Tenguzake

Peter, Did you do his Coyote Investing? If so what dod he cover and how was it? What are the books he mentions as required reading? Thanks, Tenguzake

Who else is a Tracker student? Thelearner and who else?...

I got the ramp and the wedge combo. I may get the others later. The cube looks like it would be good for yab-yum. I have a zafu (round meditation cushion) we use for that now. I agree that the wedge is the most useful and we use that one more than the ramp, but there are some neat things you can do with that as well like standing at the edge of the bed with your partner on the ramp, etc. In high school, I had a more experienced girl friend that showed me the strategic use of pillows and I have used those for years. The liberator shapes that the pillow trick to new heights. I wish I thought of them...

I agree with Red Fox that there are tons of people out there with martial arts/healing/other esoteric skills trying to make a living and crapping out because they don't understand business particularly finance and marketing. If you go the business route try finance instead of accounting. It is much more interesting and it is about projecting into the future as opposed to explaining what happened in the past. The bucks are good too. Or get your AA and apply to an acupuncture school. That might be the most direct way to apply your interest in Taoism and chi kung in a direction that will actually generate income for you. I was originally pre-med and might have gone this route had I know more about acupuncture at that point in my life. Or get any degree and go teach English in China or Japan and study while you are there. I think Peter is teaching in China, based on his comments. I taught English in Japan for almost 3 years after finishing my undergrad. It is a great experience. You could do this and when you come home go to acupuncture school. I did an undergrad in Asian Studies, lived in Japan, came home and worked for a Japanese travel company. I started a dojo at the same time and I crapped out because I didn't know anything about business. Got into real estate, went to grad school and got an MBA. I got another advanced financial certification. Today I turn consumer loans into bonds and sell them to institutional investors. I travel a lot on business and make enough bucks to do the training that I want to do. I tell attorneys to keep their tongue on the roof of their mouths and to breathe with their belly in meetings and other things like that to keep people off balance. One can be financially successful and still not be a complete button-down corporate automaton. From experience I can tell you there is nothing spiritual about being broke. Go study Maslow's heirarchy of needs. If you do want to escape from the world and totally avoid society, save enough $ to attend a few tracker school courses and you'll then have the skills you need to go live in the woods and survive without needing anything from society. That will give you plenty of time to practice your chi kung. Yoda, I think you mentioned selling real estate somewhere. If that is right, you should check out NLP. It will help your sales skills. I use it in negotiations all the time. Be Genki, Tenguzake

I bought Lin's CD based on Trunk's recommedation on Alchemical Taoism. I haven't finished reading the book yet, but have skipped around a bit. I've had some good success with his finger plier technique and his discussion of angles is interesting. Focusing on your lady's more sensitive areas with your less sensitive ones is logical. A product that helps with this are the Liberator Shapes. If you haven't already seen these I highly recommend you check them out. They have been a big hit with me and Mrs. Tenguzake. They are pricy but worth it imo. One of the tag lines that comes with the marketing material is: "At a 27% angle, it's not just a vagina, it's a wonderland." www.liberatorshapes.com Enjoy, Tenguzake

Peter, I also thought your blog was great. In particular I enjoyed reading about your integration of the Tracker School Philosophy material with internal alchemy and your experience with the birds and concentric circles. Your Chinese hollerers reminded me of the way I always thought that the Japanese really reacted to nature. My undergrad was in Asian Studies and I remember reading lots of textbooks on Shinto and Japanese asthetics that discussed the Japanese reverence for nature. Actually living there showed me that that don't revere it so much as fear it and want to constrain and control it so that it is no longer something so frightening. Be genki, Tenguzake

