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Found 4 results

  1. Propaganda War

    China is fighting a propaganda war. Beijing's plan is to shift all blame from China for the initial botched response concerning the outbreak. The communist government is claiming that it has largely controlled the epidemic, even as it suspiciously now blames “foreign arrivals” for new cases of virus. Videos smuggled out from China shows huge lines at a hospital in Chongqing, raising questions about just what is happening around the country. What Beijing cares about is clear from its sustained war on global public opinion. Chinese mouthpieces have launched a broad attack against the facts, attempting to rewrite history. Chinese state media is touting the government’s effective governance. The truth is that Beijing dropped the ball early on because of long-standing CCP policy. Chinese officials knew about the new virus back in early December, and did nothing early on except to persecute their true heroes sounding the alarm! China also has enablers abroad helping to whitewash Beijing’s culpability. The World Health Organization refused for months to declare a pandemic, and instead thanked China for “making us safer,” a comment straight out of an Orwell novel. Most egregiously, some Chinese government officials have gone so far as to state that the Wuhan virus was not indigenous to China at all. The reality is that China did not tell its own people about the risk for weeks and refused to let in major foreign epidemiological teams, including from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. Thus, the world could not get accurate information and laboratory samples early on. Because of China’s initial failures, governments around the world, including democratic ones, now are being forced to take extreme actions that mimic many of Beijing’s authoritarian tendencies,. Not least of the changes proposed will be in more invasive, digital surveillance of citizens, (public safety has always been the main venue to curb freedom and we all need to keep that in mind as the world transforms around us), so as to be able to better track and stop the spread of future epidemics, a step that WILL NOT be necessary, yet it will be an argument parroted by most government because, of Beijing's slipshod incompetence.
  2. Why does entering puberty (10+ years old) seem to increase the coronavirus lethality from 0%?
  3. Hey bums! Due to the Coronavirus my teacher asked me to translate and share around the following article. I wasn't sure where to publish it, but though you guys might find it of interest. It details a breathing method to boost defensive qi (weiqi) and help restore the body after an illness. The method is a little intense so be careful with it. Make sure when breathing out to complete release and relax the body. Moving Jing to Change into Qi: A Method for Restoring Health from the Yellow Emperor’s Inner Classic From a talk by Wang Liping Written by Hu Qiao Translated by Nathan Brine The Yellow Emperor’s Inner Classic can be split into medicine based on human physiology, and medicine based on scientific inquiry into the relationship between humans and the cosmos. With the later, the Inner Classic discusses how people can stay healthy and live longer by understanding the correct time and space to do things, and the relationship between people and things. When external disturbances do enter, such as wind and cold, the inside of the body might go through some small adjustments, but will we not get sick. The Inner Classic also pays particular attention to what a person should do if they are already ill. The Body’s Order of Life (人體生命之續 renti shengming zhi xu) is an important concept that arose out of medical research into organ function. The Order of Life refers to energetic processes in the body. In the old days, when illness had been basically cured after a serious illness or epidemic, there was still the issue of rebalancing The Body’s Order of Life. No matter if the person is still sick or not, there will be traces of the illness left behind. Mind and body, energy channels, and internal organs etc. will all be damaged to some extent. Therefore, we need to work with the four stages needed to rebalance the mind and body and bring The Body’s Order of Life back to normal. The Four Stages Rebalance (調整 tiaozheng) Condition (調理 tiaoli) Repair (修復 xiufu) Rehabilitation (康復 kangfu) In the rebalance stage, we follow the cycles of heaven and earth to rebalance daily life. We use the outer world, such as medicine and food etc., to rebalance internal energetic function (jing-qi, blood-qi etc.). Gradually, the Body’s Order is restored. In the condition stage, the emphasis is on rebalancing a person’s mental state and mood. In the repair stage, the focus is on repairing the harm done to the internal organs and energy system. At this time, The Body’s Order has already been restored to normal, but because of experiencing an epidemic, a person’s whole body will be weak, thus we will need to repair each internal organ one by one. In the rehabilitation stage, people can work to recover the body by doing baduanjin, tendon changing practice, tai chi etc. to nourish vitality and return to full health. During the repair stage we must make our body’s jing-qi (essence, vital energy) full, and bring the blood-qi back to normal. At this time we must use the yi jing bian qi 移精變炁 (Move Jing to Change into Qi) method. Yi