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I sort of agree, but it comes down to really being sensitive to your body. More sensitive than I am, that's for sure. I agree that badly timed spinach might not be good for you. But I can't agree that a snickers would ever be good for you. Well...some quick blood sugar boost along with some fat is probably what you need. Snickers provides that, but in a much less healthy way than some fruit and nuts, which would serve the same purpose. So I see your point. But refined sugar ain't so good. There's an idea Ive heard about ethnic diet being important. In other words, whatever your ethnic heritage is (unless like most of us it's pretty mixed, I guess...), that historic diet is what you'll do the best on. So if you came out of a hunter gatherer background, and are trying to go vegetarian or vegan, and eating processed foods, you won't do so well. Etc. Personally, I do good on meat. Good quality, lean meat. I don't think I'd feel as good if I were vegetarian. There's also something to the idea that your body does good with foods its used to. Constantly changing your diet messes with your digestion. Eating within the season is ok, which is a varied diet...but eating indian one day, english the next, asian day three, typical american fare day four, etc, is rough on your system. We could talk about this for days and probably be right where we started. Complex issue. But I always love hearing what other people have for a diet, since people on this site aren't your "typical" eaters. Where I live, I know a lot of people who are eating pretty "healthy". But their understanding of what "eating healthy" is, is very shallow. They're doing way better than the typical american, but they don't really understand. A good friend of mine was "bragging" (not in a douch-y way) about his healthy eating. His breakfast: yogurt with agave nectar and granola. Not plain yogurt, either. That would be WAY too much sugar for me. Agave nectar is sugar. Sure probably better than corn syrup, but sugar. Granola is sugar, lots of it. I don't worry about fat. Yogurt, even plain, has a good amount of sugar. Honestly I'd like to see a comparison between his "healthy" breakfast, and a sugar cereal with milk. He's on the right track...but missing the point. The less I eat sugar the more sensitive I am to it. For me, his breakfast would have been as sweet as eating a donut. I do agree that the more "natural" the ingredient, the better. I don't worry much about fats, sugars and the like if they're from good, natural, unprocessed sources. But still...only so much of each is good for you, no matter where it came from. Is "diet" soda better than regular soda? I don't think so. I'd rather the sugar than the chemicals they used to make it diet. I love seeing the 250lb, 5'8" guy/gal walking out of the 7-11 with a 32oz diet coke. Cause it's good for you...and they're on a "diet". But I'm sure we all agree on that one.

I think it's only good advice for people who are very sensitive to what their body is telling them. I don't buy all what scientists say about how we evolved, but we absolutely crave calories in any form, especially condensed form. Like sugar, fat. Some of eating healthy is retraining your body to learn that it is not in danger of starvation, so it can stop wanting to cram as many calories as possible wheneven it gets the chance, in case there's famine coming. A lot of times my body is not giving me good advice. Maybe more your spirit? I think I agree with you, it's just your use of "body". I agree that if we listen, we can tell what our bodies are actually deficient in. But most people will always crave sugar and fat and carbs, and I can almost garuantee that most people aren't lacking in those categories. At least not all the people I work with who just can't leave the donuts alone I guess my point is that, like everything, it's more complicated than that. If you tell your average person to listen to their intiution about what to eat, they are going to go from unhealthy to really unhealthy, quickly.

I go grocery shopping when I get paid. Once every two weeks. Most veggies last that long in my fridge, no problem. So there's no reason not to do that. Eating healthy, for me, is really pretty darn easy. I mean, it would easier to eat bad, but I don't have to go out of my way to eat well. Just have to plan a little more, sometimes. I eat a ton of veggies, usually a fruit everyday, mostly organic. Lots of rice, quinoa, some whole grain bread but not much, deer or elk when I have it, and usually salmon or tuna once a week. Almonds. Yogurt. Potato and corn chips are my weakness, and that's ok by me. I have lunch and breakfast out usually once or twice a week, dinner out sometimes once a week, and that usually ends up being a fish burrito, fish sandwich, sometimes burger, greasy breakfast (but with natural greasy ingredients, not crap ). Basically, not much dairy, not much of any processed grain, whole or bleached, not a ton of meat, lots of veggies. Because that's the bulk of my diet, I don't stress when I end up grabbing a burger if I'm out on the town or go to dinner with friends. I drink a ton of green & oolong tea, lots of water. I have a beer most nights, or wine. I mostly avoid sugar like the plague. It's terrible for you. I don't dislike it, but it's not a vice of mine, not a weakness...so I just avoid it for the most part. I feel good. And mostly keep guilt out of it.