Some of Kevin's classes look like fun particularly the Urban Scout and the Urban E&E. Tom has a weekend intensive couse called Urban Scout on his schedule as well. I haven't yet taken the Scout class, which is a prereq to these, but am looking forward to doing so. I have to get the Advanced Tracking out of the way first and unfortunately my deal flow is too heavy this summer to get away from the office for it. Hopefully I can swing it next year. I have a friend who I think had signed up for one of Kevin's classes. I'll email him and see if I can get any feedback. The wide angle vision is great for being in nature and for budo. I had an insight at Phil I when Tom sent us out to do the long form in our sit area with our eyes open. Many years ago I had learned how to "disappear in a mirror" from Glenn Morris and while cool I never really felt like it was very important. When we came back in from the open-eye meditation and Tom told us that the strange visuals we got were the beginnings of being able to see into the force and spirit realms I was floored. I need more practice on this for it to be really useful, but it is something I enjoy and don't practice often enough. Do you have any insights? Thanks, Tenguzake

Overall a good article. A couple of comments though. Technique is where beginners relearn how to move naturally. It must be transcended over the course of time for a person to be an effective fighter, but it is a step that can't be skipped. How many people do you see on the street that move perfectly naturally? I see damn few. Natural movement and behavioral flexibility is what allows a person to respond appropriately to a chaotic situation. As to the no match was ever won with dim mak, etc. comment: No sport match was won with an eye gouge, punch to the trachea, by one opponent grabbing the others balls and ripping them from his body, or with a knife, a stick, tear gas, a gun, etc. There are things that are not appropriate in a sporting contest for legal and ethcal reasons that are perfectly acceptable in a street fight or in real combat where you are fighting for your survival. The two can not be rationally equated. You will fight in a real situation the way you fight in training or in a sparring match. If you train avoiding these responses that I mention, then are potentially limiting your ability to deal with real danger if it ever occurs. This is what I alluded to in my earlier post asking the reason for wanting to train in the martial arts. If you want to be a sport fighter fine. If you want to know how to protect your self and your family fine. Don't confuse the two and beware instructors that say the two are the same. Caveat emptor. Tenguzake

Peter, Another question... >>And: don't you think there to be "negative" lineages out there too that try to rape your soul? How to know? Dark forces are real, and have their lineages/orgins. But they hate alchemists who have trained in the proper use of the life force to create harmony and balance. They run from the yuan chi that is cultivated, just like the Wicked Witch ran from water in the Wizard of Oz. Yuan chi dissolves them. Inner Alchemy is the strongest way to cultivate the Middle Path, in my book, and the safest for this reason. << http://www.healingdao.com/cgi-bin/tpost.pl?smessage=652 The above passage is Michael Winn's response to a question posted at healingdao.com. You have been through more of Tom's Philosophy training than I. Do you agree with Michael that inner alchemy defeats the effects of "the dark side/black shaman", etc. than other approaches? As you know Tom is a great orator and this is a drum that he beats loudly in his classes. Thanks for any insight you can give me. Tenguzake

Best martial art for what? Survival in a street fight? Success in some sort of competition? As a vehicle for self development/spiritual growth? Figure out what you want out of practice and find an art that will lead you to your goal. Be aware of the teacher that claims to be able to do it all. I personally think that systems where you see teachers continue to train into their 60s 70s 80s etc. have more value than those in which a practitioner is done by the time they hit 40 because of all the damage they have done to their bodies. As someone who has run a commercial martial arts school I disagree. People in the US tend to have a microwave oven/ remote control mentality and want immediate gratification. They hop into an art and then just as quickly hop out looking for the next trendy thing. Knowing that they are on the hook for some cash helps keep them motivated. Also, instructors that are worth their salt spend as much time and almost as much money on their training as do doctors and lawyers and except for a very few are not rewarded financially nearly so well. A long term contract reduces their financial risk and allows them to teach the students that do get off their butts and show up. Most schools will offer a free class or two to prospective students. Check out several schools by taking advantage of this. If this isn't enough time to fully evaluate a school tell the instructor you want to train for a month before making a decision to sign a long term contract. To compensate him for his time you need to offer to pay a 1 month rate that is higher than what you would pay under the contract. Most instructors won't have a problem with this. My 2 cents. Tenguzake

