onebir

I'm actually quite surprised myself that I'm not going insane over this. Good thing I'm not, though because it would be WAYY worse if I did. I guess I just sort of know that it'll eventually go away.

 

Regarding perception and attention- that's true! However, just like when you stop actively listening to something, your ears still perceive the sound, it's the same thing with this. It's still there even if I don't focus on it- in fact, I have learned to pretty much never focus on it, but it doesn't really help it go away...

 

It sounds like you're handling it really well. Perhaps the best way to go is just to ignore it?

 

You mentioned focusing on one part of your brain tended to reduce the sound. I thought perhaps the focus on something else was more important than the exact location of the focus...

Does sleep paralysis and seeing ghosts and other things fit into here? I'm sure many of us have had the common experience of going to sleep and in the moments between consciousness and sleep being visited by something.. a cloud of mist, a ghost or an entity you could actually see there in your room while you could not move your body. Scary as hell, which is then why you struggle to move your body get away from it.

I've had an entity visit (scary), & I get lucid dreams now & then. This wasn't like the former (too visual) or the latter: visual in a much more intense way, without a sense of dissociation from my body, but with a strong feeling of incongruity. Funnily enough, despite the fact that the pre-lucid dream dissociation often comes with a sense of impending death, I found it easier to surrender to than these bizarre images

This has happened to me a couple of times now & I wonder if anyone recognises the experience. While falling asleep, the visual images I've been presented have seemed so bizarre that I've been jolted wide awake. The first time the image was a pulsating 3D fractalish thing, more recently it was an infinite field of tesselated cartoon faces.

 

Like most people I get some interesting hypnagogic imageary, but these seemed so out-of-the-ordinary for me I immediately woke up thinking "WTF"!

 

I was able to get to sleep without too much trouble both times, and I'm not distressed by these experiences. But I am curious...

Well now I'm kind of stumped..

You sound very calm & unflustered about this now - how about trying to apply as full as possible awareness to what you're doing (ie anything other than the sound)? After all, a perception needs a certain amount of attention to be sustained...

Well, language is a little hard for a beginner though People keep telling me 慢慢走

One major problem I had trying to improve my Chinese in China was getting decent textbooks. The bookshops had very little, and would often be missing volumes of multivolume sets etc.

 

I finally discovered a website that sells Chinese published textbooks at near-Chinese prices:

http://www.studychineseculture.com/

(they ship to China & worldwide; if you're inside China you don't even need a bank account to pay; just take cash to any bank, along with their bank details.)

 

There's a series of books by Zhang Peng Peng that I think looks particularly good ("Intensive Spoken Chinese", "The Most Common Chinese Radicals", "Rapid Literacy in Chinese". Also check out the FSI materials (www.fsi-language-courses.org) especially for pronounciation which can be a big hindrance to communication (& progress).

 

& if you haven't discovered it yet chineseforums.com is a good place for asking about the language & study methods/materials.

 

慢慢来安思佳

One thing I came to understand recently is that I do need to move out into a new location. This provincial city does not seem to be a good choice and does not serve my needs. Chengdu has more to offer, while I stayed there I did attend qigong with Dr.Zhang Zheng Bin, a Lineage holder in the Sixth Generation of Nan Gong Zi Ran Men (that's what is on his card). At the moment he is on a tour in Europe. However I have not heard from people who translate him, that he would differentiate female and male practices.

There might actually be more high level people in smaller places, where the pace of life is slower. They just won't have high positions in various associations (which often seem to reflect administrative prowess/guanxi as much as anything...)

 

It'll take longer and a more grass roots approach to dig them out. But if you have the time, you may have a better chance of meeting someone who's more interested in teaching you than in money; some Chinese teachers are extremely frustrated that so few Chinese young people are interested in learning what they can teach. They often view their practices as an integral part of Chinese culture, worry it will die out, would like to see it spread to other countries etc. So they can be very happy to run into a westerner who's prepared to do the work to learn from them. I've seen this happen a couple of times.

 

Apart from parks, it might be worth chatting to people around temples. AFAIK there aren't many functional Daoist temples, but Buddhist monks and nuns are often pretty approachable, and may know people who practice qigong even if they don't themselves.