jing bian qi is an ancient method using yinian (意念 intention/awareness), yishi (意識 consciousness), and shenyi (神意 energy of our spirit and intention together) to move the jing-qi and blood-qi to rebalance the energy channels, internal organs, and surface of the skin etc. Thereby returning the disarray of the body’s energy system back into a state of ordered homeostasis. In the old days, yi jing bian qi was divided into three stages: Use yinian to regulate the movement of the torso and four limbs to replenish jing-qi, to bring us back to normal in terms of daily activity. Use yinian and yishi to rebalance breathing and the movement of the torso and four limbs, allowing jing-qi and blood-qi to flow unobstructed. This will soften the breathing, still the mind, and relax the body. Use yinian, yishi, and shenyi to regulate the movement of jing-qi and blood-qi in our body. By using our yishi to regulate our qi, we will restore internal organ function, open energy channels, and allow the body’s entire energy system to run smoothly. This process reestablishes the Body’s Order of Life. Yi jing bian qi has many techniques. Initially we recommend a Taoist technique to rebalance the upper and lower parts of the torso, what medical practitioners call the upper and lower burners. There are four methods to rebalance the upper and lower burners: standing posture, stool-sitting posture, cross-legged sitting posture, and moving posture. How to do the three static postures (including how to use the yishi, yinian, shenqi, and shenyi) are all the same. For now, let’s discuss the three static postures. Standing Posture Use the wuji standing post posture. Stand naturally, feet shoulder width apart or a bit wider, both arms hanging naturally at our side with shoulders, arms, elbows, and wrists all relaxed, palms facing inwards, spine straight, chest relaxed, the two kua 胯 (two insides of the groin area) relaxed, two knees bent slightly, and two feet firmly planted on ground. Stool-Sitting Posture Sit on a stool with two feet naturally hanging down or touching the ground. Fingers naturally open, palms facing down, lightly placed on top of knees. This hand posture is called “Peaceful Form.” Cross-legged Sitting Posture Sit on a cushion or floor with legs crossed in front. Palms of both hands facing down on our knees. Relax whole body. After settling into our chosen posture, use both eyes to look straight ahead, look afar, the farther the better. Put yinian in the distance. Slowly bring the light of our spirit (神光 shenguang) from the horizon back to between our eyebrows. Slowly close our eyes. First, become still. Put yinian on our breathing. Make our breathing fine, even, and long. Inhale and exhale evenly. Slowly let our physical body relax. Let our heart beat more calmly. Practice Regulate Upper Burner Step 1. Breathe In Take a deep breath with our nose. Put yinian in our chest cavity and lungs. As we breathe in contract tightly. Let the qi reach the chest cavity and lungs (this is called Qi Fills the Metal Chamber). Breathe in until we cannot breathe in anymore. Do our best to also tightly contract the ribs. Hold Breath Now, do not breathe. While holding our breath, use yinian to expand the ribs, chest cavity, and lungs forcefully, at the same time let the spine become straight and centred. Hold it for a bit. Breathe Out Slowly exhale through nose (or nose and mouth together). As we exhale relax ribs, chest cavity, lungs, spine and whole body. Completely expel the old air from the lungs. Step 2. Breathe In Again, take a deep breath with our nose, use yinian and yishi to tightly contract the chest cavity and lungs. Do our best to fully inhale, filling the tips and lower parts of the lungs. Hold Breath Do not breathe. While holding our breath, figure out how to use yinian and yishi to expand our lungs, ribs, and chest cavity forcefully, and slowly extend the spine upwards. Hold it for a bit. Breathe out Slowly exhale through nose (or nose and mouth together), and completely expel the old air. Step 3. Breathe In Use yinian and yishi to breathe into our lungs, lungs contract at same time. Then breathe in again, and again contract lungs tightly, until we cannot inhale anymore. Hold Breath Do not breath. As we hold our breath use yinian, yishi, and shenyi to expand our lungs, chest cavity, and ribs. Figure out who to let the chest cavity expand to a point where the whole body gets hot, this will fill out the couli 腠理 (protective layer between skin and muscle in the body) of the body with jing-qi. Breathe Out Endure for a little, and then slowly and completely empty the breath out of the lungs. Regulate Lower Burner Step 4. Breathe In Take a deep breath with our nose. At same time lift up anus, pull up on genitals, and contract xiaofu 小腹 (lower abdomen. We lift up anus to seal in digestion qi, and contract genitals to seal in qi from our urinary tract). Use yinian to contract xiaofu. Contract as tight as we can, the best is to have the front and back of the body stick together. Inhale until we can not inhale anymore. Hold Breath Do not breath. Hold it. Use yinian to let the outside of the xiaofu and the xiaofu to expand. Then hold it some more. Breathe Out Slowly exhale through our mouth (or mouth and nose together). When we breathe out, the xiaofu and the outside of the xiaofu relax. Step 5. Breathe In Breathe in, lift anus, pull up on genitals, and contract xiaofu. Contract as tightly as we