Do you love all of these?

• Nature
• Physical activity
• Giving your mind something to do during meditation

If so, then Taoist meditation might be just the right practice for you.

Taoist meditation is very different from Hindu or Buddhist practices.

Taoist meditation is different in these ways. It’s much more focused on:

• Nature and the natural rhythms of the physical world around us.
• The technical aspect of working with energy.
• Using your mind to move energy through your body.
• Using external sources of energy that are in our physical world — Sun, Earth, water…
• Taoist practices take a long time to complete so you need to live about 120 years to finish the complete practice and build your light body to live in forever. Many Taoist practices are dedicated to keeping your body healthy and alive for that long.
• Working with energy and your personal resources rather than working with deities. Deities like the Three Immortals and the Jade Empress are present if you want to call on them, but you can do the practice without deities by simply focusing on Chi.

Taoist meditation goals

Taoist meditation teaches you all about the generation, transformation and circulation of energy to achieve your specific goal.

The goal of your Taoist meditation practice could be:

• Promoting your health and longevity.
• Discovering emptiness and awareness.
• Growing an energy body to achieve immortality.
• Healing yourself and others.
• Martial arts.
• Painting and poetry.
• Enhancing sexual energies.
• Anything else you want to apply energy to.

Similarities to Buddhist and Hindu meditation practice

Taoist meditation practice is very similar to Hindu and Buddhist practices in that your first goal is to develop one pointed awareness.

And, like their Buddhist and Hindu counterparts, Taoist meditation practitioners develop that awareness through focusing on the breath. Focusing on your breath allows you to achieve inner stillness and concentration.

Having achieved inner stillness and concentration, your mind can focus itself completely on moving energy without being distracted by thoughts or external stimulus.

When you’ve achieve one pointed awareness:

• Your energy work becomes extremely powerful.
• Intuitive insights arise by themselves.
• You start flowing with nature around you instead of struggling against it.

It often seems like the energy itself is teaching you as you circulate Chi through your body along specific pathways to achieve your specific purposes.

Beginning Taoist meditation practices

Taoist meditation works on the three treasures – your body, mind and energy system.

Your first goals will be to:

• Gain and retain optimum physical health
• Achieve a clear mind and one pointed concentration
• Constantly grow and develop your energy system

Achieving these basic goals will give you the firm foundation you need to apply your practice to any area of your life that you want to focus on.

When you first begin Taoist meditation, you may find that your mind is very uncooperative.

Your mind is uncooperative because your ego, or emotional mind, is used to being in control of you and it doesn’t want to relinquish that control. Your senses revel in sensory entertainment and emotional turmoil.

Your untrained mind loves to ride the roller coaster of emotions and sensual pleasure –even though the often pleasurable, sometimes miserable, ride depletes your energy, destroys your body and causes spiritual degeneration.

9 Taoist meditation exercises to gain control of your mind, restore your health and recharge your energy

Taoist meditation gives you very useful tools to use to draw your mind back into concentrated awareness whenever fantasy or external stimulus pulls you out of focus.

You’ll probably notice that many of the exercises draw on Buddhist or Hindu methods. There is a lot of overlap.

Before you do your meditation, it’s good to do some Chi Gong or Tai Chi exercises to loosen yourself up, get some energy flowing and invigorate yourself so you can focus clearly without falling asleep.

Sit or stand in a comfortable meditation position to do the following exercises. Read this post illustrating different meditation positions if you need to.

You can use the hand position of your choice. Resting on the knees with fingers pointing down discharges energy. Palms up recharges with energy from the heavens. You can also any mudra of you choose.

It’s very helpful to use a timer for these exercises. 20 minutes is a good length of time to start with. As you get more proficient you can increase that.

As you do the exercises below, remember the three Ss -slow, soft, smooth and the three Cs -, cool, clear calm.

Taoist meditation exercise 1

Your Breath

1. Focus your attention on your breath flowing in and out of your nostrils. It’s cool coming in and warm going out.
2. Count your breaths from 1 to 9.
3. When you reach nine, begin again at one.

If you lose count simply start over again at one. If you find yourself on 17 or 23, begin again at 1 and count to 9.

If you’re familiar with Vipassana meditation, this exercise is exactly the same.

Taoist meditation exercise 2

Your Abdomen

Here’s a video illustrating the abdominal breathing you’ll need to use for this exercise

1. Place your attention on the rise and fall of your abdomen as you breathe in and out.
2. Breathe slowly and smoothly, keeping the rise and fall of your abdomen gentle.
3. Count your breaths from 1 to 9
4. When you reach nine begin again at one.

Taoist meditation exercise 3

Energy Flow

Focus your attention on the energy flowing in and out of a point or chakra.

1. Choose an acupuncture point on your body or a chakra.
2. As you breathe in, experience stale energy being forced out of your chosen point by the breath coming into your body.
3. As you breathe out, experience fresh energy being sucked into your body through that point by the vacuum that your outflowing breath is creating.

It may seem more logical to you that energy should come into the point as your breath comes in and go out of the point as your breath goes out, but give this a good try and just experience what happens.

Taoist meditation exercise 4

Breathing Chi

1. Breathe in through your nostrils while you visualize brilliant white light coming in with your breath and flowing up to your brain illuminating it.
2. Breathe out through your mouth while visualizing dark, stale energy going out. Pursing your lips slightly as you blow out helps.
3. As you continue the exercise, start bringing the brilliant white light down from your brain into your body until you can pull it all the way down to your feet on the in breath.
4. On the out breath, continue to visualize dark, stale energy going out.

