qirin

this is my first post here, and I wanted to tell a little about my story and what I am after, and hopefully ignite a discussion about some of the things that matter to me. for a long time I have been looking for, or following the thread of something, and that ultimately lead to me being here at this moment asking these questions. I decided to ask them here because there are so many people on this board with so much knowledge about different traditions and such a wealth of real life experience. I apologize if this seems presumptuous for a first time poster, but this stuff has really been nagging at me and I need to put it out there. a long time ago I was a very unhappy and in a lot of pain, and so I started to look for something outside myself that could help me with that pain. of course the first thing I turned to was drugs, and when that didn't work out very well I began looking into meditation and then yoga. through the practice of yoga, I realized how estranged I had become from my own body, and I realized that overcoming some of the emotional pain I experienced required me to get back into my body and deal with the issues I had there. not only that, but I came into contact with something in myself, a quality of "aliveness" that seemed to flow within me and guide my movements and create a feeling of freedom and expansiveness. however, I quickly became dissatisfied with yoga. I found it very unidirectional, very yang, too limited in its use of the body and not fully embracing the potential of this life force I could feel within myself. consequently, I began to study qigong and chinese medicine and later feldenkrais and somatics. each of these things seemed to hold one more piece of the puzzle, but none of them was truly the art that I was looking for. I also realized that I needed to increase the basic physical capacities of my body. as I engaged in activities I once considered the purview of "jocks," my body began to flourish. so I ran, swam, lifted weights, and my strength and vitality grew. yet I remained unsatisfied. in my mind I pictured an art that combined the playfulness of feldenkrais with the fluidity of taiji and the ground engagement and stretching of yoga. one that also utilized some often neglected approaches to relaxation, such as controlled tension, shouting, and vibration. and I imagined a system of strength training that did not focus on moving muscles through certain ranges, but strengthened the body in the ways it was meant to be used, using tools like hammers or clubs. I could invent all of this myself, but it would be a slow process, and I do not consider myself a very advanced student of any of these things. and then one day I found it. poking around on youtube, I saw a video of this scott sonnon guy doing exactly what I had envisioned. he called it "prasara yoga." and not only that, he used weighted clubs for strength training. it was bizarre, as if something in my own mind had stepped out into reality. the honeymoon, however, was short lived. as I looked into it, I grew more and more uneasy with this guy and, to a lesser extent, with his system. the material, I learned, was derived from work done by the russian special forces. sonnon himself seems to have been involved in combat from an early age. his writing is bombastic and often ill-considered. he proclaims his system to be superior to things (feldenkrais, ashtanga yoga) that are in their own right very advanced and legitimate forms of self-development. he claims that his system is complete and that it provides a foundation for longevity unparalleled in the past. yet the system itself seems to me to have serious flaws in it. flaws that reflect sonnon's disordered personality. while it certainly is a more internal system than most western arts, it seems to lack a deep appreciation for the spiritual and energetic sides of experience. sonnon claims prasara is yoga, but that statement is preposterous since he only deals with two of the eight limbs. more recently I have seen videos of russian practitioners of the system sonnon's material is derived from, and they demonstrate a fluidity and ease of movement that sonnon seems to have stiffened and tightened. now please understand me. everyone has a character structure, everyone has their quirks and those are always commensurate with the strengths one brings to the table. but sonnon seems to have arrogantly insisted on isolating himself by declaring his superiority over the people who could really enrich his system, by constantly pursuing patents and trying to set himself up in an ivory tower. his own ego, I think, is the downfall of what could otherwise be one of the most valuable resources out there right now. a system that, in my eyes, could provide the missing link between wellness, martial arts and spiritual development. most important to me, however, is the fact that sonnon has been accused of sock puppeting, and as far as I know has never responded to these allegations. again, don't get me wrong. while "guerilla marketing" is certainly deceptive, I don't think it's necessarily wrong. but if sonnon really is tichok or any of these other alleged puppets... it's not that he would lie, but the specifics of what he said as these puppets, the stupid arguments he made, the badly faked "accents," that indicate that he has taken leave of his senses. and with his newest product, "the bible of joint mobility," his writing (or is it nikolay travkin's?) grows more bombastic and tabloid and comes to resemble more and more those e-book blurbs you see all over the internet, trying to sell you anything from penis enlargement textbooks to manifestation techniques to, in this case, the secrets of siberian shamans. so here are my questions. what do you people think of these criticisms of sonnon? does the value of work outweigh this deranged behavior? do you know of any way to get at the R.O.S.S. material without going through sonnon? does sonnon have something to offer that other can't? are you interested in a project that involves extracting the valuable parts of sonnon's work and placing them more firmly in an open context which includes and respects yoga, taiji, feldenkrais, and other arts? do you believe there is a different teacher out there who has a better understanding of human biomechanics (in all planes of movement), the "state of flow," and the movement of qi in the human body, who you would recommend instead? am I just hypercritical? in other words, stfu grasshopper? of course any other comments are welcome, too.

