Home / Practice / Daoist practice

修煉 · xiūliàn · Cultivation

Daoist practice.

A living religious and philosophical tradition, approached through practice, study and continued training — not as a collection of wellness techniques.

Orientation

Coming soon

Tradition-based practice

Internally Still approaches Daoism as philosophy, religion and lived cultivation. The classical texts matter, but so do the communities, disciplines and ways of life in which those texts have been embodied.

Our charism — the particular character we have inherited and try to live out — comes from the Daoist Foundation, an independent, non-sectarian organisation dedicated to fostering authentic Daoist study and practice and to preserving and transmitting traditional Daoist culture, and from other teachers and connected traditions whose lines of transmission have shaped what we do.

The Dragon Gate 龍門 thread reaches us directly: Ian's first seminary training was with Abbot Lǎo Zhì Chǎng 老至昶, a twenty-first-generation Longmen abbot and priest, who gave him his Daoist name. We follow the thread of internal cultivation carried through that line and through the wider tradition of Complete Perfection 全真, as it has been transmitted and renewed by teachers down to the present day — with a particular debt to the Longmen teacher Mǐn Yīdé 閔一得, and to the guidance of many teachers across the living tradition.

So the Foundation's curriculum is the trunk, and the other lines are grafted onto it rather than replacing it. We name the teachers, organisations and texts that shape the work, without claiming that Internally Still itself constitutes a single inherited lineage. That distinction is deliberate, and we hold to it.

Daoist or Taoist?

Both, and they are the same word. Taoism and Taoist use the older Wade-Giles romanisation; Daoism and Daoist use pinyin, which is now standard in scholarship and closer to the Mandarin sound. The character is 道 either way. We write Daoist; if you searched for Taoist meditation or Taoist practice, this is the same tradition.

No belief required first. Students are not asked to adopt particular beliefs before they can begin. Practice, context and careful enquiry come first; conclusions, if they come at all, come later.

The curriculum

What is practised

Taken roughly in this order. The later entries are not more advanced subjects to graduate onto — they are what becomes possible once the earlier ones are settled.

  • Quiet sitting 靜坐

    Seated meditation, including guarding the One 守一 and sitting-in-forgetfulness 坐忘. The Yinshizi 因是子 method — Jiang Weiqiao's early twentieth-century synthesis of Daoist circulation and Buddhist calming-and-insight — provides a practical way in. The centre of everything else here.

  • Quiet standing 靜站

    Post standing 站樁, including Three Elixir Field standing. Stillness carried into the upright body, and the bridge between sitting and the moving arts.

  • Yǎngshēng 養生

    Yangsheng, nourishing life: time-tested qigong 氣功 sets, breath work and self-massage, together with rest, self-care and seasonal awareness.

  • Dǎoyǐn 導引

    Guiding and pulling: guided stretching and movement that opens the joints and works along the channels. Two sequences carry most of this work, and each has a page of its own —

  • Scripture study 經學

    Contemplative reading and application of the core texts, working from Handbooks for Daoist Practice 修道手冊, with the Dàodé jīng 道德經 and Zhuāngzǐ 莊子 assumed alongside, and the Neiye 內業 as the touchstone.

  • Nèidān 內丹

    Neidan, internal alchemy, approached through the dual cultivation of innate nature and life-destiny 性命雙修. Taken up gradually, and only on a settled foundation, with respect for the context in which advanced methods belong.

  • Internal martial arts 內家拳

    The internal family as moving cultivation, taught as practice rather than performance: tàijíquán 太極拳, and in principle bāguàzhǎng 八卦掌 and xíngyìquán 形意拳 — worked through form, standing and paired practice. See T'ai Chi Ch'uan.

敬除其舍，精將自來 Sweep clean its dwelling, and the vital essence comes of itself. Neiye 內業 · Inward Training

In a session

What a gathering looks like

It varies by subject. A session on quiet sitting looks nothing like one on scripture, and one on yǎngshēng looks like neither. Commonly: a short standing or moving warm-up, a period of practice, then a text. No one is examined, nothing is graded, and there is no obligation to take up everything on this page.

It will run on Zoom, which means nobody is shut out of the study side by distance or by a weeknight journey.

How to start

A regular Daoist session is being set up, and it will run on Zoom. Meeting online rather than in a room is a deliberate choice: it keeps the session open to people who cannot reach Edinburgh or Linlithgow on a weeknight, and it suits work that is mostly sitting and reading. Beginners will be welcome at any session; nothing is sequential in a way that makes a first visit awkward.

Ask to be told when it starts. Until then, the Sunday T'ai Chi class in Linlithgow is the way in.

See the timetable The texts we work from