freeform

It's a form of hypnosis... ever clapped because everyone else is clapping? it's kind of like that. What happens is this guy has a bit of chi (everything does) - it's just over the years he's trained his students to react to that chi in a certain way (lose strength, fall over etc)... The students invest a lot of time and money, so for them it pays to follow the master's lead... it's just sad to see him deluding himself that he is doing anything more than "bowing so that the students clap"... it's kind of a little spectacle that feeds his own and his students' egos - it's just he forgot it's a spectacle... I do believe that there are masters who can develop true skill - maybe not throwing people without touching them, but certainly skills that are difficult to explain using standard western methods. The confusing thing is that there is an aspect of hypnosis to this 'real' skill too...

agreed. I'm gonna be a bit ambiguous with this one: If you come up to a dog and begin to tell it how much of a bad, smelly, terrible, unlovable animal it is, but do so in a high pitched, lively, loving tone - the dog will still wag its tail, and happily soak up your attention. This is a case of content (the words used) and context (the way the words are used) - tradition is always a mixture of content and context - in the case of spiritual development the context is where the value is - content matters as much as words do to a dog... of course we all forget this from time to time... ... I also like all the ex-soviet nostalgia... I know how to stay alive in an earthquake! and in a -30C winter with no heating, running water or electricity - but with plenty of delicious preserves and some good humour!

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Here comes a rather shoddy translation the guy in the red t shirt is punching away while both of the other guys urge him to use his full strength. then the main guy in the black t shirt demonstrates the normal punches and says that if you're hitting with tension the force doesn't get inside the body... he goes on to explain that when you're completely relaxed the force goes in easier. when he starts demonstrating it slowly, he explains that you must feel the feeling of your fist punching through or penetrating... "the speed of the hit wont affect the speed of his fall" - so it's your choice (he's showing off now ) - he explains that the feeling of punching through is transferred to the target, and in this way you can also mess with his balance... "he can try to tense up as a defence" (and thats when he pokes him in the neck and the guy gives out a loud yelp, whilst someone in the crowd giggles)... anyway - can't be bothered to translate the rest - but for me the most interesting part is that he explains that the feeling of what you want is transferred to the target... Cat - you know about pacing and leading - this is a very subtle form of that (there is also a micro induction there if you can spot it ) also, see Peter Ralston - he explains this stuff kind of similarly...

Creative expression has a lot to do with the emotional energies. So any decent 5 element qigong form tends to develop one's natural ability to express. And this creativity isn't limited to the traditional arts - it covers any human activity that takes something more than just logic to accomplish - everything from cooking to negotiating to teaching, dancing, acting even police work. Anything that requires a sense of intuition and a range of expression... I used to do a lot of art - sometimes would get great ideas, but then over-labour them, they'd never come out right, and sometimes things would just grow organically, through synchronous steps of mistakes and accidents and something wonderfull would be the result. Being in touch with the body and the organs and the 5 archetypal flavours/flows brings this out in and intuitive way...

mgd thanks, I now have a fuller picture of where you are. The "Help with Negative Effects of Meditation" topic was started by an inexperienced person doing very forcefull head based practices he kind of made up on the go - which is pretty much the worst combo you can get - that's why all the warnings came up. You're not in the same position at all. What specifically are the negative effects that you get? Because any effective practice has you deal with 'negativity'. It can come in the form of feeling overwhelming emotion, repressed trauma, difficult memories etc. This is all stuff that needs to be processed and integrated... It often seems insurmountable and rather scary to deal with. But untill you properly deal with all that stuff, it's going to be there stuck in your body, mind and energetic system, subtly controling your life... Ofcourse grounding really helps with this. Having a body with enough 'space' to accomodate for whatever internal storms may come is what is extremely valuable - that book called "Unwinding The Belly" really does open up space and gets any stagnation moving. developing a connection with the ground/earth also opens up a huge amount of space beneath you which you can also use - this is where the leg/foot work comes in. However we still dont know exactly what your negative experiences with this energy are... I'm no authority on these matters I just have my personal experiences and intuitions. It's probably a good idea to get in contact with Max and see what he suggests... Serious grounding is always a good idea, appart from helping to integrate/discharge powerfull, hot energies, it also opens up 'body wisdom' - which is where intuition, the ability to make good decisions, the ability to deeply relate with people and the world around you all come from. anyway - remember - we're here to help!

