Reed

Yes, it's been a while since I listened to it but I quite enjoyed it when I heard it Last time I looked, I couldn't find any actual video of him, unfortunately. I always quite like watching people whose ideas interest me.

not sure if this has been on or not although it's quite fun: http://zenpencils.com/comic/98-alan-watts-what-if-money-was-no-object/

No worries. He always struck me as quite an interesting and jolly person. Here's a couple of interviews of him (one written and one audio) which I quite enjoyed: http://dreamflesh.co...views/philhine/

also here is some interesting stuff http://www.chaosmatrix.org/library/chaos.php

Phil Hine's always good for a laugh. Some of his old stuff is here like oven-ready chaos: http://www.philhine.org.uk/writings/index_e-books.html

Welcome to the site. Hope you have fun on here!

It's very interesting reading your post. I've tried a lot of different things as well over the years with limited success -- diet is the most successful thing so far -- and I definitely agree that the causes of ME are a very physical thing. I haven't tried TCM and don't know anybody who does it so I'm afraid I can't answer your questions I will say one thing which you may well have thought of but I'll say it anyway: IME increasing intake of omega three even in food can lead to slight fever -- it doesn't necessarily just have to be high levels of omega-3. Taking vitamin E (several hundred IUs) gets rid of the fever in an hour or two (and also itching as well). Depending on what you've been increasing in your diet and if you've been getting more slight fevers recently, that might be one place to look.

I can relate to most of this. I'm still recovering from a bad episode of ME/FMS since I physically injured myself a few years ago although I've never been the same since I had glandular fever around 20 years ago. I'm sure you've done this already but I'll mention it anyway: it's very important to rule out any other illnesses by getting blood tests and if necessary examination by eg. an orthopaedic surgeon for things like your joints. Yes, nutrition is the biggest factor that has helped me and I'm just talking here about eating healthily. I reintroduced meat/fish/eggs after about 20 years which helped a lot. Also cutting loads of sugar out such as eating wholegrains, and also having healthy snacks between meals to help get rid of spaciness (which is basically like hypoglycaemia). Even having one teabag/day of echinacea helps my immune system although you can't take it all the time and need to take breaks from it, I think. I still haven't looked at echinacea properly -- it's the next item on my list. I'm afraid it's a long slow process, yangluchan. Good luck with it

That's interesting on Suzuki. I'm thinking maybe asking if BKF should be taken like a car maintenance manual or something like TTC/ZZ might have been a better question perhaps. I don't know who Milarea is, unfortunately, although I get your point -- all I seemed to get is entries on malaria when I use a search engine lol Thanks for the input. This was also helpful. Yes, this was a very good and helpful discussion in general. The above issue has been weighing on my mind for several months since I made a decision to start practising deeper/more often. I think I've reached your conclusion as well and will look to things like TTC/ZZ instead for more metaphysical and ethical issues etc

It seems to me the general consensus here is that books on meditation/qigong/internal alchemy etc like BKF's 'relaxing into your being' should be viewed more like car maintenance manuals as opposed to books like Suzuki's 'Zen mind Beginners mind'? ie just like with car maintenance manuals we don't really care about the personality of the author or their attitudes and how they behave etc, the important issue is whether we have a set of techniques which do the job efficiently and safely. What do people think about (seriously) training directly with a teacher in real life? Do our priorities change or is the important issue still developing techniques which 'do the job' when it comes to things like meditation/qigong/internal alchemy?

I think that this is roughly what my concerns revolve round.

I saw this interview the other day and also enjoyed it. However, I'm in a similar situation to yourself where I'm not sure if I'm that drawn to him as a person -- it's difficult to say for sure as I don't really know him -- and I also wonder whether that might create problems in the long run. I've only been working on his water method a few months so I can't really comment on how good it is yet (seems okay so far) but I know a much more advanced person who has found it personally useful and also with his students.

No problem. December is always a hectic month, anyway Many thanks for all the input, it was very helpful. I'm still having a read and thinking about it.

Great interview: very interesting and helpful. Many thanks to everyone involved

Yeah, I was getting it as well. I've had it before when there were site problems. I wasn't able to get on earlier either.

I don't have Frantzis' second book in the series and its been ages since I read Bardon's IIH. What would you (or anyone else) say were the differences, if any, in terms of achievement/results between someone completing/mastering IIH and both of Frantzis' water method books?

That's interesting. IIRC, it reminds me a little bit of 'LHP' Tantrics who deliberately pursue taboo behaviour like eating meat and spending time in graveyards and brothels, so they exhaust things like their 'unhelpful' desire/temptations and break programming etc Funnily enough, I came across this last night when I did a search on Bardon and smoking. I only looked at Prophecy's response to criticisms on Bardon's weight, caffeine and nicotine which I also thought was an interesting perspective. I wasn't familiar with the author and it's good to know that they are reliable source. I will sit down and read the rest of it later on --------- Last night, I also found this link to a Yahoo discussion site on Bardon from the thread I had bumped on the other forum which may be of interest to people. It's been a couple of years since I last looked at that thread and Bardon, and the Yahoo group still looks quite active although I don't know what it's like personally; I think I found the link via Rawn's website, possibly. http://groups.yahoo....ranzBardonMagi/

I thought his IIH was very good although I wouldn't pretend to fully understand the whole of it and I also thought Rawn's website was very useful. I tried stage one of his IIH for a few weeks before I gave up on it. With things like imprinting food, drink and air, it worked quite well for me and I succeeded in feeling quite peaceful when I was imprinting 'peace of mind'. It had a similar result to doing something like breathing meditation etc for a while. With pushing negative energy into cold water, that didn't work so well for me and pushing that kind of stuff into the ground works much better I've found personally. I never really sat down and did the personality thing but I've seen that kind of thing crop up in Wicca books and occult web sites before and I would imagine it is quite useful. I bumped a thread on another forum on the same topic and people seem to generally like his stuff and found it useful. I would say one thing that put me off him a little bit was that he couldn't give up smoking (I can't remember how he died and if it was related -- it might not have been). While I don't expect teachers to be perfect, and I think the message is more important than the medium, I still found that a bit disappointing given the context.

Hey, good to see you signed up on here. Hope you enjoy the site and get some mileage out of it

Glad you liked it I've really enjoyed it so far as well (I've got about 40 episodes left to read now). I'm not actually familiar with any of his other work but I will definitely look out for it in the future.

I did about a year and a half of Hung Ga and Wing Chun, and we used to do mainly forearm and shin conditioning (from what I can remember) on each other and on a wooden dummy. We were told to use dit da jow on our forearms and shins for all the bruises. I don't know who Chris Lomas is or what kind of training you're doing. IMO, it might be a good idea to get in contact with Chris like others have suggested. Good luck with it

This looks like the whole of the video. It won't tell you how to lift up your testes unfortunately although, on the plus side, you get to see that guy hang himself (demonstrating iron throat, not trying to end the pain lol) after being repeatedly kicked in the groin