cheya

These responses are amazing! Makes me want to take up drumming! (And you've also inspired my friend to join the board!)

Good question! She has large but very flexible hands. Maybe all drummers have flexible hands? If not, stiffness could change the sound... Two of her teachers I know, one large dense male and one small wire-y female... But maybe some differences in tissue density... She is following the thread, and maybe will join to respond or ask questions herself. Thank you all for your responses and suggestions so far!

If you're close, don't miss this. You don't need to be Buddhist, the energy is amazing. What are the relics and what do they look like? When we normally think of relics, we think of items connected to a holy person or actual body parts preserved. That is not necessarily a pleasant thought or display. However, these relics resemble beautiful, pearl-like crystals. Buddhists believe these relics embody the Buddha and his following master's spiritual qualities of compassion and wisdom and are deliberately produced by the master and subsequent masters at their death. Hagar and others report on their experience: http://thetaobums.com/topic/18119-suddenly-gotamas-relics-were-on-top-of-my-head/ Check it out here: http://www.lovingkindnesstouravl.com/ Asheville, NC October 31 thru November 2nd 2014 The Venue 21 North Market St Asheville, North Carolina Admission is free, donations accepted.

You can learn about Tai Chi Ruler here: http://thetaobums.com/topic/18710-tai-chi-ruler-activates-the-8-extraordinary-channels/

Somatech, Too bad there's not a double or triple like button! Great advice, especially about paying special attention to the most subtle sensations, which often then slowly blossom into major discoveries.

You might give the Tai Chi Ruler practice a try. It is said to be one of the fastest ways to feel chi, and that has been my experience. Good luck!

Liniments... I keep a couple on hand that I buy from the local oriental shop (asian veggies, foods, and kitchen equipment place). The most well known is Zheng Gu Shui, a "hit medicine" designed to heal martial arts injuries. I use it on people (and myself) who have bruising or tearing injuries. Tom Bisio has a great little book, A Tooth from the Tiger's Mouth: How to Treat Your Injuries with Powerful Healing Secrets of the Great Chinese Warriors. He gives recipes for making your own liniments, what to use when, for each type of injury. It's a regular goldmine of info, and really inexpensive. In terms of liniments for chi cultivation, can't say I've come across anything. Maybe someone else will chime in...

Folks who liked Scott's books Juice and Peng: Root Power Rising (and his latest, Radical Xingyi Energetics), may appreciate his Sept 12th post "Hard vs Soft Waves." "Some readers of my Tai Chi books, Juice and Peng, have written to say they've been feeling stuff but are still a little confused as to the essential difference between what I call the "hard wave" and the "soft wave"....." This is a longish post, and he goes on to clarify 5 major dimensions along which he distinguishes the two phenomena. I found it very helpful. His new double pole work is pretty cool too. It's up on youtube if you want to check it out. http://cattanga.typepad.com/

The movement on these DVDs is just BEAUTIFUL! That "cute blond instructor" is Damo's partner Roni Edlund, who has her own branch of the school, Lotus Moon Spiritual Arts, for female Daoists. Watching her move is pure joy. (Okay, so Damo's pretty good too :-) Damo's doing a Dragon Dao Yin workshop in Texas in Oct, $200 Dragon Dao Yin (US) with Damo Mitchell San Antonio, Texas, USA October 17 - 19

If you like to know about new books in energy arts/eastern practices and when authors are giving workshops, consider subscribing to Singing Dragon's newsletter. Topics include chinese medicine and acupuncture, energy arts, aromatherapy, Daoist meditation, internal energy, and all sorts of interesting stuff. Their authors include Damo Mitchell, David Twicken, Zhongxian Wu and many others. The newsletter announces new books and tells where the authors will be presenting workshops (like Damo Mitchell's being in Va next month for a 2 day workshop on Sung!) Check it out here: http://www.singingdragon.com/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=USA-Singing+Dragon+Newsletter-Sep14&utm_content=USA-Singing+Dragon+Newsletter-Sep14+CID_52d6ffe42d4912abbbb1b8e1022f3aac&utm_source=Email%20marketing&utm_term=Singing%20Dragon

Anyone know if external Google searches the ppfs? Would embedded Google be able to do that?