Aah! so you're doing kunlun, but experiencing kundalini-like effects?? The contraindication is doing a kundalini practice along with kunlun practice. So dont mix practices. I know they say kunlun is a downwards flow, but I find that it's more of an 'inwards' flow - you'll get both rising heat and descending coolness - sometimes things get intense and sometimes very calm. kunlun's a practice of 'letting go' - that means letting go of thought, judgement, logic etc and just becoming intensly curious about what's happening inside - paying very close attention to the kinesthetic sense. and that's about it. or are you practicing kundalini and thinking that kunlun would balance things out? Well - it may well balance things out, but in nature a devastating earthquake is a way of balancing out the pressure within the earth's crust... so just be carefull - if you want to have a go at kunlun, it's probably a good idea to stop all kundalini practice - do the grounding work recomended and then give it a go... either way let us know how it goes, Gloria

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oh Buddy... are you really, actually pretending to not understand what I meant? It's sweet I guess... See I dont know what exactly would happen - a lot of subjectivity, many variables etc. but you get the general idea that power sprinting and Tai chi wouldn't gel well... I havent done any kundalini myself, but know people that have, and the whole approach is in opposition to the kunlun approach...

what would happen if you trained taichi at the same time as competitive 100m sprinting?

You urgently need grounding! Excess energy in an undeveloped head centre can cause serious, permanent damage - stop pushing energy in, and stop anything that involves imagining light, or any visualization, especially anything to do with the head. For grounding you need to first learn how to relax your body completely - sounds simple but there are always small tensions that come up when you pay attention. For this you need to learn thorough abdominal breathing (and softening the tummy) - there is a fantastic book called "unwinding the belly" - teaches you both of these. You should activate the bottom half of your body - doing simple excersises like well structured squats will get quick results. Also pay more attention to your feet - foot massages, shoes with a very thin sole, walking barefoot on rocks or at least just round your house. also ankle rotations are very good. When you've done the above daily for a few months, you can add some simple dan tien meditation - which involves sitting upright in a chair (not using the back), your feet firmly planted on the floor, your hands covering your lower belly, taking long relaxed belly breaths that you learnt from 'unwinding the belly'. After you've done this for several months and can physically feel (not visualize!) a connection to the ground/earth (you may be able to feel a very slow dense buzz going between your belly and the ground under your feet) - then you might consider learning standing meditation... this is quite important for you! you may notice that you get some genius ideas or thoughts that stop you doing any of this - this is just the mind sabotaging you, notice when this happens give yourself a knowing smug smile that you caught it in its tracks. let us know how you get on!

I work in front of the computer for a good 8 hrs a day - my eyes invariably get really tired. I sometimes massage around the eye socket and then cover the eyes with my palms (warmed up by rubbing) to relax them... (Also, I try to gaze into the distance when on breaks - this relaxes them a bit...) I tend to have quite bloodshot eyes, whether I'm using the computer or not... As well as that I have these visible dark purple circles right under the eyes - and although they can get better or worse they always tend to be there to some extent (or at least they have been since my early teens)... Can you guys help out? Any tips for initially healing and then maintaining their health would be greatly appreciated... (I once came across an interesting machine that acted like a biofeedback device for the eyes - not sure how it worked, but it analysed how you're focusing, and when you're doing it optimally it makes a noise - the idea is to train yourself to keep the noise constant, in different ranges of focus - apparently they used this on snipers and pilots... I completely lost any reference to this, so if anyone knows anything about it, I'd be interested...)

Don't mix kundalini with kunlun.

come to the front of the class and explain yourself young man re: intent mobilised in the limbs - means taking physical, bodily action to achieve your intent... I happen to be one of those people that tend to be very indecisive (why make decisions when one decision is as perfect as another ) I'm trying out a completely new way of 'being' or 'doing' - whereby instead of making decisions I become aware of the decisions to be made and let my body move me in a direction that it decides... at the moment it's not so smooth or easy - imagine completely re-learning how to walk after having walked the old way for the whole of your life... I think I need to join a dance class or something... does dancing help the liver?

