tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-134393232024-03-07T15:22:36.897-08:00Seeds of LongevityAn Italian-American, born in Brooklyn, NY, living in Taos, NM, who writes about Tai Chi, health, wellness, and occasionally about outdoor recreation. Chris Aloia has a BA in Psychology and a Master of Public Health. He is a father of two boys and works in Diabetes prevention. chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10404520347687352090noreply@blogger.comBlogger78125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13439323.post-2590122657714291652023-07-24T15:01:00.003-07:002023-07-24T15:02:01.694-07:00Have you found your North Star?<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiem5BRFR-kI-8LjNgNDxfVoAyAbIA8flGL1PjkfHtcGKDC5oTqLtvuYzIk8JNwTuwZTqeiytF-MfdSW_NBMcC2yFoeXFrQjSUAZjnh5vEaKUf_6Sh0Et5OY2DNNQLPO5FszYfihbrMX6QUH9a73SjSoS8ediu4IPta4b7T3kfy3Waj5FxSeQuYhQ/s3000/NorthStar.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1981" data-original-width="3000" height="211" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiem5BRFR-kI-8LjNgNDxfVoAyAbIA8flGL1PjkfHtcGKDC5oTqLtvuYzIk8JNwTuwZTqeiytF-MfdSW_NBMcC2yFoeXFrQjSUAZjnh5vEaKUf_6Sh0Et5OY2DNNQLPO5FszYfihbrMX6QUH9a73SjSoS8ediu4IPta4b7T3kfy3Waj5FxSeQuYhQ/s320/NorthStar.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><br />When I was a kid, I saw Shogun, a TV mini-series aired in 1980. It was about an English explorer who became part of Japanese society. After it was over, I was completely taken in by the katana and Japanese culture. I was in karate, and I was already enthralled with Kung fu from that TV show, which aired in the 70s. </span><p></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-71296bf1-7fff-ed07-18d4-32ed9bbf1c71"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">I was raised by hippie parents who were always making stuff from leather. They had artist friends, and I supposed they were artists themselves. I also grew up in Brooklyn during a violent time; there were cops chasing robbers; in fact, while playing on the sidewalk, an armed robber jumped over me, fleeing from a policeman. Both men had a gun drawn. There were many other instances, but I don’t want to come across in a bragging type of way. I am creating the context of my childhood. In other writings, I have discussed the level of bullying I lived through as well. I have always had these seemingly dual paths, that of the artist and the man of violence. These dual paths pushed me towards new ideas and stressed the need for self-defense. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Seeing, Shogun inspired me to make a bokken out of hardwood and start practicing cuts. I wanted to pursue weapon study further, but my Sensei didn’t teach weapons until one was a black belt. Disappointed but not dissuaded, I explored other ways to learn about weapons and frequented China Town in NY and purchased some weapons like nunchucks and staffs, etc. I knew from then on weapons would always be in my life. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">I remember sitting in karate after class, and we were all talking; well, the senior students and sensei were talking. I was listening because that was what kids did back then. I was a young 15-year-old. In the days before karate kid, there were no kid classes. You worked out with adults and sparred with them. Anyway, the highest-ranking student said he was going to Japan to study karate and live there. I remember thinking that was about the coolest thing ever. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">And here is where we get to the point of the story, deep in my heart, I was ecstatic about the thought of living in Japan, but it never occurred to me that I could actually do it. Whether we attribute that to low socioeconomic status or low self-esteem, it seemed beyond my reach, and further, no one in my life would tell me I could actually make that happen. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">After that moment in the dojo, I went on many journeys and adventures but never made it to Japan. I am writing this mostly to my kids who don’t seem to have a direction yet, and I want to let them know how to recognize that feeling when their heart leaps and that they can make it happen. They may not get to the highest levels, but they can certainly get where they want to go. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">I am not writing this out of regret; I still practice martial arts religiously 43 years later. Not many people can say that. In some respects, my journey might be the one I was supposed to be on all along. However, it is always good to remind people, especially young people; they can pursue what makes their hearts leap. