Purify the Furnace

(Not a how-to guide. Complementary material for students of Wang Liping)

Qīng lú 清爐 - Purify the furnace

To purify the furnace means to purify the body. When forming the elixir the body needs to be energetically clean and physically healthy. Purifying the furnace is a way to achieve this.

One way Wang Liping teaches to purify the furnace is through the mysterious opening 玄竅 practice. The mysterious opening practice is part of the “refining jing into qi” curriculum. (It is best done after you have learnt to set up the three spaces and inner cavity. It’s easier to go inside once you’ve set up an inside to go into.) Students of Wang Liping will know this one as the practice where we go inside the torso to find the “moving area” 動處. The moving area is a mysterious opening. It is jing energy 精氣. It will feel different to everyone. For me it is a vibration or pulsing, sometimes with colour or light. The mysterious opening will often be in a different place each session. Once we find it, we follow the guided instructions to either move it (usually into the lower dantian to turn it into qi) or disperse it.

Dispersing the mysterious opening is part of the process of purifying the furnace. To disperse it, we use awareness, shen, and inner breathing to expand and open it up to fill our whole physical body, then our subtle body 有形無質的我, and finally clear it out of our system altogether.

This process is a great way to clean out our system (kind of like an energetic enema) and keep us healthy. Illness often has energetic roots. Energy becomes stagnant and begins to solidify. Once it begins to solidify, illness emerges. By regularly purifying the furnace we can keep our body and mind healthy and running clean. It’s also a great way to practice working with jing energy.