GreytoWhite

Avoid them, what they teach is not taiji and is likely to injure your knees. Too bad you are located in a remote area. I tried to find some good kung fu teachers near you but the closest I could find that I were confident of their skill were in Toronto or Detroit. :-( Were I you I'd try to make a trip out for a weekend seminar to one of those cities and practice at home. I looked around for martial arts in your town and the hapkido folks are definitely dominating. Across the border is a Filipino martial arts school and it looks like you have a Gracie jujutsu school in town. Jujutsu is what I would recommend if you want to learn with dedicated people who want to be able to use what they learn. The Filipino stuff is good too, especially for blade work.

Cultivation is the main tool I use for pain management. In the worst episodes of post-stroke recovery where my pain was debilitating I would focus on breath, micro-movement in the afflicted area, and relaxation.

Who else has experimented with standing in neck high water? What are your experiences?

http://spiritualswat.org/

One thing I've learned in neijia is sometimes yang is required. We can cultivate yin all day and be bags of potatoes with shiny golden elixir fields and a smile on our face when we taste our wonderful bowls of chocolate ice cream. Wonderful. Some things need to be accomplished here. Going with the flow is great, have you ever gone whitewater rafting? Anything Class III and above you definitely have to row hard to get through some parts safely.

One beautiful thing about Northern California is that people don't really bother you when you're practicing. In Arizona I'd always be interrupted.

Nungali if someone uses "masheen" in Farsi they are typically referring to an automobile.

Golden Sweet & Sour Body - that gave me a laugh.

A teacher should always be a student - regardless of his attainment there is still more to learn. I would caution against this sort of practice in your case.

I find the buoyancy allows me to relax my back and intercostals more and pull down into my lower dantian to keep myself rooted in the pool. The balls of my feet were super important in staying in a shape without floating arms. Illuminated a lot of tension in my rib cage and abdomen. Very interesting to breathe through certain areas while working against the floating.

Serge Augier http://www.sergeaugier.com/accueil-en/

Feldenkrais/Hanna Somatics is pretty much the same thing. It's very easy to find resources for it. http://openatm.org/

You are supposed to circulate the energy back into the woman as you are making love. Consider her as part of your MCO and if she is trained then she can help with the distribution of energy. It's not about withholding orgasm but rather to attenuate and extend that energy. When working with this stuff make sure the person you are exchanging energy with is someone you want to become like as you will take on their characteristics.

http://www.somatics.de/artikel/for-professionals/2-article/118-lecture-notes-on-psoas-adductors

http://www.daoiststudies.org/ http://thedrunkentaoist.com/ http://neigong.net/

Welcome to peng energy.

I've experienced a lot of things from practice, usually the best thing is not to think about stuff like this too much and keep practicing. Most likely you have some muscles in your toes that just awakened and you are now able to feel the connective tissue around your bones move more freely. When I started practicing all the toes except for my big toe were curled inward. As the years progress my toes are all straightening. Also, I've developed some calluses on the three nails as William CC Chen calls them and some seriously defined calves. http://www.williamccchen.com/3nails.htm

After practicing in neck high water - standing outside of water seems empty. Although if I am doing something rather dynamic like Andrew Nugent-Head describes here I cannot hold a posture for very long as it is changing my body too quickly and exposing weakness. The tattoos on my forearms have elongated - the taijitu is closer to a football if I point my index finger.

Sorry for being vague, yes, there is further connotation but I was referring to morality/emotion/whatever. Of course there are further qualities to the energy that help one understand it.

Ted Mancuso has some wonderful information on the blog for his company. While it is not restricted to Baguazhang the information that he gives is great. Although he seems to have something against He Jinghan for some reason. http://www.plumpub.com/kaimen/

Huh... I have never equated negative to detriment in practice. My first teacher was an electrical engineer and my education is in computer hardware and networking so we always treated negative as a polarity of energy without further connotation.

I laughed.

I have had flat feet all my life and it's only since I started practicing neigong that I've noticed a small arch beginning to form. Honestly, the biggest gain was getting some wide toe Merrell skate shoes and these acupressure insoles. http://www.massager-machines-and-more.com/acupressure-insoles.htm

Well thanks to Mr. President Obama I got my first regular check up in ten years and some blood, urine, and other panels in the works. My blood pressure is normal which is odd, it's usually low. I've had asthma since childhood and he said my breathing was normal but did prescribe an inhaled steroid to help manage it. He thinks it will probably go away once I quit smoking cigarettes. Biggest thing was my back. I've had scoliosis since I was about 12. A little over a year ago the X-ray showed a C curve in my thoracic spine. Today the doctor's words were, "Spine straight, no scoliosis, just muscles hurt." I was so happy afterward I was laughing and crying at the same time driving back. All this work has truly paid dividends for my health.