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">The idea of Japan in my heart at 15 was more important to me than actually going there; perhaps that idea was a rough but concrete marker for the martial path, a path that is still to this day my North Star. </span></p><br /><br /></span><div class="blogger-post-footer">There are many lessons out there which we can learn from and change our lifestyle to help us live a higher quality of life.</div>chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10404520347687352090noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13439323.post-46199283821262925092022-11-30T14:37:00.005-08:002022-12-01T07:37:50.120-08:00Insulin and your health<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi9x-1Ii4XkobNTiOraR9nRvazAiJBpE-2qjUTNZ8RNrVSN2M3DtPoAWDOceNL9T7JxyPfjlsQ2CIFdenFFkMsWTAixWF_YcM2IL353OK535CWnGGcaWCQa39cdPFduxRmHHTRQTbLgB3qHX3x-pwypVyuhTjIxBw0f5F0Y8L_FvMAvBe5LV40" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="183" data-original-width="275" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi9x-1Ii4XkobNTiOraR9nRvazAiJBpE-2qjUTNZ8RNrVSN2M3DtPoAWDOceNL9T7JxyPfjlsQ2CIFdenFFkMsWTAixWF_YcM2IL353OK535CWnGGcaWCQa39cdPFduxRmHHTRQTbLgB3qHX3x-pwypVyuhTjIxBw0f5F0Y8L_FvMAvBe5LV40" width="320" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">Insulin helps blood sugar enter the cells, which your body needs for energy—turning it into glucose. It also signals whether to store excess energy as fat.</span><p></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-d42f37c1-7fff-3f8d-5f5c-3c2a7df8d84f"><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What does this mean for your health?</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Metabolism helps your body decide what to do with the food you just ate. If you eat a bunch of food, specifically those high in carbs and sugar, and don't exercise, insulin will tell your body to store the calories as body fat. If this happens consistently over time, you can get Type 2 Diabetes or other related metabolic disorders. Too much sugar in your blood is toxic, and it can lead to atherosclerosis and heart disease. Regularly having high blood sugar levels for extended periods (over months or years) can permanently damage parts of the body, such as the eyes, nerves, kidneys, and blood vessels. Diabetes is the leading cause of heart attacks and early death.</span></p><br /><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj8F-D0W-Vo_mF3kSdFlE4zR2m5R_kLXryITcV6uxZQyWv7gdArhX1DcibEJBnvQnl3UHPVKSBHdi6d3Oiiy2iZzZOeMe_K8E6zfbxgoFz4zvlfzYdipVW8PwfuuUyeAstWosR9M_fCpxvqSU3K6L7vIzBxFUxxwMXKV22yJQaoZSkXAsjI4t0" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="600" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj8F-D0W-Vo_mF3kSdFlE4zR2m5R_kLXryITcV6uxZQyWv7gdArhX1DcibEJBnvQnl3UHPVKSBHdi6d3Oiiy2iZzZOeMe_K8E6zfbxgoFz4zvlfzYdipVW8PwfuuUyeAstWosR9M_fCpxvqSU3K6L7vIzBxFUxxwMXKV22yJQaoZSkXAsjI4t0" width="320" /></a></div></span><p><span>The example that I like to use is comparing your pancreas to a small restaurant that comfortably serves a dozen people and is suddenly overwhelmed with 100 customers. That small restaurant can get through it a few times, but if it is constantly being overwhelmed with more people than it can handle, eventually, the staff will quit. One thing the restaurant can do is set up a maître d', which can help regulate the number of people being sat at tables and orders of food. </span><br /></p><p></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If you have a normal functioning liver and pancreas and are steadily using energy by exercising and eating moderately, your body isn’t storing much fat. Said another way, if you are not overwhelming your body, you will allow your liver and pancreas to handle the inflow of food, and you will be in balance. </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">But if you consistently are not exercising, not using the energy up, and adding more processed carbs and refined sugar, eventually, your pancreas will give out.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Why are our bodies susceptible?