Taomeow

A reputable TCM doctor I know favors clothes... ...and asserts that Westerners don't know how to dress for cold weather. The trick is to dress the lower part of your body very warmly. The Chinese have invented padded pants! The Japanese have invented a pillow to wear over the kidneys! Keep your feet and your kidneys warm. Keep your head warm too -- you accumulate cold in the lower body and lose heat through the top of the head. So what you wear on your feet, legs, over your kidneys, and on your head matters the most. The Western way is to pay most attention to the upper body clothes -- which are nowhere near as important. Another item of common TCM knowledge: if most of your food comes from the refrigerator, you accumulate too much cold in the body. And if you drink anything ice cold, you extinguish your Digestive Fire, so the food you eat doesn't warm you up properly. In China, they always serve water or tea with meals -- HOT. I would be so happy if I never saw another ice cube floating in my drink... no such luck here in the US when dining out. And I have friends with refrigerators equipped to dispense ice cubes into their drinks, what a marvel of technological health-sabotage!..

Cold rain?

I think http://longmenpai.blogspot.com/ is a good place to look -- it is the translation of the official blog of Shen Zhigang (referred to by the translator, Ken, as Shen Laoshi but NOT to be confused with someone else using the name "Shen" ) who wrote quite extensively about his 20+ years of studies with Master Wang. There's a good deal of great information in Russian (Viktor Siao, aka Xiao Weijia, has been Master Wang's student since 1988 and has a school in Moscow supervised by himself and Qin Ling, another long-term student. They are the organizers of Master Wang's Russian seminars, the only ones outside China so far.) Which is why I may not know of all the English language resources , so someone else might chime in to help answer your question more comprehensively.

I've heard they don't teach quantum physics in kindergarten. Does this mean that we cannot go through the entire training process of this system?.. Master Wang does not run an institution. When a seminar or a workshop is offered, you get a clear and precise curriculum of the event. But if you want to know in advance what the system "has" in its entirety, you can't be offered that -- you need to do some practice work for a length of time and, in the course of this practice, develop some organs capable of perceiving what it has before you can perceive it. How fast you personally can develop these organs is impossible to phase into any curriculum. Well, you are told what you're going to be doing, step by step. What is going to be happening while you're doing it, however, is just about as transparent as destiny, as clear as the will of the gods. This is a traditional art that has never mass-produced its masters. A teacher must be qualified before he or she is authorized. In the traditional view, just because someone "wants" to teach is not enough qualifications. What are you going to do about the entity that made you say that? Are you going to question it closely as to its source of this idea? Please do, I'd be interested to find out how the demons of character assassination and smear tactics get their training and what curriculum they follow. Think of it this way... What master Wang teaches is not a "product" that has gone through a process of packaging and presentation so as to look attractive to the customer who's been preemptively trained to expect his or her consumption of goods and services to be facilitated in a particular fashion by the producing industry. It is not a product that is going to get cheaper once knock-off versions are mass-produced. It is not a commodity. It is not an entitlement. It is not something someone promised to deliver, satisfaction guaranteed or your money back. It is not a basic right. It is not a trendy must-have goodie. Not a fad to abide by. Not a basic necessity. It is not a constitutional guarantee. It is hard to come by and will always be. It is expensive and until the world abolishes money it is likely to remain so. It is unique. You don't demand a Rembrandt original for your living-room just because you want it. By the same token, you don't demand things of a taoist immortal. You take what is offered, gratefully, or you say "no thanks" and look elsewhere for what pleases your heart's desires. It's as simple as that, and it is not likely to get simpler. Hope this helps.

Thanks for putting me on the spot! Still sucks, but better than it was back then. I recently tested it on a piece of furniture... the other side of rooting is uprooting -- the opponent -- in this case, a large solid wood cabinet with glass doors which spent 3 years in a spot no one liked because no one felt like moving it -- it's freakin' heavy and I keep nice dishes and wine glasses and other breakables there, so unloading it was always thought of as a hassle... then I decided to use my uprooting technique on it and moved it single-handedly and effortlessly -- without unloading it and without breaking anything. I just levitated it to a new and improved location. It weighs at least three times as much as I do. Rooting power!