I suggest taking anything you read on dragon door with a grain of salt. I am biased against them, because I feel like I wasted the first year or so of my training taking pavel's advice as gospel. there's a reason why the things he says are controversial -- some of them are deeply rooted in his own prejudices, and some of them are simply not true. the frequent training thing is an example. pavel hates bodybuilders. he thinks having big muscles is unhealthy. he thinks being able to lift a big weight a couple of times is more manly than being able to lift a medium weight for hours on end. stick him in a gulag breaking rocks apart and see how he feels about it. and pavel looks a lot like arthur saxon. neither guy is that big. well, you say, I'd be happy looking like pavel. that's fine, and once you look like pavel or arthur saxon, maybe you should start training like them. but the methods pavel promotes do not generally produce muscle development. it's true that building muscle is unnecessary if you already have a good supply, but if you are an unmuscular guy, you need to do the following, in this order: 1) condition your joints to bearing a load 2) build muscular endurance so your muscles can handle doing a lot of lifting 3) increase mass so you have more muscle to work with 4) increase muscle fiber recruitment (aka strength) pavel/dragondoor's techniques cover 1 and 4, but not 2 or 3. and the truth is, for most people endurance is a more valuable attribute than strength anyway. building muscle mass is a slow, painful process. in order to bear enough load on your arms to build muscle there, you will have to build muscle in your back and shoulders first. muscle growth is metabolically very costly, and your body will not do it unless you push hard. muscle development is also very genetically determined. some people benefit from frequent training, and some people benefit from hard, infrequent training. some people grow fast and some people grow slow. if you were the kind of person who grows fast, you would probably be buff already, so be prepared for a long haul.

if Li Jiong has the right to be a twit, don't we have the right to talk about banning him? we can't actuallly do it, but we have the right to TALK about it...

pah! that's funny. every country collapses, the question is just when. mind you, I don't believe now is the time, but the whole world economy was formerly based on the idea that for any reasonable length of time it could be assumed that the US government would remain solvent. that is no longer the case, and the economy is restructuring itself.

that formula is called Long Mu Shao Yao Ning Xin Tang. I don't think it's right for you. it is for yin vacuity, so unless your friend has that I wouldn't take it. people with yin vacuity are thin and have dark circles under their eyes, dry skin and mouth. their skin often looks wrinkly and taught. they can't sleep but are tired all the time. exercise makes them feel worse. it co-occurs with western conditions like hepatitis and fibromylagia. it's not unheard of, but it's not that common in western society. you are probably better off having your friend try a more all-purpose formula. xiao yao san is safe for pretty much anyone anyone to take. it specifically targets qi stagnation by mobilizing the qi of the liver. it's safe to take with anti-depressants, and a chinese study came out a few years ago that showed people taking zoloft did better when they supplemented it with xiao yao san. if your friend has symptoms of heat (excessive sweating, restlessness, red pallor to face, irritability, feelings of being hot or occasional fevers, occasional diarrhea or profuse urination), then you could have him/her try gui pi wan. I suffer from anxiety, depression and insomnia (blood and qi stagnation leading to heat from yang excess) and have gotten really good results from both those formulas.

