DynamicEquilibrium

From Yinyang five elements point of view, it is possible that a complicated arrangement of elements prevents you in the way towards the positive and healthy developement of your life. To tell more by taoist counselling require first to do a complete and thorough diagnosis and analysis of your individual inborn nature's structure before saying anything about the possible underlying reasons behind the problems in your life, and from there to begin to define tailor made solutions.

If efficiency in real fight situations isn't the purpose of one's practice, it won't work for it that's for sure. Another purpose doesn't makes it less real, an excuse or BS, but you are right, it's easy to believe doing one thing when actually doing another, what is BS IMO is when Taiijquan is sold as an effective martial arts whitout even just light free sparring included in the training regimen.

If we agree about the concept of individuality and that people have an inborn individual nature, then these traditionnal cultural heritages can serve as a common soil to support any unique tree in the vast human forest to reconstruct its own set of values and principles according to its inborn caracteristics, Xing and Ming. To me its very tricky, because if some natural principles are missed in the edification of individual ethics, it could change into absolute individual morals and rules enforced at the detriment of absolute common principles, so maybe no matter what someone practice, she or he is the one practicing it with her or his own content.

Very clear, thank you. Coming to Taijiquan from other martial arts background, i can say this is a common point to make these arts applicable in real situations. You point to an important and difficult problem, body/mind integration. It's so easy for theoretical concepts to stay stuck somewhere away from the body in the virtual space operated by our minds, even to make a set of 8 or 9 simple principles being clearly expressed by the movements is really not that easy. Same wishes to you on this infinite path.

Thank you for offering another perspective, how about Taijiquan being one of the practical methods to return to Taiji by the ways of Quan? There are sayings like "拳道不二 and 道拳同源 "Boxing and Tao are not two" and "Tao and Boxing have the same origin" something like that. I know i'm biased since what i'm trying my best to learn and practice is Quan taking advantage of the Taiji theory by embodying it, but of course any different point of view adds to the reconstruction of a wider picture.

Taiji means the state were Yinyang are about to differentiate but not yet, so if the practice cannot demonstrate a clear integration of opposites, there would be no Taiji in it, making it something else with a different purpose than the integration of opposites into a dynamic state of balance. Calling this something else "Taijiquan for such and such" is ok, perfectly fine, but from the above point of view it would remain a name whithout content if it fails to demonstrate the core theory of Taiji belonging to the wider subject of a "science of peace". According to the Taiji theory logic, "taijiquan for self-defense" makes no sense because where there is really a Taiji there are no opponents, if there is an opponent that means Taiji already differentiated into Yin and Yang and for some reasons one attacks the other, but yes martial arts can teach how to recognize and avoid dangerous situations and how to improve our self-control abilities to make better decisions in the struggle to maintain this dynamic state of balance, if that's what we are looking for of course. PS: just a point of view

No, from my own experience, when i was younger i used to travel back and forth to china to do static and dynamic exercices in my teacher's living room somewhere in Shanxi, during the weekends other students were coming to practice Tuishou and Sanshou in the backyard. Of course nothing is really coming to the melting point of metal. The point is how the mind affects the body and vice-versa? Through which interface ? And why doing something everyday to take control over various switches? For which purposes? At some point any of these practices will affect directly the psycho-behavioural patterns of an individual, so learning before doing anything might be safer than a leap of faith on a coin flip. Who wants to repeat the same mistakes over and over again and wrongly take it for a real knowledge and skills acquisition process when actually it's just some 'uncontrolled mouvements'? In a kung-fu movie the sword master tells his students "Think first before you move", really this is a verry good advice to prevent and avoid a lot of problems or to make those already existing worse.

https://brennantranslation.wordpress.com/2013/04/29/the-voices-of-sun-lutangs-teachers/ Part 1 of chapter 4 could be a good read.

