Qigong aka Chi Kung books
My all time favourite is The Root of Chinese Qigong by Jwing Ming Yang. If you could only get one book this one has everything and is also a good reference work. It also has the Chinese characters in it for the terms for further research.
After that anything by Mantak Chia, who takes the opposite approach and has dozens of short books breaking the subject up into given tools and small areas, which is cool when you have the foundation and/or are looking for a specific technique.
Particularly these fundamentals which are also the Taoist approach to having good Spiritual Hygiene, there is no “shadow work” called out separately, it’s all you:
Awaken Healing Energy Through The Tao
Fusion of the Five Elements: Meditations for Transforming Negative Emotions
The Inner Smile: Increasing Chi through the Cultivation of Joy
The Six Healing Sounds: Taoist Techniques for Balancing Chi
Important for occultists, after getting cleansed and balanced, we want to increase our energy for magickal work beyond just being healthy, open our clairsenses more and become more sensitive, more empowered and more wise, start here:
The Taoist Soul Body: Harnessing the Power of Kan and Li
The Practice of Greater Kan and Li: Techniques for Creating the Immortal Self
Sealing of the Five Senses: Advanced Practices for Becoming a Taoist Immortal
Update to add:
The Water Method of Taoist Meditation Series 2 book set:
Dec 2024 Update:
Jwing Ming Yang now has a book on how to run the microcosmic orbit aka small circulation. I will get this for completeness and to see if there’s anything extra or different from the way my teachers taught it to me. It’s a very simple exercise and almost all the insights from it come from when you’re doing it, but you never know.
Update: I WISH I’d found this book when it came out in 2016.
Most Qigong and Bei gong is explaiend from the man’s perspective. Women;s systems have big differences, particulary to do with being yin more than yang and having a longer hormonal cycle the length of the moon cycle not one day.
Nei Gong for Women goes a long way to fixing this gap for women practitioners. As a woman practicing the man’s way for 30 years I haven’t found all the things in here to be a problem, cultivating to lower dan tien not middle dan tien has been better for me, but I have blocks in my heart meridian and women starting out might have faster results incorporating these ideas sooner and I’m certainly actively working through this book to see where I can get improvements.
