Michael Sternbach

Scissors

rock

Cool! Where did you find this? There is a UFO shown entering or leaving through the Arctic opening. So maybe the UFOnauts are inhabitants of Agartha?

I thought you might say something like that. And sure enough, mastering a soft style is as difficult as mastering a hard style - if not more so. Nevertheless, as I have been training years in two external styles of Karate as well as in the internal arts of Taiji and Aikido, I feel the unquestionable effort required by the two latter to be more... effortless.

Bliss

No two paths are exactly the same, nor will they lead to exactly the same understanding of the Universe. This is because anyone's full comprehension of their world, or enlightenment, is equivalent to the full realization of their own individuality which is unique to themselves. For the Universe to understand Itself, it needs the myriads of unique perspectives of all the individuals it created. The best spiritual teachers always understood and taught this. They simply serve as a model and guide during a certain stage of one's perfect path. With the words of Kahlil Gibran: "For the vision of one man lends not its wings to another man. And even as each one of you stands alone in God's knowledge, so must each one of you be alone in his knowledge of God and his understanding of the earth."

Kung fu as "hard work" or, as you say, "self-imposed great difficulty" seems to be conceptually more in line with the hard Shaolin approach than with the soft Wudang approach. Maybe that's why the term is not used as commonly for the internal styles.

Hello, Spencer, and welcome to the forums, Your membership is approved and we're happy you found your way to us. You will find many qigong practitioners to exchange thoughts with here. Please take the time to read the two posts pinned at the top of this Welcome page and take a look at the forum terms and rules. This covers all you need to know when getting started. For the first week you will be restricted to ten posts per day but after that you can post as much as you like. Also, until you’ve posted fifteen times in the forums, you’ll be a “Junior Bum” with somewhat restricted access and will be allowed only two private messages per day. Good luck in your pursuits and best wishes to you, Michael Sternbach and the TDB team

No, it's not. It's right in the centre of the world, of course. That's why we have the Not to mention the LHC.

Of course they have dogs of their own!

Given its anatomical location, the big toe kick to CV1 you described should work well when fighting against an asshole... Sorry, that was a little graphic. Definitely below the belt.

Interesting... Could you explain this exercise, please?

As The Ancient Art of Life and Death: The Book of Dim Mak by Rick Bauer and Flane Walker discusses at length, there have been various attempts to explain the system of the meridians in terms of nerves and blood vessels etc. As to be expected when two very different perspectives on the human being meet, there is no full congruence. Despite numerous parallels, it doesn't seem to be possible to fully explain one system in terms of the others. Of course, some individuals will maintain that modern materialistic Western science has all the answers, whereas ancient Eastern knowledge is full of superstitions and only valid as far as it can be explained by the former. This is not my position. And if it is yours, I probably won't be able to help you. According to aforesaid book, rigorously, there are actually three types of strikes to be distinguished, although there is often just a thin line between them and they commonly get mixed up in martial arts parlance. Dim mak: Death strikes - defined rather by their effect than by the way they work. Dim hsueh: Bloodgate strikes - they connect to the circulatory system in some manner. Dim ching: Incapacitating strikes - generally attacking nerve plexi. A strike in one of the two latter categories in many cases can be elevated to a Dim mak strike, that is, if it kills the recipient, either immediately or later. Strikes in the Dim Ching category are generally the ones used in what came to be widely known as Kyusho-jitsu. This is mostly based on Okinawan Kempo and represented in the West by George Dillman, Evan Pantazi and some others. Nerve strikes as used in Kyusho-jitsu are considered non-fatal, in fact quite harmless, even when they knock people out, thus more suitable for modern self-defence. They are typically delivered with what looks more like a touch than a strike. This is certainly one of the reasons why their effectiveness on a non-compliant opponent is often questioned. However, it should be borne in mind, that a strong looking blast doesn't always do the damage one would expect (brick crushing Kyokushin full contact fighters in tournaments usually keep bashing each other for quite awhile before one of them drops - sometimes). On the other hand, a technique that looks weak in the layman's eye might in truth have a lot of penetration and knock the wind right out of you! A little story to illustrate: A drunk 'friend' of mine in a bar shaking my hand used the opportunity to apply a finger lock on me that he had probably seen in a Steven Seagal movie. He knew I was doing martial arts and probably thought of himself as being funny while he gave me a big grin. I couldn't slip out of the lock and it was increasingly painful. So, before he was going to do some real damage, using my free hand, I delivered a fairly 'soft' vertical punch to his solar plexus. At no stage did I tense my muscles as I didn't want to do any real harm to him. The instant my lose fist connected, he let go of my hand as if struck by a lightning. "You're never gonna touch me again!" he squeezed out angrily. I thought to myself: Neither will you... It should be mentioned that Kyusho-jitsu demonstrations on non-compliant outsiders are not always successful. Of course, you could say this of other strikes as well; some men can even take a substantial hit to the groin. So much depends on the susceptibility of the person struck, the level of mastery on side of the striker, and other circumstances. Also, the alleged harmlessness of Kyusho-jitsu nerve strikes is often being questioned, especially by traditional practitioners of Chinese styles. I would be especially worried about long term effects the practice might have. I sometimes wonder if the high reliability of the strikes on other Kyusho practitioners is based on their nerve system having become overly sensitive due to being struck that way in training for years... Personally, I wouldn't join that kind of training, for being on the safe side. But I do watch the videos with interest. Chinese practitioners like Erle Montaigue emphasize that to use Dim Mak to full effect, the techniques must be delivered with Fa-jin ("explosive force") which (it has been mentioned on this thread before) is more than a matter of body mechanics although the latter is an indispensable foundation for it.

