ChiDragon

Did you mean thyroid keeps us warm? Indirectly yes. Thyroid hormone is governing your basal metabolic rate, orchestrating the idling speed at which all cells make energy and thus heat. It has great influence in regulating our body temperature.

Osalina.... I am glad we have come to this forum and discuss the notion about the five elements. It strike on me when you said wood is not an element. Since metal, wood, water, fire, and soil are not really elements but they do have individual characteristics. The Chinese did not call them the five elements but called the Five Attributes, 五行(wu xing), by their respective names. I think somebody was at fault to call them the Five Elements. What the Chinese did was categorize matters with characteristic similar to these five attributes and assigned them to each category accordingly. The metal, wood, water, fire, and soil are really Five Categories instead of Five Elements in Chinese thinking.

I was going to ask this practitioner to take some cold or flu pills.....

Westerners are crazy to go to China to learn the Taoist stuff and spoil the Chinese. The Chinese developers saw that is coming and why not build hotels to accommodate them...

Dear Osalina... Regarding to the "Ayurvedic Medicine is called Ether for Wood and Metal for Air to explain these relationships." The first thing that come across my mind about "Metal for Air" was a little mixed up in the cross link from the Hindus. The five elements in their system is different from the Chinese. The Five Elements of the Hindu are earth, water, fire, air and sky. The Chinese system are metal, wood, water, fire, and earth(soil). The Hindu treats the 'air' as the "air and space which is the wind". My Ref link: The Hindu Five Elements

From what I gathered here in the forum, it seems to me some people are not very clear about the pains in the knees while doing Zhan Zhuang. I would like to hear some of the questions about that. Would you please raise questions about the knees being in pain during Zhan Zhuang or describe your experience of the knees hurting while doing the horse stance. Let's be open-minded about this and save the insults at the end. Thank you very much for your cooperation....

(1) More weight toward the front is for a novice. (2) That is for an intermediate. It is harder to balance oneself if one was to shift more weights to the rear or the lower legs are perpendicular to the ankles. In other words, the farther the knees move toward the ankle, the more force has to be exerted by the lower legs and the feet to anchor the body to the ground. The force exerted by the lower legs and feet was known as Fa Jin. Thus it is the Jin that was holding the whole body in place. Indeed, the purpose of ZZ was to build up the muscle tone mostly for the lower legs and feet to Fa Jin. The Fa Jin is equivalent to adding more weight to the lower legs and feet to counteract the weight of the upper body.

Just for my curiosity, if the feet are not touching the wall, why bother to stand one inch away from the wall...??? It sounds to me one can stand anywhere to accomplish what you were describing. If you say the toes has to touch the wall, then I can understand the wall has to be there.....

Are you talking about a novice....??? Please read carefully....

Let's discuss some of the fine details on ZZ from a point of view with a novice. With the body standing straight up vertically, imagining that there is a vertical plane cut through the body from the head to the ankles. Now, let's the upper leg bend 15 degree with the Vertical, what will happen if the knees did not lean forward...??? In the event, the buttock tends to lower to the ground and to body weight was shifting behind the vertical plane and causing the body to be off balance and fall to the ground. It's important to know that by leaning the knees forward, in front of the plane, will counterbalance the weight behind the plane to prevent the body from falling off. Have you ever thought of the weight of the lower legs are much lighter than the total weight of the upper legs and the body....??? The weights of the lower legs are not suffice to counterbalance the weight of the upper body. It was a force exerted by the muscles of the lower leg acting through the feet into the ground to hold the whole body in place. In physics, it was known as taken the movement about a point. Please keep in mind the force exerted by the lower legs. It is the key to understand Zhan Zhuang.

A Tai Ji practitioner will let all the muscles to be 鬆(sung), loosen, for relaxation. And all the motions to become 柔(rou4) to be as soft and smooth as silk.

