i am

Funny how all these "tiny" houses look just right to me... In fact if that adobe house qualifies, then the rental I'm in right now qualifies.

Figuring that out still... Not sure if I'll just check up online when I'm in a town, and head to a coffee shop or whatever, or if I'll get an ipad with 3G or something and be able to get Internet in more places. Leaning towards 3G, or some way to get Internet through phone signals...

I'm going to be looking into solar cells pretty soon here. I very well may be living "off grid" in my RV. Solar would be nice, for when I park somewhere for more than a week or so, and don't have my trucks engine as a "generator". Not much electrical. Four LED lights, and a fridge that runs on propane but does have some 12V draw. Otherwise...I'd only use power if I wanted to listen to music or plug in some device. There is a water pump, but the faucet is also a hand pump, so unless I'm feeling very lazy, no need for the electric pump. But still...knowing my battery is getting charged by the sun and I'm only limited to staying in one place by my propane tank,Forest Service/BLM laws and food & water supplies is nice.

So I guess we need to learn from vegetarian cultures. How to eat. If we were to try it. Because clearly there's a way to make it work. Children and adults training Kung fu in Shaolin eat a vegetarian diet. They are working their bodies to the limit every day. And I don't know, maybe they're farting the whole time and run to the bathroom a lot. But they seem ok. But yes...when I try to eat mostly quinoa or rice, and tons of veggies (slightly cooked and raw), minus meat and grains, my digestion gets all f'd up. I have to assume that's more because I don't know what I'm doing than anything. But... It's insane how complicated this can all get, if we let it.

This is all very interesting. I know my bowel movements tend to be very smooth and "no fuss" when I'm eating certain things I don't consider to be healthy...sometimes it seems my body runs better on the foods I try to avoid! Though I wouldn't commit to a way of eating just based on how it comes out in the end...but it does say something. When I lived in the dorms in college and ate endless greasy, fatty cafeteria food, I was the most regular and easy pooping I can ever remember being.

Depends on where you are in the country, maybe, but the more I hang out with ranchers and cowboys, the more I see that even though they're good old boys, many of them are surprisingly open minded. In fact I don't even use good old boy as an insult... Having said that...I refuse to work a job I don't feel good about. With people I can't stand. But I don't have a family...so quitting a job and being poor affects no on but me.

Well, excess anything is bad. If there are pollutants or toxins in the tea leaves, and I'm drinking gallons, it's going to affect me. But I wouldn't compare it alcoholism. For me anyways, tea drinking isn't an addiction. It's a pleasurable habit. If I go a day without tea, I have no side effects (other than wishing I had tea). I don't use it to wake up, and I'm not dependent on it. I just really like it. A couple glasses of tea in the morning, and a couple in the afternoon post-lunch slump is definitely nothing to worry about, and is really pretty healthy. As long as you're getting quality tea without pesticides and all that crap.

I probably drink a gallon of tea a day... I'm just thinking about it, and when I'm home on the weekends, I drink tea out of a pint glass. I fill it at least 4 times during the day. Often 4 times in the morning, and maybe twice in the afternoon. I guess there could be some negative effects that I'm not feeling, but I feel pretty good.

Oh you Canadians. Actually I'm pretty fond of it myself, having grown up in upstate NY...

So...only things invented by western civilization, then? Figures. Although I'm sure we could find examples from all cultures, but probably the most from the west. Stupid linear thinking...

It's all sugar, in the end. That's what our bodies run off of. We break it down into sugars. If you mean refined sugar, yeah, we could all do without that.

But I guess I'd say that allowing qi to "hold" the posture is probably the best way to think about it, and a goal, even if it's an un-achievable goal.

Is it possible to be in any position at all with all muscles relaxed? Very technically: no. Because the heart is a muscle and there are digestion muscles etc. But slightly less technically: yes. Laying down you could release all skeletal muscles. I cannot imagine it being possible to remain upright without using skeletal muscles. I'd say position 1 with hands at sides would allow the most relaxation. Holding the balloon a bit less, and on from there. No matter how much you relax the extra muscles not needed, but often used to hold each position, you'll still be using some muscles to some extent. The point is to relax them all as much as possible, and stop using the ones you don't need to.

I have a question on the bulletproof coffee. All I really have for a coffee maker right now is the ibrik. I don't have a blender. My thermos is for hot water only. I don't want it to pick up a coffee flavor. If I want to try bulletproof coffee with just coffee and butter (skipping the oil, for now anyways), what would you do? Or would it really require a couple more purchases to make coffee that way? If I really knew how to make it and how it should come out, I could probably brainstorm some ideas. But since I'm totally new to it, I don't think I can up with alternate ways to make it on my own...

