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Yeah i've experienced this first hand for many years. Dairy and wheat are the first things to cut out. Then you can breath through your mouth if you can't breath through your nose smoothly. It doesn't matter in the beginning just watch the breath if thats what your doing in your meditation. Try not to drink alcohol because that will make your nose more clogged too. You can rub either side of your nose for very temporary relief and keep doing this regularly to get the blood flowing through there. It most likely will take a couple of weeks for the nose to settle down but if you meditate and stay away from dairy wheat and alcohol it will most likely improve lots. You can do lung exercises too. take deep breaths and stretch out the top of your lungs by holding up your diaphram for 12 slow breaths then stretch out the bottom by expanding your stomach for 12 slow breaths.

Chinese traditionally when talking about qigong etc are very poetic and this leaves room for an individuals interpretation and no set one way but here in the west where we are not used to it, it's just darn confusing. Birthing a spiritual embryo is where you start to live in the now / become enlightened. When the embryo is born that means you have become enlightened and have experienced enlightenment on purpose (not accidently or from your environment). But you may have only been enlightened for a few seconds or minutes or something, then you go back to normal. Then you practice living in that state where it's the real you, not the thinking you, and the chinese say that the embryo becomes a toddler and then a teenager until it is fully grown. When it is fully grown it means you can switch in and out of an enlightened state at will. Thats my understanding of it anyhow

I started to write a book about cultivating health, taking into account alot of the questions asked on this forum. It is a 3 pronged approach with nutrition, meditation and exercise parts. After 14 years of nutritional and exercise research and experience, and 8 years of daily meditation experience i hope to reach out to people that have health problems and to fix them as quick as possible. If you would like to read a wealth of useful knowledge and give me feedback on your understanding of it i would like you to be a tester. It is health and wellbeing focused, not meaning of life, etc focused, although that can come from it too of course. It will be about 2 months or so until it is properly edited and ready to go into beta stage and have you assess it, but if you would like a free copy please message me. I am only giving out copies to people who will read it, and will give me some feedback on it. Cheers, Louis.

I have been growing a beard for the last 2 months since my wife had been overseas just because i can't be bothered shaving all the time, also to look more holy. I don't feel more holy at all but it scares away alot of other women so thats a benefit i guess, at least for my wife

You are aware of your problem. Now address it. Don't bring in more energy, just balance the energy you have. Bringing in more energy can help to temporarily balance you but it's just going to make you worse when you don't have the time to balance. Balance is more important than energy !

I would never give up the power of thought. It is most enjoyable. Focusing your thoughts is good though, so that they are not scattered. If you asked me if i'd give up scattered thoughts instead of pure thought i would say yes straight away

I've read you can use the I Ching or the Book of Changes to tell the future, much like people can do with tarrot cards. Has anyone had a try? Any luck?

haha yes it is very good. Some people want to believe in magic or mystical gurus with super powers. 3 of them didn't even talk to him after he revealed who he was! And these are all guys who are very into spirituality, you wouldn't go on a big retreat like that if you weren't truly seeking spiritual truth. And when they finally become enlightened some of them don't like the truth and seek out more illusions. Some people really are funny.

Having practiced it for about 7 years or so i can say it works very well. I suggest do it every week day and have the weekends off. Look on youtube for videos on how to do it, he has put up videos of his lectures and you can piece it together. The book is very good too and you should read it but also watch the videos before you start to do it. Be gentle and don't do it too hard until you build up over a few months. I generally use it for health but i have started hitting with sticks for a martial iron shirt recently. I made my own wire hitter and have used that for a long time though. The wire hitter is good. Do iron shirt 1. Iron shirt 3 you need to be VERY good at energy practices. Unless you have done MCO and fusion 1, 2 & 3 to a very high level don't do Iron shirt 3, you will hurt yourself, there is too much chi generated, and you can't just tell it to stop - you can feel very uncomfortable for a couple of days after.

I'm probably going to lose all creditability by telling this but i can't help myself... What do you tell a woman with 2 black eyes? Nothing, you already told her twice haha JOKE!

I've run for years i love it. I only go about 5ks or so but thats enough, makes me feel good. Just gotta keep stretching my calves. One thing i changed to about a year ago is running with plimpsoles. Just $8 ones i got from k-mart. Jogging only came out in the 80s i think, after nike invented joggers. Before that everybody ran. You can even see the running track shoes are flat. It is heaps more fun running with these types of shoes or barefoot. When you land on the balls of your feet you can feel your body movement body heaps more. Just gotta go gentle at the start so the muscles get time to adjust to running again.