2-3 times longer than its "legs"! Crazy. Thanks quirks and quarks. Back to the point though, MLK was indeed a great man.

When did you change to "protector"?

It was interesting, when I was in China, and had already been reading a lot about Buddhism, and their idea of immortality, I had a chance to ask a Taoist, who was an internal martial arts master (but not Taoist priest) what their definition of immortality was. My version/understanding of it in buddhism is that you meditate and refine your spirit to where you are released from the wheel; samsara. That you kind of remove yourself from the cycle of life and death, and are just "are". His answer for Taoists was that you become immortal by becoming a person, and doing deeds that you are remembered for, and so I guess you're immortal because people and places remember you. I didn't like the answer then, and don't like it now And I think depending on which Taoist you ask, you'd get different definitions, and they wouldn't be chalked up to just different ways of explaining the same thing, I don't think.

Yeah I think the point is that someone decides to remind us of a great man, and all some people can add to the conversation is "well yeah? Well, according to this, he plagiarized once!". Meaning everything he's done, said, accomplished, means nothing and shouldn't be celebrated because he did something stupid once (show me someone who hasn't). Your point that we shouldn't ignore things, and should always seek the truth, is well taken. But why jump into a thread praising what most of us would consider a great man, and have nothing more to say than "he plagiarized"? Do you bring up the one or two bad things in the past of any great man or woman, any time they're brought up? Seems a very negative way to live a life. "Oh, Buddha? Well, I heard once that he started out believing some other religion, and only at the end came around..." "Jesus? Did you know about the things the Romans accused him of??" "Did you know that BK Frantzis once made fun of Wudang martial arts and called them "bullshit"?? Cause that's all I have to say about any of those people". I realize putting Mr. Frantzis in the same example as Buddha and Jesus is silly, I was just looking for more examples and wasn't getting inspired....

I see. So on a certain level, this is an argument between people who feel safer knowing that even though they couldn't possibly win, they'd at least die shooting if their government ever came for them after becoming tyrannical_________and those who are just your regular old citizen, living life in a great country and more or less left alone by the government to do as they please, more than pretty much anywhere else in the world, thinking "we have more gun deaths than anywhere in the civilized world; we have more guns than anywhere else in the civilized world, maybe we should do something about this". Both are right, on their own grounds. It's just that the people who want to defend themselves against their government can easily be labled as extremist (and in a lot of cases are), and are fighting gun control on any level because of a "what if", and often conspiracy-based fear. I do agree that it makes me feel better knowing the government has some fear of its citizens. Either way, I don't know what the answer is. If we're just, as Americans, a more violent people, for whatever reason, or if it's only because of guns that we kill more of our own than any other western nation. I'd like to see if all the hammer mass-murders and sword deaths and "anything is a weapon if you hold it right" scenarios that gun rights people constantly remind us of start to come about if guns were completely outlawed.

I can see that if you beleive there are corporations and politicians who want an unarmed populous so that they can take over with no fight...then all this gun control talk would feed right into it. I believe a lot of bad things about corporations and politicians, but I'm not sure if I believe that there's a unified, spoken (in private settings) plan or desire to unarm the people, so that these politicians and corporations can take over without a fight. Having that stance absolutely allows no wiggle room in the gun rights debate, which is exactly the problem. I do agree that if you're thinking that you want guns so that you could overthrow your government, should it become tyrannical, and that government wants to limit the kinds of weapons you can have...yeah, sticky! Joe, I'm not sure, but are you saying that the right to have guns is a God-given right?? Crazy. The right to defend yourself, sure. But if my idea of self defense is a missile launcher, does that therefore mean that my right to a missile launcher is God given? 'Cuase that's crazy! Yes, "assualt rifle" is a coined term, just like death panels, death tax or a thousand other political tools to try to get people to think about the subject in a certain, subjective, biased way. I can kill a whole lot of people with a semi-auto .22 rifle in a crowded setting, but it is not an "assault rifle" by their definition, I don't believe...

