Earl Grey

I've read the same book and every book by Eva Wong is wonderful reading.

When I lived in Tanzania as a Peace Corp Volunteer, one may think that in the rural villages, men hold power and women are oppressed due to the first taste of life a Trainee experiences upon being delivered to their homestay family. Married couples in particular were outraged as men were urged to rest because of the assumption that they did all the hard work at sunrise until noon, breaking their backs, and then making decisions about where the child/volunteer can go and where they must not go. The women, still suffering from jet lag, were urged to bring water from the bottom of the hill, chop vegetables and cook, sweep, or watch over the chickens, and if all tasks were done, they would find more work for them. Our female volunteers initially found life very difficult to adjust to after coming from the United States. Later on, we all discovered that when doing village projects, the easiest way to find out what the needs of the community came from talking to the grandmothers and mothers, who knew everyone, who made financial decisions, and with one loud and very authoritative order, no man or child could hide or say no. My projects were a lot easier for me to understand when working with all the mamas (actually proper Kiswahili term for older women), because the men simply said "Yes" or "No" and then did the work, but the women knew the how and why and who. Who really ran the community there? I can't identify if it's patriarchal or matriarchal at that point. All I know is that those who held authority and "soft" power were the women, and frankly without them, I would have been unable to understand how to serve the community since the men seemed fairly content with things as they are even amidst food security, malaria, sexual health issues, and sanitation and hygiene.

I would like to share with everyone a few insights lately from my personal practice. 1) I am in no rush to learn the forms beyond the DVDs (yet) because the depth of every single form from Vols. 1-5 and 7 are so intense that I really have to schedule my days to keep things flowing and not forget forms. By intensity, I mean that in the very beginning, they feel great and simple, but the more I practice even the basic meditations, the more profound each one is with the layers of development of the psyche. So it's a lot of work with what we already have and am grateful that we have as much as we do now, but echoing SeekerOfHealing, I do get excited at the prospect of the new DVD volumes you've mentioned in the works, Sifu Terry. And I'm simply waiting for things to align on my end financially so I can begin training with you on Skype and for when I inevitably go to your classes in Santa Monica. 2) I practice intensely a couple other systems, and one of my students had until yesterday complained that she didn't feel much benefit from it (Wu Qin Xi) after 100 days, but when we practiced together, the power of training together really led to a breakthrough for her. Interestingly enough, we also meditate as a group for Flying Phoenix every new moon and full moon, and for my friends who practice at home, they feel benefits alone and exponential benefits together as a group. Why I bring these two points together is that it's easy to feel benefits in Flying Phoenix, alone or in a group, but with other styles I know, some people have a difficult time feeling the benefits without a group, as individual practice is difficult for them. 3) I can't emphasize enough the importance of sitting meditation that was mentioned cryptically at least once or twice on this thread when doing Flying Phoenix. If you do not have a silent seated meditation, find one now. Your Flying Phoenix practice will drastically improve, and I can not describe how because it's beyond my ability to accurately convey in words what happens when you sit and when you don't. Now, I shall end with a question that Cihan mentioned in an earlier post about the Five Flash Meditations on Vol.5, the last one coming from Baat Din Gum: it can be done again and again repeatedly much like Bending the Bows, after one breath control sequence, yes? If so, how many repetitions do you recommend, 18 like in BtB? Enjoy your workshop in DC, Sifu Terry! May everyone have fruitful practice! EDIT: I recommend traditional Taoist Zuowang, or Golden Flower, which I practice for my meditation primarily, and my secondary seated method is chanting mantras.

Adding to this... I didn't even know I had the flu virus until two weeks ago when after doing my usual martial forms, I coughed up some phlegm. An hour of Flying Phoenix later, my nasal passages cleared and I never would have known I was sick if it weren't for those symptoms I coughed up. I was still able to do calisthenics right after, and the next day was as though I had nothing at all. So keep practicing even if you don't feel anything working--it's always working.

@Songshou we are truly fortunate to have you as a member of our thread and community of Flying Phoenix practitioners. The level of insight and analysis that you bring is immense and immeasurable. Thank you for this; we look forward to practicing with you as we do the rest for our family of Flying Phoenix practitioners here.

This is absolutely true; I've entered lucid dreaming states to the point that I could close if I wanted to and still remain in the dream, or close and then go into deep sleep devoid of dreaming too.

MSW meditations definitely impact my quality of sleep and dreams. Sometimes I feel like I'm plunging into a different world and this is the dream itself when I awaken.

I personally put the hands on the knees at the end of each round to rest based on what I saw, but clarification from Sifu Terry would be fantastic.

