idquest

Opening the two channels is a good thing, who'd argue. But M. Chia is not very eloquent as to how long it might take. From very good posts above you could get that for the vast majority of practitioners we are talking about years if not decades of diligent practice. You could train your awareness along the route for MCO, but you can't shortcut the foundation training in the long run as JB, SZ, and others have put here.

I agree. The leadership in modern world is determined by the ability to generate and consume technological advances and innovations. So far the USA have been successful in this area. But look what's happening in major technological universities. This is no secret that vast majority of students are from Asia. The trend is obvious.

To OP: I'd definitely look into the diet. A lot of good suggestions here. The first thing to try would be to figure out if some specific food causes allergic reaction. The first possible culprit to try is wheat. You mentioned you are gluten free but then you are saying you eat bread. This is not gluten free. Second - try elimination diet with the an attempt to find an allergen. For me the allergens are coconut oil and soya beans. Both are perfectly vegetarian by the way. Good advice here on cutting down on sugar. This includes fruit, especially high sugar content things like peaches/nectarine. One of the things that helped me with HERD was skin of oranges. What I did was pulp small whole oranges, preferably with thick skin, with hummus and ate this with steamed vegetables. But you could think of something else you'd like. I took small oranges because I didn't want to eat too much sugar from their flesh. Most difficult thing with your condition would be if you have some sort of intestinal bacteria overgrowths. THis is difficult to discover and even more difficult to get rid off. So I'd try elimination diet first with the hope there is an allergen that causes your problems. Also, keep in mind that with age the content of intestinal flora changes, not to the better. Mostly due to life long taking of antibiotics. In practice that means that there have to be changes in diet to accommodate the changes in the intestinal flora. That means that if you have eaten something for you whole life doesn't necessarily mean that you can keep eating it; you might not have proper bacteria to digest some specific food. THe sad side of all this is that no doctors will help you figure all this out. On a positive side though, all this doesn't require large financial investments.

Inflammation in prostate and urinary tract can be triggered by food. The decisive factor is not vegetarian-nonvegetarian, but some specific foods that can trigger auto immune response. For me such triggers are coconut oil which, ironically, is praised for its healing features, and turnips. Both are vegetarian btw.

Are you sure this is your muscles and not your stomach? You might somehow constrict movements of your diaphragm when you try to breath in a conscious way rather than doing natural breathing; and that might affect your LES and/or stomach.

AFAIK Wang Liping doesn't teach taiji, only qigong/neigong. So it all comes down to what your goals are, what you are trying to accomplish. Some teachers teach taiji as a form of qigong, like BKF for instance. But if you want to train things like open/close, pulsing, spiraling - this is best to study as short qigong movements. Also, qigong usually implies heavy breathing gong. This is why in my previous school the teacher said that taiji is like a half of qigong (he was asked exactly the same question). He meant that qigong would incorporate a serious breathing component and work with glands, which is much more difficult to accomplish by doing taiji.

Is your idea that taiji (and other IMA) need to be sponsored to survive and develope? In the past some war lords might have sponsored the arts, now it is either the government or private sponsors? This actually makes sense to some extent. Throughout the history, fine arts and music survived and evolved being commissioned by sponsors, why not martial arts?

A singularity will come with all its wonders, but for tiny minority. The vast majority will continue to drag on.

Chechens committed a number of terrorist attacks in Moscow and Southern Russia in 1990-2005 including blowing up several 5-stores apartment buildings in Moscow (hundreds of civilians killed) and killing about 200 children in a Southern Russia school. This is well documented and ample evidence exists. All the evidence indicated those ter. acts were done as paid jobs. In some cases there were signs of subtle KGB involvement. Like absent patrol on a road at a time when it should have been and the like. I have little doubts the Boston bombing was done by Tsarnaevs. The main question is who was the ordering party and the cover up.

Fascinating scientific study: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3050654/ The criteria used in the study: volunteers completed the Pahnke-Richards Mystical Experience Questionnaire (Griffiths et al., 2006), which assesses seven domains of mystical experiences: - internal unity (pure awareness; - a merging with ultimate reality); - external unity (unity of all things; all things are alive; all is one); - transcendence of time and space, - ineffability and paradoxicality (claim of difficulty in describing the experience in words); - sense of sacredness (awe); - noetic quality (claim of intuitive knowledge of ultimate reality); - and deeply-felt positive mood (joy, peace, love). Ratings were made on a 6-point scale relative to the participant’s overall life experience. The observations were made over 14 months periodof time. Some comments from the article: The most striking finding from this 14-month follow-up evaluation of the effects of psilocybin and methylphenidate administered to hallucinogen-naïve volunteers is that a large proportion of volunteers rate their “psilocybin experience”1as among the most personally meaningful and spiritually significant of their lives. Fifty-eight percent and 67% of volunteers, respectively, rated the experience as being among the five most personally meaningful experiences of their lives, and the five most spiritually significant experiences of their lives; 11% and 17%, respectively, indicated that it was the single most meaningful experience, and the single most spiritually significant experience.