Hey, Soaring Crane, you could try telling them to put their hands on their STOMACH. That might work. I get people all the time saying their stomach hurts. I've learned to ask them to point to where it hurts, and they usually point to their belly button or even lower! None of them seem to know where their stomach is. Either that or a lot of people have very unusual anatomy!

Hi NazunaFlower, Done a fair amount of Osho's Kundalini meditation myself, although not recently. Are you using Osho's music CD for it? At the ashram, it was a late afternoon practice, not morning, not night. Wake you right up from a desk job! Bruce's spinal bouncing is an internal practice, right? His NEW energy technique really woke me up to internal energy work. I don't use his stuff specifically now, but all internal point work started there for me.

Wow! Great questions, Dawei! I guess I hadn't been paying enough attention to grasp the potential here, But I sure am now! Thank you!

Yes, it's true, BKA... You're only one member, and certainly the board will live. But for some time now, you have been serving as a big part of the HEART of theTaoBums, and, if you really leave, the hole you leave in our collective heart is huge. I am so sorry you have felt hurt to the point you need to leave, and hope you will miss us as much as we will miss you, so that at some point, and hopefully soon, you will find a way to heal this in yourself, and reconsider.

Hey Soaring Crane, Can't read German, but didn't see anything too bad in the English version. What got your attention? Oh yes, note that xylitol ingestion can be fatal to dogs... they can't digest the sugar.

I like xylitol, although I haven't cooked with it. It tastes just like sugar, no aftertaste, but only has 60% of the calories, and does not feed candida. It's prevents cavities and can help eliminate sinus infections. If you use too much too fast, it can give you diarrhea, as it changes your gut bacteria. If you WANT to, ah... clean out, put a couple teaspoons in a cup of strong, gingery chai. Tastes great! So great you'll probably want another cuppa. Then things can get really interesting, really fast! (Yeah, ask me how I know that!) Besides the tendency to speed up your plumbing transit time if you use alot of it right off, you might want to only use the versions made from birch trees, and not the stuff from China. The xylitol made from "strawberries, other fruits, and corn cobs" can be made mostly from GMO corn. Wouldn't be my choice! I use xylitol mostly in coffee, but also for neti pot and gargling for sore throats. Good stuff!

Years ago, I took a week-long residential Shiatsu workshop at an ashram in India. A week of trading shiatsu treatments, doing extremely physical meditations (read that standing in pools of sweat), no books, no talking, sleeping in a huge room together, laughing our asses off first thing in the morning as a meditation, no caffeine (arghh!), no sugar (double arghh!), a skimpy veg diet (I was so HUNGRY!). I never wore glasses or contacts in India, and was pretty nearsighted, so, at my favorite cafe, I'd have to go up and stand right in front of the giant menu banner to order. When I got out of that workshop, I could read the entire menu from the back of the cafe. Every word. Three days back on sweet chai and my regular diet, no shiatsu treatments, only one active mediation a day, and back in the "stress" and drama of the ashram... and my eyesight drifted back to its pre-workshop state. Ten days later, I was back to ordering from right in front of the banner.

Damo has another book due out in Sept: the Four Dragons: Clearing the Meridians and Awakening the Spine in Nei Gong. It looks like an update/expansion of his earlier book on Dao Yin. Sounds GREAT! Amazon blurb: "The Dragon Dao-Yin exercises are a set of four short sequences designed to work with the subtle energies of the spine. Damo Mitchell teaches and explains the exercises in detail, within the context of a larger discussion of Dao Yin. He covers the theory, history and development of Dao Yin exercises in general, and the effects of the process which a student can go through if they practise them. He also explains the difference between Qi Gong and Dao Yin, including the qualitative differences, and their effects upon the body, as well as the concept of purging as opposed to nourishing or regulating, and how Chinese medical theory relates to Dao Yin training. One chapter is devoted to problems related to stagnation and the the flow of Qi, and covers the different causes and forms of stagnation (including the location of stagnation along the meridian pathways, stagnation in the Qi Men, and in the psyche), and the Chinese medical theory of the process of damage caused by stagnation. Later chapters look at breathing patterns and the extension of Yi, opening the joints, and rotating the bones and spine. The author also discusses stillness as the source of movement, and the philosophical significance of the Dragon and the pearl, as well as the means of hardwiring Dao Yin exercises into the energetic body. Central to the discussion is the concept of the spine, and how to wake it up. The Dragon exercises - Awakening, Swimming, Soaring and Drunken - are described in detail, with photographs and step-by-step instructions on each of the exercises as individual therapeutic exercises and as a form."