I'm reading Dr. Yang's book. I finally got through the hundreds of pages of theory, and into the dozen or so pages of actual practice, and I've found that it's not laid out in a way that makes the actual practice clear to me. I won't go into how he has it laid out, I'll just say that there aren't clear stages I can find...he says do this, or do this, or after a while do this, for enlightenment do this, etc... If someone does this practice, can you spell it out a little better for me? I gather than I should start with abdominal breathing, and after a while of that, when I'm comfortable with it, I can use reverse-abdominal breathing instead. Ok. He says I need to increase the ability of my LDT to store qi, but says those practices are in another book. Ok... He talks about leading the qi and shen to the LDT and all that stuff, but it kind of seems like that's something you do at a later stage? My point is that he has all these separate instructions, and it's kind of clear that some are more advanced practices, but what are the basic practices? What am I doing when I'm sitting there, before I'm doing the more advanced stuff? At first, for how ever many months, am I just breathing? Sitting in meditation, abdominal breathing, keeping my intent at my LDT? Then move on to the same thing except with reverse abdominal breathing? Then after a while of that, I start actual embryonic breathing, which I'm gathering is basically moving my lower back along with the abdomen? Not to say "just breathing" like it's some minimal thing, I'm just asking if that's really all I need to be doing. Is this still reverse breathing? So my lower back is going out while my abdomen is going in, on the inhale? Or is the abdomen going out, and the lower back going out, on the inhale? There isn't really instruction saying "at first do this (this being, sit, do this kind of breathing, focus here), then after so many months, start doing this also" etc. It just kind of says at first the kind of breathing you do is this kind, then this kind, then you start leading shen and qi and all that. So am I right that at first, I'm just breathing, with my focus on my LDT? I move eventually from abdominal to reverse abdominal? Then actual embryonic breathing? Then at some point I start actually working on the spiritual embryo and all that? I'd appreciate some insight..

Thank you! Oh, and I'll have a lot more questions at some point, I'm sure. But for now this is a ton of info, so I'll just get on with trying it out.

It might just be because I've had a couple beers, but I've been thinking about this for awhile. I have other interests, obviously, and I'm on a few other forums. Some of them have good, thick-skinned people, but more often than not, it takes nothing at all to start an argument; to put someone on the defensive. I've seen more people "turn the other cheek", ignore insults, even thank someone for putting them in their place, on this site than anywhere on the internet or real life. Maybe it's because I had a brother who was nice enough to attack my self esteem at every chance he got, but criticism is fine with me. If there's something you don't like about me, I want to know it. It's something I likely could change, and never realized about myself. Or, after consideration, I realize "nope, that's just the way I am, deal with it". But it doesn't hurt me or my self image to find out annoying, bad, or similar things about my personality. Not everyone is like this...in real life and on internet forums. I've started more arguments than I care to remember on other forums. Here, I think it would be hard to get into a real argument. I've found more people, for whatever reason and because of whatever life experiences, who just take what people say, even when they're confrontational, rude, or even insulting, and just go with it. Calmly make a counter-argument, or even agree and say "hey thanks for pointing that out", than I have anywhere on the internet or in my daily life. I've seen other people make, and made myself so many comments that could and would cause a blowup in so many other situations, and they just get taken as what they are and the conversation continues, here. Anyways, it's really nice. I've made a lot of comments in life and on other sites, and I feel like I have to "go into hiding" for a while, or that I'm a trouble maker or instigator. People seem to get it here. I've learned in life that just because I can take it, doesn't mean other people can. Just because you can tell me, to my face, exactly what you think of me, and it's cool, doesn't mean I can do that to other people...It's a lesson it's taken me a while to learn. But it seems like people here can more or less tell when there's respect behind it or not, and react appropriately. So thanks for that.

Perfect topic before I'm about to head to class, which has been on sabbatical since the week before christmas. I can always hear my instructor in my head when I'm practicing on my own, saying "it's time now for shavasana..."...

Interesting. Well, the constitution can be changed. For instance...when they amended it to include the right to bear arms. Things change. I personally have very little real, gutteral allegiance to any country. I would defend my country, but stopped actually "pledging my allegiance" early in school. We are all people, in this world. For me to think that the document written at this nations founding contains ideas which, if someone were to try to change, would be punishable by death, is ludicris. To me. I'm not sure, in reality, how far off we are from believing more or less the same things, but with some slight (though strong) differences on certain points. If over half the country wanted to change gun laws...is it treason? Really? Just like with a lot of the constitution, people can and have been interpreting it since it was written. The right to bear arms and a well armed militia are not clean cut, obivous explanations of what is meant, in my mind. The current gun control "debate", or lack thereof, is not trying to take away those rights. It's about restricting certain weapons. If I have 2 hand guns and 3 rifles, and everyone else without a criminal record can also have that many guns or more, but a law is passed saying they can't have something classified as an "assault rifle" (and that's sticky, I know), is that treason? Is it clearly against the constitution? I have the right to free speech. But if I yell "fire!" in a movie theater (same old argument), or say I'm going to kill the leader of our country, etc., that speech is NOT protected by the law. There is a right to bear arms, but do armor piercing bullets need to be allowed in order to live up to that right? Fully automatic weapons are already illegal to sell. Has treason already been committed?