You could try to engage perinium and kwa joints

As soon as gay marriages are recognized by law, the federal tax revenue is going to drop by a sizable amount. Who is going to pay for the difference?

Here is a good discussion on BKF's curriculum: http://dankleiman.com/2013/01/29/3-layers-of-neigong-practice-and-taoist-meditation-with-paul-cavel/

I've had a number of incidents were I was personally involved that were later reported in the media: TV, radio, newpapers. In ALL cases the facts of the incidents were grossly mixed up and/or presented inaccurately. In ALL cases that inaccurate reporting had nothing to do with any conspiracy or otherwise pushing forward any interest groups. All those inaccuracies were just journalists' mistakes due to the pressure of time/laziness. Some people say that the reports of the tragedy don't add up. I'm inclined to blaim only the time pressure for journalists' inaccuracies. Not even laziness this time.

http://www.taichimaster.com/bagua-zhang/bagua-zhang-roll-the-ball/

Some time ago I had pain in the left chest. I thought that was muscle/ligament pain but I decided to check it anyway. So I went to a medical doctor. She said she couldn't hear any problem with my heart so I asked her how to distinguish between muscle/ligament pain and the heart pain. SHe said the muscle/ligament pain would feel like acute, sharp pain, and the heart problems would feel like pressure in the area. The muscle pain in the chest can also be alleviated by massaging a specific tendon down from left clavicle. It goes deep but still within the reach. Any acupuncturist or massagist would know this tendon.

Both heart and solar plexus areas could be dangerous to work with. While the heart area is obvious, the solar plexus may be felt as a lower esophagus sphincter or incipient gall bludder problems. The damaged LES is one of the most often occuring reasons causing heartburn, acid reflux. I've known people whose choice to practice either with heart or solar plexus would depend on their physiological / medical condition. People who would have tendency for heart problems would focus on the solar plexus more; and those having LES/gall bludder problems would more readily work with the center of the chest. The safer practices I know of include expanding those areas and not focusing on them as focusing would tend to congest energy/body fluids in the area. I'd only learn the technics from those who have practiced with these areas for at least 30 years and their age would be 65 YO or older.

This has puzzled me for a long time. Puzzled in a sense that virtually all sources I've seen talk about contractions in the perinium area and there is very little talk about relaxation there. My experience has been that relaxation is healthier and more effective. Do you advocate relaxation throughout the practice or alternating contraction and relaxation?

You could look at this inexpensive book: http://www.amazon.com/Internal-Structure-Cloud-Hands-Advanced/dp/1583944486 The author, Robert Tangora, refers to Bruce Frantzis as one of his teachers. The material presented in the book is at about the level you could find in the narrative portion of the Bagua Mastery Program. The Program is much more elaborate and detailed of course.

AFAIK, MBA can be done part time. I'd strongly encourage you to start building your professional career along with the part time MBA (or any other professional designation) study. Grow in your workplace and amplify that growth with your study. In my view and experience, it is easier to find meaningful job with sort of middle education than with the highest. Overeducation is a big no in hiring process. I'm assuming you aren't working right now as you have mentioned pretty big student loan. Sorry if I'm wrong.

This is a good question. I'd say none of the above were the primary reasons for any bubbles and/or past recessions/depressions. What I've noticed is that the systems, like USA financial system for instance, tend to spiral themselves to 100% of efficiency or close to it. That results in extremes in business cycles. Whether this is good or not depends on a personality preferences. Some people like is extreme, some people like it moderate. As we here are sort of study daoism that teaches balance as a main point, I'd expect the preferences here leaning towards the balanced approach. Doesn't seem to be the case. As for regulations, I think they are necessary to smooth the extremes resulting from the human nature, but again this is a matter of preferences. There are people who make good money during crisis, they would advocate the highest efficiency of the system and as a result the widest extremes.

Apparently, shamans can't guarantee safety in using the herb: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/49009779/ns/world_news-americas/

I researached this issue a bit in the course of my professional studies. It is clear for me that the lack of regulations was a major contributing factor in the severity of 2007-08 crisis. The prior withdrawal of regulations was backed on all levels of governments. One of the fiercest fighters against all regulations ironically was Alan Greenspan whose job description included oversight of the bank system of the USA. Now seeing how Republicans fight against regulations again one could wonder how short memory people may have...

Frantzis has two or three DVD's on San Ti. Unfortunately, it is a portion of a package of 11 DVD's. You can check his website, some info there posted free.

In my experience cold will increase the blood pressure. The idea behind that could be that cold will contract small capillars in the body and blood will not move around. The easiest way I know to get small body blood vessels filled is to stand ZZ. Once the small vessels are filled, there will be less blood for the head. Another point is to release major veins in the neck because they are responsible for outflow of blood from the head. IME this is best done by relaxing the neck and tissues close to it. Another great tool is walking either bagua or taiji walk. WWhen you walk like this you focus is on the abdomen and the legs. This normalizes the BP.