RobB

Currently, for my sitting practice: I look to identify and stay with stillness. This can turn up in different ways in body and mind. Whatever turns up I try and stick with until it inevitably all goes pear-shaped and I need to regroup. Bagua: twist

Ha - tried a few of these at the weekend. "then toe move toward the hand" mad leg strength required!

@Taoist Texts might be referring to the idea that, in Chinese medicine, viruses can be seen as invasions of pathogenic environmental factors and treated accordingly. It might be worth looking into the acupuncturists in your area. In any case, they may be able advise you on building your health to enable you to manage the situation better.

I regularly make this soup in winter. You can add as much grated ginger as you like!

I'm in a porridge phase at the moment. Andrew Sterman has a good article on the subject. Ive also had chicken and broccolli (pre cooked) with a scatter of beansprouts and soy sauce if I'm off carbs for a bit.

It's the Bujinkan Godan test. You can find videos on YT.

Thanks @liminal_luke. Equinoxal best wishes to you also. Its at this time of year that I stop shaving, growing a beard (with management to prevent wizard-like excess) until the spring equinox when I shave it all off to reveal my, slightly older, but essentially unchanged potato-face.

Perhaps it is 'perfect' as in 'as it should be'. Everything is as it should be. Things might not be pleasant or enjoyable but they might be precisely in line with how the Universe (or your Universe) should be.

Perhaps it's because scientists are human and like to do cool, fun, stuff from time to time? There might be a publicity element to it as well. In the UK at least, researchers will get partially judged on whether their work gets media/public engagement. I'm not sure this is necessarily a healthy thing but it is what it is. Cool images increase the likelihood that your normally obscure and incomprehensible work will get a moment in the limelight.

The phys.org article links to the original paper https://www.nature.com/articles/s41566-023-01272-3. Which contains this figure: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41566-023-01272-3/figures/6. The accompanying text reads: Coincidence image of interference between a reference SPDC state and a state obtained by a pump beam with the shape of a Ying and Yang symbol (shown in the inset).

Before anyone gets too excited, the tai chi(yin yang) pattern was chosen by the experimenters to help demonstrate the phenomenon they were looking at. It didn't arise unexpectedly/naturally.

Pitchford seems to be going for a synthesised view of 'eastern' rather than CM specifically. I prefer Daverick Legget's books which focus on CM food energetics. Beinfield's book is heavy on the Wu Xing - in a good way. The descriptions of how these might manifest in an individual are interesting. She has this slightly odd questionnaire in the book to determine your element 'type'. I'm not sure how good it is but the way she talks about the Wu Xing fits quite well with BaZi Day Masters (at least in me and some people I know).

Might be interesting to some: “Meditation Sickness” in Medieval Chinese Buddhism and the Contemporary West C. Pierce Salguero A certain percentage of people report experiencing adverse mental and physical side effects from practicing meditation. Contemporary scientific literature and personal reports from meditators are beginning to document the phenomenon, but centuries-old Buddhist texts also warned about the dangers of “meditation sickness.” Writings from medieval China not only identify the adverse mental and physical symptoms that can arise in the course of meditation practice, but also explain why these occur and how they can be effectively treated. Might these materials contain important therapeutic information that is relevant for meditators today? What would be required to make this historical knowledge accessible for contemporary practitioners and clinicians? And do our disciplinary norms as religious studies scholars even allow us to ask such questions? https://blogs.dickinson.edu/buddhistethics/files/2023/08/Salguero-Finalized-ms-for-publication47.pdf

Hi @amosharari - where are you headed in Wudang?

Finally made it to the Hilma Af Klimt & Piet Mondrian show at Tate Modern. Very cool. Nicely curated showing parallels and divergence of development for both artists. All happening with Theosophy in the background - both artists were members of Theosophical Lodges and had contact with Rudolph Steiner and others. Mondrian. Note theosophically-significant belly buttons. Hilma Af Klimt went through an iridology phase... Blackboard illustration from a talk by Rudolph Steiner Mondrian drawing trees again Mondrian self-portrait. There was a photo of him at about the same age with similar young Rasputin vibes