soaring crane

Aufheben?

I'm curious how often you think about your stomach throughout the day, and if they're good thoughts or angry thoughts. Are you ashamed to have a stomach? This a huge problem for many, many of us in the 'West'. And a terrible blockage for us when we try to accomplish things in Qigong practice. Something you can try is to come at it from the other direction. Get to know the Huiyin (Perineum) and pull it gently upwards while inhaling and let it sink, but not 100%, while exhaling. This might direct your breath to the lower belly more easily for you. It's a good enhancement to breath work either way. The DT's are energetic centers and I don't think your surgery is really that big a blockage. Maybe your thoughts and convictions about the surgery are the problem?

I'd say you're doing quite an advanced cultivation exercise, and am curious what you're doing in conjunction with it. And also, how exactly are you practicing - sitting, standing, tempo, direction, etc.? Every 60-70 breaths - does that mean you're doing short bursts of breath? Something to try: focus instead on releasing the stomach muscles on the exhale instead of drawing inward on the inhale. In either case, it's potentially more effective to actively perform only one half of the breath, either inhale or exhale, while allowing the other half to happen on its own. There are a lot of details, and many variations, and what you're doing should be part of a system. So, maybe give some more information to your background, etc.

Does the site use fortune cookies?

Spare the tiny crabs For they know not what they do Ignorance is bliss

Doch

I'm kinda hungry, and sleepy. I think I'll have a little something to eat and then go to bed.

You're turning into a Suckamore before our very eyes...

nice not what I expected

Spiral

Sphere

Wonderful stuff, thank you!

A healer I used to sort of work for/with once said very bluntly to a client who was having trouble coming to grips with the notion of 'past lives' (after she'd gone through a few intense regression sessions with my friend), 'if it's easier for you, just think of it as experiences from your ancestors stored in the dna passed on over the generations'. That line stuck with me.

There was an hour-long radio discussion on this topic here last week. Very interesting indeed. But I don't think it's relevant to people who simply sleep less because they live better and meditate more when they're awake. I'm certain that if you wake up feeling fresh and raring to go, and have energy all day long, then your brain did all the detox that was necessary in the time alloted to it. Maybe it even does some of this work during meditation? I wonder ... that might be an explanation for the reduced sleep requirement?) The findings are really a warning for a society where people are forcing themselves to get through a stressful life, and depriving themselves of sleep. And by extension, against experimenting with techniques with the explicit goal of reducing sleeping time.

There seems to be a mishmash of vegetarian and vegan going on in the discussion. Vegetarians aren't missing anything (and I have plenty of extremely healthy and happy vegan friends as well). An excellent 'compromise' would be piscine/ovo - fish once in a while and eggs all the time. Something like the Mediterranean diet sans lamb cutlet, but with local organic eggs. Lots of veggies and fruit of course. And of course lots of oil - olive, sunflower, etc. And try to get into the habit of at least blanching your veg all the time and eating them warm. But cook most of the time, avoid raw. Make crazy soups with many different vegetables and whatever else you have in the cupboard - - nuts, chick peas, grapes, whatever... Keep fruit at room temperature (In fact, although it's probably not feasible, something to shoot for would be getting rid of the big fridge and using a little unit like those for a college dorm room). The best method for me is do all my nutritional work when shopping, and then just eat on a whim. If all I have at home is good for me, then it's hard to make a mistake. The worst thing for me (and I'm suggesting it because maybe it'll prove true for you, and it may ring true for other people) is to obsess over my diet. I've taken the view that eating is a necessity, not a luxury and not a pastime. I compare it with tanking up my car; I don't own a car because I enjoy shopping around for different and interesting gasolines, I have a car to get me places, same reason I have a body. I tank Super Plus gasoline (we still have that in Germany), but when I leave the petrol station, I drive away without thinking about the next 'pit stop'. Btw, a vegan joke (posted to facebook by a vegan friend of mine): Do you know how to identify a vegan? Just wait five minutes and they'll fucking tell you.

Up on the down side We can crest the waterfall The silver river!

Dakini power Mysterious, the female Container of stars

a very interesting read: It was the tell-tale tartar on the teeth that told the truth. Or at least, that is what it appeared to do. Researchers – after studying calcified plaque on Neanderthal fossil teeth found in El Sidrón cave in Spain – last year concluded that members of this extinct human species cooked vegetables and consumed bitter-tasting medicinal plants such as chamomile and yarrow. These were not brainless carnivores, in other words. These were smart and sensitive people capable of providing themselves with balanced diets and of treating themselves with health-restoring herbs, concluded the researchers, led by Karen Hardy at the Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies in Barcelona. Our vision of these long-extinct people needs adjusting, they argued. Continues here: Neanderthal Stomachs

Or destroy the natural water supply in their area through poor agriculture.

it's almost perverse how much water we have here in Germany. Some municipalities actually have to dump excess clean water. And still, people are very conservative with water use.

yes! I can get into full lotus, but I'm lying to myself when I do it.

Mark can't see the pic? Perhaps if he tried standing on the other Foote

well, the thing is, my views on clean environment are so extreme that my policies would drop CO2 anyway. Sort of a shotgun approach. And in my perception, the issue polarizes people and creates more hardcore opposition which could well be holding back real advances. There are a lot of people out there who cringe when they hear 'CO2' and I'm leaning in that direction. It's going to take drastic governmental action to really change the energy industry, One suggestion: requiring smart meters on all new buildings, domestic and commercial. And part of that system would include smart cards like they have in hotels these days. You have to use the card to open the door, and to activate the non-essential electricity in the house. When you leave, you take the card with you and the electric is shut down at the switchbox. About the only things in a house that need electricity when no one's home are the refrigerator and alarm system if there is one. Something else that has to be done is end light pollution. NO non-essential lighting at night. That would be a blessing for nocturnal animals, and drop power consumption as well. Make air travel a luxury again. Massive excise taxes on flights, especially short hops, the revenue to go directly into land-based mass transit ... those are the kind of things I would welcome.

no, no. *I* was first

We do what we can. We use power strips and shut the electric in the apartment off at the circuit breaker when no one's home. The house isn't very efficient, but we're renters so we only have so much say in the matter. We also switched to 100% green energy about five years ago. The switch is very easy to do here in Germany. The company we use is called 'Naturstrom' and they're very reputable. Our electric bill actually dropped a few % points after the switch, which surprised me. I don't see where you replied to my mention of the grid. The biggest problem here, as explained to me, is the way the cables in the grid are laid out. Traditionally (and simplified because I don't have the English vocabulary for this stuff), the larger cables are at the big power generation plants and the power is sent through ever smaller cables until it reaches the end user. Makes sense. But local photovoltaic and wind generation parks have to have the large cables on-site in order to exploit their fullest potential. And that's a huge cost, involving creating a new infrastructure. Germany is working on it, thinking long-term, but as of now, there's the problem of bottlenecking holding the renewables back from their full potential. Where I wrote Kw instead of kWh, I was writing 'verbally'. We don't say 'Studenkilowatt', we just say 'KW'. I should mention that I'm not terribly concerned about CO2 per se. I think clean water and air are reason enough all on their own to drastically cut, or forbid, filthy energy sources.