1995 - Channel Small Heavenly Orbit

"Small Heavenly Orbit (SHO)" (or microcosmic orbit) is a term that can be seen often in qigong literatures. Many different schools all aim to "open" it. You can even heard of "speed courses" which claim to open up the SHO in a few days. But if we look at all these so called SHO methods, one can see that they are actually talking about Intention SHO or meridian SHO. Intention SHO means that the practitioner uses variants of visualization or intention method to "open" SHO, this is nothing more than fantasy. It will cause more harm than good. Meridian SHO means using will power to concentrate on points of the Ren and Du channel and then using intention to guide the Houtian (*) Qi to move in the channel. Since usually the movement got mixed up in other channels in the front and in the back, it created the illusion that there is actual movement in the SHO. Again this causes more harm than good.

The term SHO originated from ancient neigong art, it has a very specific meaning in daoist cultivation. The old daoist ancestors discover through their power that the Ren and Du channel of a fetus inside the mother's womb are connected together. When the baby is born and the umbilical cord is severed, the two channels also get disconnected. Daoist practitioners believe that if one want to get from Houtian to Xiantian (**), to reverse the aging process, Ren and Du must be reconnected again and the internal qi must be reversed back into the fetus stage. The authentic SHO is the method to reconnect the Ren and Du channel. What it means it that when the Xiantian qi is full, the Xiantian yuen qi initiate from the lower tien, then through the Hui Yin point going up inside the spine, knocking down the three gates of Wei Lu, Jia Ji and Yu Zhen, and opening up Tian Men, Tian Mu and the three fields. The Ren and Du channels reconnect and the process is automatic. Once this stage is reached, the internal qi reverse back into fetus stage and a series of natural Xiantian abilities will also appear, Internal viewing, remote viewing and the automatic movement of the internal qi. Since the authentic daoist SHO means that Xiantian qi reconnect the Ren and Du channel, and these two channels are part of the body's Eight Wondrous Channels, therefore this is also known as Channel Small Heavenly Orbit. In the Three Immortal Methods, this is the fifth stage, the "The Golden Sphere Flying up from the side".


(*)Houtian : it roughly means "after birth". It represents things that belong to this material world, it also means polluted.

(**) Xiantian : it roughly translate to "before birth". It represents things that are natural and pure.