can. Hold Breath Do not breath. Hold it. Forcefully expand the xiaofu inner cavity. Again hold it. Breathe Out Slowly exhale through our mouth (or mouth and nose together). Step 6. Breathe In Breathe in, lift anus, pull up on genitals, and contract xiaofu. Increase yinian, yishi, and shenyi, contract as tightly as we can. Hold Breath Do not breath. Hold it. Forcefully expand our xiaofu. Make the xiaofu inner cavity, xiaofu, and outside of xiaofu expand. Expand until we cannot expand anymore. Again, hold it. Think of a way to expand the xiaofu cavity to a point where the whole body gets hot, this will fill out the couli of the body with jing-qi. Breathe Out Slowly exhale through our mouth (or mouth and nose together). The six steps above are done together as one set of practice. If our body still has strength we can repeat the whole set again, or even a third time. Things to Pay Attention To The upper and lower burner must be practiced one after the other. When we work on one area the shenyi will be in that area, if other parts of the body move ignore them. When working the upper burner, eyes look straight ahead and then move down slightly to look within the chest cavity. When we start working the lower burner, eyes look down. Use yinian to quickly move the eyes from chest cavity to the abdominal cavity. All the practices related to the yi jing bian qi method must be used with the Hold Breath and Cease Breath segments, otherwise nothing will change! In order to make it convenient for casual practitioners, and to avoid confusion, we have omitted the segment for Cease Breath. After doing this set of practices the body will be very hot. The body becoming hot is a manifestation of qi changing, this is the point of the practice. According to how tired we are after the practice, we can also Bathe and Cleanse (do silent sitting). Let the whole body relax. Let the hands hang at our sides and stand or sit quietly. Wait for the body’s internal energy system to change. No random thoughts. Do not think about anything. Just think about our body. When our random thoughts start up again, finish off practice by rubbing hands and face. The main point with regulating the upper and lower burner is to strengthen our defensive qi, and replenish our internal organs. This practice will definitely heat up the chest cavity and abdominal cavity, and even the whole body. This is an indicator that the defensive qi is full. The body’s couli is inflated by the defensive qi, and using yi jing bian qi is a great way to get it activated. Defensive qi goes from inner to outer to protect our physical body’s skin and body pores. When our couli is filled out then bad qi cannot come into our body. Therefore, if you are stuck at home with nothing to do, I suggest giving it a try.
  4. Because the coronavirus epidemic that originated in Wuhan continues to spread, I wish to share a simple immunity-promoting technique with members and visitors here. Coincidentally, I learned this incredibly simple and easy method from a student of Andrew Nugent Head while visiting Hubei province, the origin of the current coronavirus epidemic, in 2016. Andrew Nugent Head learned it from Dr. Xie Peiqi (解佩啓), a master of Yin style baguazhang. The Yin bagua practitioners were in close contact with Forbidden City doctors during the late Qing dynasty, and a great many wonderful medical and health promoting techniques were absorbed into their teachings. This is one of them, and it is something that apparently Dr. Xie would make some new baguazhang students do for an hour a day before training anything else. Andrew Nugent Head said he sometimes used to do it for two hours a day. The fellow who taught it to me practiced it while living in a very polluted Chinese city with bitterly cold winters. He and his wife did this method for an hour each morning and neither of them caught a single cold in two years. After learning this method 3.5 years ago I have not gotten a single cold or fallen ill in any other way. I do not think you need to do it an hour every day to get results, and in fact I almost never do it any more. After doing it for 20-40 minutes a day most days of the week for about two to three months, I could feel that my body had reaped the effects of this method, and I was able to feel that I no longer needed do it with regularity. I now only occasionally use it if I feel that I have been affected by pernicious wind-cold qi and need to, in the words of Chinese medicine, "clear the exterior." I would estimate I have done it only three of four times in the last year. Here is how to do it: 1. Stand with approximately feet shoulder width apart in a stance that you find comfortable. Relax your body. Your knees should be straight but relaxed. This is not a horse stance, going low will not help. 2. "As though" there were a ping-pong ball inside of your belly button bouncing constantly up and down at a fast pace and guiding the shaking of the rest of your body at its pace, shake your whole body. I say "as though" because this is not a visualization; the ping-pong ball image is just a suggestion to the body. Do not think of this as "filling the dantian with qi" or anything like that; do not strive to imagine a clear image of a ball. It's just a feeling. You can also think of shaking a big sack of rice to get the grains to settle. The most important thing is relaxing and letting yourself get a chance to know what feels right. 