Actually I heard Wang Xiangzhai's daughter was still teaching in Beijing a couple of years ago. It's possible some Yiquan people might be in contact with her, & she might have female disciples even if she's no longer teaching.

 

Yao Chengguang's school was in Nanguan Gongyuan (南馆公园 off 东直门北小街). I think the school's moved, but probably Yiquan people still train there. There were also Yiquan people training in Guanyuan Park (官园公园 off 平安里西大街). Or you could try asking one of the Yao brothers (Yao Chengguang & Yao Chengrong) both have schools with websites.

你好right back at ya ;-)

 

& congratulations on venturing to one of the provinces of mountains & mangled Mandarin. (No slight to the people of Sichuan intended - it can just make communication a bit tricky...)

 

It might be worth finding out if there's a local taijiquan society (太极拳协会 or maybe even 武术协会) near you. Certainly the big cities have them. Many of the people involved will only know the more modern forms. But go along and do the Beijing 24 form and talk to people and you'll find some of them know traditional forms, hold lineages, know other stuff etc. And some of them will know people who know people etc...

 

Also have you tried practicing qigong in a park & chatting to locals? When I did that they'd sometimes tell me where to find other people doing qigong...

 

Likely most of the people you'll find will be male, but I can remember seeing a 奶奶 demonstrating a pretty bone-crunching Chen taiji form

 

祝你好运!

Seeing a couple of people apologising for taking the thread 'off-topic', as 'OP' I've got no objection to this. Compared to some threads in some forums it's stayed remarkably 'on topic', and been interesting reading.

 

It'd be nice to get a bit more detail on steps 7-12...

 

But it'd likely take me months of assiduous practice to get to step 6 anyway

Bruce has a LOT of free stuff on his site these days, much of it is taken directly from his older books. I'd check the info on his site then sign up and get the free guide

Thanks - I hadn't thought to check there! The guide indeed covers the first six stages. Dan tian breathing was the 12th & I have a rought idea what went in between. Enough to be going on with

I think there are 12 of them, I did them with a Water Method teacher years ago but I've forgotten the sequence. Recently I've been doing quite a lot of Vipassana, but I my breathing sometimes feels like it 'needs some work'. And (Goenka/U Ba Khin) style Vipassana really only has one 'fallback option' it'd be nice to have more for those sessions where Vipassana just ain't working.

 

Shipping makes buying the book uneconomical where I am, so it'd be great if someone could these exercises list them (or even describe them if you've got time/inclination).

A family just moved in next door here in Kunming & they did something very similar. For the whole day!

The interesting thing (to me) about this research is it potentially confirms standing and taiji as effective forms of exercise, because the vibrations in question have small amplitude & pretty low frequency (if I remember correctly).

 

Bone and muscle surfaces are composed of cells, so both have fairly regular grain. When grained surfaces rub together, a vibration results; tibetan singing bowls are the prime example. In the body, the vibrations will inevitably small - perhaps imperceptible. But the research indicates this may not matter - large amplitudes aren't required.

 

For given grain size, the speed of the two abrading surfaces affects the frequency of vibration. Again, playing with a singing bowl demonstrates this. So the slow speeds of movement in standing (with a mo jin) or practicing taiji may be further exploiting the effect by using low movement speeds to generate low frequencies.

 

If there's someone with a physics or engineering background, it'd be great if you could put up the speed/grain-size/frequency relationship; assuming I can understand them I'll try to dig up info on the size of cells & work out roughly what movement speeds would create frequencies in the the desired range (assuming this has been published somewhere?).

some persistent lower back pain that has troubled me (which you can attribute to retention, it may or may not be the cause).

 

Mantis, you also mentioned 'getting sick out of the blue' in a previous thread. Together with back pain - particularly if this doesn't respond to exercise, stretching etc - these are the two symptoms of prostatitis that I've had. It's taken me quite a while to put them together. You may be able to save yourself some future problems if you get the possibility of prostatitis checked out.

