Celebrate the NEW YEAR OF THE DRAGON with 3 Days of Flying Phoenix Qigong with Terry Dunn February 9-11, 2024
3-day immersive workshop Feb. 9 to 11 at the Dragon Nest, New Paltz
3-day immersive FLYING PHOENIX QIGONG Workshop with Master Terence Dunn February 9 to 11 in New Paltz, NY (Zoomable)
Ehrmei Mountain Flying Phoenix Qigong (“Fei Feng San Gung”) is a rare and extraordinary medical Qigong system that was created more than 400 years ago by the renowned Taoist monk Feng Dao Deh (Cantonese: Feng Do Duk) of Ehrmeishan in Szechuan Province, one of the five sacred Taoist peaks in China. Flying Phoenix Qigong is the holistic health “safety net” and yogic cornerstone of the Ehrmei Mountain Bok Fu Pai (White Tiger) Kung fu tradition.
This 14-hour intensive workshop provides a deep dive into this rare and powerful Taoist monastic system of hygienics––comprised of standing and seated, stationary and moving meditations that imparts a wide range of salient health benefits with remarkable swiftness: increased respiratory power, improved circulation and metabolism, higher energy levels, improved neuro-muscular function in terms of agility, balance and coordination, high immunity, increased bone strength, and the allostatic reversal of many signs of aging. All the Flying Phoenix health benefits are tangible, repeatable, verifiable, long-lasting, and manifest with remarkable swiftness.
This workshop will impart experiential knowledge of what a complete and authentic classical Taoist Qigong system like Flying Phoenix can do and how it functions. You will discover that FP Qigong fulfills all the five functional criteria of authentic Qigong, as expounded by the late great Master T.K. Shih in his seminal work, “Qigong Therapy – The Chinese Art of Healing With Energy”(Station Hill, 1994):
Prevents disease
Cures disease
Strengthens the body
Increase intelligence and thus longevity
Develops latent powers
Long term Flying Phoenix practice cultivates a superabundance of the distinctively tangible and even visible (to some) Flying Phoenix Healing Energy (Qi) that has extraordinary healing and restorative properties unlike any bio-electrical energy generated by any other form of Yoga—one that has “an intelligence of its own.” Other latent powers that manifest through FP Qigong practice include clairvoyance, clairaudience, spontaneous healing, telekinesis, and other phenomena that demonstrate that the laws of physics are on the plane of human mental control.
This video below shows the capstone exercise called “Flying Phoenix Heavenly Healing Chi Meditation”—which gives this Qigong system its name, “Fei Feng San Gung.” Once learned, this Long Form Meditation subsumes the practice of the preceding 7 standing meditations of this system.
"Flying Phoenix Qigong practice significantly elevates parasympathetic tone. 90 minutes of practice of this Qigong is restorative in real time and over time afterwards."
- Yetsa A. Tuakli-Wosornu, M.D., M.P.H., IOC Dip. Sp. Med. Assistant Clinical Professor, Yale School of Public Health Department of Chronic Disease Epidemiology (December 2019)
Flying Phoenix Qigong imparts its remarkable range of health benefits through a sophisticated and ingenious yogic mechanism that brings all the organ functions of the body under the regulation of the subconscious mind. This extraordinary and sublime self-healing process that medical science calls allostasis is somehow brought on by each of the 32 Flying Phoenix Meditations (8 standing and 24 seated exercises)—each of which consists of (A) an easy-to-do breath-control formula followed by (B) a meditation in repose or a serene moving meditation using repetitive natural movements that are done three times slower than typical Tai Chi form practice. The esoteric breathing formula that is unique to each Flying Phoenix meditation generates the distinctive, tangible “flavor” of Flying Phoenix Healing Qi in the body; the concomitant posture and pre-choreographed natural movements further circulate this Healing Qi through specific orbs of the body and activate specific brain centers. Long-term practice develops subconscious and then conscious control over the tangible Flying Phoenix Healing Qi.
Beyond imparting its splendid health benefits, Flying Phoenix Qigong’s yogic methodology of combining of breath-control formulas with natural postures and movements integrates mind and body so deeply and lastingly that it develops in the human organism a strong—and refined—structural sensitivity to all-encompassing Nature that is experienced as higher states of consciousness and levels of jhanic absorption (concentration) that go far beyond rapture and bliss. Another remarkable feature of Flying Phoenix Qigong is that its healthful practice does NOT involve any type of visualization or mental imaging whatsoever. This quality makes Flying Phoenix Qigong unique and extraordinary in the world of Qigong and Yoga.
Although they are completely different systems of Chinese yoga, Flying Phoenix Qigong is entirely compatible with Tai Chi Chuan practice as it promotes deep physical relaxation, develops natural body mechanics, awareness and control of the body’s subtle energy flows, and jhanic absorption (concentration). In fact, the advanced Flying Phoenix exercises are moving meditations that are practiced three times slower than typical Tai Chi form speed.
