Mantak Chia - Pi Gu Chi Kung: Inner Alchemy Energy Fasting

Acknowledgments

The authors and Universal Healing Tao Publications staff involved in the preparation and production of Pi Gu Chi Kung: Inner Alchemy Energy Fasting extend our gratitude to the many generations of Taoist masters who have passed on their special lineage, in the form of an unbroken oral transmission, over thousands of years. We thank Taoist Master Yi Eng (One Cloud Hermit) for his openness in transmitting the formulas of Taoist Inner Alchemy.

We offer our eternal gratitude to our parents and teachers for their many gifts to us. Remembering them brings joy and satisfaction to our continued efforts in presenting the Universal Healing Tao system. As always, their contribution has been crucial in presenting the concepts and techniques of the Universal Healing Tao.

We wish to thank the thousands of unknown men and women of the Taoist healing arts who developed many of the methods and ideas presented in this book. For their continuous personal encouragement, we wish to thank our fellow Taoists, students, clients, families, and friends who have inspired the writing of this book by their eager desire to understand Pi Gu Chi Kung.

We thank the many contributors essential to this books final form: the editorial and production staff at Inner Traditions/Destiny Books for their efforts to clarify the text and produce a handsome new edition of the book, and Nancy Yeilding for her line edit of the new edition.

A special thanks goes to our Thai production team: Hirunyathorn Punsan, Sopitnapa Promnon, Udon Jandee, and Suthisa Chaisarn.

Putting Pi Gu Chi Kung into Practice

The information presented in this book is based on the authors personal experience and knowledge of Pi Gu and Inner Alchemy. The practices described in this book have been used successfully for thousands of years by Taoists trained by personal instruction. Readers should not undertake the practice without receiving personal transmission and training from a certified instructor of the Universal Healing Tao, since certain of these practices, if done improperly, may cause injury or result in health problems. This book is intended to supplement individual training by the Universal Healing Tao and to serve as a reference guide for these practices. Anyone who undertakes these practices on the basis of this book alone does so entirely at his or her own risk.

The meditations, practices, and techniques described herein are not intended to be used as an alternative or substitute for professional medical treatment and care. If any readers are suffering from illnesses based on physical, mental, or emotional disorders, an appropriate professional health care practitioner or therapist should be consulted. Such problems should be corrected before you start training.

Neither the Universal Healing Tao nor its staff and instructors can be responsible for the consequences of any practice or misuse of the information contained in this book. If the reader undertakes any exercise without strictly following the instructions, notes, and warnings, the responsibility must lie solely with the reader.

This book does not attempt to give any medical diagnosis, treatment, prescription, or remedial recommendation in relation to any human disease, ailment, suffering, or physical condition whatsoever.

Introduction

Pi Gu is an ancient Taoist, or Chinese, mode of fasting that has been known about and practiced by a small minority of adepts, mainly during spiritual retreats, for some thousands of years. The ancient texts refer to Pi Gu as an energy fast or energizing fast, as the bodys energy levels increase while food consumption decreases radically, but without eliminating eating entirely. Experienced Taoists may consume only fruit and water during prolonged meditations lasting months, and the ancients could go without any food or drink at all for long periods (fig. I.1). But this level of fasting is difficult to fit into our lives today. Mantak Chia has revived the legendary Pi Gu energizing fast and adapted it to our times, making it easy for the modern student of Taoism, or those with weight or health problems, to benefit from it.

Fig. I.1. Taoist sage

Pi Gu (fig. I.2) literally means to stop eating grains, although some translators would say stop eating or stop eating meat. We can take it to mean in effect to stop eating meat, grains, and processed foods. But Pi Gu does not mean to stop eating altogether; in fact the types of food allowed depend on the level of spiritual practices.

Fig. I.2. Chinese symbol of Pi Gu

We know that if we want to get energy and whatever we need to exist, we have to spend something. So we work hard in order to produce or buy food, and then we work to cook the food. But these days you can buy many different sorts of foods or go to many restaurants and other places that serve food. We are spoiled for choice; even gas stations serve hot and cold food and everything is available outside traditional mealtimes (fig. I.3). There is also a lot of junk food available, leading to an overconsumption of food, when food should really be a precious asset. So we do not choose raw ingredients and cook them as much as we used to; indeed many people do not know how to shop for raw ingredients or cook at all.

We eat the food, chew it, and digest it, which takes a lot of time. Digestion depends on what sort of food you eat, but it takes from four to six hours. After that your body must absorb the nutrients and the blood carries them around to distribute them where needed. And we need good air to breathe to keep this system flowing.

Fig. I.3. Multiple choices for fast food

When your stomach, liver, spleen, or other members of the digestive system have problems, you do not absorb nutrients well, so you dont obtain optimal energy from your food. You can spend 100 percent of your energy in the form of time and money but if the stomach cannot digest, the nutrients cannot be absorbed. So no matter what you spend, you get poor value for it. It is like spending 100 euros and getting 33 euros worth of use. If the food is only fat and sugar, the body has nothing to feed on. In the short term you are losing out, spending more to get less. This will not lead to better health.

One way to improve the energy from your food consumption is to chew your food better. Pi Gu involves chewing techniques, which ensure that your saliva and food mixture becomes liquid; they also mix in oxygen and nitrogen from the air. This provides the body with material and cosmic energy, perfect building blocks for the body to nourish itself. In this way there is no need to eat as much food, the excess of which turns into waste that is flushed down the toilet.

It is also important to clean out toxins that have built up in your system,like clogged plumbing. This will also help break the cycle of urgesfor bad food and will get your hormonal and other bodily systems workingproperly. In this way, you will start to get value for what you spendon food, up to a 100 percent return, or even 120 percent!

There is energy inside of us, which we can call bioelectromagneticpower. The energy outside of us is electromagnetic power. The differencebetween the two is the