soaring crane

I'd like it if it were more subtle and blended with the sky, but green is wood and this is Wood horse year.

Wood horse

There was a call-in radio quiz here the other day where they read some pretty long statements and the challenge was to guess if they came from the New Pope, Karl Marx or Gregor Gysi, the leader of the Leftist Party. It was basically a toss-up each time. I like that!!! If anyone should be a Socialist, it's the Pope

Fixed it for you:

It's easy to opt out of the tax. But the church does a lot of work for the community here and the tax is very minimal. I'm happy to support them because they are a clear benefit for us in the whole. I think if you had been born and raised here your perspective would be different, too. Your worldview is formed by your experiences.

There's a crucifix above the door of classroom in Bavaria where I live. I'm talking public schools. We pay a church tax, too. Hell, the strongest political party in the country is the Christian Democrats.

Oh wow, thank you so much for that reply, Friend! Sehr hilfreich :-)

Two of the biggest balls in western history laid to rest. The man was very special, his mission on earth was to open eyes and hearts and he exceeded his quota manyfold. I hope that his passing heralds the coming of his... Nachfolger. Help me with the English. His torch bearer.

I think in about 40 years, there are going to be a lot very confused grandchildren wandering around.

Saudi Arabia should be a pariah state ala North Korea. But they've got friends in high places.

In the museum in the castle in my town here, they have an original "Witch Scale" and "Thumb-Toe clamps". They really did weigh women (sometimes, but rarely, men, too) and if they were deemed (by the judge) to be too light for their size and thus light enough to fly on a broom, they would be carried off to the next test: Their thumbs were clamped to their big toes and they were thrown in the river. If they floated, they were again deemed too light and would then be burned because they were considered light enough to fly a broom. If they sank, I guess they sank. Dieting was a bad idea in the middle-ages. But if you were poor and starving, and cursed with an active metabolism, there wasn't much you could do to fatten up. Oh and, at one point in time, they came up with a particularly nasty way of burning witches. Plain old shackling them and throwing them on a bonfire was considered too humane for witches accused (and in the people's minds guilty) of especially egregious witchy-things like causing bad weather that resulted in crop failure. For those witches, they built a higher pole with a seat on it, where the witch would be shackled. The fire below would be high enough and hot enough to slow cook them over a period of many hours, I forget how many, but it was too many, like twelve. The bodies would look mummified after the process. BUT the truth about most of the witch hunts, at least in this region, is that they were blatantly politically-motivated. Something along the lines of, you allow my son to marry your daughter (because I want a piece of your land) or I have connections that can get her accused of witchcraft. Oh, and your mother, too. There was NOT a rampant, psychotic raging bloodlust among the normal people to kill kill kill the spooky occultists.They went along because they didn't want to be next.

I'm sorry but, I feel that diet and nutrition comes closer to religion than science these days. Just read through the whole thread (and any thread, on any website, on this subject) and it should be obvious why I say that.

It's a good question and I'd be very interested in the answer. I should mention that I have had participants report back a couple times that they got their fees covered by insurance, but it's very potluck, apparently depends a lot on who answers the phone when you call. And I'm actually listed as an authorized instructor at one company, specifically because the person who answered the phone when I called was not aware of the stipulations. She told me to fax in a copy of my certificate, which promptly did, and that was that.

as opposed to those silly Druids, damn. I would soooo love to know what kind of energy work and cultivation they performed. It was actually giving up in frustration with my searches for authentic druid practices that led me to Daoism.

Well, I'd say you need to be pretty damn far to begin with or you're just going to be confused and wondering what half the book is about. Make that three quarters. You have it already? What are your goals? What experience have you got? Basically, though, with due respect to Mr. Luk, there have been umpteen hundreds of more accessible books written in the meantime. His was a pioneering work back in the day when information was hard to come by, and the audience for a book like that was minuscule.

Hi Dainin - Thanks for the link, I've been doing the basic form for so long but never really explored it further. It's one of my daily practices, regardless of what else might be going on. I do this form often with my groups, because it's one of those things that just has it all, in a pretty simple movement that can be learned and practiced solo relatively quickly. It can be used as a simple, effective limbering gymnastic, or get downright deeply meditative. I include pre- and post-exercises and meditations, too, but I created them myself. The teacher I learned it from insisted that it was for strengthening and "cleansing" the triple burner, but I've migrated it to a 3-dantian movement, it just fits better for me. It's good winter Qigong because it really boosts the body's temperature in no time hmmm ... the description at the website is pretty long, lot's of stuff on those dvd's, but I wonder if you would really benefit from it all? The basic form is one that I would actually say a person can learn from the youtube videos that are out there, lol. And then just go with the flow. Have you tried it?

Hi Friend and thank you very much for replying. Do you know specifically if the Swimming Dragon/Three Circles originated with this form? If it isn't too much to ask, could you specify what modern additions to the form you don't like? What is there to look out for? There's someone in the area offering the form and he's making some wild claims in his ads. I know that he only recently finished a short teacher certification program and has virtually no experience with this form, or any other. I wouldn't ordinarily worry about it, or even notice it, but the administrators of my club are considering asking him to take over a class and I don't feel comfortable with the idea.

nice! That reminds me of the health insurance system over here. They generally subsidize a couple yoga or taiji classes or similar a classes a year for their customers. Some of the companies give yo a kind of 'wellness allowance' of a few hundred Euro that you can apply to classes. Others pay 70 or 80% of up to two or three courses a year. That kind of thing. But what I'm writing about is actually the qualification process of the teachers. They have to have either a medical or pedagogic (education) background. That means, a physical therapist can indeed attend a weekend course and then offer Taiji in his practice, and his patients/customers can get the lessons covered. And so can, for example, a f***ing English teacher. But a Chinese doctor with decades of experience? Nope. Or someone like me with a four-year teacher-trainer qualification through the German Qigong Society (the largest qigong organization in the country) and 15 years personal experience, plus going on ten years successfully teaching? Nope. But my classes are full, anyway, so pfft

Oh nooooo ... has anybody even heard of Hui Chun Gong?

A woman once phoned me up and asked if she could attend one of my classes a couple times because she wanted to add Qigong to her list of offers. She had already got the 'Wellness Trainer' certificate (it's kind of a thing over here) and wanted to include more forms of exercise, because, hey, the more the bullet points on your flyers, the wider the audience you can attract to your courses. A big net catches more fish. She already had the Pilates, the Autogenous training, and a couple other things. I basically told her to get lost. Even her voice was nerve-grating, brrrrrr...

haha - I'm not sure, either

Courtesy of Best Taiji Videos at Facebook:

Very nice find! :-)

No, you found it macabre. And you can't edit my posts.

Shoulda let the South win....