Mental working out and concentrating too long aren't good. Its like thinking RSI. Anything you do too long and hard will hurt you. I have first hand experience.

Imagine you got your own house and you got a mate who asked if he could live with you. Hes got no money so you'll have to work overtime in a job you don't like to pay for his food n extra bills n stuff. He takes up space in your house, probably leaves a bit of a mess around too that you gotta pick up after doing your overtime because ya mate doesn't have a job but still doesn't have any time to clean up after himself. Then you get up early to start ya extra long day to pay for you're good mate, and when you go to get in the shower theres no hot water left because your mate was having a wank in there and used all the water. Then when you just crack it because you feel so tired too, then you're mate cracks it back at ya. Of course you will feel pretty pissed off. I don't think you shoulda yelled back man, you should just say sorry and accept he's gunna be pissed off at ya. What you want to do more important than any sitting meditation is practicing at that moment when someones getting pissed off at you to just watch your breath and breath slowly only hearing the other person in the background. Stay relaxed and just listen to them without butting in and trying to say something, then just reply back calmly. If you can do that then you've already got the goal of meditation. Catch it early, as soon as you even start to notice yourself in a angry situation just start watching your breath, then you will stay in control. Once you have already lost control it is too hard to stop. Who cares what they say just listen to it while it's in the background of your breath, maybe concentrate on breath 80% and yelling person 20% so you still can just hear them. You don't need to fully process every word just be aware of the general idea that they are talking about. Good luck

Also i have to say i totally agree with what -K- has said in the whole topic. She is a woman (i guess anyhow) and am glad that she hasn't totally gone against things that i've said. The OP sounds like he is trying to get help which is good and trying to improve the problem. And lucky for him his parents are supporting him still. But when it all boils down if you are 18+ and you don't like the rules at home, nomatter how rough you think they are, you should stand on your own 2 feet and get your own place. I moved out when i was 18, although i got along with my parents fine. Nobody should have to put up with very violent abuse, and although the reciever can still be blamed for retaliating however they see fit, i can understand the retaliation. But thats also to say if somebody is hit the reciever also shouldn't retaliate with verbal abuse.

Ok i understand why u'd be pissed off but i have to piss you off a little more. The reason why you are so pissed off because of your social conditioning that says men should not hit women. You feel like you have the right to never be hit by a man. But... by the same thinking, i should be able to shout my lungs out in a huge mans face and scream at him and throw as much emotional violence towards him and expect that he would not hit me. In our society if i did that people would call me stupid. Why would i do such a thing to such a big bloke, he will squash me. Well if men and women are equal how is it equal i can't do that to the big man but the small girl can do it to me? That's definately not fair and not 'equal rights' and very immoral in my point of view. OK let me get this straight. I HAVE NEVER HIT A GIRL OR WOMAN EVER! I don't think it's good and i wouldn't do it. If i lived in a different society where it was normal then perhaps i might. Who knows, having being bought up where it was normal i possibly could. I'm not saying it's right or wrong, but this is a board for expressing points of view and theories that don't always fit in our society. I know i am digging myself a hole here and maybe lots of women hate me but i honestly have the point of view that some men and women (both) haven't seen enough of the world or worked hard jobs (tradesman type jobs or abattoir, working waist deep in blood) where there are hard problems and they need hard ways of sorting. They sit in offices or sit at home where everything works out easy and they struggle with choosing what to eat for dinner. When somethings not done perfect by the removalists or they damage something they get all pissed off because they paid the removalists good money but they made a mistake and broke something. The workers out of the office always joke around at some of the ideas office people come up with because they dont' have a clue to how things really work. So with these equal rights things it's easy to see the good things that guys have and try to get those as well so women (they are the only ones screaming for equal rights) feel they are equal but they already are above men in relation to rights in my eyes. I don't see them wanting equal rights in hard jobs like fixing a blocked poo filled toilet or something like that. No then the women just giggle and say no you can do that. How about equal rights in family law? The man gets screwed over big time, that is very one sided, at least in Australia.

