idquest

I'd suggest discontinuing energetic practices and start doing standing postures as described by Kam Lam Chuen or Bruce Frantzis. By doing them you'll learn how to relax your body and induce a relaxing downflow of fluids. Master song/sung. After that see yourlesf what suits you best.

It is not important at all. It is just whether you have a calling or not. If all your friends are taoists and you don't feel a thing about it - no worries, no sweating. Do you life yourself.

IME, meditation makes sleep deeper and more restful; and it doesn't reduce sleep hours. Intentially reducing sleep hours can be harmful. In young age lack of sleep will affect one's brain only, but for older people lack of sleep negatively directly affects their muscles, tendons, and bones condition. This is my direct personal experiense. I also think that internal organs could be affected as well. THere are some reports on people who slept/sleep few hours. It is not clear though how this kind of regiment affects their health long term. I've come accross at least two reports on how people initially reported excellent health sleeping 2-5 hours a day, but after a while they would run into serious problems. Best is to listen to your body without any preconceptions, IMO.

B. Frantzis addresses this issue in depth in his Meditation Circle. Highly recommended if you can afford it. As other mentioned, Unwinding the Belly has a good piece on massaging the diaphragm.

First of all, you need a live teacher. Without a teacher there is a next to zero chance one would be able to move beyond level one. At best, books and video contain half of material, even less so on higher levels. Also, you might concider a timeframe. Each level could require 1-3 years of dedicated practice (that is minimum one hour a day).

JUst to let the Bums know that Bruce has started a new online program, studying the TTC. Surprisingly, the program is not advertized at all, at least I haven't seen any advertizements. I know about the program only because the TTC program is a sort of continuation of his online Meditation Circle where I participated. So far a discussion on Chapter 1 has been released. Bruce discusses the ideas from the Chapter 1 and offers a meditation on the topic related to the chapter. I'm in no way promoting the program. I can't even say so far if I like it or not as I'm not a big fun of philosofical daoism. But the meditation was interesting.

Is it above or below the navel? Because if it is above the navel it's likely stomach/esophagus problems.

I agree that poor alignments are the likely reason for the knee pain. You can check whether you are trying to twist your legs or keep your weight on the balls of the feet; both can lead to knee pain. The best is to educate yourself on the basic body alignments. Frantzis is good as well as Egoscue for that.

Neither liberal nor concervative, that's for sure. Those are categories of clown circus in world capitals. As for self versus society, I'd repeat the airplain safety instruction: deal with yourself first then with the others. Makes sense to me. How can somebody help others if he/she can't help him/her self?

I have always thought that cutting trees results in more damage to the planet ecology than human-produced CO2. Greenhouse effect due to CO2 is a theory so far. But changing landscape due to human activity is harsh reality. I'd direct resources to massive planting trees/shrubs in arid areas like Sahara rather than to fight for CO2. So far Sahara has been advancing with intimidating speed and African tribes cutting trees on its periphery don't help much.

I couldn't understand from the article what would be the reason for a would-be dramatic increase in CO2 in the atmosphere: - the technology of extracting oil from the oily sands would release the CO2 - the consumption of the final product - oil and its derivatives. The second reason would not give any incremental increase in the atmospheric CO2 IMO. I'm not sure about the first one. Is there anything special in that technology of extracting oil from the sands that would release huge CO2?

1) Neal Stephenson - everything 2) Ian Banks - Culture 3) Peter Hamilton - Confederation 4) David Marusek - Counting Heads 5) A Asimov - unsurpassed Foundation 6) Julian May - Saga of Pleocene to Magnificat

Exactly my sentiments. If you liked his 'Relaxing...' CD you might want to check his Meditation Circle he launched some time ago. THere is more interesting stuff there.

1) Alignments. If the alignments are bad, any practice, even walking, will be dangerous 2) Deep abdominal breathing. The one that engages the whole diaphragm and upper spine 3) Ability to relax muscles. Without that any attempt of meditation will be futile. Of course there are lots more, but these three are critical in my view. Even though they don't look sexy. If only I knew this short list when I started!

I found this interesting. The article says that westerners read facial expression of emotions differently than East Asians (Chinese). East Asians trust eyes but not lower face/mouth muscles for reading/understanding emotions. Also, East Asians showed more diversity when classifying emotions. They needed such emotions like shame, pride, guilt in addition to the basic six emotions to classify facial expressions.

Yes, I was inspired by Boutenko's books as well, they were a very entertaining read for me. Many people report improved skin on green smoothies. The only thing, I shy away from spinach because of its high oxalates content. I mean it's good once in a while, but I wouldn't make it my green staple.

Why not make fresh green smoothies from live plants?

I'd differentiate r&d tax credits given to oil companies and credits given to alternative technologies companies. When you give r&d tax credit to an oil company, you support a well established technology that has existed for at least 50 years, even if we take into consideration the most complex ocean rigs. Whereas when you give r&d tax credits to alternative technologies companies, you promote completely new technologies that can and will move the USA forward and maintain its world leadership. When you support the oil companies, you only promote inefficient business models requiring large consumption of refined oil; you also maintain oil leadership in the USA and their owners. I don't think this is in the long term interests.

IME when we work with qi we might get insights. Certainly, those insights are far from being as deep and profound as those attained by Teachers. So we have two options. First - put our hope on attaining the Oneness with the Tao in one big jump. Or getting small steps up the ladder. Perhaps this is a personality issue: some would prefer the first option, some - the second.

Thanks for this good outline for standing practice. Dao rain Tao, would you agree with the interpretation of 'packing breathing technique' that another Taobum member, Snowmonki, has suggested? Namely, that packing is meant to be not forced compression in certain areas of a body but rather expansion of those areas? When I practice ZZ I experience expansion; but it happens by itself, without me forcing it. Sometimes I use expansion imagenary as a dissolving/relaxation technique though.

I don't see any difference or contradiction. You need material stuff - food, shelter - (nominated in monetary terms for the sake of simplicity) to sustain your living. Likewise you need to put some effort to advance in spiritual development. Some people are confused when they distinguish money and time. Both are resources. SOmetimes you have more money and less time, sometimes the other way. Just think of them as your resources, that might make things easier to understand.

I wanted to buy this DVD set but decided against it. From what I understand there were 4 DVD's on Yi-Chuan and 6 or 7 DVD's on Hsin-Yi. I wasn't intrested in Hsin-Yi so I thought it would be too expensive to pay 11 DVD's price for only 4 DVD's. Does he teach San Ti only or some other postures as well?

I'd say there are three types of taiji teachers: - those who only show you how to do it right. It's up to you to pick up know-how - those who show you how to do it right and also correct your movements - those who correct you alignments, your posture, and explain the basics/fundamental principles. I learned it hard way that the first two types of teachers are worse than useless unless you are truly gifted in body movements and alignments. If you want to begin your study under some grandmaster, keep in mind that he/she will likely be the first type teacher. And the lowest instructor will likely be a third type. The most useful IMO and IME.

I agree that effort of finding a teacher can be a necessary component of one's spiritual development. I also remember B. Frantzis's replying on a question (here on TTB) about different schools. The reply was in a sense that it eventually boils down to how full/complete a school is. Say completeness is 95% which means it would require dosens or years of full time cultivation - I'd say such a school would be a good one. And compare to another school that offers 3 levels out of 7 levels, and those 3 levels are already watered down or simplified to accomodate new age folks demand.