Yes, in a movie episode I once posted a link to. So I am aware of this interpretation. However, sometimes a gun is just a gun. And sometimes it is sex. And sometimes it is love. A warm gun means "loaded and ready for explosive release," "silently full of potentials." So it may mean many, many things. A creative impulse. A destructive impulse. Or merely the knowledge of being armed and not powerless. Armed with anything that eliminates powerlessness and victimhood. An unshakable, unshatterable core belief that is more than a belief, a knowing. Inner strength. Inner peace. Magic aptitude. Whatever. "I know nobody can do me no harm because happiness is a warm gun." I don't call this song "an all-time favorite" for nothing. It is profound, it is not trivial, it is not "about" one thing no matter which one thing that is. By the way, I've asked this question many times and I will ask it again, because I still don't have a definitive answer. What does this line mean: "a soap impression of his wife which he ate and donated to the National Trust?"

You are essentially right, except it was done before the catholics and before the middle ages. History records that the early Christan church believed in reincarnation and the souls' journey back to oneness with god. This all changed by Imperial decree some 500+ years after the death of Christ. Emperor Justinian in 545 A.D. was able to apply the full power of Rome and his authority to stop the belief in reincarnation. He forced the ruling cardinals to draft a papal decree stating that anyone who believes that souls come from God and return to God will be punished by death. The actual decree stated: "If anyone asserts the fabulous preexistence of souls, and shall assert the monstrous restoration which follows from it: let him be anathema. (The Anathemas against Origin), attached to the decrees of the Fifth Ecumenical Council, A.D. 545, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2d ser., 14: 318)."

A charm hung off the Chain: Alright, Taomeow, what is it that you saw, heard, smelled in that crazy dream? In that crazy dream, an alien jellyfish floated in the sky.* (*True story. I pay attention to my dreams because I don't get any mundane ones. It's either a vision, or nothing. So -- an alien jellyfish, lights, colors, the whole nine yards of realistic dream-vision, and a messenger. When I woke up, I punched in "jellyfish UFO dream" in the search engine and got some 350,000 hits. Including one that did make the news at one point -- in Russia, in the 70s... not the dream of course that made the news, the actual alien jellyfish in the sky! A whole city witnessed it... I don't know if the article is available in English, or if I'll be lucky to find it among those hits once again, but I might try...)

Not the morning star... What spins, hums, smells of ozone and doesn't make the news?

Therefore the sage learns to swim before she surfs, learns to ride a bike before she heads for the highway, learns to talk with her neighbors before addressing the gods, learns to use grammar before style, style before freedom, freedom before power. Therefore ten thousand hollows sing her words, ten thousand peaks shake off their caps of snow to bow to her, ten thousand stars celebrate her speech with eternal fireworks in the sky.

Eh, an enabler! Women who have been convinced that there's nothing they "can" do about it, and then nothing they "should" do about it, and then "it's normal and OK to be treated like that" and then "it's cool to be treated like that, it means my hair is pretty and I'm sexy and they want me" -- deserve to be born as something disposable (a box of Kleenex? a box of condoms?) in their next incarnation. They are working on it...

It's absolutely normal (nevermind rare these days) to only be interested in sex+love, I've always been like that (with a few exceptions I regret. Love without sex is a teenage thing called "a crush" and sex without love is a pain-processing thing called "traumatic developmental history"). Where I come from men groped you too, often in the middle of the street and always on a packed bus while looking elsewhere with a deadpan expression -- like in that John Lennon song which is my absolute all-time favorite, Happiness Is A Warm Gun -- well, they did this to me since I was, like, thirteen and projected nothing but "I'm absolutely not ready for this, unavailable, too young, too normal, please give me some human boundaries" which of course didn't work -- but by the time I was, like, fifteen, I had a counter maneuver mastered to perfection -- a discreet knee-to-the-crotch kick, while looking elsewhere with a deadpan expression. Highly recommended if you don't have a gun.