you should always take vitamins and other supplements with food. imho you shouldn't take synthetic supplements. if you buy pill type supplements, look on the label. it should say 'from vegetable sources.' if it doesn't, it's probably synthetic. the best omega 3 supplements are cod liver oil and flax oil. besides omega 3s, I personally have gotten good results from taking magnesium, B vitamins and spirulina. I have taken a lot of other stuff, and aside from chinese herbs I have found most of them to be worthless. taking vitamin C pills has been linked to cancer. in general, it is best to get vitamins and minerals from food. if you eat leafy greens, shiitake mushrooms and some sea weed, you have most of the bases covered.

eh, I am not so sure about that one. granted, many athletes succumb to various kinds of injuries over the years, primarily connective tissue injuries. these probably could have been avoided by doing taiji or meditating or just generally being more mindful of your body. but there are lots of researchers in the US who study aging, and my understanding is that the number one most important predictor of longevity and health is regular, vigorous exercise. exercise stimulates and strengthens your bones, connective tissue and muscles. it increases your lung capacity. it strengthens your heart. it circulates blood, lymph and water through your system. it supplies oxygen to your brain. it increases production of neurotransmitters that combat depression, anxiety and other psychological issues. I am no expert on qi or TCM or daoist cultivation so I can't comment on what kinds of effects various forms of exercise have on the subtle body, but I don't think standing still for three hours has the same benefits as jogging, swimming or lifting weights. all are good, but they are different. I think a bias against physical exercise is a hold-over from a feudal society that saw hard work as lower-class. your body was built for work. regularly pushing yourself to your limits will make you thrive. if our definition of qi doesn't include this kind of health, it needs to be revised.

sometimes when I am practicing reiki meditation, I spontaneously get this image of myself as avalokitesvara. as if by channeling reiki I become the embodiment of the buddha of compassion. then I just rest in that.

two things, both directed at the OP (even tho he doesn't seem to be responding ) -- first, kettlebells use your body in a way that's very different from most other things; if you go this route ease into it. start with sets of ten. if you bring your kettlebell home crank out 3x50 swings, you will be so saddle sore you won't be able to walk for a week. second, you don't need a kettlebell to do kettlebell drills. if you have a 30-40 pound dumbell you can do swings or snatches. look on youtube (kettlebell swing or kettlebell snatch) to see how to do them. with a kb, a snatch is considered an advanced exercise, but the dumbbell eliminates the factors that lead to that. there are advantages to having a genuine kb, but a dumbbell is actually safer.

gotta disagree with mjjbecker et al. here. my opinion is that people tend to be overcautious about these kinds of things. your body is very resilient and can withstand large amounts of stress for short periods of time. one of my problems with qigong and TCM, at least as I have been exposed to it, is an infatuation with doing things the "right" way, which parallels similar trends in Japanese and American culture. feldenkrais, conversely, taught that there's not right and wrong ways to do things, just different ways that have different consequences. if you are healthy and balanced, doing something "the wrong way" for a short period of time doesn't matter. it's only when you do things habitually that are detrimental that you will have problems. human beings evolved during a period when scarcity was common, and scarcity would most often be accompanied by hard work. when the snows came, you had to march, you had to hunt for food, etc. people often talk about having "the right diet," and talk in terms of what you should eat each day, but I think that's misguided. our bodies don't need to be fed like babies. we don't need to eat every three hours. we don't need meat and bread every day. it's okay to go several days without eating. the point is to maintain balance over time. you might be interested in ori hofmekler's warrior diet, which involves alternating periods of controlled undereating (and exercising during those periods) with periods of controlled overeating. he even gets into, a little, the idea of having lighter and heavier days. as you can see, I am a firm believer in cycling, both for intellectual reasons and because that's what my body seems to prefer. I encourage you, too, to make your cycles coincide with changes in the world. eat less during the week and more on weekends. when you get a new job, eat less for a few days. after a big workout, celebrate with a healthy lunch. fast on the equinoxes and solstices. during the summer, eat smaller meals and more leafy vegetables. during the winter, eat less often but more at a time. that's assuming you live somewhere that has a winter; I live in southern california where it's June all year long the bottom line for losing weight: eat less, move more. just staying on your feet all day can burn some calories.