Ok, so just came back from a spiritual gathering with a group that teach meditation and has a head of the organisation in the capital city. They were nice, it was a free weekly event, and they had free tea and cake which looked quiet nice although i didn't have any. It was quiet big and therefore i had concerns, or thoughts about it. My question is... Can you 'teach' spirituality? Is it not something that is an individual path? Is finding a teacher any help at all or is it just a crutch, that sidetracks you? I can understand a nei gong / neigong / yoga teacher much the same way somebody learns martial arts or something like that or even a meditation intensive class that teaches you the techniques then you go away to do it by yourself, returning every few weeks to learn some new techniques and teacher to ask questions of. But when the head person at the gathering goes through scriptures, or even the head teachers book which are not their own ideas which they don't even fully understand is this morally right? I wouldn't feel right preaching what i thought or learnt about spirituality unless i experienced it directly. Infact i wouldn't want to preach at all, i would like to teach exercises that can let people experience it themselves, then discuss it with them. Preaching is using the mind to lure the people to what they all naturally crave - that enlightened / happy state, but the mind can never finally grasp it because it is the mind that is actually getting in the way! However... I have heard of people reading scriptures and becomming enlightened or reaching that state but i can't comprehend it since the reading is feeding the mind, which is the very thing you want to lose. Generally i don't think scriptures or texts are useful in a spiritual journey. I'm not talking about qigong/neigong/kundalini/yoga which all lead to a spritual destination, but they are in essence mainly physical, mental and emotional. The scriptures seem to deal mainly with spiritual with a little bit of emotional and mental. Wonder if some of the great minds on here can offer some insight

What you say isn't common sense Aaron, it is the opposite. Why did we need to learn that women should be treated equally when it is commonly known man is stronger. You can hurt who you want as long as you are willing to accept the results, which in western society may not be good. Hurting your feelings can give you cancer, make you die if you are always depressed. Emotional clearing is all what the healing tao is about so physical illness can recover after emotions are balanced. Hell yeah, if people hit people when they call them names then it would stop alot of name calling. There would be a hierarchy, Naturally. I sense you have a feeling of being superiour because you are amongst the 'modern educated men' group and label the others as 'oppressive social fascism'. It makes you feel good that you are above nature, and have developed 'better' ways. Open your eyes and see what is really there. America f**k's over all the little countries and steals their oil. Is sneaky and provides arms to countries to let them destroy themselves. What name did the educated call that one? 'Fair game'? When your society falls and the education is all lost, then what. It goes back to natural ways, and the tao is strong. It is widely known that education is leads one away from the tao. Education comes and goes, the tao is the eternal truth that stays forever. What you educated men talk about is what is enforced by the society you live in and believe to be the way it is. It's only the way it is here, now, it's not the usual way. Has it made the earth heal? What the? He's fighting with his mum and he should worry about whats going to make the earth heal? The earth doesn't need us to help it heal, we just need to leave it alone and stop screwing with it and it can heal it's self. Just like you let the tao heal your body, you just need to stop screwing with it via the ego. Women accepted it as normal before, so they were happy with it. If they got some of the animals that the man hunted then they were happy with it. This man stronger than woman thing has kept humans well for 1000's of years. This equal rights thing has been around for 100 years or so and it's already stuffing things up. Let nature take it's course, that is the right way, not treating things equally when they are not. Not saying man is better than woman but they are not equal, they are NOT THE SAME. If your mum is psychotic it changes things a bit doesn't it? Have you ever had experience with this kind of thing? You need even more patients than normal, or just try to leave the person. But how can you leave if you got nowhere to go? My advice is just do some chores, try to help out, try to be the 'golden child' even better than your brother. Meantime try hard to get a job and get the hell outta there if it makes you feel uncomfortable like it seems it does.

You got to think if your mum is going that nuts well there must be something wrong, at least in her eyes. Try to see it from her point of view it might make you more understanding. Try to help her knowing that you're probably going to get attacked right back even though you are being kind. She and your brother must have a bad view of you at the moment because of how they are acting to you but you can change that if you want, just be patient and know they won't change their view in a day, it will probably take a few months. I rekon if you got no money, no job and nowhere to live you just got to put up with the screaming and try to get along with them the best you can. If i had a son and he pissed me off like you must have done at some stage for your mum to be screaming so much i think i would be doing well to let you live in my house. That would be my love for my son. But if he came and put his hand over my mouth and told me to shut up, overpowering me, or made me feel scared in any way, well i would be making sure he didn't live in my house any more. Everybody's point of view is right, i'm sure you have reasons for feeling how you do and so does your mum. But you gotta make this work for you dude, you don't wanna be kicked outside and living in the cold. Just say sorry, do some chores, buy ya mum some cheapo flowers and try make it up even if it's not you're fault. 1-2 hours of chores and some flowers might start to change their opinion anyhow. Either that or you can use force and try to make that work for you..... but i don't think it seems to be working for you so far, may be wise to change your style of attack.