Wow! That's a really great time! Any chance you'd be willing to show us a video someday possibly? Just being able to witness someone that dedicated and advanced in the skill of doing it that slow is amazing. Also, Glass' Metamorphoses is a wonderful set to practice to, I must say.

Purple and violet are no joke. I and a few people who've chatted have been noticing that sometimes in our practice.

If it is Volume 5, my understanding is just one breath sequence, one round of movements, then close and repeat again, as seen in other forms like for Wind Above the Clouds, but--let's see what Sifu Terry says. You were the one who reminded me that we can do MHP while supine and I missed on the thread before, so let's see.

Gendao, you do realize a lot of NGOs for development work aren't just composed of foreigners, but locals from the country itself, right? And there are many that are locally founded with international recognition that have both foreign and local staff. Please do not talk about things that require better understanding and try not to derail the thread.

Welcome. I know there are discussions on all the styles you mentioned. I also think it's a good idea to pick a practice that doesn't just resonate as a form, but you have a good teacher and community that goes along with it too. Your Qigong teacher sounds like he knows an eclectic mix of styles. He must be very handsome and talented too.

There is a specific type of loneliness for people who repatriate or even just visit their passport country after living away for a while. It's beyond reverse culture shock, and I'll share the loneliness I and many of a lot of my friends have experienced returning to the US/UK/Australia/Etc after living in Cambodia/Philippines/Etc. Let's think of Captain America, for anyone who has seen the movie or reads comics. In the movie, he gets frozen at the height of the Second World War, but his body is preserved in the ice where his plane crashes, and awakens in the modern world (in the movies, he awakens in 2012). This world is not the world he knows: America is not the country he knows anymore, as technology, social norms and values, historical events both major and minor, humor, and maps are no longer the same. It's a big jump 70 years in the future, trying to reconcile how your country has changed into something unrecognizable. Now, technology, even before everyone had tablets, smartphones, and laptops, has made this happen on a more accelerated scale: being away just for a couple years (ask any Peace Corps Volunteer) and your world changes significantly. A story: I visited America in 2014 after being away for a few years living in Cambodia/Indonesia/East Timor/and a few other countries. The last time I specifically went to San Francisco to see my mother was 2010, while the city was still fairly stagnant and boring as everything was closing up and there was nothing more to do. Fast forward to 2014, and more stores are closing, but a lot of my friends have left because it's too expensive, all these new young people are using language I no longer understand because of Silicon Valley with their accelerators, influencers, and contracting words into indecipherable sentences as a result of 140-character limits for posting their verbal diarrhea infecting their everyday speech when talking to people in person. People are more interested in looking at their phones or trying to be funny with sarcasm but saying the same copied and pasted jokes again and again. Did San Francisco change because of Silicon Valley? Was I a square because I don't know the music or pop culture news and memes that are part of the everyday exposure to everyone else? Was I stupid for not knowing slang or being able to respond with an equally snarky comment to someone who refuses to tell me where the toilet is because he's making fun of me for just asking and confused that I don't know he's referencing some television show I've never heard of that everyone else is watching? The first thought was that no one can go home again, because the locks get changed in your home and someone decides to redecorate it. No. It was I who had changed even more. I became accustomed to speaking slowly for non-native speakers. I had slow Internet that meant I didn't know Netflix was now an Internet streaming service, and I thought it was still the same company mailing DVDs to people who didn't want to go to Blockbuster. I didn't know about how people were using mobile phones to do everything because of apps that allowed them to order people around to buy groceries for them or drive for them, as I was only using mine for phone calls and text messages, and only recently discovered What's App. The humor I had was based off of cultural differences between I as a westerner with Asian heritage living in Asian countries and having difficulty due to so many differences amongst Khmers/Javanese/Timorese/Illongos/ and my norms, biases, and values, but now humor was about pointing fun at people and bragging about how witty you are online. And this was just San Francisco, because when I got to L.A., I had no idea why restaurant servers were more focused on trying to be funny instead of taking my order or asking simple questions about menu items that they said was made from rat poison or calling me a terrible person for ordering some toast without coffee. You can't step into the same river twice. I left America the first time involuntarily in 1995 and returned in 2002, and then left a second time in 2012 only to return in 2014. As of 2014, I have not spent more than two weeks at a time each year in America and have no desire to as my favorite bookstores and cafes close. My friends have people in their circle who make fun of country stereotypes and all think I lived in Thailand only for prostitutes and the fear and loathing life, without realizing that people actually live there trying to do good social work for NGOs or that there is actually a good expatriate entrepreneurial community there. For me, the America in my mind was the height of Gen-X in 1995, for the late 1990s are a different era than the early 1990s with the gang violence, Kurt Cobain, the Gulf War, and Super Nintendo. I still can no longer reconcile it with the America I visited in Christmas of 2016, as Millennial and Edger America has different values, different geographical maps, and rode a different wave of experience that defined them and their America. I am a foreigner in my own country not just because I am Asian American, but someone who still can't believe it's the same country that I initially left in 1995. You don't need to be Captain America waking up 70 years in the future--a few years away changes you with the new environment as much as your country changes while you are gone. In the Third World Countries I lived and live in, I meet more people like me who are displaced expats from different countries who are forever foreigners in their new country, but anachronistic aliens lost in time. I know one man who hadn't been back to America since Carter was in the White House until the early 2000s, and now has no desire to go back as he reads about the greater influence of technology on social psyche. I know another man who left Germany as a teenager and now in his 30s, can't live in his motherland because he speaks English far more comfortably with other expats more than he speaks German with his parents, and can't live in America due to his citizenship even if most of his friends moved there, so he has opened up a business in Manila. Repatriation is exceptional loneliness, because that sense of community that you get from being with people who have been flung out of their home countries willingly or unwillingly who connect to you at the very least from being just as foreign as you. I have more in common with a Belgian guy who grew up in Portugal and the UK living in Bangkok and has no love for his passport country because Thailand is his home now and all his friends are other denizens who have the same sentiment of no desire to return to unfamiliar places that are supposed to be their homelands. I have no commonality with someone just because he's another American, which is why I don't make an effort to be friendly with all these tourists--I care for the long game with the long-term denizens. The loneliness of repatriation far exceeds the loneliness of being a foreigner in the Third World, because you can eventually meet people who came to Manila/Dili/Siem Reap/Jakarta like you for whatever reason from whatever country and suddenly share the same disdain for traffic, mosquitoes, visa laws changing every few months, and the joy of sharing the same sardonic suffering. I do not care about waiting two weeks camped outside of the Apple store for a new toy when I have to queue up for visa renewal much longer sometimes. I may have a hard time asking for directions to the toilet in Bahasa Indonesia and pidgin English, but I find more effort and genuine care from someone in Bandung than I do from some Bay Area hipster who wants to say something snarky that his friends on Twitter and Reddit just dared him to say to the next customer asking where the toilet was so that he could post my reaction to the list different responses to his wittiness (or lack thereof). I don't laugh when someone makes jokes about Kazakhstan because some unfunny British actor introduced them to a country that they may not know actually exists, because I think of my neighbors who were actually from Kazakhstan who owned a Russian restaurant since they left a year before the Soviet Union split and ended up somewhere in Manila. Certainly how I am characterizing what I saw in America in recent visits is not the totality of America, but my world has become so different and my identity is now of the forever foreigner living in a country that is not mine but I call home for now, while the country I originated from is far more exotic to me. This is the loneliness I know, and for people who know what the term Third Culture Kid is, it gets far more complicated.

