autopoetic

Adapt. If you sleep in air conditioning then step outside at noon, you're going to get walloped. On the other hand if you allow yourself to get hot on a regular basis (ie. every summer) you'll deal with the heat way better. It's not terribly esoteric, but there you have it.

Meditation/qigong are powerful tools. The deep desire to quit is the most powerful tool you can have. After that, dealing with cravings is the hard part. What Bum Grasshopper said corresponds well with my experience - smoke only when you feel you need one, never because you're bored or looking to kill time or out of mindlessness. Always smoke mindfully. When you smoke, only smoke - experience it fully. You will find if you do this you'll smoke dramatically less, which will make actually stopping considerably easier. I smoke occasionally now, but not everyday... I was up to a pack a day for a few years, and then quit completely for two years. What did it for me was to learn to reorient myself with respect to the feeling of craving. That craving is precisely the feeling of your brain re-wiring itself to not need cigarettes anymore. The smoking replaces and displaces a variety of chemicals in your brain, which it must learn to produce again when you quit. Pay close attention to the cravings, and invite them in - let that feeling wash over you and do its work. It is a positive thing, the feeling of your body/mind healing itself.

In my understanding, everything we experience is out of balance. All sensations are imbalances. This is just the post-heaven state. If we would return to the source, we cannot do so by pretending we are already there. We must use imbalance to create balance, because imbalance is all we have. The question then becomes creating exactly and only the right imbalance to create balance. Therefore, right practice moves us through harmonizing the five elements into the tai-chi state, where original balance begins.

Seems like no one here was saying that all Science is guaranteed safe. Given the history of technological accidents, that seems like a silly position to take. But the title of the thread is "end of the world in 5 days?" That's a whole different kettle of fish, particularly regarding the LHC.

The energies concentrated in the LHC are small compared to the cosmic radiation which constantly bombards earth. If something horrific was going to happen, it would have happened eons ago. http://www.universetoday.com/2008/09/05/ne...tely-unfounded/

I like this. It reminds me of a line from a meditation manual I once read... something like "Qi is more like music than electricity." It's a resonance or harmony, internal and external, rather than some mysterious juice that is pumped into the body.

It all depends on which particular martial or non-martial system you're looking at, of course. But in general, I understood martial systems to be more focused on power, and healing systems to be more focused on balance.

Assemble a team of psychologists, neurologists, qi-gong masters, doctors, physicists, biologists, and probably philosophers. Gain access to EEG, fMRI, laboratory to study blood chemistry, etc. Do extensive testing on masters, observe results. Develop metrics for evaluating chi levels, compare those to self or peer assessments by masters. Do extensive longitudinal testing on new practitioners. That is, make repeated observations of people before starting a given practice, while they learn the practice, and as they develop. Repeat this process for each practice of interest. Given all that data, try to come up with correlations between what people experience through practice, and what happens biologically. Then, we may be in a position to start offering hypotheses about how to describe chi scientifically, and where to look to do more testing.

According to the wikipedia article, it isn't that there is extra material... Rather the material that the earth is made of is actually becoming less dense, due to changes in heat. I'm wondering if the earth was covered in land 80 million years ago, where was all the water in all the oceans back then? It's a pretty neat idea though.

I am happy to stand (somewhat) corrected on this point. Your calculations do seem to show that it is at least possible for the gravity at the top of a mountain to be higher than that at sea level. As daoian says though, the density of the mountain (and its root structure) would be important to the calculation. I would also point out the confounding factor that the earth is not a perfect sphere, but rather a lumpy ellipsoid, so gravity will (on average) be stronger at the poles than at the equator. But the more important point, that both you and daoian have commented on, is the lack of a clear connection between what science calls gravity and what we're calling yin chi. It may be a decent metaphor, but it seems we all agree that the reality of the situation is much more complicated than that.

thanks for a thorough reply. I didn't know that mountains differed in density. I suppose it make sense! I see you've selected the one reply amongst a dozen that sounds like it supports you position. But if you'll note, I didn't say the gravity is usually lower on a mountain than in a valley. I said it is higher at ground level. (yeah, I guess I do look into things in detail! ) Having a lot of earth above you will obviously act as an attraction upwards. This makes for some interesting reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_gravity They even have a nifty chart with measurements of the strength of gravity in various cities!