I meant that you should compare the three students talking to sonnon talking, not to retuinskih and the spetsnaz guy. I think that sonnon's students over time come to imitate some of his posture and mannerisms. I agree 100% yeah just yesterday I discovered ginastica natural, which is a system of yoga developed by some brazilian jiu-jitsu people, which bears striking resemblance to some of the systema techniques and to sonnon's work. so this stuff is everywhere in little pieces, sonnon just seems to have tied together some of the most important threads. sure, definitely. right now for me it's just a question of who and where, not if. for the time being I might just study jiu-jitsu and taiji independently, and maybe one day study systema. I could work the CST system, but with sonnon's increasing push towards macdonaldization, I think the price tag will be moving out of my range.

what kind of exercise do you do now? breaking a sweat is usually a good indication that you are burning calories, so if what you are doing makes you sweat, you could just try doing more. I lost a lot of weight a few years back by bike riding. another way to burn a lot of calories is hiking up hills, but your sciatica might get in the way of either of those. you could try swimming, bodyweight exercises (a.k.a. calisthenics) or circuit/ballistic weight training. also playing sports and plyometrics, but those are probably out. there's also dancing, but it doesn't burn a lot of calories unless you do it very vigorously. for info about calisthenics, try http://www.combatfitness.co.uk or http://bodyweightculture.com. things like burpees, mountain climbers, and push-ups. a "circuit" is when you cycle from exercise to exercise, each using a different muscle group. an example using bodyweight exercises would be: burpees - sit-ups - squats - windmill - push-ups - mountain climber you do each exercise for like ten repetitions and then rest for a minute and then start again at the beginning. if you have weights, you can do a cycle like shoulder press - squat - curl - weighted crunch - bent-over row - lunge - side bend do the reps quickly and use a weight light enough that you can keep it up for some time. the general recommendation is 50% of the heaviest weight you could use for that exercise. ballistic weightlifting, which can be done with regular weights or kettlebells, means hoisting weights using your whole body. if you're interested in that, google crossfit or olympic weightlifting. the key to burning calories is pacing yourself so you keep your heart rate up. keep sweating, and put in a good thirty or forty minutes with your heart rate at at least 130 bpm. if you know how, you can also do yoga sun salutations at a good clip. however diet is key. when I lost weight from cycling, I was really watching my diet. mroe recently I have been getting a lot more exercise but haven't lost weight at all because I just eat as much as I am hungry for. if you burn a lot of calories, your body is going to want you to replace them, so you really need to make sure you dont overeat and end up shooting yourself in the foot.

since no one has said anything, I will share what little I have to say on the subject. I used to have his "five tibetans" book. from that book and from his website, I get the impression that he's a good-spirited guy who is out to make a buck. the practice on the recording is probably just a standard chakra dhyan, visualizing the centers with color and then chanting their bija syllable. its a solid practice that gives results, and I dont think it matters much whose voice is on the tape. *shrug*

a much more eloquent statement of what I was after, grounded in the depths of personal experience. I feel happy for you and hope to one day see things so clearly.

I've been struck by this a number of times, that zen is basically a japanese version of indian raja yoga. I am not sure that I agree with the use of the word "lull," though, as both zen and raja yoga involve pretty intense concentration.

an old girlfriend of mine got really upset once when I told her that I could "see beauty in everything" because she felt that took away from the specialness of me telling her she was beautiful. but here's a question. do you want your partner to experience spiritual love for her sake or for yours? are you genuinely interested in her liberation, or is it more that you feel that your non-spiritual relationship doesn't reflect your perception of yourself as a spiritual person? if so, then this feeling of a need for ego-transcendence in your relationship may in fact be coming from your own ego. your responsibility in your relationship is to and for yourself. it's your job to understand her and to try to be understood, not to try to change her outlook or way of life. it is your responsibility to make sure that you remain true to yourself and to your own spiritual experience, but there's nothing spiritual about forcing her to conform to your expectations about what a relationship should be. if you are genuinely only interested in her well-being, then have patience. simply be the person you are, love her in the way that you do, and don't try to force anything. over time, she may begin to understand and grow. she's on her own path with its own truths, and she must realize them in a way and in an order that is unique to her. ultimately the reason why unselfish love is "better" than obsessively romantic love is that romantic love is grounded in a fear of losing the other and a need to be "special" that stems from a sense of one's own vulnerability and insignificance. and so the realization of unselfish love is a positive one. it's not that attachment is wrong, it's just unnecessary. unselfish love is an experience of freedom, of the freedom that comes with being whole. if she feels the need for romantic love it is because she does not feel secure or whole, and so you should concentrate on helping her find that sense of security and wholeness and not on reprimanding her for her illusions. like most illusions, they serve a purpose, and there must be something to fill the absence when they are stripped away or she will only be left with emptiness and depression. just my two cents. good luck.