Thanks for the suggestions! I might give the saline solution idea a go, but I can see it being a little impractical (I'd be wrried about infecting my eyes or getting the salt concentration wrong etc) When do you tend to do your eye circles (in the morning with no tiredeness or to relieve tiredness?) I tend to do the eye circles when cupping - have not heard of continuing the circles with yi - sounds like a fantastic idea! wudangspirit - yes the liver connection makes sense - I have this underlying pattern of suppressing anger - Although I can get the energy moving and flowing, it soon goes back to 'normal' - which is a general stagnant state... (I also think the liver issue has a deeper supporting pattern based in the lungs...) Gou Qi Zi - is that what's comonly reffered to as Goji berries? I should have some around (I like em in salads!) I remember seeing this device on a respectable accupuncture site, although it looks more like torture device to me, it's meant to be quite effective (I suspect over-using it will over stimulate some meridians): http://www.gizoo.co.uk/Products/HealthFitn...EyeMassager.htm

I'm enjoying this topic and your presence here. I will keep challenging you with this, though - so please don't take this as anything more than a friendly debate... I read your piece on the aura... you later said: "I know my way around chakras and aura" - this communicated to me more than you may realise - I'm afraid I found that most of what you wrote came from 'knowledge' peppered with a tiny bit of actual experience - it feels to me like regurgitated book knowledge... and the experience was completely coloured by your expectations and impressions from books and other mind-stuff. I can't see the aura, but I can feel it... I can then pay close attention to the vibration of the feeling and this, is represented through sound! So I can hear an aura (at least the general state of it) - but the hearing comes from paying close attention to the feeling... I also have a very strong sense of smell - not sure if I can 'smell' the aura, but I can often (in the right environment) smell the condition of a person (excitement, relaxation, fear, illness etc) of course living in the city, I'm usually unable to exercise this sense... I have no idea how the aura works, what it's connected to, how many 'levels' it has etc... I suspect if I tried to work it out, it would stop me feeling the actual aura, and instead I would start to perceive my limitations (language and 'thought' are self inflicted limitations) When I was in art school, I'd love to go to the regular life-drawing class - I wasn't that good, but it was really fun... One of the first lessons was to learn to keep your eye on the model, and not on your paper - 90% looking at the model and 10% looking at your paper... it's quite hard at first - your mind keeps making it seem like it knows best, it's hard to trust your intuition to be in the drivers seat... Over time it became easier and easier to let my hand do most of the work, without having to keep thinking about direction of light, proportions, perspective, colour etc... all that came automatically, without having to read books, use rulers etc. We had a guy in that class who had quit his job as an architect and wanted to become more creative... In class he drew really well finished, proportional, well shaded pieces - all the students would look at it and wish they could do it as well as him... the professor, on the other hand, would keep telling him it's all wrong and he's not doing what's asked of him- 'you have to draw your act of experiencing the subject - what you're doing is more akin to a cheap photocopier than an artist with a soul'... The poor guy was obviously disappointed - all his life he'd been praised for being such a perfectionist and an excellent draftsman... One day it really got to him and he kind of lost it - he scribbled chaotic, crazed mass of lines on his page, along with profanities... (this was unusual for the quiet and normally very reserved Japanese man) - I think he wanted to piss off the professor... anyway, at the end of the drawing session, the professor walks around the room, looking at every drawing, making some comments etc. When he walks past the Japanese architect, he quickly nods, says 'good - you're starting to get the hang of it' and walks on...

