David Yeh

By the way, interesting fact, one of my (Western) Chinese medicine teachers had Janet Travell as a instructor back in the 1940's and Janet's niece as a classmate. The niece revealed that Janet's father was a missionary in China and learned bodywork from the Chinese. He taught it to Janet but warned her that she had to inject something or else Western medicine would never accept it. So the whole concept of trigger points was actually imported from ... Chinese medicine!

Hey Kempomaster, what was your treatment protocol on this? Or Michael, how do you approach eczema or other skin problems?

Hi there surfingbudda, I'm flying in to Indianapolis that Friday, but I was a bit hesitant about offering to carpool with people, partly because I get in late (like almost 11 PM). I am also driving back on Monday evening after the end of the clinical day, so if you were planning to stay another night in Terre Haute, you might have to find someone else to drive you back to Indianapolis. There are some other special circumstances around the car, but nothing that relates to driving to and from Terre Haute ... except that long flights make me crabby and sleepy. In any event, if you aren't able to find anything else, and you are willing to wait several hours, I'd be willing to give you a lift.

Hey Michael, any sense of when your Santa Barbara, CA, workshop might be?

Good book, I actually enjoyed it better than Magus of Java; Daskalos was decidedly more ... wholesome. Wonderful stories, like holding a young toddler who had never been able to walk, then setting her on the floor to the horror of her parents and telling her to go to mama, and she did. Daskalos (aka Stylianos Atteshlis) also wrote a few books of his own which the group he founded, Researchers of Truth, sells. I have a couple and they are very interesting. Of course more Western than Eastern, if one can categorize -- he worked within a Greek Orthodox context. Great read. Would have loved to have met the man but he passed on a number of years ago.

Elijah, you are really something, you know that?

Here's my understanding, and someone can correct me if I'm wrong. It's about intention. What are you training? With yiquan (as far as my limited understanding of it) and other types of martially-oriented zhan zhuang, you're really focusing on structure and balance and relaxation, maybe on endurance and stamina and building force. You don't really have permission to allow the qi to flow spontaneously, so to speak, because you're trying to train it into a certain shape. With Stillness-Movement the focus is not on the form but on accessing a different vibration which then expresses into your body in ways that can be very still or very active, and not in a planned way. Attuning to that frequency is what orients the whole experience. So the aim is pretty different. There are overlaps, of course, so theoretically you could maybe combine a little. For me, I've tried to combine things a bit, but I generally find that doing that tends to put me at odds with myself. I can't decide what I'm doing therefore I don't do anything as well as I would like. He who chases two hares catches none, and all that. But your mileage may vary. So think intent and goal, and what you're training, rather than what it looks like on the outside. After all, there are sometimes big differences even between what your aims are when you train zhan zhuang under two different martial arts styles, or two different teachers of the same art.

Make that nine!

I would suggest using some of the approaches in Robert Bruce's NEW Energy Ways. I work with a patient who has very little mobility in the arms due to nerve degeneration, and try to teach this to her. His approach uses mostly Western terminology too, so it makes it easier to understand for the uninitiated.

I'm not clear on your criticism, Hundun. How are presentation or "theatricality" and personal integrity related? Is this based on the assumption that the hand gestures are unnecessary? Michael's methods might look theatrical or fantastic. I've seen similar in Bernard Shannon (Jerry Alan Johnson's student) and Wong Kiew Kit. When Sifu Wong or his students project energy, they often get into a broad kung fu stance to do it. At first I thought that was unnecessarily theatrical, but after having tried it for a time I realized that it really does help.

Don't know if you guys have seen this, kinda funny: BK Frantzis doing a little tai chi dance to disco music: http://tinyurl.com/yhfwzoc

Have you heard of St. Joseph of Cupertino, "The Flying Saint"?

What seminars/workshops did you attend, and what were they like? And what is he like? Thanks for the link ... I'll check it out.