GreytoWhite

I grew up in Stockton, CA wish my mother had put me in the Cabales Serrada Escrima class instead of the wimpy aikido dojo. I would also liked to have known money management. When I opened my first checking account after moving out I was clueless how any of it worked and impoverished myself. Also, I would have liked another language other than English.

@ralis The drivers issues typically effect odd OEM hardware of the newer or cheaper models. Typically if you buy a decent laptop that is 2 years old or less Linux will not have much trouble with the drivers so long as you are willing to stray from open source occasionally. I personally don't care about the philosophy, I just want it to work and it usually does so quite well once I've done my tinkering. My old Ubuntu machine circa 2009 ran very solid. I didn't restart it for over 270 days once. It took me a while but once I got things working properly it was great. @Apech There is a distribution called Zorin OS that is based on Ubuntu. If you donate to their project you can then get a GUI that is almost identical to Mac OS X from what I understand. Their free version looks almost like Windows 7 from what I've seen. Still, I don't like that they make you donate just to get a different GUI appearance that is close to something else. Between Mint and Pinguy I would personally go with Pinguy. It has a lot of software pre-installed and you don't have to go digging through the software repository. Since both are based on Ubuntu the main difference is in the GUI which are both somewhat similar. They should be equally easy to install and configure. You may want to have an alternate computer available during initial setup so you can look up fixes to your issues if any arise. Typically Ubuntu based installs are SUPER easy. Unlike Daoist arts you CAN learn Linux from a book and many of the more hardcore Linux communities will tell you repeatedly to RTFM or read the fucking manual. For the most part you can find what you need on the Ubuntu community which is fairly welcoming in comparison the tl;dr rtfm crowd. The funny thing is that both Linux and Mac OS X are based on UNIX and there have been some interesting parallel developments. If you're looking for a decently priced WIntel machine I could not recommend the Dell Outlet more. Sign up for an account and be sure to subscribe to their newsletter via e-mail. About once or twice a month they e-mail coupons of 15-25% off of their already low prices. I always recommend getting a graphics card other than Intel's HD option if available simply because you can use that graphics card to help the overall speed of your computer even if you don't game. Flash and Web videos in H.264 will be processed by the graphics card instead of the CPU. H.265 is coming up quickly, I wouldn't trust Intel's crap graphics hardware to do well at all. Another thing is distributed computing if you're into that sort of thing, you can contribute quite a bit more with a decent graphics card that also does computational function.

Yes, I agreed with that sentiment GMP. When I first learned to move from my LDT it made a ton of sense. I had a friend of mine I used to work with try to throw a shoulder into my back once. He got a running start and then he bounced a good 4 feet or so until the wall caught him. It was pretty funny because I didn't even expect or really feel it. Peng FTW. I think the best thing to take to a fight is the willingness to start off vicious. Kick the knees, punch the liver, elbow the kidneys, gouge the eyes, fishhook!

I've only done some sleeping stuff a couple of times and find it very hard to manage the excess energy I get from it. I typically speak with certain intelligences whilst doing the sleeping stuff and learn a lot.

I hear wonderful things about an Ubuntu side project called Mint. It has the Cinnamon and the MATE GUI which are both much closer to the Gnome 2 desktop environment. Gnome 2 was very close to Mac OS X in appearance but there seems to be a movement within the Linux community to further differentiate their GUI from the competition of Mac OS and Windoze. Mint is also considered to be the easiest Linux distribution to use. Pinguy looks to be an Ubuntu variation that may be of interest to you. It is very easy to use, by default the GUI is very similar to Mac OS X in appearance and has all of the normal Ubuntu support. Another good choice may be Fedora Core or OpenSUSE. Both of these have great productivity features and support available as well as being very stable. Although Linus Torvalds himself apparently HATES OpenSUSE which is like saying Lao Zi is unhappy with a certain lineage's take on his philosophy. Remember with Linux you may have to install certain things that are against the philosophy of open source such as Adobe Flash just to use the Internet how you are accustomed but this is a rarity now. Most normal user oriented distributions include this material by default.

If you want Sun style neijiaquan Tim Cartmell is in Southern California.

Hmm... I have talked with some Baha'i refugees from Iran and there were some very horrible stories particularly from right after the Islamic Revolution. Even through these experiences these people were some of the humblest and incredibly gentle people I have ever encountered.

I found a lot of vascular growth in my hands and arms from practicing Wing Chun's Siu Nim Tao and also from Chen taiji's chansigong. Within three months' time my left hand went from having one vein visible below the back of my hand to many veins. The interesting thing is that the visible veins on my left hand are traveling in more of a spiral fashion than those on my right which were visible before I started chansigong.

http://www.manchesterkungfu.com/CONTACT.html That might have a little bit more useful information for his purposes. Looks like the fellow learned from the Little Nine Heaven guys. I wish there were someone nearby from that lineage, the Splashing Hands style is really interesting looking to me.

