DiscipleOfScience

I'd really like to keep my teacher private. I learned iron palm levels 1 and 2 in person and I can do the level 1 coconut break, though not level 2. I also practiced flying phoenix heavenly chi materialization meditations along with the diet (bok choy, tofu soup and rice gets old fast) and sexual and alcohol abstinence for a few months every day for an hour. I'm not really sure why this is important. A lot of the art still seems like mysticism and I have yet to find exponents of it sparring or performing any miracles apart from the occasional haphazard coconut break. I'd really, really like to be proved wrong here, but I've looked hard and all I could find was this. There's also a forum or two with a lot of drama between Lacy and Doo Wai, but I'd rather not wade into that mess.

That's not what I've come to do or I would have said things to that effect and it wouldn't be sad if I had if my intentions were to merely dispel falsehoods. I am just looking for answers and don't want to waste my effort. Perhaps you do not value your time as much as I do mine? I first started training in bak fu pai 7 years ago and have since traveled all over the country and trained under different masters and have read scores of books and I now have the opportunity to continue in the bak fu pai system, but some of the more advanced stuff seems rather wishy-washy in the extreme. I mean, healing energy? What does that mean? Can it be measured? Is it real? A tingling feelings in the hands is not enough to warrant a lifetime of practice. I'm a serious practitioner with serious, practical goals and then I found this thread and thought it would be a good place to ask around and see what people think and if anyone had any examples of demonstrations. I've seen many tapes of people doing bak fu pai forms and the only person I've seen doing them well is Doo Wai. He's how old now? And he moves like a blur -- that's just amazing. Can anyone else do that? Can any of his students? Can they even spar using the forms? Yes, there are elements of kung fo and qi kung that are "within" but the whole point of kung fu, chi kung or any spiritual practice is to make use of it in the world around you. If all you have is inside your own little world, what use is it?? Surely there must be some fruits of your labor? I have no problem going into detail about what I know, because it stands up to scrutiny -- it works, and that's how anyone should feel about the system they practice. There should not be flimsy understanding or a secret fear that none of it is real. It should be demonstrably real! I look forward, when I have time of course, to debating. It strengthens what I already know and helps me get rid of the stuff that might not be true. If a pai is legitimate and your practice is genuine than it will not be difficult to demonstrate -- perhaps some form work, sparring and with bak fu pai it's even easier because you should be able to materialize chi, glow in the dark, move things at a distance, heal people, etc. under controlled conditions. Is it strange to ask why it is notoriously difficult to find single exponent of his system or any system performing super natural feats in controlled, repeatable experiments? I don't think it's the least bit strange. The only strange thing is that so few people bother asking. There are some very legitimate aspects to the system, specifically the palm training and dit da jow, but there's just a lot of "woo woo" around a lot of the other stuff.

Hi Rene, thanks for the reply and the attachments. Is it really? His organization has people come all the time and try to demonstrate abilities. Most are genuinely surprised when they fail. Randi would not cover up a discovery like that and no scientist has a real incentive to do so at all. Real science loves to buck the status quo. That's where the interesting stuff is. That's where the money is. No one wants to sit around and write papers on stuff everyone agrees about. If there was really something to get your teeth into here, young physics students would be writing thesis papers on it and winning acclaim and fame. Were these published in any journals? I'm not a biologist so I can't judge this material. They seem to make several very very casual assumptions about the nature of this energy and that it even exists which I found a little unusual for a biological paper, but again, not an expert. Yeah that's a good point. It could be there's some real stuff here and it just hasn't migrated over yet. It's hard to trust Chinese journals when it comes to hard sciences. A lot of them are kind of cruddy. There is also a lot of state-sponsored stuff that kind of totes the party line. If there is something that acts externally really here, that is stronger than placebo, it wont be hard to test for. When I've seen tests done that failed, people would claim that the experimenters had some kind of negative energy that stopped it from working or something. That's funny you mention that because I do a very similar trick. I made a very very small device that fits in my shoe and is completely impossible to detect unless you hold and examine the shoe very carefully. It charges my body with static and I can turn it on and off with a tiny movement of my feet. With that I can shock people or move small objects. I showed it to an older couple and they were not even surprised. They said they used to have a toy or something similar when they were younger. I'm sure your experience was profound, and I'm not saying he was tricking you. My problem is, I'm pretty serious when I get into something and I don't want to waste any of my time on ineffective techniques. I need to _know_ and my standards of _knowing_ are high. To me, it still seems pretty easy. Just e-mail [email protected] or call anyone's number on the website and setup a test. You both agree to the conditions and that they are fair. Then you show up or setup some other way of doing it, get tested, get a ton of money and enough fame that you'll never have to work a single day in your life ever again. Just off the top of my head, if you can heal, then we maybe get 60 rats and injure them all completely identically and set 20 aside as a control, use 20 for the experiment and 20 for the placebo. You do whatever you do to heal the rats -- hold them or whatever. Then someone completely untrained will simply hold the 20 in the placebo group. Do this and if the results are statistically significant, repeat the procedure, write up the results in a paper, publish it and try hard to think of how much you'll enjoy the fame. Sure, scientists are people too, and some are better than others and some are more rigid than others. Science, though, is not all stuffy rooms and white haired people that refuse to change. That's what thesis papers are for. That's what the new young blood does -- they buck the status quo. As I said before, that's where the exciting stuff is and where people will dig. Digging is being done but exciting results are not forthcoming. Yes, there is a lot of information but the quality of the information is uniformly low. Not all scientific institutions and cultures are equal. Western science is top notch, and standards are incredibly high. My goal wasn't really to take on all of supernatural-dom, but I will if people want to throw some stuff at me and I have enough time. Really, I just wanted some feedback on this particular system and if and how anyone knows the hours they spend on this a week are actually doing what they're supposed to be doing. William Tiller makes some very fundamental errors. His thinking is not clear and I don't even know where to begin. If you want to offer up some specific points we could do that, but we should make another thread or talk in PMs. With regards to super natural powers, healing chi, psychic abilities and so on, how would these have evolved? People used to believe in them much more strongly and leaned on them much more heavily to explain the moving shadows in the dark and more and more science is shedding light and finding answers -- putting the pieces together -- giving us a wealth of technology. All the while super natural abilities are pushed more and more to the fringes, always seeming to perfectly elude scrutiny. I would love it if healing chi, chi materialization, telekinesis, etc were real -- I really would, but if I'm going to spend an hour plus a day working on something, I need high standards of evidence. I'm desperate, really. Iron palm? Yeah, that's legit. I know from personal experience. Internal strength? Nothing esoteric about it. It can be felt and understood in a few minutes and can be very nicely explained in western terms.

