i am

Yep, wouldn't that be nice...

These are big ideas we on this site are concerned with...the best we can hope for is that people who have been at it longer and/or more in depth will give us some pointers. So yeah, I'll degree nobody really knows anything. But some know MORE. More than me, anyways. I'd like to think that if any member happened to reach enlightenment, they'd come back here and post about it...but I sort of doubt it. What this site does for me is show me I'm not the only one out there who isn't satisfied with grow up go to school get a job get married have kids retire then die out on my yacht. I'm not in a particularly culturally diverse area of the country... Anyways, this place provides a good community and exposure to ideas. I find that with most places like this, you get a TON of beginners. They have all sorts of questions and are excited to find a place. Then when they really get a practice going and figure some stuff out, they fade away a bit, maybe for years. If we're lucky, when they're really accomplished, they remember this place and decide to come back and see what's up, and do some teaching.

If I remember, I'll find the section that talks about it and email you more description of what he actually says, if you're interested.

I was wondering the same thing, since I kind of consider my zhan zhuang to be a spiritual practice. But I guess it depends on intention. If i'm just standing there, there may not be much spiritual about it. What really kick started my cultivation a little over a year ago was the book Be Here Now. It's pretty simple and basic, kind of an "introduction to spirituality", but I'm finding that it really helps me a lot. He's more on the Indian side of things than Chinese, and so he talks about yoga. He doesn't just say to "do yoga and here are some poses". He mentions that each pose should be a prayer to a higher being (of which you yourself count), and other things to keep in mind as you do each pose. I've been working, when I can remember , to "develop the witness". Stepping outside myself and seeing myself doing things, but being un-attached, just an observer. Not "doing" anything, just observing myself do things. I'm not very good at it yet, but it's an interesting sensation...

First off thanks a LOT for your posts. You're obviously going to get some specific questions about techniques ( I have a thousand of them but it's clear that isn't what you're doing here, so I'm restraining myself...), but I'm sure that like me, there are quite a few people reading this thread and getting a lot out of it, and you likely won't hear from most of them. So keep doing what you're doing. And if I ever live in a place with a resource like you or teachers like you and can get all my specific questions answered, I'll be a happy, happy man.

This was what my teacher in Wudang said "is going to be my issue" after seeing my difficulty with it. When beginning some forms, we were to sink down so that our legs were bent at 90 degrees, back straight, without the knees going past the toes. I could not do all those at once. But then I had never tried, before that time. They seemed to have no issue with it.

One of the few times I feel good about being a government employee...we don't always do the best, but we are not expected to make a profit, so we can be ethical. Now I know governments in general are not always ethical, but I'm state government, natural resources, giving out grants for natural resource projects. The work itself is not very fulfilling, its more or less your typical government soul sucking job, but we do good things, and I feel good about what we do in communities. I've more and more considered farming. Seriously. Buy or find a way to inhabit a small piece of land in an area where things can be grown. There are all sorts of ingenious ways to make enough to pay the bills. You can't care about money and material, though. But get hooked up with the right community of people and I think you could have a go of it. Ever hear of permaculture? Lots of interesting ideas, from backyard gardens all the way to social activism. Anyways...I hear you. If you want to be ethical and feel good about what you're doing, sometimes it feels like there aren't a lot of choices.

Anyone see in? I just saw it last night and it was really good. We usually get things late, so if it's been in our theater for a while, it might have already left yours. I don't know. http://barakasamsara.com/

I can't say for sure if I saw Baraka. Some of the images from the website look really familiar, so maybe I did...but I don't remember. Either way, I really liked it. Samsara, that is.

Thank you very much Wisdom Seeker! Don't worry. It's an internet forum and people will be people. Don't let it scare you or put you off. Or do. Either way...but it seems like we could make use of your experiences, so it'd be better if you stayed. I will need to tell the Wudang master I met, and his disciple, that they are Shaolin monks and didn't even know it! They ought to be happy!

In a forum with unlimited likes, they begin to be thrown around the way the word "hero" is these days. Maybe they're more special when they're rare? Do we want to cheapen them? And how the heck do I access the emoticons on this site? Or maybe it's just this iPad setup? Having said all that, I voted. Which in the case of this particular poll means I voted "yes".

Difference between alright = ok, I guess, but not great vs alright = for sure

I haven't been here long and I'm already getting tired of the misuse of "meditation". Or more acurately the willful, conscious misuse and narrowing to one single definition, by people who clearly know better, for the simple sake of invalidating someone's argument. I thought we already went over this. My experience with standing in ZZ, is that you are focused, very in-touch with your body. I would call that meditation. What is walking the circle, if not meditation?

Well, that's what you get on an internet forum, or life in general...a lot of people who have read things, or heard things, repeating them for the benefit (and sometimes detriment) of others. I do my best to always include "in my opinion" or something to let people know how much stock they should put in my words. I think that if people are careful what they post, don't act like experts if they aren't, and listen to other people's advice with the same thing in mind, we can all get a lot of good info from a forum like this. I know very few actual "masters" (actually I know none, but that doesn't mean there aren't any) who would take time to post on an internet forum. If we left it up to them, there wouldn't me much to talk about here, except just some philosophical musings... It's the same with any site I've been on. You learn, at some point, not to just repeat what you've heard, unless you have experience with it, or you qualify it with "this is just something I've heard". It does annoy me to no end when I see people who clearly have no idea what they're talking about repeating some nonsense back in a post they read somewhere by someone else who they assumed knew what they were talking about...but I'll admit, that guy was me, once upon a time. But thankfully, a merciless member called me on it and I was sufficiently shamed enough that I usually catch myself doing it and stop before hitting "post".

Thanks gatito!

What videos?