I hate to be too literal, but... gravity is actually slightly less on top of a mountain than on ground level: http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/phy00/phy00348.htm Also, since our dissection of the earth into east/west is somewhat arbitrary, there is no physical difference in centripetal force between korea/tibet and any other part of the world. Sorry, I know you're talking about real forces in the world, and I don't doubt that wise people of the ages have found the powerful places. It just bugs me when people misuse science.

I never asked my teacher for documentation! Perhaps I should? I am curious about the lineage, which he claims is about 700 years old. But it never seemed that important. One has to approach any practice with a certain degree of skepticism, I think. It is up to everyone to confirm its authenticity for themselves. So even if the lineage is only 70 years old instead of 700, I wouldn't really feel much different about it - I've confirmed its effects in my own body/mind.

I don't practice sexual kung-fu anymore, but at the peak of my practice I was experiencing some pretty remarkable full body orgasms. I'm by no means an adept at this stuff, but it sounds like you're pushing too hard. I practiced about a year without any kind of non-ejaculatory orgasms, until I got the hang of it. My problem was I was trying to make it happen, rather than opening up the space and allowing it to happen. I guess this was a result of thinking of it in terms of male genital orgasms, which can be straightforwardly induced with vigorous enough activity. The character of the full body orgasms I was experiencing was much different. They required deep relaxation, and an openness to the natural flow of energy rather than conscious direction. Instead of sending energy anywhere, I would just relax as much as possible and observe how it moved. I think this helped me avoid an extreme excess of energy in my noggin, as when my head was full, the energy would naturally flow down the front channel. (you are remembering to bring the energy back down during your practice, right?) If you're wondering, I stopped doing the practice because it works a bit too well! That is, I got a taste of the kind of energy it cooks up and realized I didn't have a clue what to do with it, how to store it safely, how to refine it, etc... Without a teacher to guide me through the process, I had the distinct impression that I was just as likely to do myself harm as good.

Uh, didn't he master all of the yogic postures before finding his own method? People seem to forget that.

After all that scorn for the materialism of meditating on one's own body, I find this throwaway line at the end pretty funny. Not only is he hawking a book, it's a book about how to make your skin prettier - with chi!

Hi Everyone, I'm wondering if anyone out there practices qigong from the taiji-men (tai-chi men) lineage? I learned the practice from a lineage holder, and I know a few other students who were also taught by him, but I've never met anyone else who has even heard of this lineage. I'm just kind of curious if there are any more out there like me! Failing that, has anybody even heard of it? The only thing I could find about it online was written by another student of the same teacher! peace, autopoetic

Is it possible that different systems of cultivation refer to different things when they talk about yin and yang chi? One type of chi may have active and passive qualities, but there may be other kinds, utilizing other fundamental forces. It seems possible to me that different groups are referring to different aspects of energy as 'yin chi' and 'yang chi', and people navigating between would simply be stuck with a confusion of words.

I'm curious, what attracted you to the eleusinian mystery in the first place? What does it mean for you?

My impression was that even if you correctly practice the mo pai method you can seriously injure yourself! Definitely not the kind of thing you'd want to be learning just over e-mail. I mean, what's the emoticon for "my lower dan-tien just popped loose and is wandering my body"?

Some people believe that the drink kykeon was some kind of psychedelic. There are various theories about which one, but my favourite is that it was ergot, a fungus which grew on grains. Check it out: http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/lsd/valencic.htm btw... are you concerned about 'blacking out'? Does that happen to you a lot?

Hi Bums, I just discovered this forum, and am excited to explore. I practice a taoist form of qigong, from the taiji-men lineage. I did about 3 years of on-and-off practice from the Healing Tao books, but once I found a serious teacher I gave up MC and never looked back. I'm also pretty into taoism as 'philosophy', though that word doesn't seem quite right. Looking forward to talking with you, autopoetic