Taoist meditation exercise 5

Focus on an Object

1. Choose an object to look at. A candle flame, a Mandala, a flower, or a picture of your teacher or a deity all work well.
2. Gaze at your object with your eyes half closed. You can blink to keep your eyes moist, but do not break your gaze to look at any other object.
3. Keep your focus on the very center of your object, but be aware of your peripheral vision as well.

The object that you focus on is not important.

What is important is changing the focus of your attention away from your thoughts, fantasies, emotions and any other antics that your monkey mind gets up to so that you create a stable point of focus.

Then your wisdom mind can arise. You’ll start getting flashes of intuition and clarity that will expand until this becomes the state your mind rests in permanently.

This highly useful exercise is the same as the gazing meditation that you can read about here.

Taoist meditation exercise 6

Chant Om Ah Hum

Chant in a deep, low pitched tone using long exhalations for each syllable. Vibrating the bone in your nose as you enunciate the last letter and feeling the vibration in the corresponding point increases the power and effectiveness.

Chant Om Ah Hum in sets of nine repetitions.

1. As you chant Ommmmmmmm, focus on the point between your eyebrows. Feel the vibrations from your nasal bone vibrating that point. This stabilizes your energy.
2. As you chant Ahhhhhhhhh, focus on your throat. Feel the vibrations from your nose vibrating your throat. This harmonizes your energy.
3. As you chant Hummmmm, focus on your heart. Feel the vibrations from your nose vibrating your heart. This concentrates your spirit.

Taoist meditation exercise 7

Sacred Symbols and Deities

1. Do Taoist meditation exercise 1 above
2. After your breath calms and stabilizes, visualize a sacred symbol or the deity of your choice directly in front of you or above your head.
3. Hold your vision as you count your breaths from 1 to 9 and feel your breath coming in and out.

Taoist meditation exercise 8

Hugging a Tree

You’ll need to stand up to do this exercise. As you hold the pose and feel and watch the energy, you may experience a large ball of energy forming in the circle that your arms create.

1. Stand with your feet shoulder width apart and your knees slightly bent with your spine straight. This stance is very much like sitting perched on the edge of the barstool. When you get the sitting part right, your body automatically aligns itself into the right stance.
2. Hold your arms up in front of you like you’re hugging the trunk of a tree with the tips of your fingers pointing at each other but not touching.
3. As you breathe in, bring Chi into the bottoms of your feet, up your legs and into your arms.
4. As you breathe out, relax into the energy.
5. You may begin feeling the energy moving between the tips of your fingers. Slowly and gently moving the tips of your fingers closely together and further part will help you get started with feeling the energy between them.
6. Do sets of nine breaths.

Taoist meditation exercise 9

Bubbling Springs

You only need to do this exercise one time to open the minor chakras on the bottoms of your feet that the Chinese call Bubbling Springs.

Once the chakra is open, your ability to draw Mother Earth energy, or Yin Chi, into yourself to use in your other Taoist meditation exercises will be greatly enhanced.

1. Remove your shoes and socks.
2. Sit in a chair and rest your left ankle on top of your right knee so that you can see the bottom of your foot. The point you’re looking for is next to the ball of your foot which is just behind your big toe. There will probably be a V-shaped line next to the ball. Bubbling Springs is just inside the point of the V.
3. Hold the tips of your fingers and thumb of your right hand bunched together. All the tips will be joined together as tightly as possible.
4. Activate the Chi in your fingertips by simply thinking of energy moving there. It will help a lot if you have Reiki or another healing energy to work with, but it’s not necessary. The Chi will activate just by you thinking of it.
5. Press the bunched tips of your fingers into Bubbling Springs, connecting with the energy in your foot.
6. Slowly spread your fingers out. You’re using the energy in your fingers to open Bubbling Springs wider and wider.
7. Use the same procedure on your other foot.
8. Place both your feet flat on the floor.
9. Allow your arms to hang down to your sides with your fingertips pointing at the ground.
10. Breathe in, pull the Chi up into your feet, up your legs and into your body.

• Breathe out and send the Chi down your arms and out of your fingers back into the ground.
• Do sets of nine repetitions until the Chi flow becomes very strong.

While doing these, be aware of and observe what’s going on inside of you. You’ll probably experience the following events after your breath and energy are flowing smoothly,

Notice how:

• Thoughts and feelings that arise dissolve away in your mind.
• Your awareness expands and contracts with each breath.
• Intense aberrations arise.
• Vision sent images appear and disappear.
• Emotions arise and subside in wave after wave inside you.

Observe all of this mind-play dispassionately without becoming caught up in following it.

If you find your mind slipping out of the state of observation and following stories or sensations, use one of the techniques in the exercises above to bring your mind back into focus.

Eventually you may experience the true nature of your mind.

• Open and empty like empty space
• Clear and luminous
• Infinite and without obstruction
• Expanding out to the entire universe.

Conclusion

The goal of Taoist meditation is to control your fire mind of emotion with your water mind of intent.

Your mind guides energy easily when your breath is soft and smooth and your mind and emotions are calm.

This is what Taoist meditation and Chi Gong are all about.

You can:

• Move energy through your meridian network to energize vital organs.
• Raise energy up your spine to your brain to nurture your spirit and your brain.
• Exchange your stale energy for fresh clean energy from the heavens or the earth.
• Move energy around the microcosmic orbit which is the Chi Gong equivalent of Hinduism’s kundalini exercise and will take you to enlightenment just like kundalini does.

Doing the microcosmic orbit replenishes your own energy very quickly, alleviating feelings of tiredness. It also puts a lot of energy into your entire system, growing your chakras and meridians fast and expanding your awareness while at the same time the focus required helps calm your mind and emotions.

You can learn the microcosmic orbit in our personal meditation course.