Ian

Dear Kate, First of all welcome. It's nice to have someone here who sounds sensible. It sounds as if 1) you're having stuff happen without really trying, and are therefore, as they say, "ripe" and stuff will probably continue to unfold spontaneously and all you have to do is learn to enjoy it. to which end, 2) anxiety is only natural because you're not a "seeker" and you haven't been reading and fussing and looking forward to what might happen, so it will be unfamiliar. It may be useful, when anxious, to 1) breathe deeply to your belly and 2) to sink, to whatever extent possible, into feeling the background aliveness/tingliness of your body, thus not identifying fully with anxious thought or whatever physical flutters come with it. The other thing I would suggest is to totally give up trying to define what "it" is and what is happening. Because firstly that's what your most egoic self does, and secondly it won't help as stuff will probably keep changing anyway. Does that help? I hope so. But I'm no expert, so take me (and everyone!) with a pinch of salt unless it resonates with your own experience. Best wishes, Ian

I read a really nice thing once in a Zen book by someone called Ha Hui. I can't remember the exact words, but he said that the process of waiting for grace was an active one. He used the analogy of boiling water: that you never knew when it would leap to 100 degrees, but that its chances were way better if you kept it bubbling at 99. Thank you for this post. As you often do, a nice straightforward summary of a potentially complex topic.

Feeling my arse on the chair.

It's one of my all time favourite things. Just walk, body loose as if you're the happiest bunny on the planet, and feel every footstep, every contact of the soles of your feet with the ground. It drags your attention down through the body - you can sometimes feel it pulling through tight areas. And if you get loose enough you will lurch and stumble like a drunk. Only then do we find out how much tension we need to walk normally. It's called lotus walk because after a while (maybe quite a long while) you get little explosions under each foot, that have been likened to a lotus flower opening.

I think a distinction can usefully be made between 1) getting enough flexibility to sit in full lotus and 2) actually having ones legs cleared enough that sitting in full lotus is a good idea. I know I've ranted on this before, and I really don't want to be more of a miserable bastard than necessary, nor do I want it to appear that I'm persecuting Drew Hempel, however obliquely. BUT I would like to reiterate that there is a school of thought that full lotus, or indeed any kind of crossed leg posture is very much an obstacle to health for beginners. And that we are more beginners than we think. For starters this posture originated in places where there weren't chairs! And yes it's stable and concentrated, if what you want to do is force stuff up to your head in order to have head-based realisations. But for overall taoist body-based health the legs gotta be included. Healing requires that bioenergy settle down. Right down. And 60% at least, of healing release from chi kung or seated practices goes down the legs. And spending ages with legs awkwardly folded prevents this unless you have done massive massive amounts of leg clearing before hand. Like five-ten years' worth. If your path doesn't involve clearing all the gunk out of your system, or if you really think you've already done that, then please ignore this. But otherwise, please be careful. Sit in full lotus and tune in to nothing but your legs. See if they, not the rest of you, feel alive. Then do a lotus walk. Feel the difference. I'll shut up now. Sorry.

My teacher says that, roughly speaking, the first 40% of healing can be done with movements, but for the rest you need meditation. But in his case neither is really energy work, as there is no direction nor intention, other than to feel.

I think it's ok to hint. Did you have someone in mind?

I guess my paradigm is different. In the system I practice it's all Karma. The whole body is karma. I've never had a thought or an emotion, they are all karma's. So nothing, but nothing, can be genuine enough to be worthy of special treament, as it were. Having said that, I've heard of occasions where a particularly fierce bit of karma has needed to be negotiated with. (After all it's older, smarter, and stronger than us, such that refusing to participate is our only resource.) But I don't know how that might work. And Sifu does talk about affordable karma, i.e. letting your desires have some fun while you're off duty. No point in building extra resistance. So anyway, when you give attention and say hello, does that reduce your awareness of the rest of the picture? I think I often do a similar thing in that I will sort of sweep the interior to make sure I'm not avoiding anywhere, and that can involve "meeting" lumps etc. Incidentally, let no-one think I'm any good at all this. Most of any given session will still be daydreaming!

Yes, exactly, I'm advocating just being present with the whole picture. But doing so causes ones stuff to arise. So one needs to repeatedly interrupt the learned tendency to zoom straight for the pain/thought/emotion/tension, hence "stay with the softness". The ideal is not focussing at all, as focussing implies direction, which is itself a form of tension. But it's always an approximation, as the ideal, doing nothing and being present, isn't possible yet. But one can interrupt what one does instead with ever increasing gentleness. The interruption usually has a downward emphasis as well, at least for beginners, of feeling your feet or your bum, as we are usually, literally, way out above our heads and need to be pulled back in. And yes, Sifu Yap. Any foolishness or incomprehensibility entirely mine.

I must admit that I'm coming round to thinking that there's damn few of the former, when you get right down to it. Can't really marshall any evidence, except to argue that if any "genuinely physical" problems are susceptible to spiritual remedies, then so must they all be....

Different advice: Don't try. Let it be there. Stay with the softness elsewhere. Don't block it out, but don't let it take your attention. It will begin to dissolve as soon as you don't mind it at all. Might take ages: if you're right-handed every punch you didn't land and every caress you didn't make is in that shoulder.

Dude, you ignore people even as you write to them.

I thought this, mainly at Michael Winn's prompting, but for a while now, all the happiest people I've met have been buddhists. The distinction, nowadays, and the reason why what you say is often true, is, imo, that most taoists inhabit their bodies, or try to, and most buddhists don't. But it doesn't have to be so. Big bouncing buddha bodies bring best benefits!

Start here. http://www.precisiondocs.com/~altaoism/AbIntro.htm Definitely.

Swimming (slowly), digging allotment, living at the top of a hill.

What about tardigrades? I think they're pretty much indestructible...

Great post, as are many above. My teacher, whom I obviously consider extraordinarily wise and gifted, has been quoted to say that if a spiritual teacher manages to do more good than harm, then he or she is doing very well indeed. A good general rule, is to answer people who ask, but never to proselytise. I break this rule more or less daily.

Any answer, Mr P?

I must admit I rather like this, dubious though I usually am about ideas that I couldn't satisfactorily pass on to a skeptic friend. Reminds me of Michael Winn all those years ago, talking about how we were down to about 10% Yuan Chi.

Apologies for the pedantry which is about to follow, but I think it might be helpful. What I'd like to say is that it seems to me almost always unhelpful to use the verb "is" in this sort of question. Religion isn't harmful in the sense that A never "is" B, or it would be B, not A. Alleging an isomorphism, as Dr Bob would say, always reduces the possibilities. You can always find an example of sweet people who've learned nice kind religious rules and give some spare cash to feed the poor, or whatever. It's so much easier to discuss, say, "Religion always produces harmful effects", because that doesn't rule out everything else it does. Having said which, I believe that religion sucks dead dog's wang. It's always about the past, and everything we need is present. It's nearly about mind and thought, when all we've got is body and awareness. And it's always about mediated access to the divine, when we gotta like, y'know, be it ourselves.

If you end up on this plan, I'd recommend you contact Barry Spendlove. Lovely man, spent a lot of time going round the sacred sites of Britain, has a great earth connection, heals stones etc.