Hello Baguakid, I've had all manner of feelings from powerful full-body vibrations, ground-shaking third-eye pulsations, flowing/powerful feelings in my arms and legs, the whole bit. Often times I can't help but smile, yawn and laugh and it's probably the most useful thing in the world for relaxing, more than any drug. I could go on. I don't deny the existence of feelings. You should be able to feel them on day one. Internal force is pretty easy to feel and understand. Using slow twitch or skeletal muscles "within" the mobilizers to utilize a path from the ground to your target you can generate bafflingly strong blows with very little movement, and you have to retrain the body to use those muscles with slow, completely relaxed movements and so on. That all makes sense to me. I can practice that and get real, practical results. It's when people start to talk about super natural forces -- things like moving and healing things at a distance, for example -- that I start to make this face :-/ and wonder if it's worth the investment of my time. Exactly! I need to know "it's" real, but we seem to have different definitions of "it". What does "it" mean to you in this case? Chi is real? Well what is chi? It was a term invented pre-science before people really understood red/white blood cells, neuro transmitters, hormones and the like. It probably refers to more than one Western concept and unusual perspectives of Western concepts simultaneously, but known Western concepts none the less. It's the same with "internal strength". Taking words from one culture and implanting them within another without cultural context can easily obscure the meaning, especially a culture as nuanced and poetic as Chinese martial arts.

I'm not sure what you're trying to say. Do you mean that some news reporters looking for a story count as rigorous scientific scrutiny? Or count as anything at all? I'm not saying nothing happened, I'm just saying it's about as credible as going to a magician's house and seeing some tricks. I'm sure you already know how easily people can be fooled -- even scientists. So what is needed, and what I've never seen even, though I've seen many attempts, is action at a distance using an hitherto unknown force. Could you elaborate on what this is supposed to mean? When I find something that I can not explain, I do not stop until I can explain. I'm certainly not attacking him, and even if I was, it would not be relevant to the truth. I know he lies about some things, as in I have tapes of him doing things he said he has never done, heh. If I knew his system worked as he advertised it, then you're right, nothing else would matter and I could proceed pouring my full attention into its mastery with absolute zeal and passion. But that's just the thing -- he claims incredibly amazing things that, being true, would change almost everything I know about physical reality and would, without a single doubt, be the most important discovery in recorded history. People talk about healing chi or this or that prana, what have you, like it's a small thing. They fail to realize that if it were true, it would change absolutely everything in the same way that the Germ Theory of Disease changed everything -- people washing their hands after poo'ing and the like.

I have a simple question about Flying Phoenix Chi Kung that also applies to many of Doo Wei's claims about supernatural powers -- chi healing and such. I could make this several pages long, but I'll be brief. The question is if this stuff is legitimate? That is, actually real and not just real in the sense that your mind makes it real, why is it not being explored by science wholeheartedly? For example, if you could really demonstrate action at a distance, there is a lot of prize money waiting for you, not to mention and endless stream of grant money and other funds from wealthy individuals and corporations wishing to develop technologies replicating the action, and so on. In short, it would be a fundamental reconfiguration of most of the hard sciences and would affect almost everything in the same way that the theory of evolution affects so much biology. I've broken coconuts and have practiced various elements of bak fu pai and other types of meditation for several years and have experienced very real sensations, but I have yet to see anything conclusive regarding action at a distance. I've seen Doo Wai move paper in his own recordings with his own setups, but my standards of evidence are just a little higher. I'm a serious person and I don't want to waste my time chasing anecdotes, feelings and hearsay because every culture has some form of spirit healing and when tested are all just as good as placebo. So there it is. How do you know it works? Personally, and my goal is not to confront but really just get at some answers here, but personally, it's hard for me to get it up when it comes to esoteric breath control sequences and elaborate hour long slow moving meditations if there's no way to actually, really, truly quantify progress and if I'm OK with thinking "I touched him and he felt better, must have been my healing chi." then I would have to accept that someone who says Zeus blessed their wife with child has the same standard of evidence that I do. If this could be shown to, let's say, the Randi Foundation, you would get a million dollars. Science would be changed forever. You'd be a hero. Everyone would be trying to prove you wrong but the evidence would stand up to scrutiny and everyone would be forced to admit something is there. This has yet to happen and I cannot begin to understand how, what amounts to, a quasi-mystical pre-science culture could have figured it out without us noticing such an important, fundamental aspect of nature. Anyone care to help me out with their thoughts?

Hello there. I'm eager to ask several questions and hopefully get at some answers.