EFreethought

If I wanted to listen to someone talk about Jesus, I would have signed up for a Christian forum. Or go to church. We got plenty of those in the USA. Not too many places to talk about Taoism.

There are some Golden Shield instructors here in Austin, TX. I mentioned to my instructor that this thread got bumped up again. He gave me clearance to post, so if anyone has any questions I might be able to answer them.

@dmattwads, @Miroku Thanks for the response. Do you actually chant mantras, or do you repeat them mentally while meditating?

Are there any mantras that help with not "staying single"?

Does this "Inner Smile" have any similarity to the "Secret Smile" made famous by Glenn Morris of "Path Notes"?

Is Flying Phoenix only available on DVD? A lot of PCs these days do not have DVD players.

For sitting mediation: Just use a chair.

I lurk more than I post (I think this is my 5th post). I tend to read threads without logging in (mostly at work, I admit). No logging in, no personal Ignore List. So when someone hijacks a thread, that thread is pretty much hosed for a regular reader who does not log in.

Is Wim Hof method with just the breathing similar to qigong or pranayama?

About me: 47, live in Austin, TX, software developer by day. I did martial arts in college long long ago. We did some breathing exercises at the beginning, and I started doing them on my own. I have been doing meditation and chi-kung (as it used to be spelled) on and off (mostly off) for many years. I am trying to get more serious about it. There is a Golden Shield Qigong group here in Austin that I am thinking about joining. That is all I can think of at the moment. If you have any questions, let me know.

wstein: What taoist practices are you aware of in Austin?

I work for a large company doing a Java/Spring/Hibernate app. Not Java 9+ with Spring Boot. For us, it's like 2007 never happened. I am studying Clojure and other variants of Lisp. I would love to get a job doing some type of Lisp. I think the ancient Lisp masters hit upon some enduring wisdom.