Earl Grey

As a minority by western standards, I don’t buy into this woke framework. I have always known Lovecraft to be a weirdo, and unsurprisingly, many writers, artists, and musicians have had some sort of neuroses or addiction on top of being full of idiosyncrasies. Does it excuse them? Of course not. But do their works still influence us? It would be delusions and hypocrisy to say otherwise. I wrote in my own thread for woke criticisms that in the country that I presently live in, Lovecraft is insanely popular in literary and hobby cultures—even though the people here and I have been depicted as little pygmy cannibals goblins, the Tchotchos. We are fully aware he imagined us to be savages—and we find it hilarious even as this country has had colonialism on top of racism. We look at the ideas he made and escapism that exists, and have games revolving around hyperbole: role playing as southern plantation owners being murdered by Cthulhu cultists, and treat his ignorance the same way white people make fun of Asian people Engrish. Is it offensive? Some of us do think his views are messed up, but we don’t enjoy what Lovecraft has spawned from literary influences to games and art any less. There is an ongoing reaction here since the World Fantasy Awards removed Lovecraft’s bust as their award to highlight woke articles about Lovecraft and how they’re all written with the same arguments by Americans predominantly and the people here instead do more Lovecraft related activity as a response. The Americans of course have their history of slavery that causes them to react differently to their literary son, and the dialogues about him are led by the Americans very loudly. It is made worse by how Americans lead the dialogue more because of their influence via social media and homogenization of ideas that also stem from Silicon Valley and its unsurprisingly parochial views that somehow are packaged as diverse because of the love for tech and its stranglehold on 21st century life. As a result, the Americans can keep going on about this unoriginal revisionist progressive view, but it’s not going to be as fun as the ideas or settings Lovecraft created. Lovecraft and his legacy will continue entertaining us all, and wokeness today will be tomorrow’s old hat.

Lovecraft is indeed a product of his time, but he is also known for being much more extreme than the average bigot of his fellow man then. His travel experience was mostly towards the end of his life, and what changed his views too was his marriage to a Jewess and being on the train out west that got him thinking. Prior to that, he was the equivalent of a modern-day incel who was smothered by his aunts who raised him and his own development as a child put him behind his peers socially. He was incredibly awkward and can be thought of as a guy who lived in his head because he rarely spoke with the people whom he feared, but he was amongst them when living in New York. This changed with his marriage and his travels gradually—hence the renunciation.

While these are great general discussions, staying on topic with the Flying Phoenix thread in relation to these points can help both with yogic development and trauma release. Notice that spontaneous shaking can occur during practice--even Sifu Terry shakes occasionally when doing some meditations, even the basic ones, not just the advanced forms. The longer you practice and slower you move, the greater the jhanic absorption. What advantage exists for Flying Phoenix compared to other qigong out there is that not only is it very accessible, it is a pure and unadulterated authentic Taoist art as opposed to the many claims of what is out there. In addition to this, as mentioned earlier by @asavakkhaya, dealing with trauma might be good to start with Flying Phoenix and then contacting Sifu Terry privately for sessions as he is also skilled in therapy, as well as trained in hypnotherapy. Now, if any of you take the streaming sessions, you can experience the two yogic practices of Tao Tan Pai's basic 31 form and the short form power yoga derived from it, and how it facilitates more depth of Flying Phoenix practice as the two systems complement one another.

I saw no arrow fired by @CloudHands and if anything, what he wrote seemed more like a concerned friend.

Lovecraft renounced much of his bigotry towards the end of his life. This change is glossed over frequently by his critics and evidence of that change in biases is seen in the research of prominent Lovecraft scholar S.T. Joshi.

As I said: sensations aren’t important or where your mind is. This system is not focused on feeling sensations, but there are common sensations. This system doesn’t follow typical qigong norms. If you’re really worried, send an e-mail to Sifu Terry or take a one-on-one with him. As your question is something more general rather than related to Flying Phoenix, you may be better off consulting Eric Isen for a session on your health.

Flying Phoenix does not require mental focus. As Sifu Terry said before, you could literally do your taxes in your head while doing the forms after the breath control sequence. Do not focus on body sensation, just focus on doing the forms and meditations correctly.

To most people, Archie Bunker appears to be a naive bigot. To his wife, he was “honey” and “darling”. To his children, he was “dad”. To those who gave him a chance in the word of “All in the Family”, he had made great gains, and in his succeeding show, the character of Archie was ultimately a different person who had grown out of that in “Archie Bunker’s Place.” But many will focus only on the less savory moments and ignore growth or change. Most people will not see this growth context in you or me and anyone else. Most people do not want to accept or hear your story aside from how it fits into their individual story. That is fine. Just be sure your own story is not a rigid narrative, if the lessons that Gene Wolfe and J.D. Salinger offer are anything to go by about the unreliable narrator and being a hero in one’s own mind. By equal measure, be careful of the gossip that makes you question if you’ve become the villain just because someone has made you the dragon in their fantasy, causing you to wonder how much of their truth is reality compared to how much your own truth is reality. tl;dr: facets, Steve. Facets. Like a gemstone, some angles look better than others. But these angles do not change the actual value of the gemstone, for better or for worse.

