Yoda

Seadog, You have to follow your heart on these things! Your pal, Yoda

We are all so new to this, that it is so hard to plan out the strategy for the next few years or decades. It sounds like just do Kunlun as much as you are drawn to and go from there. If you want to go hardcore, then do more of it and maybe phase out your little herbal friend so you can Kunlun more often throughout the day. Personally, I'm doing Kunlun in a very easygoing way and I'm still making great progress so I haven't any appetite to be hardcore about it. It's a very luxurious situation.

Thanks for the report!! Sounds fun! I would have loved to see the Scorpion Claw! Sounds like you'll have some nice progress in front of you for a few moons!!

Dude... you won't believe this, but I totally knew you were going to sign up! Welcome to taobums!

The hypocrisy of it all!

I think the near death experience is always yummy... whether it's teens playing flat liner, animal attacks, or more boring routes... it's all good. A friend of mine was attacked by a captive tiger who was supposed to have been tame. She's 99% healed fortunately and now avoids large cats. She said it wasn't euphoric, but had it gone on I would like to think that things would have started feeling better for her. The tiger in question went into a rage for just a second and then remembered its pet status and froze and made eye contact with its master where she was told, "Bad kitty!" (in a very firm tone) and decided that it was best for everyone that she not rip my friend's arm off. An unusual story I read from an old book I found in the Kingston, Jamaica library: some dude had made a house pet out of a full grown tiger and was very proud of his pet. According to the story, he had a cut that was healing and during his midday nap with his previously milk fed tiger started licking the wound and suddenly developed a taste for blood and started behaving in a very aggressive manner towards everyone and they had to shoot it in the end. Don't know if it was true and it was trying to make the case that a vegetarian diet would make for a more peaceful world so it might have been 200 year old propaganda. We know now that a V diet is better for the environment and I do think it also contributes to more inner peace as a whole. I'm vegetarian by nature but Mrs Yoda who does the cooking is carnivorous, so we tend to embark on V diets for health purposes until she can't deal with it and then we take time off before I roll out the China Study by Campbell and we fire it up again.

So, by my tally, there were 5-6 taobums in attendance... Look forward to any and all reports!

Cat, The book looks nice enough, but it didn't live up to my hopes for it so I tossed it onto the back burner. I was hoping for more Kunlun info from a cross cultural perspective but it didn't overlap as much as I had hoped. If you are a fan of African dance and Kunlun, it might be worth picking up. Pietro, As for shaking, when I met Max I got the standard spontaneous shakes for about a week or so. Kunlun isn't so much about shaking though. Check out the "oh glory" youtube vid for a better handle on it if you haven't already. For me, Kunlun tends to be even more mellow than the vid with the movements being very smooth and repetitive. I've heard that the shaking side effect can come and go but it's my understanding that there will mostly be some form of movement with Kunlun practice. Yoda

Introduce yourself, criticize, and blast off... the force is strong in this one!! Thanks for visiting!

Just give it some time, it'll come!! Welcome to taobums! Yoda

I bought a copy of Shaking Medicine and have only skimmed it so far. Seems like an excellent book and there is certainly overlap between the two systems, but as far as I could tell it advocated playing the included African dance drumming CD and just moving spontaneously with it. I think that approach could be very effective for some people but white Americans... especially white male Americans are way past this level of redemption. I remember taking an African dance class in college... the teacher and her drummer were astonished by how much we sucked... all races and genders in the class... no gains were made, sadly. If it had been a ballroom dancing class, maybe there would have been a prayer. No other spontaneous chikung practice has been able to capture my attention or get results like Kunlun, at least for me.

Ben, I was reading up on the Shakers and they'd have little shaking attacks whenever... at least you don't live amongst the Puritans!! Yoda

Interesting, thanks!

Can't help you on the third eye thing, but fun writeup!

welcome to taobums!

welcome to taobums!

Shake your booty... that's pretty much it.

welcome to taobums!! There are gazillions of fun practices here!! Have fun experimenting!

Rain, Is it cooler than google earth? Turbo has discontinued his Kunlun practice but he called it "heavy metal" cultivation... he really thrashed about, it was pretty wild to see. Max told him not to let it get that wild... keep it to Stevie Wonder level. He's back to the more mellow AYP scene.

Thunderbolt of the gods rocks, thanks!! A recent Discover magazine makes a convincing argument that the story of the great floods from mythologies around the world was due to a comet collision, btw.

I would like to think that magnets have something going for them.

I've noticed in my travels that Americans are much more fearful of bear attacks than are Canadians. I've always thought it interesting that reports and stories of animal attacks are much more frequent in America too.

I could never get past the prostrations... can I be grandfathered in pre-Ngondro? I love the Tibetan thing about sharing the merit of one's practice. The prostrations were good for me, it's just that they were a lot of work. It'll be fun to see where Max goes with all this. I don't know why it's coming to mind at the moment, but I was very impressed with Max's demonstration of Powa in Phoenix.

Uh oh... a scale of 1-1000!!! A dangerous tool to place in the hands of us taobums! ~~~ I'd bet Mantra won't disclose the identity. I'd guess the teacher is Nyingma and we've not heard of him or her before.

I turned to hellorocky.com for an in-depth analysis: