Well Put. I just got back from 10 day course that I delayed not once but twice in the last three years. There will never be a “good” time for you to take a 10 day course. I deeply regret not going earlier.

cheers

Qigong is my meditation of choice; I’ve been a martial artist for the majority of my life, meditation has kept my life in focus. Commend you for this post. Thank you for taking the time out to put this in questions.

sthg to add on the last line of previosu reply. The book is known as – Ultimate Healing: Power of Compassion.

I also practiced some different types of breathing exercises based on taoism and martial arts in my younger days. Basically, in my opinion, I believe Vipassana is a very old method but was no surprised to be the Mother of all Qigong and soft breathing exercise eg. Taichi. this can verified when it was passed onto to the rest of India and into China by Ven. Dhammo (beginning of zen buddhism in China), which in return spread again to the Northern Eastern Asia eg. Japan & Korea at later stage.

Vipassana emphasized on the simplicity in cleansing the whole body using the movement of our focal concentration, which drives the Qi around. In this context, we do not observe just at one point of the body like most meditations. After prolong practice, the capability of driving this inner energy feely at any part of our body will be able to energise ourselves with very fast thought of our mind!

This can be achieved only thru developing equanimous mind which can be expedited from a quiet environment (highly preferred during practiced). However, many martial artist or other Qigong methods only emphasize the developement of equuanimous mindset during practice for reason of faster Qi development in order to promote health, but they do not promote as a way of life!

In Vipassana, equanimity is reinforced by the development of personal inner compassion which is the universal synchronisation of all energy differences. When equanimous mindset is reinforced by consistent compassion as a way of life in our daily living, then it becomes an added value to our life and definitely changing ourselves to be better.

To develope and maintain equanimous mind, one has to reduce and eventually do away with anger, jealousy, hatred, frustration and even happiness out of attachment…etc etc. hence a true way to free ourselves from all mental and physical sentiments.

So if you ask if the different methods can be practiced with Vipassana, I strongly believe it lies in the compassion development. If you want to know more, read the book called written by Lama Zopa Rinpoche.

Metta, Daryl.

Also I wonder how healthy vipassana is. Qigong is certainly a system that makes you healthier as well as one that helps you dissolve emotional energies. I will take your word for it that vipassana is more adept at this. Do you think the two practices could work together in this way?

Anyway, I am looking forward to hearing more of your thoughts.