There are other practitioners here like Tao Stillness and Cihan who have been practicing a while and answer in place of Sifu Terry for other students, as Sifu Terry is often busy and confirms while also remaining patient for many of the same questions being asked and answered multiple times before throughout these 175 pages. I'm sure he'll be happy to tell you the breath control is that on the DVD and there have been typos before both by other students, Sifu Terry, and have all been corrected later on. Happy you're enjoying the long form. It's a personal favorite of mine.

That was me too. I initially repatriated to the US for university and work after living in Hong Kong and Manila for some years. By the time I got through the first year of grad school, I got fed up with North America and moved to Indonesia, which in turn led me to a host of countries from Cambodia to Timor-Leste to Sri Lanka and Thailand, and now back in Manila. What I enjoy the most is actually what I like about The Dao Bums that I find sorely lacking elsewhere: a sense of community. It is a totally different thing to emigrate to a Third World Country than it is to go to London, New York, Singapore, or Hong Kong. The expats I meet in cities like those I have mentioned are part of one rat race or another. The expats and other denizens I meet in Manila, Siem Reap, Jakarta, and Dili are those who enjoy a new pace, and there's a wonderful kind of connection that starts off with one thing in common: we are all here for a reason and aren't here to be part of the rat race. Even if they aren't doing NGO or other types of development work, there's a lot more humility, openness, grit, and empathy. Someone hears my voice and they're another denizen who either went to international school or worked in a few countries here and there and suddenly, we're hanging out a few days later and training, getting drinks, playing board and video games, and meeting each other's friends while exploring new ideas and possible collaborations. We're exchanging books in our libraries and taking a bus to another province so that we can explore together. I can't get that when I visit my friends in North America or Singapore, especially in Los Angeles or San Francisco. It's a lot of "Hey cool, I was a voluntourist in Thailand for spring break" which is actually false equivalence. It's a lot of pissing about who saw more sites and took more buses instead of flying or working in the same place for a long time and developing a connection to the community. My time in Sri Lanka was up north where civilians weren't allowed anywhere near, so I don't think of beaches or temples and tourist debauchery, and the friends I made were a range of people from Lithuanian youth pastors in a Christian church to middle-aged Australian professionals who speak Sinhalese and Tamil fluently and have a vinyl collection as well as a stack of 1970s paperbacks that they were happy to share with me and a range of different nationalities and generations over Sunday brunch and a little cricket (which I still don't know how to play). During the Snowden affair in 2013, while living in Siem Reap, Cambodia, at the Russian restaurant while watching the news, the French, American, English, Australian, and Russian patrons all looked and said, "I guess we all hate each other again" and laughed because we no longer had any special love or attachment to our passport countries nor did we discriminate based on nationality anymore. If anything, we took jabs at each other for national stereotypes in jolly good fun, but our animosity was reserved for tourists who had no respect for this land, which was their Hangover Trip like Las Vegas, but to us? It was our home.