</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Overwhelming your liver and pancreas is a problem because, for most of human history, there was not enough food, and especially, carbohydrates and sugar were difficult to come by. A good example I use is for hunter-gatherers to get honey; it was quite a labor-intensive activity. First, you had to find a beehive. Then you had to climb the tree; if you needed smoke to disorient the bees, you had to make a fire by hand. These are all high-calorie expenditures. Said simpler, IT WAS HARD WORK. Once you got the honey and woofed down a couple of pieces, you would share some. Also, the bees don't have that much honey available in their hive, so if you wanted more, you would have to find another hive and repeat the whole process, or you would have to forgo honey. Adding to this, you wouldn't want to decimate your food source, so you would ration it and save it for later. </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEihwV-ZqP1k7p1_A8zITWupVFyYmEfbmYCVog0YJ81cPmTGu633FjqEPZsxlyrf02iXicghi90vmZv-_WKyXwPGC5R3AqjMyb6MQCEwTuzhMSF1UL-bIxSiz6euBdVpOA65Uop4h2aZl71sWtrZt73VoEi65R0O-z6Tx67suUS6-JrO8wMHgbI" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="768" data-original-width="1024" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEihwV-ZqP1k7p1_A8zITWupVFyYmEfbmYCVog0YJ81cPmTGu633FjqEPZsxlyrf02iXicghi90vmZv-_WKyXwPGC5R3AqjMyb6MQCEwTuzhMSF1UL-bIxSiz6euBdVpOA65Uop4h2aZl71sWtrZt73VoEi65R0O-z6Tx67suUS6-JrO8wMHgbI" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The same goes for dried fruit. The same issue occurs with drying fruit. First, fruit only lasts for a while, and you must store it. Second, you still have to process it, which is work. How much could you process? On the Pueblo, I often see homes with drying racks, but I usually see one or two. That isn’t a lot of fruit. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Nature was our dietitian and our fitness coach at the same time!</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Now that we've industrialized food, we can go to the store, buy 20 jars of honey, and consume them all in a day. Unfortunately, our liver and pancreas did not evolve to process/digest/metabolize all that sugar in that short of time. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The same thing happens with dried fruit; I could purchase bags of dried blueberries, cranberries, and cherries and consume them all in a day. I have reduced the time and labor to almost zero. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So this massive radical change in our food system forces our liver and pancreas to go from a small restaurant that handles a dozen or so people to corporate-level dining. This is really the food problem we are facing now. I hate to simplify things, but it is literally a problem of scale. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I've just outlined a scale issue, and our bodies are not up to scale! </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What can you do? </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So the problem is easy to identify. The hard part is instead of nature determining what you eat and how hard it is to get food, you have to step in and regulate your intake. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There are many diets out there, but the first step needs to be eating less refined carbs and less sugar. I would completely cut out juice and soda. And alcohol. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Soda is a direct sugar infusion into your liver, making it particularly bad for your body. There has to be some level of caloric restriction, and that means going without eating. You have to tell yourself, and I always do this for myself. I tell myself it's OK to be hungry. There's nothing wrong with it with going to bed hungry, especially in this day and age. Second, you do have to be active, and it doesn't require running marathons or being a bodybuilder. You just have to be active because that starts the reverse process of burning the energy that is stored as fat, and you can't reward yourself with a snack because you will never burn the stored fat. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As I mentioned, one of the roles of insulin is signaling the body to store energy as fat. Understanding this vital function is an opportunity to get involved in your health and start reducing damage to your liver and pancreas. </span></p><div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div><div class="blogger-post-footer">There are many lessons out there which we can learn from and change our lifestyle to help us live a higher quality of life.</div>chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10404520347687352090noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13439323.post-11449154117009936242020-09-30T07:50:00.008-07:002022-11-30T15:11:27.292-08:00Nunchaku and Demons<p><span style="border: none; clear: left; display: inline-block; float: left; height: 346px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; overflow: hidden; width: 253px;"><img height="346" src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/VtZTRGbVMUUfOoCNIpsJ0pDw1ctsytECp4TnpjIkZ5XEe88OcoiDJikjX9tmXm0R1ctpmMNhYrZp_af963A_AydtXlPRe9sqdLOTylrgmvIeJs6DGtbRlxM5i06GR6FPuh8YZ09j" style="margin-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px;" width="253" /></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When you get to your mid