What happened to your filter? I think it's time to replace it with one that works. The current one let through god only knows what...

Here's a book recommendation for you: Forbidden History: Prehistoric Technologies, Extraterrestrial Intervention, and the Suppressed Origins of Civilization by J. Douglas Kenyon

Fish jumping in ponds. Great Lord Pike who makes them jump a shadow deep down.

I have no idea. Alpha Draconians usually go to Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard or Yale, join a secret society (e.g. Skull and Bones), a masonic lodge (most US presidents, e.g.), and a few powerful and secretive international elite groups (like the Bilderbergers, the Trilateral Commission, the Council for the Foreign Affairs, e.g.), and practice occult arts (like the Bohemian Grove rituals around the Owl Furnace, e.g.) What they tell the public about occult arts is part of what they are entrusted by their higher-ups to be doing in order to keep inquiries safely on the wrong track. As to whether they are lizards, opinions vary, and I have no strong convictions one way or the other. Circumstantial evidence points to the possibility, because our oldest "creator gods" like Marduk or Quetzacoatl or Nuwa are always (no exceptions in old mythologies) depicted as some kind of reptile, which makes sense if you consider scientific evidence -- reptiles are hundreds of millions of years older on this planet than mammals -- in all likelihood on other planets it's the same -- they ruled the earth for most of its history, and if they chose to tell us now they no longer do and went extinct and so on, that's, well, what they tell us, we only have their word for it, vs. the facts. The facts point to the whole history of civilization of our species as an orchestrated, planned, non-random process, and apparently there's evidence that it has been orchestrated, planned, and implemented by the residents of a planet or planets in the vicinity of Alpha Draconis, which is why whenever I hear the agenda of the overlords from someone with overlords connections in the background, I mentally mark him as an Alpha Draconian, though it doesn't cross my mind of course to think of him as one of the puppeteers, merely one of the puppets jerking other puppets away from the puppeteers. That's what I meant.

I haven't seen David Icke do that. As for this guy, he is an Alpha Draconian.

I got a dancing lesson New Year's eve. Salsa and tango. I have never learned any formal dances in my life. I am pretty good improvising though, and have some nice experience -- I used to go to a barefloor dance studio in LA specifically dedicated to free dance expression, even professionals would go there just to get a break from the "rules" and let it all hang out, and me and my partner were so into that that other people would ask, "are you guys being paid to dance here?" So, that was then this is now. I was shown a bunch of formal moves and told to keep my back very straight and, as I understood it, stiff -- the teacher told me I have to aim for my shoulder blades to touch each other, or almost. This ran counter to all my taiji training. The position that was supposed to be right locked all the vital points I've spent a while to learn to open. It felt screwy. But it was my very first lesson only, so maybe I just don't "get it" yet and am missing out on some vital information or body dynamics? -- hence my question: Are there any bums out there who do formal dances AND taiji, and if yes, what's the secret? How can one combine the postural requirements of a taiji back with the postural requirements of, e.g., the tango? Any input will be much appreciated. I would like to take a few formal dancing lessons, but after my first go, the next day I had aches and pains and stiffnesses here and there that I've never experienced post-taiji, but used to experience all the time pre-taiji. So I don't know how good of an idea this formal dancing one is. Please help decide!

Thank you, Pablo, it was very helpful.

You are referring to 西王母, Xi Wangmu, Queen Mother of the West. She is an ancient goddess who predates taoism, so there's ways to contact her in shamanism, but since she has been embraced by taoism, you can also follow taoist rituals to contact her. The best day for this is March 3rd of the Chinese lunar calendar. The occasion is the annual Peach Fairy Feast, when all gods and goddesses of taoism come to congratulate the Queen Mother of the West on her birthday. People on earth mimic the celebration with lavish feasts and offerings. You can start the acquaintance by "introducing" yourself on that day, joining in the crowd of guests and bringing gifts and a festive mood. Establish a spiritual residence for the goddess in your home (an altar). If you don't know how, between now and her birthday, research, meditate, and ask for guidance. The ancient way to contact Xi Wangmu is through divination. You could start learning the I Ching, then ask for guidance. Zhuangzi was a follower of Xi Wangmu, according to some sources. Read some Zhuangzi for a "flavor" of the goddess. For a stronger flavor, go to a South American country where it's legal and take ayahuasca. Hope this helps.

