liminal_luke

There´s a lot to be said for "eating to live" rather than the other way around, but I also think that cooking is an art and savoring food can be as valuable as going to a museum or reading a great book. Liminal

Ok...mystical or not I´m not sure, but I wanted to share this poem by James Broughton. Autobiography I took a sharp look I took a long prowl I questioned the serpent I questioned the owl I called up the mayor I called on the sage I tried reading Proust I tried life on the stage I went into therapy I went out for sports I suffered every ailment from sniffles to warts I went to the dogs I went to the Pope I climbed Annapurna I fasted on dope I dug up the desert I delved in the sea But nowhere I looked could I recognize me So eventually I had to give up my plan of escape to Siam and accept myself here just as I am But it wasn’t easy James Broughton.

MooniNite, Do you have a personal story around this? Your own weight-loss journey achieved by putting your ideas into practice? Stories from others you´ve coached? I think personal stories -- and especially yours as the author -- are what motivate people, helping to bring abstract principles of wisdom into the realm of practical advice. Liminal.

I don´t mean to be nitpicky, but I´d question the truth of that last sentence. In many cases, sure...but it´s hardly universal. There are lots of reasons why a woman might want, or just happen to have, a great body besides a desire to attract men. Liminal

Oh I dunno. As a single person the idea of finding solace in a tree seems laughable, I suppose. But I´ll bet there´s more than a few married people who find a nice oak more companionable than their spouse. Liminal

Having a romantic life-partner can be a wonderful thing, and I´d encourage anyone who wants one to take steps to find that special somebody, including online dating. That said, I think it can be useful not to narrow down one´s focus too quickly on that particular brand of love. There are so many ways to be, and feel, connected -- to ourselves, to the larger community, to the universe as a whole. Especially when a person is lonely, and yearning for a lover, embracing the smaller, but still significant, intimacies of life can help ease the pain. Some suggestions... Cultivate connection with oneself through all the practices people talk about here on taobums. Breathing, meditation, smiling. Perhaps something explicitly relational like Metta. Also journaling, artmaking, anything creative. Also, communing with the artistic work of others. Great literature and poetry. Paintings. Feeling the kinship with others through shared understanding. Commune with nature, especially trees. Work on relationships with friends and family. Appreciate all the little opportunities to reach out to people you might not even know. A friendly hello at the grocery chair. Waving to a neighbor. I get that none of these things can replace that one partner that so many of us look for. And I´m not saying to stop looking. Not at all. Just that until you find that person, appreciating the broader possibilities of connection can provide a kind of lifeline that will get you through. Liminal

I love the description of qigong as an in-the-body experience, because that´s exactly the benefit it has for me. Years ago, when my first therapist asked me what I hoped to get out of our sessions I said I wanted to feel more in my body. That kind of stumped him but I still think of it as a very worthy goal, maybe the worthiest goal. When qigong works for me I feel like I´ve "gotten myself together." And I mean this in a subtle but nevertheless quite literal sense. Not that I´ve had the more sensational out-of-body experiences people talk about when the consciousness floats up to the ceiling and you look down at yourself lying there in the bed. That sounds fun and all, but I suspect beginners would do better going in than out. Some speculative thoughts. Maybe the best, and certainly safest, way to go out is to go in. If you go in deep enough and your BIG SELF bodymind would benefit from going out, it will rocket you where you need to go. Automatically. Maybe you don´t need to do anything to go out except keep working on going further and further in. Practices that begin in the other direction seem questionable to me because they can reinforce a tendency we already have to be beside ourselves, to feel alienated, disconnected, fragmented. Going out sounds like more fun, but if you get to the center of yourself you´ll also be at that magic place which is also the center of everybody else, everything else. And what could be cooler than that? Liminal

Thanks Soaring Crane! So hilarious... In a hostel in Spain I came across this sign announcing, I think, a curfew. The hostage will be shot at 10pm.

Oh never mind. I was momentarily snippy over what I perceived to be unwarranted ...well, whatever. Chilling out now.

I´ve bought and practiced from quite a few of Winn´s dvd´s and tapes, as well as gone to retreats. Nothing but good has come has come from the experience. In his retreats he gives a very intellectual framework for understanding the material which might not be right for everyone, but worked for me. I consider his primordial chi gung an underappreciated gem, and simple beginning practices like healing sounds and inner smile can take you far. Have you downloaded the free (I think you have to sign up for a newsletter) ebook on the inner smile? Good stuff. Liminal

To know when its time to stop posting here at TDB and be able to do so. Of course this is partially in jest but a person who can do this one action, when it´s difficult to do so, will also have all sorts of other interpersonal maturity and wisdom. You can´t stop posting unless you can also... (1) let go of the need to be seen as right (2) let go of concern about other people´s opinions (3) allow other people to have their own process, even when you know they are "wrong" (4) recognize the many times in life when the best course of action is no action at all Liminal

Another thought. Consider whether there might be something that your body wants to say that you aren´t allowing yourself to voice. It´s so common to have things to say that we don´t allow ourselves, for whatever reason, to express--especially at work. The anxiety could be your reaction to this inner conflict: part of you wants to get out some pent up emotion, part of you is scared as hell that you just might. Liminal

Neck circles and stretches. Yawning Talking aloud about your difficulties in a nonsensical made-up language. (from Julie Henderson) Self-massage of the jaw. Find a tender point somewhere on the neck, and a corresponding tender point on the opposite side. Alternately massage one point and then the other freeing up the energy in a line between the points. (from polarity therapy) Consider the "meta" level of the problem (ie. how you feel about having this issue) and release any judgement.