with regard to the videos, if you are asking about people modelling scott's body movements, here are some examples: coach steer talking about flowfit when adam is standing at the beginning of the video, I find his posture and hand gestures strikingly similar to scott on the flowfit video. and both show a certain sonnon influence in their posture and body language. specifically, note the angle of the head. while you expect most martial artists to hold their heads level sonnon tends to hold his head slightly forward like a boxer. also note lack of head and shoulder movement while talking and stiffness of the upper body. a certain rhythm to the use of the hands. gesturing with the hands without lifting the shoulders. compare these to scott and in , the interviewer amusingly comments that a lot of sonnon's students seem to be torquing their backs. I think that happens because working with clubbells while doing intu-flwo results in the same qualities that scott has: stiffness through the midchest and overflexibility of the lumbar region and hips. from a reichian standpoint, excessive hip flexibility shows a desire to overperform sexually, while holding your chest tight indicates both puffing yourself up like a rooster and holding in your emotions (trying to prevent energy from the heart spreading to other parts of the body). if you' want examples of people copying scott's language and his particular brand of fallacies, I can give you two examples off the top of my head. in a thread about homemade clubbells on youtube here, coach bao tran writes: "You will not get the same benefits from using this homemade clubbell because "the center of mass" on a real CB is missing from this homemade one. I do not recommend it. You won't be doing Circular Strength Training with this homemade clubbell, you will be doing else. Bao Tran Certified Circular Strength Training Coach" here you see some common sonnon tactics: a psuedo-scientific assertion without any evidence (that the COM of the club will be different and that changing the COM will not give you the same benefits), an appeal to authority (citing his "credentials"), and an implication that CST is somehow magically superior to other training methods. the other example I can think of is, if I recall correctly, coach steer stating on the RMAX forums that all kettlebells besides those manufactured by a brand called "Pro-Gear" are inherently unsafe, thus using his authority as a coach to override the absurdity of his statement. kettlebells are solid hunks of metal, so they differ very little from manufacturer to manufacturer, and swinging around a 35 pound hunk of metal is unsafe to begin with. if you want other examples, they're all over the CST boards. also for comparison, check out these videos of and some other guy doing intu-flow and body-flow type exercises. it's quite a difference, I find, from scott's style. they are much looser and more flowing, almost like rag dolls. sonnon's students are learning sonnon's style, which is far more controlled and less rhythmic. for instance, watch some of scott's students here

yes, you're totally right, I stated that too strongly. yeah, it takes a huge amount of courage to put your ideas out there and to try to market them, and I think most people do it partly out of a desire for recognition and partly out of genuine interest in the well-being of others. there's nothing wrong with wanting recognition for the quality of your work, or for wanting to exercise your skills as a leader. and if scottt sonnon or ken wilber or whoever really just wanted to increase their cash flow without regard for anyone else, they probably would have gone the penis enlargement route. IMHO it can work both ways. I think working in groups can definitely be a way to help put people back in touch with their own stillness. but overcoming your own blocks is key. well I can't speak for the woman who originally made the comment (that you need to be careful who teaches you qigong), but in my own experience there definitely is a line, albeit it a very blurry one, between energy work and other kinds of activity. an anecdote... I attended a qigong circle at a place called the tibetan healing center here in san diego once... basically we all just sat in a room together and listened to a tape of guided meditation by this zhineng qigong guy. twenty people, probably only a few of us knew each other, no one said a word, but we all seemed to be on the same page as far as why we were there, what we wanted out of it, etc. it was a very intense experience. I am sure you have probably done the exercise where you hold an energy ball in between your hands. we essentially, at least the way I felt it, formed an energy ball connecting the entire group, which seemed to pulse or spin with a regular period, like a vortex. the facilitator said something like "wow, you guys are really focused. the energy in this room is intense!" anyway, the next day I had a kind of emotional breakdown. for three days I couldn't stop crying. I am sure that my reaction was a result of where I was at in life at that point, and that my reaction to the group had as much to do with my own temperament, as you say. but I think that the experience itself also played a part, and I was lucky to have been surrounded by well-intentioned people at the time. yes, I am an empath and a kind of energy conduit. when I am around a lot of intense people, I have to work hard to stay grounded. yes, definitely. I know feel fairly confident in practicing yoga on my own because of after years of classes I have little neville billmoria (my first yoga teacher) that sits on my shoulder giving me pointers. I will add the links to videos later.