Qi

Take my word for it... The 'legit' thread (along with the diverged Welcome thread) is in the abyss (only viewable by mods/admins). On the 'legit' thread, there were TDB members' real names being revealed, which has been rightfully reported to the moderating team. This information was quickly disseminated over the remainder of that fast moving thread by further posts quoting and referring to it. After agonizing over the problem for awhile, I decided that all I could do was to hide the most directly revealing posts, knowing that I hadn't done a really thorough job, as doing so indeed would have required getting rid of the whole later part of the thread. Not to mention all the fierce accusations, insults and mockery that you wouldn't expect to see on a forum dedicated to spiritual philosophies. The battle drew a lot of attention, the moderating team was being swayed with reports, and some clear actions had to be taken in order to appease the situation before folks would have started opening bets. It is not always possible to avoid a tough decision - as you are certainly aware. My interventions were mere reactions to obvious violations of sensible forum rules, and in no way dependent on who committed the latter. And I don't see that any member of the moderating team would have acted differently.

A sample from one of numerous DVDs on which Erle Montaigue teaches DM.

blue

Although this post is a reply to someone else, may I suggest that Bindi (who is a she, btw) referred to subtle anatomy - which indeed ties in with the vacuum as understood in physics and discussed by the article I linked. The author demonstrates once again that the subjects of science and spirituality are in truth inseparable. This was the scientific understanding of the ancients (i.e. Greek and Vedic science) - and will hopefully be the understanding of future generations again, when science learns to step beyond materialism and embrace mind and spirit.

We know how this always ends...

By the way, it is well known in quantum physics that the 'vacuum' boils with virtual particles constantly popping out of and back into it. In other words, there is no such thing as a true vacuum. Science is just beginning to understand that living beings are connected to this quantum physical vacuum (traditionally called aether, akasha etc) via "vacuum domains" or "vacuum engines". I recommend the article Field Concepts and the Emergence of a Holistic Biophysics by the Swiss researcher Marco Bischof. http://www.marcobischof.com/en/texte/show.html?id=art_3d141900af22a

The pineal gland is indeed situated between the two cerebral hemispheres. The connection between the hemispheres is provided by a very large bundle of nerve fibres called the corpus callosum. Moreover, I do imagine that, on some level, a kind of 'membrane' separates the hemispheres from each other. It is my understanding that, underneath our usual waking consciousness, information is being computed in the way of massive parallel processing. The linear mind cannot follow this, therefore, these processes remain invisible to it. At best, it will become aware of the end result as an intuitive hunch or sudden inspiration, not unlike a ball dropping out of a lottery machine.

Which coincide with certain 'zero points', 'singularities' or bindus in the subtle anatomy.

This question can be answered in a variety of ways. One 'physical location' (and quite possibly what the OP refers to) is the pineal gland.

Nungali, Overall, I think your post #17 and #18 are a fair treatment of the topic. The Theosophical system of Blavatsky & Co. is in fact a remainder from Victorian times with a number of unsustainable notions. Which is not to say that there could not be certain conceptions distilled out of it that could still be put to a constructive use. Instead of elaborating on this, may I refer the interested reader to my post #4. That Blavatsky's ideas played a certain role in the esoteric dressing up of Nazi racism is hard to dismiss. I leave this question to the historians. Personally, I hold on to Bruce Lee's philosophy of absorbing what is useful and discarding what is useless. Interestingly, this is also what the foreword of Alice A. Bailey's A Treatise on Cosmic Fire suggests (and we are no longer surprised that to the OP, anything written by Bailey is a mere digression from Blavatsky's eternally true words). Of course, about Atlantis, we will have to talk more, but that should be reserved for a certain other thread, which my new job as a mod somewhat keeps me from pursuing further. However, we're not done yet. Happy New Year everybody, Michael

Nungali, I suppose that's a version of the Bubishi? Indeed, 'Dim Mak' doesn't refer to a particular move (except in certain films), but to a whole system of striking the acupuncture points (or a certain number thereof, depending on the style being practised). Also, it is not necessarily about making the opponent succumb to long term effects, although this may be one of its possible applications. More interesting from a modern perspective, however, is its potential to incapacitate (not necessarily kill) an opponent by precisely grabbing or striking a (or a combination of) acupuncture points. Knowledge of Dim Mak has been part of many martial arts, starting with Indian Kalaripayattu, and extending especially to Chinese, Okinawan and some Japanese styles. It is preserved in their forms although their modern 'sportification' is rather detrimental to its dissemination. Much of this knowledge has been preserved and transmitted by certain pioneering individuals such as Hohan Soken, George Dillman and Erle Montaigue.