fifties, you start spending a lot of time being nostalgic and realizing those moments when you strongly connected with something because they are rare. </span></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-e28af0dc-7fff-2a9c-7813-14aa5bc210ff"><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 24pt 0pt 0pt;"><span style="border: none; clear: right; display: inline-block; float: right; height: 328px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; overflow: hidden; width: 229px;"><img height="328" src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/EwUKSEbWZIazQ-fM_-U5eWjhlqN5VXuCcPekTTyolzAUcCAe5cKKgePfAQ-EjfhGbx0Co35mzLVnnWSmFekYGYuhzgKeiM-JOueJDH9Qwge8poB7IgGk2V_8-5zvHZa41ExL7rqJ" style="margin-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px;" width="229" /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">One of the first things I developed a strong connection with was the Japanese white oak, octagon-shaped nunchaku. They had such an aura for me, they almost became sacred. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That moment in Game of Death, when Bruce Lee pulled out nunchaku in his fight against Dan Inosanto was electrifying. I made a pair as soon as I came home from the movie. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"> </p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Then, as I researched them and bought books, it was Fumio Demura and those Japanese white oak octagon ones with a cord attaching the two with a hidden knot that took me to a whole new level. I remember learning to tie that knot. Moreover, those 8 flat sides felt so powerful in my hand and I felt invincible as I practiced in my back yard. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The nunchaku represented control and power. In a time when I was getting beat up and picked on as bullies used their power to put others down; so they could lift themselves up. I saw the nunchaku as a tool to turn the tables on my bullies to say, “Fuck no, you aren’t doin that to me!” </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And it worked. Even though, I never had to use them in a fight in high school, they meant more than simply fighting. They became the very idea of empowerment, of using a tool to equal the odds. In another movie, Bruce Lee used them to fight off a gang of armed attackers. This was powerful to me. It meant I could buy two pieces of wood and a simple cord and make a weapon that could defend against a gang attack, a nightmare for many. I knew at once my role in life, and even more importantly, who I was. It meant that by any means necessary someone was not simply going to walk into my life and control me. They weren’t going to take my life, or my loved ones easily. They would have to fight because I was going to fight. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">During my 20s and 30s, there were several times I needed a weapon to dissuade someone from trying to do me harm. And deeper still, there is the larger battle inside every man and it is with one’s fear of death by other men. It becomes the ritual of defeating one’s own imaginary demons. These demons can look like a home invasion or a gang of men or an evil serial killer and your mind conjurors these demons to set upon you. True martial arts uses these demons to challenge themselves via the mastery of weapons. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Once you continually face your demons you can achieve peace and realize more of your true self and align your self with essence of the universe. This is the way. </span></p><br /><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="border: none; clear: left; display: inline-block; float: left; height: 422px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; overflow: hidden; width: 438px;"><img height="422" src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/StNOT1PZHtxoMYFdv8rrgxFKo8l-XMZwRJNWv5DAkz42bUk1QBByQM0ITgA-04fnuRe8pW0UjcfTf1sXVBp0wD1HjTmNZFTYjaFEa2mIITiy6o5MtsL0QXmYYWVllMEXjYqHBs5z" style="margin-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px;" width="438" /></span></p></span><div class="blogger-post-footer">There are many lessons out there which we can learn from and change our lifestyle to help us live a higher quality of life.</div>chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10404520347687352090noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13439323.post-68951100636423456462020-07-21T08:11:00.006-07:002020-10-07T07:41:44.791-07:00Getting lost in infinity<span id="gmail-docs-internal-guid-d6c0ceaa-7fff-b033-2955-d16a3867059d"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="roboto, sans-serif" style="color: #202124; font-size: 16.5pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9IQV-H8TK_id_yLACpVIlmDkCPUP__Y0jqcwjS7aXidlkCMnLkCBh0se7hWE3bU_Rhy05TFc3jKsBYpTPe54wKAxNwyLGvJK74ttwgGBcLD0GE5yVC8LLdcOc0Y0vXPiSISAZ_g/s640/oroboros.