I think this is a bit hairy fairy. I've heard that countless times from other people too (who were just copying what they'd heard without using their own brain no doubt) but violence is used to keep people in line and under control. Traditionally men have been more powerful, and so they lead a family like a king rules a country. The king uses violence to punish and so can the man of the household. Is it the tigers fault he's a tiger? Tigers hunt and kill animals thats what they do. Man is stronger than woman so why shouldn't they dominate over them? Over analyising it with moral thoughts is just confusing. I see it a bit like the alpha male lion who uses violence to keep the pack doing what he wants them to do, so that they can all survive. With the power he's got comes responsibility to keep the pack safe. The man has a responsibility to look after his family. Infact i don't agree with this equal rights crap at all. It's not equal at all, it's more like women want the things that men have but don't want to give up the things that women have and let men do them. Women only want to take. They make these womens groups and lobby and all this crap but if you listen to them they do nothing but winge and complain and then start trying to get support from each other in a big hoo ha. It's not much different watching those women activist groups than watching jerry springer or ricki lake. It's a bit like not hitting your children. Since all this not hitting of children has come in we got kids being more naughty than ever and their behaviour is getting worse and worse, it's very easy to see in schools. Then the only way they can be punished is by mentally or emotionally punishing them, and how big is the mental health problem becomming now. I'm not saying you smack them around the head to give them brain damage but a smack on the bum at times is good i think. That being said, I definately don't advocate domestic violence at all and i have never hit a girl (not that i haven't wanted to some times but i fought with my inner urges for the sake of conforming to society). The original poster seems to want advice on how he can become less aggressive so he wants to change his behaviour for his own benefit which is good. I don't want to suggest that this shouldn't be done but just want to illustrate how indeed he is thinking outside the square when he says that everyone is just conditioned to think it is bad - when in fact just by looking at other countries we can see that not all humans have been conditioned this way.

Chicks can be very nasty. The emotional violence is just like physical violence too but neither are good. One doesn't deserve the other. You need to become better than the other person. Also you need to remember that you are living in a place filled with people with these socially conditioned heads. You don't want them all against you. Sometimes you can act like a conditioned person even though you aren't one, just to fit in and get along with others. This is what is called developing virtue. This is the single most important thing about becoming enlightened and living in society. Even if you meditate like a buddah, i don't think you can get far in spirituality if people are against you. If you have great virtue and have everybody with you instead of against you, spirituality becomes easy. But you must behave as you want to. One way of dealing with emotional violence from women (my girlfriends or wife or whatever not just some random at the pub) that i've found good is to be honest and open yourself up. Just to tell them what they're saying or doing isn't very nice and how would they like it if i did a similar kind of thing to them? Tell them it doesn't make you feel good and you feel hurt. Now they can either discuss it with you, or understand how you're feeling and stop. Or they can ridicule you and make you feel stupid and weak for having sad feelings. If this happens then either you have to understand that this girl is always going to give you emotional violence because she enjoys trying to hurt you, and try to find another way to deal with it, or just find another better girlfriend, one that will help you keep a good mood and you can cultivate your energy with. It might be scarey to open yourself up to ridicule to a person who is already being emotionally violent with you, but infact even if they try to make you feel even worse you kind of gain an inner strength because then you know how you stand with this person, and if you end up liking them less, their opinion of you or their emotional violence hurts you less. Either that or you can beat the crap out of them, but then you gotta take what comes with that after. Try learn 6 healing sounds. Do those and your anger and aggressiveness will reduce. Alcohol makes it worse too, but i think everyone knows that.