Not sure how you're doing the math, but getting to the higher price usually involves figuring in healthcare, leave and retirement costs. There was some big political upheaval in Michigan or Wisconsin about how much school teachers there made. It was well over $100,000. But that included all their benefits. Total misleading number. The salary that would have been advertised for those jobs, and paid before taxes is more like $50,000.

Yeah this was the first time I saw the thread, and found the PDF ok, but I'll admit there's a lot of talk in between. Some of the clueless posts are actually by serious practitioners who just happen to be too busy with their path to worry about the weird mo pai fuss, and I did a bit of a palm to the forehead move when I saw them too, but...maybe because I've seen some of their other posts and know they aren't half retarded beginners (whatever exactly that means ), I was more kind. Have a good weekend.

This is the first mo pai thread that hasn't made me want to gag... Thanks for resurrecting it, even though it was only to insult people.

Just caught this http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2013/11/14/245225365/whats-the-most-important-thing-food-labels-should-tell-us

I will definitely read that article when I have time. Probably this weekend. Thanks.

Yeah I'll admit I got turned off immediately by his site...sorry about that. I don't know if he cherry-picks studies, but a lot of his takes on what is healthy and not healthy are in direct contradiction to stories I've heard on the news. Not being a person who does a whole lot of researching actual studies and comparing different results...I can't say who's right. The people NPR interviews or this guy? For every study he cites, there are others which came to opposite conclusions. So who knows.

In my limited experience/knowledge, I'd agree. That's a martial pose. Seeing his comments out of context, it's hard to say if he addressed that... He certainly knows a hell of a lot more than me.

He seems to have a very profitable business going.

**Whispering**Well then maybe we can have this discussion and not piss her off..!*** I mean obviously the entire industrial agricultural system is to blame. But I've always seen it as a valid point that the raising of meat, especially, is very resource intensive, and waste producing. So say everyone went vegetarian. There would immediately be a huge amount of agricultural land previously being used to grow animal feed, now open for...what? Growing people food? Or condos? Hard to say. There would no longer be the huge amounts of sewage produced by pigs, turkey and cattle seeping into our groundwater and flowing into our surface water. The amount of antibiotics in the planets system would drastically decrease, and probably cut down on a lot of the chance of producing super bugs. And lots of other stuff I can't think of. So it seems that on the surface, the "veggie fact" statement is true. I think it's the fact that "it's not that simple" that's the problem. So...what's the trade off? If everyone stopped eating meat, they'd need something to replace those calories with. More corn, wheat, soy and all that, grown in soil-destroying, fossil-fuel intensive, fertilizer and pesticide laced conditions. Arguably it's a healthier system, but it's still not healthy. Not enough to feel superior about. And on another side...we see that intelligent farmers can diversify, and produce sustainable, healthy, good for the environment produce AND meat. Cover crops, crop rotation, resting fields, "new" ways of grazing cattle which mimic bison and other wild herd animal type foraging and is actually healthy for the soil and vegetation. And the animal. Having turkey and chicken in rolling cages you can haul around, so their manure falls to the ground and fertilizes, rather than piling high in one place and needing to be disposed of. Same with cows. They fertilize as they go. The use of antibiotics only when an animal is actually sick, rather than just as a precaution, or because the conditions are so unhealthy that an animal needs them to survive. More humane slaughter methods and processing methods. All of these thing require smaller scale operations. The reason they want to irradiate all your meat before it leaves the slaughterhouse is because they are moving everything too fast to guarantee there's not shit all over your food. You can't grow thousands of acres of just one crop and expect that pests or disease won't jump all over it. But it can and is being done. If this were the model, you could EAT MEAT OR NOT and feel good about the animals, plants, environment, and what's going in your body. But it doesn't fit our global, giant corporation model. And those corporations do quite a bit to kill the industries like I describe above. So, taken at face value...Yes, within the current system, my opinion is that if you went vegetarian, you would reduce your carbon footprint and help the environment. But all it takes is taking a couple steps out of that system, and you can easily be a meat eater and be more environmentally friendly than 90% of the vegetarians out there.

Luckily these days I pretty much hang out with people who know me. Any problem they have with how I eat, they'll tell me, I'll tell them to fuck off, and we'll all have a good laugh about it and move on. They know I don't "do" fads, and don't preach, so after the initial feeling of "what the hell are you doing that for?" wears off, they don't much care what I do. Except that it makes me a difficult dinner guest... But as far as work conferences and stuff like that...it's a bit more awkward.

That's interesting but I agree. Cutting out grains would be harder for me, and cause my friends more grief than not eating meat. Also harder to eat out. I limit my grains and hardly eat the flour of any grain, whole or otherwise. But it would still be hard to cut it out completely. What I eat in my own home is easy. Eating with friends is where the difficulties come in.