yeah, that's not really a position that I would want to be in. in some ways, though, scott sonnon reminds me a lot of ken wilber. I think both guys have a lot of interesting things to say and are clearly intelligent and decent people for the most part. but both of them became addicted to being the center of a cult of personality, and increasingly sold themselves as part and parcel with their ideas. consequently, they both have come under a lot of attack, and in some cases a lot of unwarranted attack. and they have responded to this by estranging all but their most slavish devotees. maybe not unique, but it's good stuff. the reason why I posted here is that I find it interesting listening to everyone present the different sides of the issue. flow is unique to an individual, but flow is also something that is a property of groups. from what I've read, they use or at least used to use the word 'haragei' in japan to refer to the practice of cultivating a still center, but primarily with regard to the application of those practices to groups. so haragei means the art of listening to your belly and also the art of being a part of a group. I have had some experience of this phenomenon in zen meditation groups, mostly from how laughably we americans failed at it. and on a much more profound level in drum circles. playing the djun-djun, a big african bass drum used in ensembles, is truly a spiritual experience. as you become the centerpoint around which the group revolves, you find that the beat you are playing comes less and less from your own will and more from riding the ebb and flow of the rhythms around you. I think our experience of our own flow becomes enriched when we share it with others, and when we learn to combine ourselves with them. but that's a double-edged sword. a woman whose tui na class I attended said that it's really important to learn qigong from someone who is trustworthy and experienced, because when you learn energy work from someone you open yourself to their influence, much more so than if you learn something material. I think practicing flow, and more esoteric types of yoga, arguable is a kind of qigong and should be approached with equal care. anyway I enjoyed your comments very much and they definitely helped me to see things in a different light than I had been before. is this a rhetorical question? I've watched a lot of RMAX instructor's videos on youtube because I didn't feel like shelling out money for the various clubbell videos. it's surprising how much material is up; sonnon even seems to have put up the whole beginning and intermediate intu-flow videos. anyway, the other coaches seem to reflect a lot scott's foibles. maybe that's because like attracts like, but you can see his stiff posture, obscurantist language and fear mongering show up in a lot of their statements and videos.

evolutionary theory has evolved quite a bit since darwin, and a lot of the changes have taken place in the last few years. darwin's theory never dealt with the nuts and bolts of how evolution occurred, because people did not know about DNA or embryology. "transitional species" both do and do not exist. all of the developments that lead an organism to dramatically change function from one form to another serve purposes at all points in between, and so every transitional species is from the perspective of its own time a fully functional individual. for instance, the wings of insects began as elaborate gill structures, and eyes evolved from primitive photoreceptors on the surface of amoeba. an embryo "unpacks" the information in its DNA and uses that information to "build" an organism. by watching this "unpacking," we have discovered that all creatures, from bugs to people to horses to palm trees, are made using the same basic "palette" of genetic information. this "palette" comprises only a small part of the DNA of an animal, and changes to the palette generallly do not produce viable organisms. the rest of the DNA says how to use the palette, and changes in this part of the DNA produce small changes in the organism that, over time, lead to greater and greater changes. in other words, all life on this planet seems to have been "written" using a genetic programming language that is pretty similar to real programming languages. evolution occurs when some of this information becomes scrambled and rearranged, resulting in new implementations of the same "genetic software." at certain points in history, there have been major changes to the programming language, so that trilobytes are not written in the same language that dolphins are, but these instances are extremely rare and resulted in huge explosions of new species. one is the pre-cambrian explosion; there are maybe six or seven others. all of these ideas are to some extent theoretical; however, they form the basis for modern genetic engineering which has produced results that are hard to argue with. but that's the nature of science. unlike religious belief, science does not "hold positions." of course some of our understanding of evolution is wrong, and over time we will revise it. maybe qi will be found to play a role. as soon as that can be demonstrated, then science will accept qi as a part of evolution. if you can demonstrate the existence of god, scientists would have to accept that as well. as far as the original comment that started this thread about gravitation, there are a number of forces understood by physics besides gravity that contribute to the stabilization of the universe. there is a "repulsive force" and it doesn't come from "negative matter." it's called the "electromagnetic force" and it is what keeps you from walking through a table. the universe ostensibly does not collapse in on itself because the big bang caused everything to accelerate outward, and that inertia is what keeps things from collapsing back in. I am not saying I think modern science is 100% infallible. the point is that there could be nothing more unscientific than claiming it was. the nature of science is an unending quest to broaden our understanding of reality, even when the answers we get don't fit into our current beliefs.