3. If you wish and your environment permits, after you have done this for 20 or more minutes, you can let out a few loud "ha" sounds emanating from your lower abdomen. Three to five is of these sufficient; do not do more than that. 4. Close practice as you please. Best to stand in stillness for some time after you stop moving, until your body feels settled and normal. Then go about your day. Important notes: -If you have time, I recommend doing this 30-40 minutes per day when you begin learning. This will give you enough time to get accustomed to the method and get the desired result. What is the desired effect? After about 20 or 30 or 40 minutes you will clearly feel your whole body has become relatively "open and unobstructed" (通). This is an unmistakable sensation. For me it feels like a shock wave that emanates from my lower abdomen region and then hits the entire surface of my body at once; making the "ha" sound with your belly after 20 minutes can help to trigger such a reaction, but the sound is not necessary. When you shake unto the point of "open and unobstructed" you will feel subtly blissful and get a sense of "that's good, I'm finished now." Important: For the purposes of strengthening the immune system against external pathogenic wind-cold qi (and "breaking" pathogenic qi if you have already succumbed to a small amount of it but are not yet sick with a cold or worse), it is crucial that the wave of "opening" reaches the exterior of the body. This will happen naturally, though, and you must not try to force or guide it. -Your shaking frequency can and will naturally adjust as you practice. That's great, let it happen. It's vigor and up-down range may also naturally change, also great. However: do not sway left and right. Do not wobble or roll your head. Your body and head should basically stay upright, and your posture should be pretty straight. There should be no twisting or spontaneous movements except for small, subtle ones. This is not zifagong and if you trigger zifagong you will get different results. -If parts of your body feel sore during the shaking, try to let them naturally "connect" to the origin of the shaking in your lower abdomen. Feel the connection and observe it. Do not force anything. -Always keep your feet entirely flat on the floor. No jumping, tiptoes, no spontaneous qigong. You need to keep rooted. -Again, try to do 30 to 40 minutes the first many times until you are totally clear about what the "open and unobstructed" feeling entails. Once you understand this feeling, you can just stop when you get that, which might only take you 15 or 20 minutes. -This method is especially good to do if you feel you were exposed to wind-cold and you have the sort of feeling that you get right before you succumb to a flu or cold. If you use this method at this moment, you have a high chance of preventing the onset of a full-blown cold. Unfortunately, if you already have a full-blown cold, I have no idea whether or not this method will help at all (again, I haven't gotten one cold since learning this). -Going overboard past the feeling of "open and unobstructed" resulted in dry stool for me. No need to do this to excess. I think I saw a video where Andrew Nugent Head said that old men in the parks in Beijing in his day would do this until they got "that feeling" and then they'd stop and as, "ah, great, 'open and unobstructed,'" and then start training other things. -Never do this method right before lying down to sleep or rest. Only do it when you will remain upright and reasonably active afterwards. This is because doing this method stirs up a lot of "gunk" in the body, which then needs to naturally mobilize to the places the body will put it to help it leave the body (remember, for example, that lymph fluid only moves if your body moves, and cartilage only gets nourished and cleaned by intercellular fluid if you move). My friend said he once ignored this warning and did this for an hour one morning before deciding to go back to bed. He got back up an hour later feeling awful. -A very influential qigong master in China in the 80s and 90s included this method in his foundation practices required for all beginners. His idea about why it is so useful is very interesting, so I'll share it here. He pointed out that if you put iron filings on a flat surface and then cause that surface to vibrate at a steady rate, the iron filings will spontaneously organize into regulated patterns. He theorized that the various qi, electrical, and magnetic fields of the human body react in a similar way to shaking/vibrating. In other words, doing this practice takes a chaotic, disturbed "pattern" of qi and then "reorganizes" it. This, he postulated, makes it much easier for the body's natural defenses to operate, and has the effect of strengthening the factors that taken together are what Chinese medicine calls "defensive qi" (衛氣/weiqi). Given that I have not succumbed to wind-cold in several years and this method protected my friends in a very polluted and densely populated city in the same way, I think there is a lot of wisdom in this statement, even if it is just a hypothesis. If anybody has any practical questions please let me know and I will try to answer. Best if you try it a few times and then ask questions if any arise. Let us avoid theoretical and speculative discussion if possible, in order to keep this thread simple and accessible for people hoping to improve their immune systems. 祝 身體健康