Begging is like kissing: there´s so many ways to do it. It can be a beautiful invitation to gain merit that fosters good feelings in both parties, or an aggressive shakedown. To answer a previous posters question about what young Mexican children might be doing if they weren´t begging, well, I suppose they might be playing. Play, after all, is the activity favored by the 5 to 10 year old set all over the world. Begging is a little bit like cold calling--you have to weather a lot of rejection--and young children just aren´t equipped, in my opinion, for the job. As a child, my mother-in-law was regularly locked out of the house until she had collected her quota of coins for the day. Good times.

Security personnel at the international airport in Phoenix weren´t pleased with my spontaneous movement practice. Can´t win em all I guess. Liminal

Where I live (Zacatecas, Mexico) children, often very young children, wander through downtown cafes and restaurants asking for money. I don´t have anything to say about this other than I think it´s sad.

I have no idea if quantum mechanics is bunk or not, but the word "quantum" is a useful marketing tool for those who want to give their stuff a super-duper aura of spiritual superiority. You got your quantum shiatsu, your quantum healing, quantum touch, and so forth. As opposed, I suppose, to the hopelessly outdated Newtonian versions of such things. People who understand physics might not be impressed, but they are likely not the intended market. Liminal

I figure The Dao Bums must really be doing something right. Otherwise why would anybody ever make a stink about being suspended or banned; they´d just shrug their shoulders and go. Liminal

Julie Henderson, pioneer of a style of wellness work she calls Zapchen, recommends humming. I haven´t done it enough to write about it here as a "favorite practice" exactly, but what little I´ve done has been quite interesting. It´s kind of a stripped down mantra practice. She recommends humming a few basic sounds: hum, ommm, and ahhh. Letting the vibration flow through the body. There´s a whole workbook on the practice, "The Hum Book," that goes into detail about all the different ways to hum. You can hum into any part of your body, you can hum into somebody else´s body, you can change your neurochemistry. Recommended. Liminal

Sometimes it makes sense to do what feels good, to follow our desires. At other times, not so much. Sometimes not feeling drawn to a particular activity is actually a good sign that we need it. I suspect that might be the case for me with prostrations. Basically, I have two objections: one physical, the other psychological. I don´t want to do prostrations because they´re hard work. Why take on such a physically demanding practice when I could instead lie down comfortably in my bed and breathe? My other objection has to do with the attitude of submission that seems to be kind of the point of the practice. I´m kind of an ornery fellow and not a fan of submission or surrender or even devotion. Bleck! On the other hand, it´s kind of hard to argue with the rightness of honoring my own potential for growth, or, as Trunk puts it, the "unmanifest." Hmmm.... Liminal

Satyaloka, I am not a medical person, but I also believe you can heal. In fact, many of the most acomplished people started out with very ominous sounding health difficulties. They overcame these problems and went on to reach great heights. Such problems can provide very powerful motivation. Standing is great, of course, but the process of internal development is not dependent on any one position. I do Yi Gong as taught by Sifu Jenny Lamb and would recommend that. I always practice sitting. But really, you could follow any of a number of paths, whatever you are drawn to. Many here find Stillness Movement practice helpful. (Contact the Tao Bum who goes by Yamu if this is of interest as he´s the teacher.of this system.) Whatever you decide, I am confident healing -- and more -- is possible. There is nothing you can´t do. Liminal

What´s interesting to me is how much resistance this idea stirs up. If someone wants to start a thread limited to people of more or less like minds, is that really such a big deal? Especially since most of TDB, and viritually everywhere else, would remain open for dissension, bickering, and all manner of verbal squabbling. I think a lot of people, myself included, are very enamored with their own point of view, and never more than when it conflicts with somebody else´s (clearly) less educated opinion. Sometimes I have something to say, something I´m very convinced of the rightness of...and yet saying it would only foster divisiveness rather than harmony or any other real good. It can be very hard to hold back. Liminal

I happen to think the E word (enlightenment or ego, take your pick) is overused in spiritual circles. In my view, there´s no need to get rid of photos in order to speed enlightenment or impede the ego. There are worse sins than keeping a beloved photos album or six. Still, there might have been some wisdom behind the impulse to let them go. I believe old photos can be bad feng shui, a kind of clutter that clogs up our lives. Keeping them can be a way of trying to hold onto a version of ourselves that no longer exists. Getting rid of them can be a way of keeping current with ourselves and allowing in new life. Growth happens in spirals. And sometimes, when we´re at the apex of a cycle, we´ll do wise things only to find out later on, at the nadir of that same cycle, that we weren´t quite ready to live with the consequences of our previous wisdom. Could this be, in part, I wonder, what happened here? Liminal

Do you like to write? I think a journal where you go back and ponder those memories might be a way to reclaim the past that you seemed to let go of when you got rid of the photos. There are so many ways to do this. I like lots of the ideas put forth in the Progoff Process Journal. You might first write down just the facts as you remember them, and then perhaps reflect on the meaning they have in your life. You can "dialog" with important people in your life alive and deceased, and even with events. This could become a very rich experience of identifying themes in your history and the trajectory of your life. Liminal

I´m intrigued that prostrations, of all things, would show up on a thread dedicated to "favorite" practices. During one fruitful but arduous week of SunDo practice years ago, the master had us doing prostrations and, let me tell you, that was far from the favorite part of my day. And yet, here I am, reading about them here and thinking they might be a good idea. I imagine I will need to "burn off" quite a bit of karma before I ever get to the point where I´m so thoroughly transformed that I look forward to such a spiritual workout. Who knows though...stranger things have happened. Liminal