Q: How do you get to know this? A: You would test and experiment and test again... Because the aspect of your of your being that is to do with chi is feminine in nature, it's all about feeling! The feeling of emotion, but also the feelings of touch, movement, coordination, temperature, texture etc. The feminine is not about certainties, you cant measure it, you can't capture it because it's always in motion. it doesn't make sense because the part of you that makes things make sense is too limited to grasp it - can you measure the love you have for someone, the rudeness of a word, the sadness of a song - all these are feelings. We have many names for feelings - sorrow, sadness, 'feeling blue' etc - but if I asked "what does 'gratefullness' really mean" - to answer me you feel a little bit of the feeling and then have a thought about it and then try to explain... similarly how could you explain the tatse of saltiness to someone who hasn't tasted it before? - you may very well have definitions - there is sharp saltiness, savoury saltiness, soft saltiness etc. but if you've never tasted salt then this makes no sense. so the problem I see about defining, closely reading about the energetic anatomy, looking at pictures and charts etc is that instead of tasting the salt, you're just studying the names and definitions about it - but the taste is where it really counts! ... I will, however, be happy try to share... to be usefull I will try to explain what I feel inside. There is a feeling I get that feels like expanding - outwardsy kind of feeling, I feel its location mainlyit just where the ribcage ends... when this chi 'moves me' I feel it in my legs, slightly springy, elastic type of motion, but also outwards. That chi is also connected with the feeling that I want to socialise, make jokes, share - but it's also connected to anger, resentment etc... Taomeow explained it in yet another way... you have to be kind of poetic about this stuff... you might ask: "if it's so vague why did the taoists and the yogis create elaborate charts, explanations and distinctions?" Imo it's because these masters had a different constitution - they were far more in contact with the feminine, feeling, ambiguous, unexplainable part of us, so when they did movements and qigong and other excersises they developed much quicker in that aspect - however for them at the time the knowing, specific, logical, mental aspect was just developing. It was interesting, and uncharted, mysterious - so while they were still connected to their feminine natures , they also began to use the masculine, mental aspect; this began the effect of creativity, of creating symbols, talismans, theories (5 element, ba gua, chakras)etc... This aspect of us then developed quickly, it got quick results (agriculture, metal smelting, engeneering, the internet) and the feminine aspect became lost in unconsciousness and thus became so 'mysterious'... Now, because we're so over developed mentally, it's far more important to start developing (or rather re-experiencing) the feminine. That's why I'm suggesting that experience should be occupying 90% of your time, whilst theorising, reading, intellectualising should be 10%... (at some point you can develop a way of thinking and speaking where it originates from the feminine - this is how great poets, writers, artists, mathematicians, martial artists, philosophers etc become so respected) ... I feel that feeling that we call 'enjoyment' for this exchange.

if you're wondering why this happens, think to a time when you saw kids being really naughty just to get attention from their parents... Attention is energy, and if starved for attention kids will do anything to get it... whatever tends to work when they're between 2 and 3 sticks as the major life pattern for most people... So yeah most of us, I would suggest, have such a pattern going, it's just the extreme ones we tend dislike or get offended by. If someone is being naughty, you can supplicate to the self fulfilling prophecy and get angry at them (this is a form of reward for people with this pattern), or you can indeed pay no attention - the energy flow dries up and they move on. If, like Pietro, you prefer to 'help' or at least loosen the grip of this pattern for that person, I would suggest that it's very unlikely to happen on a forum - the type of energy shared over the internet is never the type of energy that transforms this kind of pattern... (it's the difference between mind and heart) In person, it's a whole different question - the key here is to give full attention to them - there are not many people that are able to direct their full attention to one person (let alone a hostile or at the very least resistant person) - experientially it's like you open up a space in yourself that can contain them and their limitations, then you let the light of the dan tiens (yi?) bathe you/them... I know a person that can do this very powerfully - people normally break down and cry... untill they start laughing - quite moving to watch, and very transformational to experience... I'm not sure if he can do this with an unwilling/actively resistant person... (is this what transmission is like?) The thing is, he has so little 'stuff' in him that his attention is like a powerful beam of light - quite uncomfortable for most people - you know when you can sometimes feel if someone is staring at you from behind? well multiply that feeling by at least a thousand - it's like the beam of light shines through you and makes all the ego stuff apparent, and you become very embarrassed/naked/self-conscious. So he has to be really careful how he directs his attention... until I develop anything even approximating this level of awareness, I wont try to fix people with deeply ingrained patterns - you have to take on the pattern and solve it in yourself before you can help to solve it in them, and I still have hundreds of my own patterns to solve before I start messing around with others.