Dear Osalina... Your name is very feminine, BTW, a lovely name too.... A scholastic approach to a subject is to go into the root of it to find out what it is. I had found a DVD, a documented interviews with many high Taoist priests of different shrines from mountain to mountain in China. One question was asked: If the Taoists live in a healthy life without any sickness, then why are the herbal medicines...??? The answer was to help the non-Taoist people who do get sick. Hence, they learn about the human body organs and found herbs to make medicine to cure illnesses for others. The fundamental medical theory was developed based on the concept of the Five Elements from the Yi Jing. BTW to become a Chinese Taoist, one must be familiarized with the Yi Jing, the Ba Gua and especially with the Five Element Theory. As a matter of fact, almost everything in the Chinese history was evolved all around the concept of the Five Elements. Now, let's compare notes on the Five Elements. Among the five elements, they interact either aid and oppose each other. When aiding, it was said to be 生(sheng1): engender; produce; generate; give life to; help to grow; and etc. 金生水 : metal engenders water 水生木 : water engenders wood 木生火 : wood engenders fire 火生土 : fire engenders soil 土生金 : soil engenders gold 1. metal engenders water - molten metal becomes liquid. 2. water engenders wood - water helps plants to grow. 3. wood engenders fire - When a piece of stick was rubbing against a piece of wood generates fire. 4. fire engenders soil - Fire burn wood into ashes. 5. soil engenders gold - Gold was formed under the soil. When opposing: it was said to be 克(ke4): subdue; against; restrain; control; refrain; and etc. 金克木 : metal subdues wood 木克土 : wood subdues soil 土克水 : soil subdues water 水克火 : water subdues fire 火克金 : fire subdues metal 1. metal subdues wood - metal ax chops wood 2. wood subdues soil - wood sucks up the nutrients from the soil. 3. soil subdues water - soil blocks the water flow. 4. water subdues fire - water puts out fire. 5. fire subdues metal - fire melts metal. It was interesting how the TCM was developed based on the Concept of the Five Elements by assigning objects to each attribute; and set up their relationships for determining the proper medical treatments. Of course, there were lots of trial and errors to get to the final end results.

Yes, you are. However, now-a-days, some of the modern Buddhists do not live up to their original believes. The Chinese Taoist do abide by their own rules. That is why you never see a fat Taoist but a fat Buddhist monk....

Taoism is a free choice of life style to be blended in with Nature. General speaking, Buddhism is a way to run away from society to have a different life style other than a materialistic one. Normally, a person had went through a bitter situation once in life and wanted to be detached from it all. Hence, one follows into the Buddhist path.

鬆(sung, loose) 鬆(sung) is to let loose for relaxation. 柔(rou4, soft) 柔(rou4) is an adjective describing a light and smooth flow of action.

Dear Osalina..... Thank you for giving us the introduction of the Five Element Attributes. TCM was known as the Traditional Chinese Medicine which was developed by the Taoists. I guess it's OK to call it Taoist Chinese Medicine, too, since it was the Taoist who invented it.... Have you ever taught how the five elements interacted with each other...??? The relationship between the internal organs was based on the interaction of the five elements. For example, water(kidney) puts out fire(heart). Since the water puts out the fire, in relation with organs, the kidney is working against the heart. Have you ever heard something like that before once in your TCM study....??? PS... This discussion should be taken place in the General Discussion Section. I think you can copy everything to that section with a new thread.

柔(soft) Just make your motion moves like the leaves of a willow tree.

Hehehe..... It was only a matter of Tai Ji talk. You don't have to toss your friend into the wall. Anyway, you still can do a little counteract to let your partner to get the message without verbal communication. It was the purpose of push hand by feeling the yin-yang force of partners. Pushing was being the yang; and pulling was being the yin. The yin will overcome the yang. It said so in the Tao Te Ching, remember...???

You don't tell your partner anything. It was time for you to make your offensive move by getting your partner off balance.

Osalina.... I am curious what have you learned about the Five Element System. Can you start a new thread, in the discussion section, and talk about the system and how was it applied in the TCM....??? Thanks...

I believe it is not the hormones which gave the energy to the body. The production of hormone will only take place is when there was a lack of something in the internal organs. A particular hormone will be produced be one organ to signal another organ to manufacture the missing substance. A teenager is so energetic because he was going through a growing development stage.

Hehehe....... I think it is the other way around. The reproduction of sperm is all chemical or call it alchemy if you want. It was the physical part of ejaculation which takes up a whole lot of energy. However, the sperms can be reproduced and the energy can be restored in no time by Zazen with Chi Kung breathing(NAB).

Your teacher already had given you the answer. What else are you asking for...??? I saw few posts of yours asking about the same thing over and over. You are just not so sure how to put things together. What you need to do is to have faith in yourself and keep thinking positively. Avoid reading any biased religious materials which might be misleading you to evade from the truth.

無為(Wu Wei) is "no need to do anything" rather than "Not-doing". What LaoTze had in mind was that Nature will follow its course. There is no need for intervention with Nature; Nature will do her thing and everything will be turned out Okay.

1. Pictogram is rather primitive at this stage. 2. Huh..............???