galen_burnett

@Cobie Alright. I’ll do that then. Also do you know of any martial-art forums which would suit that sort of thing?

@Nintendao Cool. Do you happen to know of any martial-art forums? It’s funny that you should reply to this post because a fair bit of what I’ve written is to do with Smash Bros. lol!

Mark Foote. I think the first reply to the post by ‘whocoulditbe?’ already pretty much summarised what you’re saying. So I guess the questions towards the end of the post to the effect of ‘why do you believe the Eastern philosophies?’ apply, which I won’t repeat because presumably you already read them, having read the post, and have opted not to answer them; but really they’re rather important to answer if you want to argue against the post, in the same way that Christians are obliged to explain why they believe in the Kingdom of Heaven to an argument that says ‘i myself can’t see it, and I myself can’t see anything credible that hints towards it nor supports the notion of its existence’. Belief in the philosophy of another person that proposes the existence of an attainable paradise, be it Christianity or Buddhism is like this: if you are sitting in a shelter in the mountains or the desert and a traveller comes up to you and says ‘hey, there’s a treasure over in that direction across that difficult terrain’ it’s then up to you to believe them or not. If you believe them there will be something about them that makes them seem credible, or certain things you’ve noticed about the landscape or area suggest strongly enough that what they say is true, signs that are suggestive enough to risk a lot of trouble in following them to the supposed treasure. Regarding the cessation of cause-and-effect, no I don’t think an end to the chain of causation has any meaning; your mind and body may be still, but you’re still a part of things, just like a piece of furniture motionless in a room is still causing things to happen simply by being present. Rocks in a stream ‘cause’ the water to take a different path than it would otherwise. There is no escaping from being connected with everything else, and as long as we are connected with everything else we will perpetuate cause-and-effect. To disconnect from everything and exist as a thing in isolation doesn’t make any sense, as the form of the ‘thing’ that you are in mind and body is informed entirely by everything else; without everything else we are nothing, we cease to exist entirely. If you reply further please know that I don’t read your quotes, rather I just presume that those quotes do indeed support what you are saying yourself. And it would be easier to use the thread if you just gave a reference to the quote rather than pasting long sections of books like that, and I’ll just trust that they do indeed illustrate your own words; but if you insist then I’ll just have to cope; and I don’t know how to quote just one line of a message in order to reply to it [edit, just figured that out, will use that format hereafter]. Really I’m interested in what people have to say in their own words; it’s fine if your own words and insights are similar to or resonate with a published philosophy; but if a person just says that ‘this published philosophy says it’s true’ then I’m really only interested in why that person believes that published philosophy in the first place.

That sounds fine. Thanks.

Gotcha, glad I asked. Thanks. Are there any sub-forums on here that would be interested in a take on the Chinese classical martial-arts, do you know?

but i don’t see how a knowledge of the internal-organs and bones and muscles etc. is going to diagnose this problem for me. i’ve already spoken with many people who have loads of that knowledge and they were completely unable to do anything for me.

don’t really understand the first sentence. and ‘learning about my body’ is what i’m doing all the time in trying to fix this problem i reckon. well, yes i think it’s energetic and thence is completely messing me up on sorts of levels, including anatomical and physiological

they didn’t think the scoliosis was necessarily causing the back-problem, you see, just that there was a chance that by sorting out some perceived postural misalignments—with physio—i could both sort out the back-pain and the insignificant scoliosis to boot. i’m pretty sure it’s an energetic problem, which is why i’m putting stock in nei gong.

basically no-one found anything the matter with the bones, beyond a few degrees of scoliosis which they deemed insignificant, so they just referred me to physiotherapy.

Cool! Thanks for that, that sounds like pretty deep Buddhist philosophy, and I’ve learned something new there. Well, I guess the argument in the post and the Buddhist perspective disagree on the definition of ‘happiness’, and so that’s where the main discussion of the post ends, which is fine! Buddhists consider the ultimate bliss of enlightenment as the ‘true happiness’ and as removed from what a layman would otherwise consider ‘happiness’ or ‘joy’ or ‘pleasure’; whereas the definition for ‘happiness’ in the proposed argument has no such parameters, other than it being defined by pain.

cheers but i’ve seen a few osteopaths already.

yes i’ve done all of that. no relief with acupuncture within the first several appointments, with two separate practitioners; would be willing to try a Lotus Nei Gong acupuncturist but closest one in 4 hours away. yes maybe if i went extremely HAM with yoga it would ‘evaporate’ all of my tensions and the back problem with them, but i have gone pretty far with it before with no success. i probably will spend a year going for that at some point though.

It doesn’t seem to get to the root of the problem, it’s just pain relief.

I’ve had it for the best part of 10 years. Tried lots of stuff from psychotherapy through to various physio exercises and even to Wim Hof, diet and fasting etc. Nothing’s ever helped in the slightest besides a single yoga stretch that eases the upper back a bit. Seems to be a problem with qi being ‘wild’ and unconsolidated in my body/back. So I reckon if I continue with this nei gong system then it would sort me out at some point. I mean this problem will kill me eventually if I don’t fix it, as it’s so debilitating; probably sooner rather than later, so even if it takes a long time at least the nei gong seems promising, and at any rate has offered the most coherent diagnosis for my problem. Had an accidental Kundalini-surge pretty much at the onset of the problem, but I’m still uncertain whether that was exclusively the cause of the problem or just a contributing factor (yet to save up the thousands of pounds I’d need to travel to Asia to see a Kundalini specialist about this yet. Neil Lodge in Cardiff is my teacher. Thanks for that time-scale. How long have you been practising Damo’s nei gong system for? Also, you say the duration question has been discussed elsewhere, would you know of any threads I could view?

Hi, About 8 years ago I had a kundalini experience while doing Zhan Zhuang, the one where you hold your arms in front of your chest with palms facing towards you. Heat rose from my heels and up my back and over my head, accompanied with a strong sensation of bodily and spacial expansion and some strong shaking of my body. But having talked with a teacher in Damo Mitchell’s school I think this happened before I was ready for it. This teacher thinks that the kundalini energy has caused a chi-stagnation in my back, between my shoulder-blades, and that it is the cause of my chronic back-pain that I have had since around the time of that experience. I had only been doing qi-gong for maybe a couple of years before it happened. So how do I undo it? The teacher I mentioned has suggested a simple tai-chi wuji posture. But I had until very recently been doing a hard yang wuji posture for about 6 months to try and fix it, without any success; so I just have some hesitations about whether this other wuji posture, the simple tai-chi one, will work also… Sorry if you see this, said teacher! I just want to explore the issue completely before I commit to months of trying any particular strategy. Are there methods in other spiritual practices, like in pranayama, that could undo it? Cheers.

Yeah, again, I’d need some link or reference to a book that explains all these terms you’re using in order to understand what you’re talking about.

Where can I read about ‘Swallow three diets’?

Cheers

Any ideas for how to fix it though?

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He didn’t meet me, no.

I didn’t try to activate it; it just happened one day. 30. The sensations I described happened altogether that one time; a few instances in the years since I’ve had that sensation of spacial expansion, on its own, while sitting meditating—again without looking for it. Just the back pain yes: back-muscles lock-up whenever I’m exposed to certain everyday stressors (like certain chores, or reading a book); especially around the spine at the level of the shoulder-blades.

Yes, I agree. Thanks.

Thanks for that. I will look into that. But how did you know about my chakras? I saw a chakra-worker/ chakra-clearer before, who had already demonstrated their ability on someone at this retreat I was on, and they said my chakras were completely clear and fine.

Thanks a lot. That sounds good.