That's probably it - 螺 (luo) means spiral like in a fingerprint or snail shell. 旋 (xuan) is to circle or spin. Together they generally mean spiral or helix, also screw. 勁 (jin) of course is energy, strength, or force. Literally, I'd translate it as spiraling energy. I guess it could also be translated as screwing energy... gotta love those xingyi/bagua guys...

 

I've heard a chinese yiquan teacher use the word in that sense so I think you're right. (The spiral he was talking about was 3d though - more like a snail shell than a fingerprint.)

Of course you'd learn to do the form mirror-image.

I agree - I've tried doing the Beijing 24 Simplified Yang form - which I've heard described as "balanced" - in mirror-image and there only bits that feel good are the moves I've previously practiced as single moves to both sides.

 

Seems entirely natural to want to be able to do any given move well on both sides. & want to be able to smoothly link together moves from a form in short sequences that aren't in the form, treating the form as a catalog of movements rather than a practice routine set in stone.

 

Using a single form, that doesn't include too many separate movements, in this way, stresses quality over quantity of techniques. For an extreme example of this approach, there's yiquan, which (as taught by the Yao bros) in place of a form has about 12 shili (aka testing force) single move exercises & five punches. Many people develop very usable skills mainly from practicing a set of material that's limited compared to many traditional tai ji or other internal styles.

 

(Thanks for the clarification on backwards. I was quite confused about how that could be useful - or even possible!)

I know Yang people do it --- my teacher jokes that it's because they only have one form and eventually get bored repeating it, so they reverse it to have something new to do with it.

 

Is backwards running the sequence of moves backwards - & somehow stringing them together - or doing the form backwards as if someone filmed it & reversed the film?

 

(I think some traditional Yang styles have at least 2 emptyhanded forms, incidentally, the 'normal' long form, and a 'fast form'.)

here is the first asana, it is known as "Sirshana"

 

 

here is the second asana, also known as "Sarvangasana"

 

 

this is the last asana named Matsyasana; this is to ease out any cramps or stiffness developed from long term practice of the above asanas.

 

 

 

I teach yoga, and most beginners in my classes can't do sirsasana safely, with or without a wall. Having said that, my students are mainly female southern chinese, & their relatively poor arm strength and short arms don't help. But I'd urge anyone attempting sirsasana to get a more detailed description of how to do it, and preferably some instruction, before making a habit of doing it. Practiced incorrectly for long periods it can cause neck problems. Note that in the photo above the person is leaning to slightly to one side - that's very difficult to detect if you're practicing alone, and probably isn't helpful.

 

People have less trouble with sarvangasana, but some people need padding (eg a folded blanket) under their shoulders to reduce the pressure on their necks. It helps to go into halasana, and wriggle the shoulders closer before raising the legs into sarvangasana. Once again, there are some subtleties to the posture that the description above omits - the elbows should be drawn in to shoulder width (if possible - unlike in the picture), & the fingers point upwards. With the shoulders drawn in & pushing into the floor, the body can be lifted up a bit, leaving room for the neck to curve a bit more gradually than would be the case if the shoulders (ie trapezius muscles) were totally relaxed.

 

The version of matsayasana shown here includes a lotus. If when you sit cross-legged your knees naturally rest more than a few cms above the inside edges of your feet, a full lotus will put a lot of strain on ligaments inside the knees, and can cause injuries. The main function of matsysasana is to allow the cervical vertebrae to bend in the opposite direction to sirsasana and to decompress (very little weight should be on the head - most should be on the elbows). The lotus isn't necessary for this; the legs can just be extended with the front thighs tightened, heels pushing away.

Apparently, when they get ill, they know what to eat to cure themselves. A research project is being set up to observe them & screen the plants they eat for compounds for use in human medicine.

 

"Chimp medicine is good medicine"

 

I'd always assumed animals (unless maybe they're traumatised) were "one with the Dao", and that humans weren't because we'd developed the ability to use language to communicate, & from there it crossed over into the medium for thought. But I wasn't so sure about apes, which have some capacity for language. But this level of sensitivity to their own bodies and the plants around them - judging from the story they select plants by instinct rather than learning from the other chimps - suggests they are...

 

A vote for Trunk's icon

In this thread:

http://www.thetaobums.com/solstice-greetin...arer-t4394.html

a couple of us were posting in Chinese.