I have a friend who is Chinese, a businessman who used to live in the Midwest before he got established in his current business (unrelated to Chinese arts) and teach taiji there. He told me that he himself had never taken a taiji class (though he was quite involved with yoga) and hadn't even seen a DVD at the time, he just had a book, so he would read a chapter in the morning, learn the moves, and teach them in the evening. Next class, next chapter. He made a living. His students, who couldn't tell taiji from no taiji, assumed that if the teacher is Chinese, it must be taiji. So... now you know one thing you need, or at least one thing that can be helpful. By the way, I've been teaching my Chinese friend some real taiji now. Even took him once to a top master (who doesn't teach beginners) for a "taste" of push-hands of the level not usually open to beginners. The master, having assessed our respective skills hands-on, announced that between my kind of "not ready" and my Chinese friend's kind of "not ready" to teach the difference is about a decade -- i.e. I'll be ready in a year or two, while he will be ready in ten plus years if he keeps practicing. FWIW.

Reality is, I know you and am delighted to see you again, Penny!

Pablo, thank you very much. I'll start processing. What do you mean by "roll your shoulders back vertically, not horizontaly?" If "in Nuevo Tango, thrust (push & pulling) comes 70% from lower tantien and 30% middle tantien in males, in females the opposite," what happens to the legs? Nothing comes from the legs?.. What about weight distribution/commitment, what about full/empty legs -- is anything like this phased in in tango? Upward and downward spirals (peng) are the bread and butter of Chen style -- are you comparing Bagua to some other style of taiji?

Dance Home in Santa Monica! I don't mind the form (I don't believe in taiji that goes into improvisation before a LOT of form work... "don't believe" is actually an understatement here), it's the kinetics that bother me... I remember reading in one of my first books on qigong ever read, by Ken Cohen, a description of the psychological implications of the physiological peculiarities of the "military stance" vs. the "qigong stance." Formal dancing seems to have this military-back stance built in, which is about either domination or submission or alternating/switching between the two. You know, like in the army they meticulously and purposefully create this top-heavy straight-back sticking-out-chest posture for both the soldiers who are going to obey orders and the commanders who are going to give them to the soldiers while obeying them when given orders by higher-rank officers, who in turn use this posture to command and obey, and so on. The posture of qigong (and taiji) has none of that, and in fact you don't do great in taiji by either domination or submission -- which is why it seems so counterintuitive to beginners who are usually coming from this domination/submission model of ALL relationships, with a matching body language. But I do believe it's a matter of figuring out how to bypass the teachers/teachings inspired by this paradigm (unconsciously I'm sure) and finding those who will teach the "one-unit" mode you're talking about. (In good taiji sparring, by the way, it is exactly this... not a competition and not a win-lose match but a win-win unity... of course in a hostile encounter it will be transformed, but that's a different context entirely. Many people who know how to taiji would be abandoned by their art in a real-life confrontation, because, well, taiji the practice ain't it, even though it teaches skills to use in "it" too.) Thanks for your thoughts... and please send my regards to that awesome Santa Monica place!

Oh NO!!! I was just busy/absent at first, distracted into other threads later, and saving the best for last! Pablo, I appreciated your input very much. (I sincerely thank everyone who responded and voiced opinions/advice/concerns and added links too.) It was GREAT, and pretty much something I was hoping to hear, from a hands-on ...um, legs-on... practitioner of both arts. And I loved the videos. If you still have a copy of your post, please repost, pretty please!