I'm not sure why you feel the need to be rude, but the strength of your argument is weakened by the fact that I have never given any of these people a single dime. I may be a fool, but I am at least a cautious one.

the board seems to have strung all my replies together so I hope this isn't too confusing. I hope it's not presumptuous of me to offer advice, but maybe you would benefit from a change of attitude towards the work. the way sonnon presents intu-flow, the "intuitive" part is more implied than stated. personally, I alternate between doing the exercises the way sonnon presents them and improvising my own movements. some days I pop the video on and follow it to the letter. I think this is important, because you really want to work on recovering the exact ranges of motion. other days, I start with the beginner material and then mix in some intermediate stuff or some stuff from warrior wellness that I like but that didn't make the intu-flow cut. or even some of the stuff from pavel tsatsouline's fast and loose. and I use these as a springboard, and follow the indications of my body and the flow of qi and start to experiment with new movements. some days I only have five or ten minutes, and so I do the exercises that it feels like my body wants me to do, or just focus on my problem areas (neck, shoulders, hips). in other words, I kind of mix intu-flow with spontaneous qigong. one of the key points in feldenkrais is varying the range of motion and speed while doing exercises. sonnon never to my knowledge discusses this, and I think it's one of the things that proves that he doesn't have the jump on feldenkrais, despite what he said in the body-flow book. on intu-flow, sonnon says to keep the reps to a minimum in order to avoid a training effect, but varying the range of motion will also avoid a training affect and has an extremely beneficial effect on your proprioception. in other words, there's plenty of reason to believe that a freeform and improvisational approach is actually beneficial. you need to be systematic, but it could be the fact that you don't find yourself getting up and wanting to do it might be an indication that the program isn't clicking with your body and you should try a more improvisational approach. yes I have. because there is often a lot more to be learned from a teacher in person, and through his or her disciples, than through videos, and with all of this negativity around him I am not sure I want to bring any more of his energy into my life. because if sonnon is just pilfering retuinskih's material without adding anything of merit, then it's retuinskih's material I want. because I am disappointed, because prasara is so much like what I had been imagining and yet it is filled with flaws that reflect sonnon's flaws. because a teacher sometimes transfers his flaws to his students, just as alexander lowen (a student of wilhelm reich) was tainted by a history of cynicism and emotional detachment that links them back to freud. because I thought maybe sonnon was a decent guy and I feel let down. because I thought maybe I had found one person worth looking up to. you may very well be right, but what interests me is not the striking and martial arts aspect of it but the ability to move the body in a flowing and effortless way. from videos I can see that sonnon, kadochnikov and the people at the systema-spetsnaz website (http://www.livevideo.com/video/A0E013B2F8644D788D5B066EAF9C3468/spetsnaz-dvd-internal-wave-e.aspx) can do that. you can't fake flow, you either have it or you don't. I don't care about these people specifically, I am interested in the work that they are doing, but I am trying to trace all of the threads. how much of this comes from break dancing? how much comes from cossack dancing? how much of it is retuinskih's? is there really a 'slavic natural health system' and if so what else does it teach? how can we tie all of this together with feldenkrais and qigong and reichian growth work to create a system that truly helps people overcome their body armoring and fear-reactivity? my own motivation is a perception of my need for this sort of thing, but I think it's something that could benefit a lot of people. because of my own inexperience and personal flaws, I don't feel qualified to tread the road alone, to invent my own techniques. I don't won't to make the mistakes that sonnon seems to have made. so I am trying to find trustworthy teachers, and hopefully one day work collaboratively to create a dynamic and harmonious synthesis. but this is starting to sound a little grandiose and I'm not really that kind of guy. michael becker, thank you for your words of encouragement

