healerman88

sifu terry, i got your first two dvds a month or so ago. memorized the first five standing meds. i think i'm going to let my step-mom borrow the first disk. thing is, she has some kind of nerve disease that limits movement on the left side of her body, especially her left arm and hand. i'll probably prime her on zhang zhuang posture and diaphragm breathing, but what should i tell her about the hand movements and such? "just do it the best you can"? and is it alright if she has to sit down half-way through an exercise? also, regarding the use of stimulants. i assume drinking decaf tea is just fine for someone doing fp. also, i quit smoking cigs about a month ago and went without the whole time. then last week i had one with a friend and eventually i bought a pack and have smoked about 10 in the past two days. i guess i'm asking from your experience (firsthand or otherwise) if caffeine and nicotine affect fp practice? is it safe to say that practicing fp would help someone get completely clean from any kind of addiction?

whoah.

explain this s g f. was unable to search for it, being under four characters...

this stuff seems pretty complicated. i might just stick to sun gazing. joke: man, the tao of pooh didn't say anything about this crap. the act of saying it was the joke, but it's true. alright, so you guys know a lot. i respect that. so opinions would be appreciated: can anyone tell me if it would be a smart thing to undertake zhan zhuang (or sitting or walking meditation for that matter) on my own? i do have attention to detail down nicely. (i'm a virgo. i've always had attention to detail. this is the fourth time i'm revising this post! i guess i'm really interested...) and i've been studying awareness of awareness for a while now; that's another way of saying the space below thought and attachments. there's a skilled internal kung fu teacher nearby. he's very learned in the history and philosophy but teaches very little zhan zhuang in the basic tai chi classes (mostly about the movements), and i'd rather focus on healing. (duh) i could take private lessons from him for $1/min if i could afford it. this takes years to master, right? i could probably just check in with him every once in a while. i'm really excitable right now. anyway, i'm gonna go stand.

jing attig- how do know whether or not someone that nobody's heard about, that didn't care anyway, attained perfect harmony with the dao? do you think somebody could do it if they became an immortal and returned to the source? or would it send them back because they were too caught up in their own self-development?

was reading through this thread the other day. this song makes me cry. it's stuck in my head now. thanks. i mean it.

huh. i get his newsletter. i'll start reading it more often.

so why do we find the need to experience or study this physical balance in the first place? some people don't even have the option of symmetry, so what should they do?

awesome!

sup! what language is that? have fun with the site. i find it supportive and diverse. (as far as self-development in a daoist fashion goes.)

i'm actually having some trouble writing this; i feel like i'm going on and on, but i think it's something i have to get out. i need to accept myself. i was a major christian fundamentalist type in my teen years then realized how crappy it was- how i depended so much on "god's love" and found myself looking down on others for not believing what i believe. i was a depressed, bitter individual. it got to a point where i went to church camp and started praying for a sense of responsibility to care for all the people of the world. i admit i was not very charismatic about it, but i got no reaction at all. everyone would throw out hallelujahs and amens for the people praying for more funding for our local churches. it made me pretty sick. then i asked one of the leaders i respected why amazing, loving people could go to hell and he had no answer. i had already known about the tao from reading about it in high school. i started practicing qigong and obsessed over finding a school where i could learn. as i got more into the healing arts i started looking into other self-healing systems. then i learned a lot about spirituality in general- magick (the fundamental laws of existence), egyptian alchemy, the law of attraction (how we create our reality), the theory that we are spiritual beings having a human experience. it's wonderful how all religions and philosophies seem to share fundamental concepts. somewhere in there i started to take psychedelics. i've always had a little bit of paranoia, being shy around people i don't know well. so dropping acid at a funk festival crowded with people turned out to be a terrifying experience. i was with some older folks i just met (my girlfriend's stepmom's friends) who were just messing around trying to have fun, but i was couldn't find anything to say, which freaked me out, then i was afraid to express anything because i was so freaked out. i couldn't get the negative thoughts about what they might think of me out of my head. so they immediately started to come true. lsd is a powerful psychic amplifier. seriously. it turns out i had this latent social anxiety that only acid and unfamiliar surroundings could bring out. i slowly recovered from it over the next six months. having the confidence to go out in public again is nice. reiki (and similar arts, they're all connected anyway) helped wash away the fear. at one point, i would just be so withdrawn, walking around at work preoccupied with all these problems in my head. eckhart tolle's book a new earth basically saved me at these times. i would just breathe and be the breath, the moment. just be. a little smile creeps up on me when i do this. so it seems like my life is happening in waves. the disharmonious wave peaked with that one fateful night and i'm now coming back to the peace i had as a child. i've been doing wu tai chi chuan and writing music. i want to start giving reiki treatments, but i feel like i need to be able to communicate how this stuff works to people first. oh yeah, the other day i re-discovered the tao te ching. sweet!

thanks. i think most of my trouble has been in definition. i tended to think, this is how i should think so these things will happen, or i define myself as this to become more what i want to be. this kind of thinking has driven me crazy from time to time in my life. at one point, i thought i was the embodiment of one particular i ching hexagram and that my life would be wasted no matter what. it was so real at the time. just for today, i let go and let tao. awareness of awareness, the solution to all of life's problems. or something.

well, it happened a few times when i was tripping my balls off... (no, i never actually visually hallucinated with my eyes open. it was more mental reprogramming, bliss-like body vibes, and heightened senses for the most part, [didn't take enough to leave this dimension.] but i digress.) so once on mushrooms, i got really entranced in the clouds. they were so peaceful. after staring at them for a few minutes they started to form into distinct patterns. that happened again on acid. i think the clouds were responding to the state of my consciousness. the last time i ever took acid, i was in my front yard just kind of existing. two of my cats were following me around. then i stood still for a minute, centering myself or something. no lie, the cats started moving around me in a perfect circle in opposite directions. they did it a few times, and i laughed. i love symmetry. they just paused in front of me and i pet them. that was a very off-topic day, as i put it. anyway, this kind of stuff seems to happen all the time. i'm sober now and it still happens. i'll have a disturbing thought and my truck's cd player will skip (no bumps) or i'll worry about it and it will skip. i'll be sitting using my laptop on my bed and i'll realize something slightly shocking and the cat will twitch even though i was completely still. qi seems like this mysterious thing, but it's usually quite simple.

i have this book somewhere. got through most of it. contains a lot of nice hints for the path.

cool. are there any masters in the pittsburgh area?

sifu terry, is it possible to master flying phoenix by practicing with the dvds? or at least develop enough to teach it?

thanks!