Yes, I understand this, what I am trying to communicate is that the varying levels of song produce different body skills.

There are varying degrees of song dependent on the art and its focus. Taiji is more relaxed than bagua in practice and that is the easiest comparison. Even within different lineages there are different focus. Xie Peiqi's animal styles for instance have varying degrees of song and that's all within one lineage.

If you really need exercise and have to wait to see a good instructor in bagua I think your time would be better spent in an exercise program and just learn qigong since you're not really interested in fighting. Most of the old masters typically learned an external art or did manual labor before starting their study.

WARNING: Contents may be offensive. http://thewordsfromthegreyspace.blogspot.com/2012/10/those-same-knives.html

Thanks. I would appreciate anyone else's feedback.

I think it's more of a certain... resonance than a mating. It's all vibrations right? So you find someone working at a similar vibration or whose vibe creates a great harmony with yours. Sometimes your vibe or theirs will change. That is difficult and painful.

Right there with ya joeblast.

sinsancer, As a chronic pain sufferer I can't agree with your initial post much. Pain was my main motivation to get better and come to these arts but as far as grounding goes I don't find that it is very effective. When pain is a part of the baseline existence it is no more grounding than walking to the mailbox. Reduction of pain is still my main motivating factor. I found, for myself anyway, that my own pain was severe enough and still is that I have very little compassion or sympathy for others. Especially if they don't want to improve their situation. I think this drive for compassion and realization of others' suffering is a very Buddhist approach and I do not particularly care for Buddhism myself. zanshin, regarding emotional pain I found for myself that love is still something I am capable of but it's usually an energetic and empathic mirroring of the other person's emotion than something that arises within myself. It's easier to mirror someone's communication style than it is for me to actually feel. I found when I had some Kundalini activity, which produced an awesome DMT trip, that love was much easier but I still do not know if it was just a wider mirroring effect or from my own palette. I can remember very clearly being capable of a full emotional spectrum as a child but as I grew, was abused, and saw horror going on all around me that changed. My loss of emotion may have also had to do with the traumatic brain injury I experienced as a child. I'm often given the observation from friends that I am like a robot that gets upset occasionally; except when intoxicated and then I become a rather jovial and pleasant person with little reservation. However, I'm not fond of being very intoxicated any longer, there is too much fallout all around. Orson Scott Card addressed a very big issue for me with his Peter Wiggin character. The question paraphrased was, "If a psychopath chooses to act as a good person does, what is the difference?" I still have trouble with exercises like Inner Smile. Transforming something into love or happiness is very difficult because I have no framework for such a feeling in a state of sobriety. Basically I'm running it on software emulation in hopes that a neural pathway will eventually burn in to my brain as neuroplasticity says it should. I'm satisfied enough with the emotional stress/physical release for now.

It looks like John Bracy recently started an internal arts virtual training program as well. http://chiarts.com/index.php I liked Ken Gullette's instruction, it was very clear and well presented. He doesn't believe in any of the more mystical aspects so if you're looking for that he's not the guy. He does however give a very clear progression and has a great selection of videos at a low cost. His views on internal strength coincide pretty well with Mike Sigman's. Sigman's material is a good way for beginners to start learning jin but will not allow one to advance as Sigman himself is only an intermediate level player, like Gullette. http://www.internalfightingarts.com/home.php?varset=s:415-pm:p

I scoffed at the "supernatural" aspects of qigong practice until I actually saw the qi flowing around my body. I hadn't read anything about it, a friend just showed me some silk reeling and zhan zhuang. I think qi is just another something Western science hasn't taken apart, studied the smallest piece, and then rebuilt to see what it actually is.

According to the Xei Peiqi lineage bagua folks Gong Baotian was taught the Monkey system by Yin Fu which included a number of kicking and lightness techniques. It was apparently modified and taught in an incomplete form later because someone used that system to murder people. The qing gong work has different requirements, the vertical force and energy is much more difficult to channel than your typical Microcosmic Orbit, up the Governing and then down the Conception. From what I understand, a lot of the lightness comes from controlling the legs with the solar plexus chakra and middle dantian over the lower dantian. This is kind of a reverse process for sending force and energy through the spine. Where fa jing with the hands is dependent on tucking the tail bone, a quick release of the tuck and then return to that position, performing qing gong techniques is quite a bit different. Michael Guen has talked of difficulty in integrating the internal organs so they are not damaged in practice as well as his personal inability to combine Yang taiji mechanics with the vertical force. Another interesting note is that the pao chui set from the Gong Baozhai branch resembles a Ma Gui lineage set as well as a Fu Zhen Song set.

http://www.southernskykungfu.com http://shenmentao.org/

I still haven't sat down to watch that movie properly. When I watched it the first time I had been awake approximately 60 hours and was so full of caffeine and sugar I couldn't think.

http://www.theplanocenterforlifeenrichment.com

Happens all the time to me. When I used to push hands with my friend we'd both rip ass constantly and laugh it off.