well I won't argue with that, but I think either way we are also slightly less screwed than we were when bush was in office.

I wasn't very impressed with Obama during the democratic primary, but my respect for him has grown as this campaign has unraveled. in the past, I would have voted for him just to vote against McCain, but now I feel like he is someone I actually feel like getting behind. but ultimately, I think john McCain winning would be the worst thing that could happen for the world right now. I think that he is too firmly entrenched in the business and political elite of this country. I think the best ad the obama campaign has run was the one where they showed McCain's comments about the need for reform in washington alongside clips of george bush saying the same thing in 2000. I think all of McCain's statements are hollow and meaningless, and that he, if elected, will act as nothing more than a puppet for the same neoconservative elite that has bush on a leash. George Bush has run this country into the ground in the service of a very few. the US economy is in shambles, tens and even hundreds of thousands of iraqis and aghanis have died, tens of thousands of americans have died, and this country has been stripped of the smattering of social services it once had. and yet in the middle of this mess, Dick Cheney, Henry Kissinger and a small number of other people are going to walk out of this presidency with a whole lot of money stowed away. one point that I feel Obama has not made strongly enough is that the republican party is in essence the party of greed and corruption. the history of the united states has, in a large part, been the history of a conflict between two powers. one is a small, wealthy ruling elite composed almost exclusively of white men, that has held sway over the country through control of the stock market and commodities exchanges, the banking system and fraternal organizations like the Ku Klux Klan and, more recently, country clubs and golf resorts. they represent the same kind of social order that has held sway in societies all over the world since the agricultural revolution. the people who founded this country, however, put into place certain limitations on the elite, and it is through the exercise of these rights that another group has managed to win hard won freedoms. the right for women to vote, the end of child labor, moves towards racial equality, equity in taxation, the widening of social programs, the establishment of labor unions, all came about through the blood and sweat of this second power, and through restrictions placed on the so-called "free market." this second group is made up of people who have little wealth or status, but who have triumphed through their force of will, the organization of the masses, and through the power of democratic institutions. these are people like Benjamin Franklin, Rosa Parks, Susan B. Anthony, Caesar Chavez, Martin Luther King; in other countries they have peers in people like Mahatma Ghandi, Salvadore Allende and Nelson Mandela. these people are the real heroes of our age. the business elite will go about doing what they do, just as nations will gone fighting wars and people will continue to lie, murder and steal. but it is the purpose of government not to restrain or control the people, but to limit its own power, and the extent to which it can become the tool of those who wish to use it to hoodwink and defraud the populace. under the banner of "less regulation," the republicans actually support a greater extension, or rather reintegration, of the power elite into government, while the democratic parties attempts to regulate the economy and promote social programs are in fact an attempt to limit the power of the real governors, the oligarchs who are not elected but who seek to extend their power through deceitful promises and outright lies. in this instance, good conscience and self-interest point in the same direction for all but a very few. a vote for Obama is a vote for the right of the people to self-govern, and a vote for McCain is a vote to backslide deeper into the clutches of a selfish and ignorant elite.

I'm 32 and I live in sunny San Diego, CA. I sometimes consider myself taoist, but only in the sense that I sometimes consider myself a human, i.e. it's a term that seems to explain something essential about who I am that I have no real control over. I am also a skeptic. at one time I was going to go to acupuncture school but decided not to because I wasn't 100% sold on it. not that I doubt acupuncture works, but I am not sure modern acupuncture techniques work as well as nor in the way that we are taught that they do. I come here from time to time because of the wealth of information here, and recently I realized that I had some burning questions to ask and thought that this might be the place to do it. namaste nick