Peter, Brilliant. Great post. I've done Kamana I and have Kamana II sitting my my bed waiting for me to start it. I think it is a nice supplement to the Tracker School training. It is actually sitting on top of the back issues of the Razor's Edge that I bought after Philosophy I that I am slowly working my way through. It sounds like you are in an area in China where you actually have wildlife which must be nice. I lived in Japan at the edge of the Tokyo sprawl for about three years and I would occasionally just go nuts because trees were few and far between and excessively pruned. Thank God for the Budo and the booze. Be Genki, Tenguzake

When I lived in Japan there was a taikyoken/kikoho (tai chi/qi gong) class that used a community center before one of my budo training groups. If you came in complaining of anything from a cold to a hangover or just being tired, some of those students would say "We fix, we fix, lay down". They would then procede to drive fingers, elbows, and knees with full body weight behind them into your kyusho. The principle seemed to be cause excruciating pain somewhere else so that the patient forgets what ails them in the first place. After a while it seemed to work. Sounds like Reiki to me.

Peter, Are you familiar with Jon Young's Wilderness Awareness School? Jon was one of Tom's first students. He has his own school in Oregon now and also runs a home study naturalist training course called Kamana. He has some tapes on learning bird language and how it enables you to more easily tune into concentric rings. He also says that learning awareness skills like the various aboriginal peoples causes a person to use more of his brain potential than do modern "civilized" peoples. Tenguzake http://www.wildernessawareness.org/

I'm signed up for Philosophy II in November. I've been told that there is more focus on energy in that class than in the first one. I don't know if the moving of objects comes in that class or a higher one, but I have heard those stories too. In any event I'm looking forward to it. It seems to me that Tom's physical skills training and training in many martial arts, while not dealing directly with chi or enlightenment do produce results that make manipulation of chi and spiritual growth more likely and easier. I wholeheartedly agree that Tom's stuff is powerful and effective. I've been using Chia's material on and off since the late 80's and I've also trained with other teachers and it wasn't until Philosophy I that I started seeing spirits. I've done some journeying meditations in the past but none of them have felt as real as do the Medicine Area and the Sacred Area accessed through the long form. There are a couple of other books that come to mind relating to the connections between shamanism and daoism. One is "Taoist Master Chuang" by Michael Saso. Master Chuang serves his community in Taiwan by presiding over a variety of birth, death, and seasonal rituals much as an aboriginal shaman would. The book focuses extensively on the spirits that the master is empowered to command. There is some discussion of sexual practices, but not much of alchemy. The other is "Living Midnight" by Jan Fries. Fries' works is on the periphery of the western magickal community. I view him as a speculative shaman. In this book he uses the trigrams of the I Ching and the taoist immortals as starting places for shamanic journeying. He then connects these to NLP style anchors to give easy access to these visions much as mudra are used in certain sects of esoteric Buddhism. He has a section on inhaling colored vapors that is more alchemical in feel. I've only experimented with a couple of things from the book, but it is a fun read. Be Genki, Tenguzake

I like Tom Brown Jr.'s Awakening Spirits. It contains his long form meditation that is the core of the Philosophy I class taught at the Tracker School. He equates the-spirit-that-moves-through-all-things with chi. There is a lot of material in the course that is not covered in the book, however. This is a very shamanic worldview with a lot of focus on learning to enter and communicate with the spirit world. The world of the force/energy/chi is a step to getting there. Tenguzake

Cool! I look forward to reading it. Be Genki, Tenguzake

Peter, Are you currently practicing the Tracker School Philosophy meditations in addition to Chi Kung? I did Philosophy I in October of last year and am doing those practices side by side with various Chia/Winn Chi Kung practices. I'm interested in hearing your thoughts on the integration of the two sets of practices. Thanks, Tenguzake