Yes it's very easy to do this. Then you are trying to become like the teacher. Copy his actions but then you get his good AND bad traits. You can never become the teacher, it should all be about becomming you. This is why the help from a teacher and scriptures throws you off your path. I used scriptures to measure my progress along the path, and thinking that now i could understand most of it i was well on the way. But that was only for my own satisfaction, which further fed my ego. I guess though that the understanding that i was making progress gave me desire to continue on the course. It's like reading scriptures or learning from a teacher is actually a back step in your progress, but sometimes that backstep can help you take more forward steps after. The thing is looking in hindsight though that you see all these things for what they actually are, a back step, and why do you take back steps when you want to walk forward? When you know the way then you can just go the way. But if learning his taoist art is your goal then your teacher has great value. Like i started aikido, i want to learn this style of martial art, and my teacher is good at it, so therefore his value to me is very high. However if you want to become enlightened... well he's not really valuable to you at all. If you want to learn your own scripture like information that is directly related to your past, current and future experiences, not having to try to see similarities between an event in your life and a chapter of tao teh ching to try to WORK OUT what you should do, then your teacher and any scriptures are useless (actually they become burdens). You need to see with your own eyes, and think with your own brain. How can you do that if you are always following your teachers ideas?

I'm the same. Sometimes i will type up a new post with some kind of question on it and before i post it i've worked out the answer already. Sometimes just putting your thoughts down in writing solidifies them and you come to new understandings because you had to express your thoughts in a certain way to write them down. I think this is how becomming a teacher takes you further on your spiritual course because you now need to explain everything to your student so you need to be able to put your understanding into words and transfer that meaning. It's not easy. But this is teaching of methods, be they meditation, physical qigong, tai chi, martial arts, but it can't be used to teach the way.. the real way, for the tao cannot be spoken of. So i guess that was a bit of my original point.

Also, you know why you acted so perfectly? Because there was probably very little thought before your punch. You probably just felt the pain in your arm then punched. You felt, and did, without thinking. That is the reason. By the way... if you was me, i couldn't help myself from suddenly ducking and weaving and doing some shadow boxing next time i saw that guy at work with a huge grin on my face hahah. I'm sure he'd take it in good spirits but then you may end up with another bruise on your arm if he thinks its a game haha.

I think this is a good topic because nearly everyone has come across this type of situation one way or another. I think your reaction to the situation was perfect. You warned, he continued, you acted with force but not too much, yet enough to let him know you mean what you say. I mean you got a big bruise on your arm you can't just keep taking that. He obviously respected that as he called you up soon after to make sure there were no hard feelings between yaz. Infact he probably respects you and looks up to you alot more now than he did before. You can look at tao teh ching for answers but you can also look at the tao directly. Nature it's self is a manifestation of the tao. I know several people with dogs, and if they have 1 old one and one young one, the young one is always annoying and teasing the older one, just trying to get it to snap or something. Then finally it does and the young one backs off for a little while. I've seen the same thing with tigers in documentries. I had a younger brother and it was the same thing with him. It's natural and normal. The way you handled the situation is the way others should strive to act. Whats more you said you have a clear conscious so you know deep down that you acted justly and ethically. But you did act perfectly, as a sage, and the result was perfect. Now you won't feel threated and the old threat treats you with respect. Only good has resulted for everybody. Further, you realise that you could have stopped the situation comming to the point that it did by reacting to the old threat earlier, so you have become even more wise. But at the point it was, you acted the way you should have. Nobody did this for you and see how well it ended up for you. I think it's a matter of not letting your emotions get in the way and seeing when they really do need help or when you can help them more by letting them to learn to take care of it for themselves. Realising that there are good and bad times for addressing issues. I don't think i would have said anything to the adult walking with the child though, i feel saying something would be worse for all involved than not saying anything at all. I think what you did was a perfect example of what i would do. No need to say why, you did it so you know Diminish our desires... Depends how far you want to go with it. I think a main goal of cultivation and one of the main benefits of enlightenment would be the realisation that you have a choice. Do you want to choose not to care if you were injured or not? Do you want to choose to let the bully beat you blind maybe? Do you want to die on a cross? I put this quote in again on purpose because i think when you say "but we should know by now" that you really mean "but i should know by now" because probably time and time again you've came into this realisation on your own. My opinion is that what you are talking about is the difference between what you 'think' is perfect and what 'is' perfect. You said you have a no regrets about what you did so you felt perfect. It was perfect. Now when you start trying to think about it you're not sure if it was perfect or not. Worry, undecidedness and and tension started to develop. In my opinion the perfection became unperfect, after you started all the work of thinking about it. Tell me, do you think if something happened to you, and the way you reacted was exactely in line with the way you understood one of the verses in tao teh ching, how would you feel? Would it be time to check the next verse and see if you actions aligned with that verse too?

Yeah you are right, but that vipassana course ain't no walk in the park i'll tell you that much. It should be, but it's not! Everyone has to do the hard yards by themselves but theres lots of good cheap help available.