 

Having read some other forums where the language shifts into one I don't know, I can imagine this could be irritating for some forum members. Perhaps it's worth having a policy on this.

The chinese character for jing is comprised of the main radical mi,which symboliizes uncooked rice.It also contains the radical sheng,which holds the meanings of life and birth.Lastly the radical tan is employed meaning essence of life.This sequence of radical which comprise the jing, clearly illustrate the dual products of pre and post natal jing.

 

That's an interesting interpretation of the character, but probably doesn't reflect its etymology. According to zhongwen.com, 精 is a sound-meaning character, with the meaning coming from rice (米 - perhaps because alcohol, 酒精, a kind of essence, was distilled from rice?) and the sound from 青 (now pronounced qing1, but pronounciations have changed a bit over the last few thousand years)

 

So attributing meanings to the upper & lower halves of the 青 element is a bit of a stretch; meaning-meaning characters only seem to have two parts - as far as I can remember.

 

Having said though the Zhongwen.com etymologies are based on the 2,200 year old Shuowen Jiezi and "subsequent research by traditional etymologists", they aren't definitive.

Would this exercise be a good one for developing the flexibility to sit in full lotus?

 

It could be a very early stage, but I doubt it could develop enough external hip rotation to get you to full lotus on its own, unless perhaps you gradually rotated your feet to point out more and more. But in this position, that could strain your knees.

this is how we know, i posted this previously that there was a medical study in which the men that regularly consumed dairy products had a much higher risk of prostate cancer.

How does a dairy products-prostate cancer link have any bearing on discussion of a possible retention-prostatitis link?

 

for example, the oneida community of the 1850s practiced coitus reservatus and no ill side effects where noted in the men. here is a quote from the wikipedia page (it can be found here)

That quote isn't attributed, and could change next week. The various environmental factors I've mentioned could well have been very different at the Oneida Community, and the effects of the practices only identifiable at a statistical level. It's not good quality evidence.

 

retention is not dangerous, i do not seek to argue but to inform those who wish to try it.

I don't wish to argue either. But what does 'not dangerous' really mean? Crossing the road is not dangerous, but people die doing it. There's concrete evidence that retention can lead to problems in western non-cultivating celibates. There's no concrete evidence that cultivation completely prevents these problems. Admittedly this may reflect the cultural/philosophical shortcomings (no pun intended) of medical science. But even if "proper cultivation" does offset the documented risks, there's a lack of clarity about what 'proper cultivation' is, and a risk that some cultivators may try to do it 'properly', but not get it right.

 

Nothing in the discussion to this point weakens this line of reasoning. So let's admit there's a risk, and encourage people to mitigate it. Partly through giving as full a description of 'proper cultivation' as possible, and partly through admitting that medical checks could play some role...

...cultivating by changing thoughts, views of sex and lustful desires.

This is really a separate issue to retention, and must be much more difficult in (most) modern societies, where sexual images are hard to avoid, than in the environments when retention was originally practiced. People practicing retention now have probably also had larger numbers of past sexual partners, and perhaps are more likely to have low level prostate infections as a result of this. These are very hard to detect because a) the pathogens don't cross into the prostatic fluid in large numbers and many are anaerobic & difficult to culture in a lab.

 

Yet those I know who hold fast to retention practice have not had any health problems.

This doesn't imply that it won't cause problems in some people - the 'sample' is presumably pretty small, the environmental factors probably don't span the full range of possibilities etc.

 

Because the many practitioners out there learning different views from so many books and teachers, it does make it difficult to know exactly what is proper.

Agreed

 

A good way to find out is to try it, and monitor one's mind, behavior, and health all the times. Look for the ebbs and flows and cultivate to not be caught in the ebbs and flows. Not many can do it.

Accurately monitoring ones own prostate health is very difficult. Particularly if you're inclined to attribute sensations there to the cultivation process before considering the possibility of low level infection.

 

It is possible because of this that there are many cautions on the retention practices.

I'd agree there probably should be.

I once saw the sahasrara on a long stem above my head when I was in New York in 1953 or '54.

 

You'd think he'd remember which year it was - it's not every day you get to see your crown chakra