Finally, PROOF OF THE FLYING PHOENIX PUDDING is this lively worldwide discussion thread started in December 2009 by a very enthused Chi Kung For Health DVD customer in Orlando, FL named Lloyd McClelland who asked Terry Dunn to join the forum a few months later to answer questions that were being posted. Now in its fourteenth year, Sifu Dunn is still answering all posted questions on a weekly basis. As of the date of this newsletter, the Flying Phoenix Chi Kung thread has 826,800 views and 5,753 postings…and contains hundreds of candid testimonials about the physical, emotional, and spiritual benefits of FP Qigong practice.
https://www.thedaobums.com/topic/12639-flying-phoenix-chi-kung/
WORKSHOP SCHEDULE
The 3-day immersive workshop, February 9 to 11th, consists of 7 two-hour sessions with 2 sessions on Friday, 3 on Saturday, and 2 on Sunday at these times:
Friday: 3pm - 5pm; 7:30pm - 9:30pm EST
Saturday: 10am - noon; 2:30pm - 4:30pm; 7:30pm - 9:30pm EST
Sunday: 10am - noon; 2:30pm - 4:30pm EST
TUITION
$440 early registration till January 27 $495 after January 27
• ZOOM PARTICIPATION: $40 per 2-hour session or $250 for all 7 sessions
NOTE: All questions by Zoom participants will be thoroughly answered at the end of each session. [Zoom log-on links will be emailed to registrants the day before workshop begins.]
• Please send tuition via Paypal (to zenbearinc@gmail.com) or via Zelle (to terencepdunn@gmail.com ) •
LODGING at Dragon Nest retreat center:
https://www.terrapia.org/single-post/dragonnest
Single room $150 per night Double room $75 per night Dorm floor bed $55 per night Food: Breakfast and lunch $50 Food and lodging early registration till January 27: 10% off
Please register early, we have a limited number of spaces and rooms: - two single bed rooms with queen size beds
- two rooms with two twin side beds
- seven twin dorm beds
Total accommodations: 13 - 15 people
• Room and Meal plan payments: Zelle, Venmo 9738969320
See you at the Dragon Nest of New Paltz!
HAPPY 2024!!!
Sincerely,
Sifu Terry Dunn
P.S. SONG PICK OF THE MONTH & THE NEW YEAR: “SHIP OF FOOLS” by Robert Plant from his solo album “Zen and Now.”
One of my favorite songs that I’ve played in the background of my Tai Chi classes since it came out in 1988—a very, very good year, btw.
I love this song in terms of its musical style—a it reflects Robert Plant’s growth and evolution from his decades of superstardom and success as the roaring frontman of the culture-shaking-and-shaping heavy metal band, Led Zeppelin, of the 60’s and 70’s—to an older and wiser, more self-aware and reflective solo artist by the late 1980s. The song has beautiful melodies and powerful, evocative lyrics, with which Plant exercises his far less often heard range of soft and tender vocal inflections.
Ship of Fools is a beautiful love song and lamentation, in which he expresses a wide range of emotions—from love and love lost, to fear of tumult and danger, to isolation, to aloneness, and finally to his Taoist realization and acceptance that life can be a falling apart where one might get swept away by unforeseen tumultuous forces—or drown in one’s own pleasures. He’s not only aware of the consequences of his choices but he admits his responsibility in creating the tumult around himself—note how he says “I am the pilot of the storm”—not the pilot of the ship. It’s a subtle mea culpa.
Beneath a lover's moon I'm waiting
I am the pilot of the storm
Adrift in pleasure I may drown
I built this ship, it is my making
And furthermore my self control I can't rely on anymore
I know why, I know why
Crazy on a ship of fools
Oh, crazy on a ship of fools
“I know why, I know why”— means that he understands what brought him to be adrift in a stormy sea of uncertainty, where he might drown from being lost in pleasure (and debauchery). And that primary causation of the lost love and karma that he’s lamenting—is the “Ship of Fools”—the milieu that he was in that took him places.
Bottom line of this song (imho): Love hurts
In this last stanza, he admits painful loneliness with the elegant conceit of disputing John Donne:
Who claims that no man is an island?
While I land up in jeopardy
More distant from you by degrees
I walk this shore in isolation
And at my feet eternity draws ever sweeter plans for me
—and so accepts his permanent condition of separation from his beloved. But he knows that his feelings of loneliness and isolation are temporary—because he’s confident and optimistic that the future holds sweeter and greater things for him.
— thus spoken like a true Leo that he is!
But I like to extrapolate this love song into a song of healing or even a spiritual, and say that it encourages one to live life to the very fullest—i.e., create your sturm and drang like Led Zeppelin, go through it all, come out the other side to placid waters, and discover what really matters in life: Love. And one’s true Self. One’s true home where love abides. And no, this is not just romantic love but Universal Love. For once this is found, one is at home everywhere. Everywhere is your “loving ground.” But to get to return to one’s loving ground, one must see beyond the consensus reality and all its absolute attributions (maya) and not be carried away as an unaware passenger on the Ship of Fools.º