It is 90 60 5 50 40 as on the DVD. If you saw it as 90 60 5 50 30 on this thread, it is a typing error of whoever posted.

The wonderful thing about the ignore option is that I no longer need see posts by people who bombard the forum with morbid drivel. But I also realize that I have more fun not using the option and instead ignoring the ignobleness of what they say since everyone else can already see it. http://www.artofmanliness.com/2017/02/08/social-briefing-2-others-see-differently-see/ http://www.artofmanliness.com/2017/02/24/social-briefing-3-4-social-mindsets-3-derail-1-leads-success/ If You Do This You May Think You Seem You May Seem Share what’s on your mind before basic personal information Interesting and offbeat Self-centered, eccentric, inappropriate Show little attention to your grooming and style Natural, not concerned with superficialities Socially unaware, careless Withhold attention or interest Cool and confident Uninterested, rejecting, cold Listen, but don’t add topics to the conversation Interested, thoughtful Dull, self-involved Focus on only one topic Passionate Boring, self-absorbed, lacking in curiosity Deliver a lecture on something you know a lot about Smart, interesting Bombastic, boring, self-absorbed Introduce topics with the goal of convincing others of your way of thinking Enlightened, smart, passionate Tedious, draining Talk about “charged” topics such as salaries or religion Passionate, interesting Insensitive, offensive Dominate the conversation with jokes and humor Entertaining, lively, funny Tedious, draining Focus on your individuality rather than your commonality with others Interesting, eccentric Inaccessible, self-involved, socially awkward Share more than others do Open, honest, revealing Burdensome, inappropriate Share much less than others In control, mysterious Closed, uninteresting, cold Speak more quickly and pause more briefly than others Interesting, energized Emotionally draining, alienating Speak more slowly or pause longer than others Relaxed, comfortable, thoughtful Boring, tedious Speak more loudly Self-confident, fun, interesting Bombastic, self-satisfied, offensive Speak much more than others Interesting, informative Self-absorbed, difficult to connect with Act inflexibly to unexpected events Determined, appropriately demanding Needy, entitled, high maintenance Present yourself as superior to others Important, impressive Intimidating, insecure Present yourself as inferior to others Modest, endearing Awkward, lacking confidence Blame others Honest, straightforward Difficult, socially needy, victimized Focus on negative aspects of a situation Straightforward, realistic Unlikable, unpleasant Make less eye contact than others Normal, respectful Rejecting, uninterested, shy, awkward

Will the above videos be available on YouTube eventually for those of us who don't have Facebook?

The secret to living forever is indeed with Drew - when he talks, it feels like it will never end.

Entirely up to you. Plenty of practitioners on this thread live in places like Germany, Netherlands, Australia, the Philippines, Turkey, some Central Asian countries, and Canada. It wouldn't be a problem getting DVDs from Sifu Terry if you order off of taichimania.com.

While you can theoretically start anywhere, it is optimal to learn Volumes 1-4 first, to get your foundation, especially Vol. 2 for the beginners' seated meditations. Then you can add on Vol. 7.

Buy them off of the website www.taichimania.com directly from Sifu Terry. Do not get copies, especially pirated.

Sifu Terry, it's so nice to see you with Sifu Li. I had the opportunity to train with him once when he came back to Manila for a brief visit and his original first generation teachers invited me (as I am friends with them and their children) to meet him. That picture and your previous one with Eric Isen both make me smile widely from ear to ear.