I bought the above referenced book a few weeks back, and have been standing for a couple years now (though more seriously just in the last 9 or so months), but I just opened it and started reading last night. I was happy to see that I'm not doing anything seriously wrong. I can also see that the book is going to help me quite a bit. He has very good descriptions. I agree with what I've seen expressed in other threads, he doesn't go super deep into anything. But that's good. It's just a short, couple hundred page book, and gives you the basics you need to know for standing. Anything deeper than what's in the book isn't something you need to be thinking about before you've been standing for years anyways, in my opinion. He very much stresses the knees never going past the toes, but in the first section, he does mention that you will probably feel pain. He doesn't go into depth about how much or what kind.

Depending on my state, it'll happen to me, but usually not until about 10 minutes or so in. It usually doesn't happen, but every now and then it will...Obviously since nobody here can see how you're actually doing it, it'll be hard for them to give advice...if you're doing things right, then yeah, some amount of shaking seems normal to me, especially when you're not used to standing. Totally different kind of "workout" than any moving exercises. I stood with a guy whose first time standing ever was for about 40 minutes, and his entire body was shaking just a couple minutes in. By the time we were done, his shirt and pants were soaked through with sweat. The teacher said "your body is empty; no chi". But he respected that the guy kept standing and didn't give up, and said that standing like that every day would build chi.

In my limited experience, they can be a bit of "fast track", which is probably detrimental to serious practice in the long run. I credit the hallucinogens I took (strictly for recreation as a stupid kid) while I was young for opening up doors in my head and possibilities in my mind that I never considered before. Whether they were illusions or glimpses of the "real thing" (and whether there is any difference between the two ) I don't know, but they got me thinking... I have yet to test this, since I haven't taken any hallucinogens since I really started to "practice", but I feel that diligent practice, with an occasional substance-induced experience punctuating things, is probably ok. I think if you really are on a path, you'll know if the substance brings you closer, or farther away from where you're trying to go. So...for someone early on their path with possibly no real teacher and not much of an idea what the "real thing" is...I guess substances probably aren't too great of an idea. And it seems to me that I've never, so far, heard anyone who I'd consider to be far on the path, advocate using any substances. So at an advanced stage they don't seem necessary or beneficial.

This does make sense. And I've made a lot of "realizations" during self practice. Sometimes they're right, and sometimes they're wrong, but they cause me to ask questions, and feel a lot more ownership of my progress. It's always nice when something "clicks", even if it ends up being incorrect. It always leads to a deeper understanding of what I'm doing.

Honestly there isn't much to talk about. I trained with a teacher and his disciple for two weeks. We learned a couple forms, I did a LOT of bagua walking, lots of kicks and running and stretching, and did ZZ every morning, first thing. Really, two weeks just isn't enough for anything...He made a couple adjustments here and there, but really didn't try to get much across verbally on what I should be doing. Probably if I went back and showed real interest in becoming a student of his, I'd learn more...but who knows! I didn't really even scratch the surface of his teaching, I'm sure.

Agreed. When I spent two weeks (nothing, I know) training with a teacher in China, the first time he had me do ZZ, he left me for 45 minutes with a bowl of water on my head... The water thing he only did that once, I think to give me a feel for pushing my head up, and keeping straight up & down, but other than that, that was the routine every morning. He said, through an interpreter, when I mentioned that was the longest I had stood in ZZ by probably 25 minutes up until that morning, "now you'll be able to start holding it even longer".

This is a great thread for me at this moment. Thanks, and keep it coming.

Yeah, that's about right. I know I'll never be that sculpted, because I think you have to work specifically on certain muscles with specific exercises to get that actual look, but yes, I agree. I hike a TON. I do zhang zhuang most mornings, if only for 20 minutes. I do exercises with a 9ft wood staff that I learned through xingyi and bagua, plus some sit ups and pull ups. That's pretty much it. The staff exercises in particular have made me strong in a way I never was with weights, since it really requires your whole body working together to do them. Good core strength, and then arm and shoulder strength as a side-effect/by product. But then I never really knew what I was doing when I lifted weights, I just "did some stuff". Pretty much sit ups, pull ups, push ups and some shoulder stuff with 15lb barbells. Nothing major, and I've never had a gym membership. I live in the Mountains! I'm lucky. Most machines in the gym are just trying to replicate things you'd be doing outdoors.

I have an image in my mind of a healthy strong body, and another image of a "weight-lifter". Could be a cultural bias on my part, but there's a different kind of physique and muscle associated with people who max out at the gym and get bulk. The healthy, in my completed uneducated opinion, kind of physique is more like the olympic athletes you see (dead liftes aside). Or Bruce Lee. He was seriously muscular, and worked out a TON. But not at the expense of speed, flexibility, and all that. Swimmers, track & field, gymnasts. Those guys are strong, and flexible. I think a huge part of it is probably what's already been said, keep flexible, but also include lots of cardio. The typical beach strongman image I have of those huge weight lifters is not something I think it's possible to attain if you run or bike or do something similar a lot. You just can't get that bulky unless you neglect the endurance, cardio side of things. And that's a good thing... But yeah, good exercise and muslce building in your 20s is a good way (as long as you don't overdo it) to build a strength foundation to rest on later in life. And I think for most Westerners in the modern world, deep relaxation and meditation is not possible without first getting some serious exercise worked into your life. Whether it's lifting, cardio or both. You've got to have a clean, healthy body. I know that's not being debated here...it's weight lifting itself...but I think that everything up to and not including getting "huge" in the sense of the guys who can't turn their head without their whole body following, and can't even put their arms down at their sides they're so huge (some people are actually born with this physique; that's a different deal, obviously) is helpful to cultivation. Everything in balance...I think you'll know, with how your body feels, if you've gone too far.