Earl Grey

Unless you actually speak both languages, know the history, and know the martial context while having competent skill.

What's confusing is how stubborn you are to insist with absolute certainty and self-appointed authority what you claim to know. There are some techniques for taking blows with reverse breathing. One is taught by Sifu Eric, but by and large, this is such a gross oversimplification since reverse breathing itself won't absorb the blows, your body has to be both rewired and conditioned to be able to absorb the blow and reflect the attack back at your opponent while taking zero damage. This of course requires development of the internal aspect, the golden bell, for its qi-based approach to create an intelligent body, more than the iron shirt for the external damage. Um, it's a comparison for reference since you're making conjecture and posting a video of an external style that is closer to Karate than it is to internal styles and training. The only thing that's not passed are the core internal techniques, as Kyokushin Karate has roots in Yi Quan, believe it or not. It's the most internal of all Karate styles, but it doesn't have Shili or Zhan Zhuang emphasized as much, or rather it has been adapted and refit into a more Karate context. Ever consider what Japanese people think Karate means versus what Chinese people think it means, even with the same characters? バカバカ!!! 黙れ!!! What mind do you even have to speak of? Remember: he doesn't even use the actual definition of qigong. If he ran across styles like Wisdom Qigong, he would immediately say it's not qigong because it doesn't fit his criteria for reverse breathing or work on the mitochondria, because to him, qigong is just breathing and oxygen is qi.

How lucky we are...

I'll also add that this is where it can fuel the ego: the seeming sense of power of cultivation can influence some people to see themselves as above others and treat them no differently from boys stomping on anthills, rather than parents who understand the innocent naiveté of children and seek to guide them. This is why lineage and a good teacher protect students: because character is essential before handing them the guns. One doesn't teach an angry and spiteful, petulant teenage misogynist with a violent and self-entitled attitude like Elliot Rodger how to shoot a gun without first correcting his infantile views.

Cultivation is the specific focus of a thread I have in my PPJ, and @SirPalomides actually pre-empts something I'm going to start talking about briefly in the thread when mentioning the cultivation of virtue, which is separate from the main cultivation I do practice. Cultivation in my personal use is primarily for cultivating jing, qi, and shen--technical practice. What I learned from several of my teachers is that cultivation of these things itself does not make you enlightened, but they do make it easier to achieve that state because you see beyond superficial states of the physical reality we live in and its inherent paradigms. This isn't because you're more compassionate, but it can make you more compassionate when you have good health and experiences seeing beyond the world of man and the relationship between the microcosmic, macrocosmic, and hypercosmic.

This "try and error" (trial and error) is basically choosing among the top ten search results in Google and Baidu rather than having a syllabus and assigned readings in a university specialization. It appears there is an indirect endorsement by ReturnDragon for what is analogous to playing Russian Roulette rather than formal training in safety and the use of handling firearms.

Your definition of cultivation and criteria for what constitutes cultivating may likely be different from what someone like me, Walker, or freeform use.

Curiously, it has hit a group of people who have contributed to many of the world's problems now: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/04/coronavirus-widespread-saudi-royal-family-report-200409070130026.html

It could be of either of two ways: Iron Shirt qigong, or Golden Bell. One kind involves mostly tapping and conditioning, with some internal practice that does include some breathing techniques (not necessarily reverse breathing), and the other is purely from internal training. I know several forms of iron shirt and golden bell, but two are developed passively and as a side effect of training more than directly focused.

Unfortunately, it is quite common because ego work is separate from cultivation. What I’ve found is that the power that cultivation brings and awareness it grants is a litmus test for character. Abraham Lincoln said that depriving a man of power doesn’t show you who he really is, but giving him power will, especially with how he treats waiters and laborers for example. Good teachers do make cultivation of both skill and soul work go hand in hand because giving someone a gun for example without teaching three basic rules of safety and then explaining when and when not to use it in defense is irresponsible. ”Keep your finger off the trigger, always point in a safe direction, keep the gun safe place until you use it.”

I started watching the Townsend's channel on 18th century living and great, really easy recipes: https://www.youtube.com/user/jastownsendandson/about

Be very careful about the mixture you are doing. I can't emphasize enough the risks.

These are why: There are very few practices one can do alone, as listed here.

Considering how often you give free shitty advice to people all the time and argue with people who do know what they're talking about with formal training, keep deluding yourself. Be warned, OP.

Wasn't inviting him to my school. But now that you're here, I'll take the opportunity to remind people of who you are:

Relevant thread for Healing Tao:

You learn more from practice than you do from books or listening to a lot of self-taught like some here who believe they know. Proper system. Not easy. can’t be done alone. Needs guidance from qualified teacher. yes. Be careful as not all training is linear nor is it always consistently replicable. Everyone’s body is unique and may develop differently and slower or faster than others.

Ad Hominem, Ad Verecundiam, Ad Ridiculum: three fallacies in one assumption about him being a westerner.

He does this a lot. Misinformation if the information is wrong, but disinformation if it's knowingly and deliberately wrong. Even when he's corrected, he insists he's still right, contrary to people with actual authority. I have shown his work to some friends in academia who are professors in well-known institutions and they found him to be worse than middle school students watching YouTube videos and going on Wikipedia. I would have thought you were from Antarctica.

A far better education than your self-appointed authority for everything Chinese that would have you laughed at in everyone from academia to martial arts to TCM.

Classic fallacy of giving yourself more credit because of your ethnic heritage, exactly what @Walker has mentioned before. Nobody is saying westerners know better than people who are Chinese. What is being said, however, is that you do not possess any academic or formal qualifications that show you understand it. You are translating based off of Baidu, and linguistics is one thing, but actual knowledge of history and subject matter beyond the very broad (and 99% of the time wrong) things you say with such generalizations means that you're no different than a high school kid holding a Spanish dictionary and saying he understands what Jorge Luis Borges, Pablo Neruda, and Miguel de Cervantes are saying in their respective poetry and literature: direct translation that doesn't convey the context at all, nor do they understand the references and innuendo and allusions. Here's an example of your style of literal translation, from a six-word short story in English using very bad translation, word by word rather than proper grammar. English: For sale: baby shoes--never worn. RidiculousDragon: 出售婴儿鞋决不旧. Direct Google Translate ignoring all nuances of the language (I do know how to say it in Chinese, by the way...) and this is exactly what you do with Baidu.

Mundane: adequate rest at an early time.

Welcome. You may find various topics aligned with your interest in the health sections and various practitioners with formal training in both TCM or Ayurveda here who can give their opinions in relevant topics here. One member who at one point practiced Reiki, currently named, RiverSnake, openly and frequently offers healing and scans for people. Enjoy your time here.

I do not recommend Mantak Chia at all as he is a controversial teacher and system here who has both inspired people and caused a lot more distress. You may use the search function to find the various discussions and opinions on this forum about him and what he teaches along with the specific controversies about what he allegedly knows, but I will spare you the further details of my opinion out of respect for your current and unsubtle joy in your current practice.

This is one system with extensive breathwork.