A little friendly note for consistency and clarity as I've seen a personal message copied to the bottom of a welcome post a while ago that was eventually quickly edited a while back, and today I'm seeing things like "The Tao Bums" in welcome posts just now as opposed to Dao but still using initials TDB. I know it's a really hard and taxing job, but a little careful checking rather than copy and pasting can save a lot of trouble and confusion for some people.

That was a joke in my post—a political crap joke. 💩

Among other things such as asking you for help with a yantra to control someone and you yourself told him not to PM you to beg for help on another thread. Just more begging and having other people do the work for him.

It's also missing the people taking selfies and saying that they were there representing or making up for centuries of racism by taking a selfie with non-whites. A selfie will make a difference...in your social media status updates.

This article is misleading. It implies that cancel culture is the lesser evil of the two and can be tolerated, but the problem is that both are ultimately terrible things in the current zeitgeist.

I'll be in your site because it's closer, cheaper, and the other people I know are closer there.

my dogs and cats were all resting peacefully in various parts of my flat when I went to use the bathroom before taking a nap. Coming out, i saw that i was vetoed out by the democratic principle as all five of them took over my bed and were so adorable cuddling together that i decided to sleep on the floor instead after stealing a pillow from them.

Spank. 😁

Yes, meditation does this and I have that article cited in my discussion thread on the dangers of meditation as a bandaid rather than a dedicated practice. This is also why I find the Taoist meditations from seated golden flower to Zhan Zhuang to be even more dangerous because they not only open to mindfulness that brings these issues to the surface, but make qi rise (especially to the head). Combining the two leads to unpleasant results.

Great decision. I hope you are surrounded by caring and supportive individuals, and that those who are there for you are encouraging of your interest in internal arts.

Yes, this caveat is crucial. Thank you. The problem is that most people either don't take it seriously or their own self-assessment doesn't just ignore their issues, but in a bizarre contradiction, hope Zhan Zhuang can help yet don't believe that it will affect them negatively (which it can and does). True story: a student who was bipolar insisted she was fine, and her state led her to not just vomit from the discomfort, but triggered a manic episode for two days afterwards due to qi rising to her head. We had to pick her up from jail later on after she was restrained.

If it's "just standing" then you really need to re-examine your definition of just what ZZ is. It is a stance, but then that is saying that art is just colors on paper, making there no difference between a child's scribbles and Jackson Pollock, or even movements like Dadaism and Neocubism. Simply put, ZZ is seemingly simple, but there is actually a lot of nuance that one discovers. As a practitioner of Yiquan from a formal lineage and instructor, this is why we don't just allow people to stand from the beginning without a lot of discernment and preparation. There is a big difference between someone who thinks it's just standing and someone who knows it is not just a complete system in of itself, but has multiple layers of complexity--hence why @freeform and I are talking about the dangers of mental health, and you are talking about other systems in general but not naming anything specific--again going to conjecture and overgeneralization. Your tendency to overgeneralize isn't helping the OP. But besides the fact you ignored the rebuttals that shut down your points previously, it seems like this discussion is more or less dead.

Still an overstatement. A person who stood for one class is registered in that statistic—I am talking about people who practice regularly. You need to provide numbers rather than conjecture and understand that of those millions, you have to consider Inner Mongolia and Tibet, Xinjiang, and other remote areas or if there are even adequate programs. The statistics in China are horribly inaccurate in everything from education to health—take for example how a hospital that former member Walker worked in and he explains doctors are inclined to convince patients to leave and if they die after discharge, they don’t fall under the fatalities recorded in hospital deaths. A trick to make the numbers look good. Focus on quality, not on quantity. You are basically saying someone can stand regularly while your stats refer to any range of people standing from a one-off workshop to high school kids standing ten minutes for a class one semester, and this isn’t even looking at quality. Going by weird numbers is also ridiculously anti-TCM because they treat INDIVIDUALS, not numbers or symptoms. A good guide is necessary to help a practitioner in their own body. Otherwise, go tell people to learn rocket science (a far easier skill than the intricacies of proper Zhan Zhuang and cultivation) since there are both books and sites on Google and baidu to learn. You could even replace Zhan Zhuang with any sport like shooting guns at the firing range or skateboarding and assume no danger because of high numbers! Otherwise, if not physical health, remember that mental health is also at risk!

Platitudes endorsing self-learning—okay. It isn’t a hard rule that you CAN’T self-learn, but from technical and statistical perspectives, the likelihood of ANY benefit is quite low and the risks are high. It’s better doing a safer qigong practice than going into standing. You are talking about qigong now but that is not Zhan Zhuang nor is it predicated on whether they were practicing complicated forms with good guidance or not, and the “millions” statistic is already questionable if not hyperbole. A poor redirection argument tactic. As for not making it worse enough to see a doctor, often a doctor won’t know what to look for as someone trained in TCM or Ayurveda and even chiropractors will see things that are affected by improper practice. Understand the risks and ignore the platitudes while looking at the skill and structure, health and achievement of those advocating self-learning versus those who advice caution (but don’t outright say DO NOT).

“Easy to learn” but the quality of practice is dependent on the quality of understanding. 😜 “By the fruits, ye shall be known” and sadly many people who encourage self-learning don’t know the many people with knee and spinal problems both before and after attempting to learn Zhan Zhuang without a good guide.