alchemy does not follow this theory, but over time in my own practice I have come to the conclusion that this principle can be used after one has gained a solid foundation if using the correct principles and that it has certain curative benefits for physical tension, aches and pains.
I will discuss my early findings in my own practice in the paid section of this article, so please subscribe if you would like to learn more about this subject.
As Felix and I work together we do not only look at Internal Alchemy, but also at the entire historical category of Yang Sheng and Chinese Medicine in order to develop a deeper understanding of the points in which Neidan technique can be applied in the scope of medicine and when it is advisable to use Yang Sheng instead.
We have already taught two in person seminars on this subject with the next one slated for November in Amersfoort The Netherlands (if you are in the neighborhood come study with us!!
https://www.qing-bai.nl/bijscholing/1/Acupuncturisten/3552/#Start) where we will be looking at the fundamental principles of the Middle School of Internal Alchemy as well as the concept of Swallowing the Jade Tablet, an early method of Daoist Yang Sheng which was imported into Internal Alchemy and is useful for balancing the Yin fluid aspect of the body with the Qi physiology through intentional practice of generating and swallowing Qi infused Saliva and creating an energetic trail around the meridian systems of the body from head to toe and back.
As we gain more experience we will continue to develop meaningful programs for medical practitioners and eventually release our research in the form of books and online talks.
In our estimation this is the medical direction Penglai Fellowship will take.
PLF also advocates theoretical analysis of documents which is a project undertaken by myself and Wes Tasker in which we are working on translations of core classics that build up the theory of Internal Alchemy. We expect to have something meaningful for publication later this year.
Ian Burgess is focused on practical teachings of Internal Alchemy and Yang Sheng and has been sharing the powerful Thirteen Rules of Nurturing Life annotation by Min Yide with his students in the UK with great success. He tells me that many students experience immediate benefit from the practices and that he is developing a knowledge base of how people respond to the techniques in order to help us better understand how to tailor specific views of techniques to individual students, in other words he is doing great work!!
David Wearley and I are working on another project that I will announce when the time is right. David is an expert on Tibetan Buddhism and has begun to develop an interesting analysis of the relationship between Internal Alchemy and Buddhism as well as the challenges that Internal Alchemy students face during the first several years of practice. When we are ready to talk about these things I think it will be genuinely helpful to everyone who wants to learn this style of meditation.
Ultimately PLF is dedicated to continuing the modernization project of Chen Yingning while adopting unique Western qualities to our practice and research.
It looks like it is shaping up to be something greater than just a concept and we are so happy to have your support as we develop this unique and helpful worldview together.
Bonus content: Using Neidan to heal by back:
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