GreytoWhite

And still others of us are bitter, fermented, and an acquired taste, like a good IPA.

http://thetaobums.com/topic/4488-dr-jerry-alan-johnson-and-taoist-magic/ http://daoistmagic.com/info.php?i=3826

The Ignore feature is what allows me to continue to participate here. I have about a dozen members whose posts consistently bother me ignored. If I choose to view their posts I expect negativity or whatever it is that I decided I would not like to see their posts. I'm actually rather ignorant of a lot of what has been happening lately because of this. Don't feed the trolls.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/12/121209152517.htm

Also, this thread belongs in Forum and Tech Support.

Off Topic threads have been moved to that board for as long as I've been a member. We have SO many boards and honestly TTB administrators and moderators must be overwhelmed with stuff. As a former admin on another community keeping things tidy can be a bit of work. The heading under General Discussion as I mentioned in the ponies thread previously is for discussion of spirituality in general, not one's entertainment. In general it's laissez faire here but when a thread has no discernible spiritual content it does not belong on that board. The show itself may speak to you but please, let's try to keep things on topic. This place is set up with so many sub-boards and so forth it shouldn't be this bloody difficult.

The General Disccusion forum's heading is: Eclectic discussion across a wide range of spiritual thought and practice. This really belongs in Off Topic. Dao is in everything. Can you draw specific parallels from your spiritual practice to the My Little Pony show? I agree with ralis, this is a new low and I have more people to add to my ignore list. :/

“Plato says that the unexamined life is not worth living. But what if the examined life turns out to be a clunker as well?” ― Kurt Vonnegut, Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons

Man Attanasio is bloody brilliant. http://www.amazon.com/Hunting-Ghost-Dancer-Attanasio/dp/006109935X/ref=la_B0034Q2RSA_1_15?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1361036265&sr=1-15

Yep, watched a kid get rolled off campus on a stretcher in high school he didn't die but was pretty close. He didn't live much longer than his 18th birthday, his cousin killed him in a DUI accident.

http://deadspin.com/5984350/the-coming-war-a-military-doctors-field-guide-to-masturbating-in-afghanistan

El Senor NERD does your girlfriend also cultivate in a similar manner that you do? If not, then please try to minimize any sort of energy exchange. My experience has led me to avoid anything like that without a partner that also practices.

I had a great big post typed up but then I backed out of the page accidentally and lost it. Basically, not all bagua lineages use mud stepping. Like circle walking, it's primarily a training method. Mud stepping was probably taken from Cheng Tinghua's Bao Ding shuai jiao days. The flatter foot one allows for a greater potential range of movement of the foot itself from the ankle up or down and helps with sticking to the opponent's leg. If one's foot is already up it's a "harder" way to meet and adjust to incoming force. Yin Fu's lineage doesn't have mud stepping but Yin Fu learned Shaolin Luohan before bagua. Also, in Yin Fu - Men Baozhen - Xie Peiqi line there is stomping in the Monkey system but that system has been taught only to a select few and without video I can find. Apparently one of the earlier students of Dong Haichuan was taught this system and murdered someone with it. Another interesting tidbit is that the qing gong skills were probably contained in the Monkey system at one time. The narrow stance critique is quite valid and John Wang of the Chang Dongsheng line has repeatedly made the same comment. I think that if one is fighting with awareness then it's not something that should be worried about. Training and fighting are usually different in appearance, hence all of the applications DVDs and seminars. I can't comment on boxing, I've never done it. Really though, if you want to talk actual fighting with IMA I'd recommend going over to Rum Soaked Fist.

I have a couple of foam pads on the floor covered by a sheet. It's not bad really, more comfortable than the sprung twin mattress I was sleeping on. I can feel the blockages in my lower back on the tops of my iliac crests.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxZPcgH9v6I

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObU7awpJctQ

The start of a 20 year cyclical change. On a calendar of 5,200 years,shifts can take time.

http://www.today.com/video/today/50820935

HE please understand that the majority of my bagua experience is more scholarly than fighty and I am definitely more interested in the Yin Fu lineages than the Cheng. I have spent much more time practicing Chen taiji but it has HUGE overlaps with bagua and so much so that I'm more interested in bagua now and the only thing that I kept from Chen shi was the silk reeling exercises. That said I'll probably be training a Cheng lineage once I can figure out some transportation. As has already been explained, the leg is rotated using the kua, a knee to ankle type of rotation, the knee should be stationary really. Considering that a major part of bagua's body method comes from twisting and untwisting the next bit should make a bit more sense. Circle walking is a form of practice and is not normally used in actual fighting. Bagua in application can look like a rather evasive xingyi and most Cheng lineage practitioners have so much xingyi mixed in with their bagua it's closer to Nutella than a Reese's cup. In taiji the rear leg has the weight, whereas in baguazhang it's the "front" leg that has the weight. The front leg is whichever leg has the weight on it, not where it is positioned in space. The rear leg is then free to be used in a variety of manners. This fellow makes a great and quick explanation of some of the uses of bagua footwork and kicks. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5-95vahRc4 The front leg provides the root but the step is not overly committed, after all bagua is all about changing. Another thing to consider is the bagua scissor step. Most Yang taiji players have a wide open "ziran" stance. Wide stances are not impossible with bagua, as many lineages have an equivalent of Snake Creeps Down, it's simply not an emphasis in training. The smaller stepping may not have the flashiness of the stomp or some of the more pronounced weight shifts but most of the mechanics are still there. The twisted body is actually more force conductive in my opinion and makes the springy quality a little easier to manifest. Regarding mud stepping, it is not a regular heel to toe step. Typically with a mud step the foot will strike the surface of the ground right behind the ball of the foot and then the rest of the foot comes down and there is a weight shift. This kind of stepping is trained so that one does not lift one's feet too far from the ground to be easily swept. Bagua typically works on a reverse microcosmic orbit of up the front and down the back at beginner-intermediate stages and in more advanced stages works on the regular MCO of up the back and down the front.

Mmm... I am a former Baha'i and if I recall correctly the Great Calamity is still to come. World War I was just the start of a cycle and Abdu'l Baha even predicted the nuclear explosion. A lot of the Baha'i writings have yet to be translated as most of Baha'u'llah's works were written in a literary form of Arabic and Persian in which the vowels are implied. One must be extremely familiar with the previous works to even begin translating the correct insight of the words of Baha'u'llah. As I study Daoism more I have a feeling that Baha'u'llah would have been considered an Immortal. There are a lot of claims to fulfilled prophesies from the Baha'i. I can truly say that I have never encountered a more organized group of passionate and loving people than the Baha'i.

I wish I had a foreskin. I have stretch marks and scarring behind the glans that can be painful sometimes. My friend's kid now needs surgery because the doctors botched his circumcision after he was born. Poor guy.

I don't remember the exact quote but I believe it had to do with walking the circle instead of mud wading steps. Yin Fu lineage practitioners typically don't practice the mud wading step and he was the person to study with Dong Haichuan the longest.