Hi Trunk, I played with this back in the nineties, and can't say I noticed much... but I don't think I really got the "emulsified" bit back then, just pouring the oil on top and eating it. So, on your enthusiastic recommendation, I'm trying it again. Question: do you use your immersion blender to make a supplement sized serving? I could use it for maybe 4 T cottage cheese worth, but there's not much to mix with just 2 T... So today I tried it by hand, and emulsion did not really happen in my time frame... I finally added a bit of OJ, and that helped it emulsify. My first batch with 4 T of cottage cheese and two of flax oil left me rummaging through the kitchen for ACID! OJ, grapefruit, tomatoes... anything! I think I would have drunk vinegar if I'd had to! I didn't notice anything the first day, but today I have definitely had some detox. Gonna play with it awhile. Thanks for putting it out there!

This Life, This was so beautiful! Blessings on John Blofeld for leaving this for us, and on you, for taking the time and trouble to bring it back before us now!

This YouTube video demonstrates how to use your brain to extend the range of your car key fob. Point the key fob at your brain. The range doubles. You can try it yourself. He also explains the physics involved in the brain acting as an antenna... It's about the water content... Apparently a gallon jug of water will extend the range even further. Dang! Here's a link to an embed. Scroll down to the part "The Brain as Antenna" http://www.buergerwelle.de:8080/helma/twoday/bwnews/stories/5584/ Comments: "This is a very interesting video. If the water in our brains does this with a car fob what is happening with Wi-fi, and are we all mini cell phone towers?" ...... "Dr. George Carlo said in one of his presentations a few years ago that you can visibly see the bars increase on a phone between the phone and cell tower by finding the direction of the tower, rotating so that it locates the strongest signal, and then putting around 3 people in between the phone and the tower. He explained that these signals *couple* with our physiology, people are very good antennae."

Yeah, just using your brain as an antenna. No worse than using a cell phone.... http://www.alternet.org/books/your-cellphone-could-be-major-health-risk-and-industry-could-be-lot-more-upfront-about-it

Wow, TL! What a great piece! Thank you!

We've had a number of threads on these on TTB. Here's what I wrote on one of them: "A couple years ago, I inherited two identical sets of Baoding balls. They were two inches in diameter, much bigger than the single small set I'd had for years, and I thought they would just be too big to handle. I'd been working alot with feeling energy in my chi gung practice, and when I finallly did pick them up, I was shocked at what I felt. The energy traveled up my arms to my head, down to my feet, back up to my head, back out to my hands. It wasn't a perfect circuit, and it didn't follow meridians, but it was very palpable. I was stunned. I mean, that is what the chinese say the balls do, but it just never occurred to me that the effect would be palpable! I didn't expect to be able to repeat the effect, but indeed, it happens every time I pick up the balls! I've become somewhat obsessed with Chinese balls, and have bought many pairs on eBay, which I make available for my massage clients. Some balls precipitate the energy effect more than others. Some hints: In general, I need balls in both hands to feel the effect. The old heavier type of balls are much more effective than the new lighter balls, which hardly do anything at all. The heavier balls, having more mass, have a stronger physical vibration. Look for two sets of balls that are at least two inches in diameter (6.5 inch circumference) that weigh at least 13 oz per pair without the box. That's not so easy to do. The new balls are plastic or something, weigh even only half as much as the old ones (pre 1985). Some of the 2" ones weigh as little as 6-8 oz.! Their chime sounds all right, but the sound doesn't convey as vibration the same way, as you can imagine. I think it is the vibration, not the sound, that generates the energetic effect. Some martial arts places sell big stainless steel balls which have fairly good chiming resonance even though they aren't from the old stocks. Easy to get two matched sets that way. If you can examine them in person, you can pick sets with more appealing and harmonious sound, which is a plus. My dogs leave the room when I start using those stainless balls though!"