Thanks both of you! I was hoping Joe would chime in, since I've noticed you're over on the Yang forum (brave of you, too, since all it is, from what I've seen, is a bunch of bickering and contrary people. i thought of joining for a while, but any topic I ever click on has wptaiji being an ass and just being contrary to anything anyone says... )

It did get overly preachy. And a lot of his points could be refuted the same way he refutes others. What I like about it is how it points out the hysteria with which gun rights/2nd amendment "defenders" react to any and all suggestions about a serious debate on gun violence. His ideas aren't leak-proof, but it is, for me, a fun rant about how unreasonable gun rights people are about this stuff. And it all comes down to a rich, powerful lobby, and "they're going to take our guns away". Should we ban the new sale of semi-automatic rifles? "you can't take my guns away!!!!! 2nd amendment, commie!!!" Should we at least have a discussion about whether citizens need armor-piercing bullets? "Nazi! Hitler! You can't take my guns away!!" Etc... Usually I think he's spot on. I couldn't agree with everything in that episode, but he does nail people pretty well, if not the issue. The vast majority of the people on the "don't touch my guns" side of the issue are completely unreasonable. There is no massacre, no fact, even, if you ask me, no amount of death which will make it ok to have a discussion, and put in new regulations. Because everything is, if not a conspiracy and sly attempt to "take their guns away", at least a slippery slope to guns being outlawed. Not one regulation is ok. The consitution gaurantees all sorts of things which we can limit and talk about. But not guns. Off the table, at any cost. So whether I agree with everything he says or not, I like where he's coming from.

Yeah there's some passive agressiveness here, as with everywhere in life. It's still better here that any other forum I've lurked on or participated in.

I just posted this in the "other" gun debate thread... If you have time, here's a perspective of the gun debate I like.

If you have time, here's a perspective of the gun debate I like.

I'm very sorry, because I just won't make the time to read all your posts, if you've covered this, but if nothing else, the meat industry, and read meat in particular, is about the biggest consumer of fresh water out there. It's getting scarce...we waste it like crazy. But it seems somehow even worse to use it on livestock. The amount of farming land now used strictly to grow cattle feed; the amount of fossil fuels used; the amount of fresh water, all to support the over-indulgence in meat that people now "enjoy"...I know this topic is about the spiritual effects of meat on a person, but it's definitely a poison to the environment and society as a whole in the way of the use (I'd say waste) of resources. There are all sorts of things wrong with the meat industry (starting with the fact that it's an "industry"). I still don't quite buy that there's necessarily anything wrong, inherently, with eating meat. edit: I'm also very sorry, after reading my post, for my overuse of commas and how halting and un-flowy reading it makes for...

Ok, thanks everybody. Turtle Shell: thanks. I think as I was typing my post, it was starting to make more sense how to approach it. For now, I'll sit, cross-legged, "natural" breathing. Move on to reverse as it feels comfortable. After that...I guess I'll need a teacher if I want to progress. And the confirmation of how hard it is to learn actual practice from his books is good...I don't need to spend any more money on them. Thanks!

Mindfulness. Most people I know don't think of it at all. But I'm a very concious meat eater and hunter. Actually killing an animal has made me much more sensitive to the death and suffering of what we call "food" than I would have been if I had never shot an animal. Seeing an animal die so it can be my food has made it really hard for me to be ok with the current meat industry ie "farming" animals. Anyone seen the new documentary Samsara yet? Not sure which would cause more mental issues, if you're right: the killing of an animal, or the eating of one. You don't need to kill or eat meat to be sensitive to it, but it's what did it for me.

I won't be discouraged by that, even though it's my same age... My path has always been parallel, in a way, to a path of cultivation, but never actively engaged in it until now. I'm off to a late start, but not so late as some, I'm sure, and beyond that, I'm sure there's a reason, for me, why "now" instead of "earlier", so no regrets.

Yeah. I agree that knowing you can at least stand a chance defending yourself, should some crazy apocalyptic scenario happen. I'm all for peace, but I'm not for letting people kill those I know and/or love (all good human beings). I don't like the thought of being "defensless" against an armed foe. And honestly, these conversations are kind of exhausting to me...and I get a little opinionated, and should really just stay out of them. The amount of research I would need to do to entertain that there's even something to be suspicious about is exhausting to think about. Being show images on the internet as proof, when that stuff can SO easily be doctored, is just not worth it. Unless I had personally seen that facebook page or the aid site on the date before the event happened, I just can't know one way or the other. As you were...

Unless we have stealth bombers and drones and missiles, our little automatic weapons aren't going to help us against our own government... I'm all for gun ownership and I own guns. But the idea of the citizens overthrowing a tyrannical government is a bit outdated in this country.