Agree. We both know that subjectivity will always blur our conclusions, so how to come to the final one ? Some branches of martial arts still have Yijinjing embbeded in their fundamentals, at one point tendons feels like red hot steel wires and the bone marrow like boiling congee, later everything melts and the body seems like being filled with lead, yet extremely light and nimble with a feeling of deep comfort and peace. In application a natural side effect of such fundamental practice was also no holding or hurry in the breath, but whithout any breathwork involved anywhere along the process.

So opposite to: In my opinion, a scientific approach to learning, research and practice has to be rooted in the ability to constantly challenge one's own point of views, otherwise we would just be carving dogmas in the stone of our minds.

By such logic, it would mean that reversely the nervous system do not affect the breathing system in any ways right ?

So from your point of view intentional modifications of the natural breathing patterns do not affect the nervous system in any ways? Sorry to insist, just want to make sure i got your answer right.

Do you mean that to regulate or to control breathing has no effects on the nervous system ?

How do you prevent and avoid any autonomous nervous system disorders (走火入魔) to arise from your breathing practice ?

From another interpretation 'mountain skills' refers to any kind of natural environements and how to live there without external support. From the same interpretation, taoist psychosomatic practices should at least lead to the minimum consuming of energy by the body/mind system for better results, so going to live in the nature by oneself for some times is a good way to check the progess in real situation, but Qigong, Taichi, neidan etc may certainly not be enough without all the related knowlege and skills needed to live by oneself in the 'mountain'. Once again from the same interpretation, 'Mountain skills' always means something done by oneself to solve the problems of one's own life, so quite different than a passive treatment, healing, adjustment, repair etc done by someone else you pay to do it for you, but of course if someone is sick, depressed or is facing a water leak in her or his house it would be foolish to not seek medical, psychological or plumbing support from the other category of 'medecine'. The question is what should be the ratio between by oneself only and through external support since nobody can live completly detached and independently from the big network of Life. Another question is how to notice our own problems and what to do to solve them? The goals in our lineage are very low, higher spiritual goals are really too vague for us, we don't understand and we are so stupid that we only take Taoism as a traditional problem solving tool to live a better, more meaningful, valuable and sustainable life amongst our families and friends so that when the time comes we can go to a cave in the 'mountain' to 'close the door and fly away' without any regrets in our hearts.

Nice map, these 5 skills just like the five fingers rooted in the palm to form the complete system of a hand indeed! Yes, fengshui through the four pillars, divining and shape reading as one for an integrated way of decoding/diagnosis.

Classical chinese philosophies and medecine

Hello! I'd like a PPD please, thank you 😊

The symptoms of "body/mind" differentiation are everywhere just under and behind our eyes indeed!

Our ancestors surely had to do something everyday for their survival, they had to face all kind of threats for their Lives, they had to endure hunger, thirst and cold, they had to risk their own Lives for the Lives of next generations. Can we still remember what they went through and that Life doesn't come for granted ? Hundreds of years if not millenia of forgiveness of doing some kind of preparation is maybe one of the reasons behind the current overall weak physiological and psychological condition of the living beings with human shape but still, most of the people hoping that the next generation would become stronger and wiser without doing anything in this purpose within their own body/mind system and in their ways of living in this ever growing artificial environnement. For Taoism, "stronger" might be related to the carrier and the content transmitted to the next generation, related to the education, to healthy growth and developpment, related to the slowing down of degeneration, related to the ways of living etc... In terms of sustainable developpment, is it really reasonable to try to challenge almost 4 billions years of Nature's activity on the planet with human intelligence ? How to grasp, learn and integrate the knowledge and wisdom of the Great Nature in our individual and collective systems might be one of the main subject of becoming "stronger" in the tradition carrying this prehistorical intangible cultural heritage from our far far ancestors.

From wuji to taiji happens original differentiation so we would get different types of what was originaly a unique Breath, a bit like the Babel tower's spell. By this model spirit is very close to if not the same concept as Life as the intangible phenomenom animating all living beings.

