Reed

Yeah, when I did some Northern Shaolin years ago this Shaolin monks training video used to do the rounds. I discovered some of it on youtube a few weeks ago. The iron eggs training section always used to make me smile; rather them than me

Interesting article and doesn't surprise me in the least. RAW's comments made me laugh as well:

Don't think this one has been mentioned on this thread. I'm halfway through it and greatly enjoying it. If you ever got into 2000AD you'll probably like it. http://www.freakangels.com/?p=23

That's interesting. I've come across him before, and he looks an interesting figure, but I've never actually read anything by him. I was about to say I'll have to add him to the list and then I remembered I was trying to read less not more

Cool, I hope you get some mileage out of it What was the author you've been having good results with?

Yeah. I think the most interesting aspect for me was how personal experience can be more powerful than language/books etc to change a person's perspective. However, looking at the Daily Mail article as well, even if he did have a genuine experience of higher beings etc it seems to me a bit of a leap to claim Christianity is true.

I'm not the best person to be answering questions on techniques about self hypnosis but I'm happy to tell you what I do To answer your question, yes the core of it is like affirmations as I'm much better with language than visualisations although working with hypnagogic states (as I'm sure you know) really aids visualisation (I've done a fair few journeys in that state). I basically start meditating on my breath (I find my nose easier to focus when I'm lying down). Then I start tensing and relaxing different muscles starting with my head down to my feet (and thinking things like 'now I relax my x' when I breathe out and relax a particular muscle). Then I do a countdown from 10 to 1 visualising myself in a lift going down. Finally I get onto the affirmations but it's more than that for me (unless I've misunderstood the term). You can do all sorts of things. I start off by thinking things like 'with every breath I take, I relax twice as much' and 'every time I do self-hypnosis it becomes twice as effective'. Then I get onto the core of the self-hypnosis with things like 'every day I do x minutes of zazen'. I guess if you can visualise yourself doing the practice it might be more effective. I'm not sure. I might try it out at some point. If I'm still awake, I don't bother counting back up from 1 to 10 etc I just do more meditating until I fall asleep. Here is a link for the kind of thing I'm talking about: http://www.wikihow.c...m-Self-Hypnosis

What I found helpful in the past is trying to do something every day even if it's just for a minute. Also, self hypnosis, especially when you're drifting off to sleep, can be quite useful for programming yourself to do things. It's something I haven't done in a while, but this thread reminded me about it and I've started doing it again.

Yes, it's funny you should write this because I was just thinking about that when I was writing my last post on that thread. It's probably why I like Suzuki so much as I also spend too much time reading in comparison to practice. This year I've had to really try and focus on doing a little bit each day of things like Zazen and Bruce Frantzis' stuff although I'm still way out balance in comparison to how much I read.

Does the following make any sense or have I misunderstood things? It's something (minus the Zazen) which Huston Smith was saying in an article I was reading the other day: Zazen along with things like reading/practising the Tao Teh Ching and Chuang-Tzu will help you make more efficient actions and not waste Chi whereas Taoist alchemy/meditation will help you build up and gain more Chi? Or is this too simple?

This is a very interesting thread and something I've been wondering about for quite a while although I'm struggling to follow a lot of it Earlier this year I was looking for, or interested in pursuing, 'pure Zen' as supposed to Zen Buddhism, and I was recommended Suzuki's Zen mind, Beginner's mind by a lot of people. I ended up reading it several times (although I wouldn't pretend to fully understand it) and greatly enjoyed it: I like his style. It's also part of the reason I've started looking at Taoism again in a much deeper way. For people who are familiar with Suzuki and Taoism, anyone care to mention (or point to a relevant post in this thread) any differences -- in a simple way, preferably?

Hi everyone, I've been slowly drifting into Daoism this year and recently started working on Bruce Frantzis' water method. I found this forum originally when I was searching for material on him a few weeks ago and have been enjoying reading this forum since so I thought I would join and say hello Hope to have some interesting discussions and a few laughs along the way.

Hey Basher, thanks for the welcome. Good to know I'm not the only one drifting into Taoism

Great thread, many thanks for all the links. I sat and read about 160 pages of this last night: it was hilarious!