Well my machine is a type of orgone generator. It's powerful, but the energy generated is unrefined/raw... it needs both my intention and minerals such as quartz to bring it to cohesion and balance (or if it's on for a while a natural balancing ensues - but this often involves the big vortex and other environmental factors (such as the hole in the clouds) - it's not so good to have that much energy moving around in my bedroom - I suspect long exposure to this would lead to chi sickness. I'm naturally skeptical of this stuff, so when I first got my machine I began testing it. I did a test where I would water alfa alfa sprouts with water charged by the machine along with controls (one using tap water, and one using spring water) - after repeating the test 4 times, the sprouts watered with the charged spring water performed the best each time (the seeds sprouted much faster, more seeds sprouted and after 5 days the sprouts were much bigger than the controls) maybe the people with the biodiscs could conduct similar personal research - I'd be willing to repeat my experiments with pictures and stuff if anyone would be interested in it... Ian and I also conducted a very informal test to see if the energy from the generator can be sent over a distance - results were pretty inconclusive though...

I'm sure you've heard that the Eskimo people have dozens of words for snow... the word snow is not enough for them because their experience is that snow has many distinctions. The reason they have so many words for snow is so that they can communicate easily with each other... So let's say you or I decide to collect many books from all the different Eskimo cultures, reading about all the different names and types of snow - really studying it... Then we decide to turn up to Siberia - do you really expect to immediately differentiate all the different types of snow, when all you see is bright white? Well, we may be better off with the knowledge we've gained than someone turning up with us who hasn't learned anything about snow, but we'd all still be far more clueless than even the 4 year olds from that culture... The distinctions are made from experience, and then words are used to point to aspects of the experience for ease of communication... you're trying to reverse the process - learn the words so that you somehow get to the experience... this may work, but it's far from being the most efficient way of going about it. To be more efficient, you must stop asking 'what is chi, what is prana, what is a chakra' etc. because the answers to all these questions will be words in a language you have no experience in. It would be far more useful for you to ask - how can I experience wood chi, how can I feel the nadis, how can I experience a chakra... the answer you will get will be a process - something you can do - to become sufficiently experienced to start to speak the language - then when you say chi or chakra, you will be speaking form experience, not just parroting words you've heard or read about.. as always - this is just my opinion...

Yup I recently got the Elanra off ebay (for a really great price). I did some research, and although it's normally very expensive, this is the only one worth buying for health purposes - other ones may clean the dust out of the air, but their ion clusters are never small enough to help with breathing. There is also this fresh kind of smell that comes about when the elanra's on, I have it by my bed and turn it on when I go to bed - sleeping's better, and in the morning I bring it close to my face and do some deep breathing which wakes me up as well as calms (my diaphragm really softens up and goes deeper when I do this) Regarding the connection between negative ions and chi - well, It feels to me like the negative ions kind of lubricate the air, so that chi moves easier and is more 'accessible'.

again this is all to do with words - if you say 'chest' that may well include lungs, ribcage, heart, thymus etc. In Neuro Linguistics this is known as 'chunking' - it's to do with the level of how specific or general you are. Words have an effect of firstly stopping time (our body is a process not an object) - and also removing something specific from its context... so lungs are more specific than chest, bronchioles are more specific than lungs, cells are more specific than bronchioles, nucleus, atoms, electrons, quarks etc etc. Language is used to communicate experience - so when you say 'definite and precise', it's again to do with the level of specificity, and always to do with pinpointing and communicating experience... would you trust someone who read all the books published on the physiology of lungs, but never seen an actual lung to operate on you? Experience -> language -> experience - the language is used as a blunt tool to communicate experience.

xuesheng has the right idea here... Having studied semantics and linguistics in depth, I completely agree. We have a word for love, but when we speak the word or read it, we do not feel the feeling. We have millions of people trying to describe love in song, poetry, painting, endocrinology, metaphysics - but none of these can in any way replace the feeling of love. The explanations of love are still useful, and pleasurable - but if you start to mistake an explanation of love (such as the explanation that focuses on your hormones and endocrine system) for the actual feeling of love, you will get entangled in the explanation, trying to make sense of it, trying to combine it with poetry or metaphysics - but all of that is just playing with words and illusions - there is no real substance in the explanation, the explanation is just a useful way of communicating ideas between people who experience or aim to experience the subject of the communication first hand. "the map is not the territory" - the wise words of Alfred Korzybski, the father of modern General Semantics... the Tao Te Ching mentions this too...