On the Fusion of Fire and Water in Daoist Alchemy

In Daoist alchemy, it is said that in nature, fire blazes upward and water flows downward, but in life the fire must be brought downward and water upward.  

A traditional imagery is like a tree - it must bring the fiery energy of the sunlight all the way from its branches down to nourish even its roots, and it must pump the water from the ground all the way up to its branches.  

In a human body, it was felt by alchemists that you should have a warm belly, and a cool head. 

Traditional Chinese Medicine believes that if there's too much hot energy rising up, you'll get heart palpitations, racing thoughts, extremes of emotions, and insomnia.  Later you may even get problems with your physical heart.  On the other side, if the water energy is sinking down, they say you'll start to feel cold and achey in your lower back, have weak knees, achey and cold feet, and feel sinking and tired.  For many of us in modern society, we'll get both these phenomena at the same time - both tired AND restless!

The answer, according to alchemical tradition is to remedy this "separation of fire and water", and one way to do so is through the meditation on Fusion of Fire and Water - a staple practice of Daoist internal training. 

The above clip is taken from a class I led around this time last year.  You can watch the whole video on my Youtube channel to learn a powerful meditation on the Union of Fire and Water.  This traditional meditation is just one of the many ways that alchemical traditions have found to work with these most powerful energies and polarities in our being. 

Harmonizing these potent elements is the overall theme in our latest mini-course "Fire-Water Qigong for High Summer"!  This course includes the traditional meditation on uniting Fire and Water, plus many other practices from Medical Qigong, the "Five Animal Frolics", Internal Martial Arts training methods, and integrations with Yoga postural training.  Class is available now, so come join the fun!