Interesting question! I see spirituality as the application of spirit in real life by action, spirit being to me a transcultural, transpersonal, transeverything formless "Breath", neither good or bad and so on. Virtuous or evil usage of spirit may mostly depend on the physical and psycho-emotional dimensions "blueprints" (xing ming) of human being. It may sound to be a weird point of view, but the largest scale genocides in history were done by very very spiritual people in my opinion, it's just that they made use of the large amounts of Breath they had in the most evil ways. Empathy with the spiritual nature (ling xing) of all living beings is another aspect of spirituality to me, even with a blade of grass or an ant, then spirituality could evovle into "unification of Heaven and man" (tian ren he yi) , at this level we may have access to an ocean of informations, some kind of celestial internet. Wuji posture can gather spirit Breath, since taiji would always give form to wuji through yinyang five elements, taiji posture could be a better starting point to rewrite a healthy circuit, then spirit breath may circulate better between "heaven and earth".

This the first approach i was initiated to along with meditation, daoyin and other practices, even got a generation name in the lineage. In one hand external work by "inferior virtue" and in the other neidan, both being interdependent for spontaneous virtue to arise at their "meeting point" as far as my experience with this approach can tell. The second one is to apply solutions and doing modifications at the "mother board" level of these base desires along with body-mind-spirit system integration practice. So far i can tell it is a "scientific" way to gradually solve own individual inborn issues, or put in another way, begining the cultivation directly at their xiantian roots. Of course both approaches need traditional apprenticeship through lineage, "self initiation to traditionnal knowledge" not being a very reasonable expression... Both have their own understanding and practical applications of daodejing in regards to the topic. Anyway, no matter the approach, school, lineage, teacher etc...we all have the same Master with 360° perspective in all directions, just seem to teach us in different ways, by different angles and through different channels.

Respect to them for achieving their goals actually, what i wished to outline was: participating in acheiving teachers/schools goals in a co-dependent mode vs recieving their help for better self-design to achieve our deep individual aspirations in a free mode. Thank you for the exchange!

Yes indeed, this is why "self healing by the ways of a very specialized medecine" may be a prerequisite. Removing the "fake" and seeing the real underlying situation can be disaster. Repaired and healed Nature would take off its clothes all alone naturally and walk around naked happy to breath fresh air in its recovered oneness anyway haha! Oneness means Nature, self, name, thoughts, emotions, speech, behaviours, actions...everything as one, no separations, no differentiations, and such "one" can be called "true". So, a person giving form to such oneness by embodying it through the whole body-mind-spirit-system and every steps on the Way can be called a "true man". "One" means smaller and smaller, like a tiny unbreakable diamond the size of a grain millet, it also means peace, balance, harmony, clarified deep aspirations and direction to take to make them concretize in the real life. If i may give a definition to the term "practice", i would say practice is an answer by action to the fundamental need individuals have to unifiy in order to be able to embody in the world what they are individually in essence, so practice by this definition is always something highly individualized. Imagine you spend ten years or more practicing something from a dehumanized online school, and then one day you realise it wasn't what you really wanted to do and that it didn't helped you in any ways to achieve what you realize now being really meanigful to you only. It could be another kind of disaster, so yes, maybe better sometimes to stay well dressed to keep the sterile selfinquiry warm until death. Nature is a subconscious part of self, if self is a robot, then Nature is the program, this kind of "loop" relationship, so repair the program first then robot will change positively and self may even begin to participate to Nature's healing, conversely give power to a defective program and therefore robot, it will only make things worse, this is why earlier i wrote: "A "Big name" most often acts as an "anti-tao block", preventing the bearer and her/his following to enter the gate or opening. These energy practices amplify the self, they do not make it smaller and smaller no matter the coat of fake humility, benevolence, knowledge, skills and wisdom it can wear." "Big names" teachers are all heavy dressed if we look closely, just like the crazy people we give power to and elect as our rulers.