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="381" data-original-width="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9IQV-H8TK_id_yLACpVIlmDkCPUP__Y0jqcwjS7aXidlkCMnLkCBh0se7hWE3bU_Rhy05TFc3jKsBYpTPe54wKAxNwyLGvJK74ttwgGBcLD0GE5yVC8LLdcOc0Y0vXPiSISAZ_g/s320/oroboros.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>Practicing martial arts forms on the deepest level manifests your cosmic kung fu training teachers. They train you. They are the cosmic ancient masters and their accumulated experiences are held in two different places, one in suspended animation in your DNA and second in the specific martial patterns. Once these are linked, the secrets can be unlocked through a deep visceral training of the ancient forms. <p></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">After I was done with fighting highschool bullies, I realized fighting is not healthy. I ran to the Yin side to pursue the arts. I had grown up in an artistic household and thought this path would offer me the most out of life. It seemed an exciting choice and coincidentally not much different than martial arts with its physicality of moving the brush, charcoal, or chisel.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Again, I heard those ancient voices but there were also voices of temptation like Lorelei whispering to travellers in the woods. I was soon coaxed into territories deeper than I could fathom, listening to the whisperings of lost souls whose threads were not connected to the ancient voices, my tether was cut and I was free floating in infinite space. </span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Floating in limitless space you brush up against those who are also untethered and there you can experience extreme connection but it is only temporary. Everything seems to fall apart and nothing lasts. Although this is true for much of the things found in life, there are however, some things that are rock solid and indestructible. Religions speak of such structures but, words can only be of little help. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In martial forms, we walk with the ancient masters without form and our souls touch their footsteps. Those footsteps lead us to the energetic cathedral which forms the structure of the universe. This is indestructible and always changing.This is the place to reside. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Chris Aloia, July 21, 2020</span></p><br class="gmail-Apple-interchange-newline" /><div class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature" dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><div class="blogger-post-footer">There are many lessons out there which we can learn from and change our lifestyle to help us live a higher quality of life.</div>chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10404520347687352090noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13439323.post-89886369787804181302020-05-19T09:11:00.010-07:002020-06-01T11:50:41.340-07:00A Small Epiphany about Animal Consciousness <br /><br /><a href="https://www.blogger.com/#"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTFi1_jg2ddFtqoh0RgsvSLBoUMJa-41AxFAAlqsRLOWSLo8c64sKxfgB7hMN28oImqrYSPzGq3M57RdK07e6uTHGqqfjMItnMEu2-ZUTSC1XXJb5mEIcdT3Ekg0RaHDJUdVu8SA/w240-h320/IMG_7741.JPG" /></a><br />Recently my wife mused aloud questioning what could be occupying our pet's minds. I quickly brushed it off saying that all they think about is food. Since it was a rainy weekend and I had time, I decided watch a few TED talks on animal consciousness. One talk was given by Carl Safina, a noted writer on animal ecology, who wrote a book entitled Beyond Words; What Animals Think and Feel. Here is a <a href="https://youtu.be/-wkdH_wluhw" target="_blank">link </a>to the video Not too far into the video, he made me feel foolish about giving short shrift to my wife's question. I also watched a few others but for the sake of brevity and clarity I will just stick to the one video. So not only did I immediately feel foolish, I also decided to open my mind and that simple but difficult action was like the sun bursting through the clouds on a rainy day. This inspired me to take my dog, Chewie (Short for Chewbacca, my kids are Star Wars fans) out in the back yard and let him wander around, while I did some T'ai Chi. During the practice I felt a deeper level of awareness of my whole body, as I moved through the T'ai Chi form. I felt these physical epiphanies before but, this time I felt increased neural connectivity. <br /><br />In addition to greater connectivity, I became poignantly aware of the tightrope walk between flight or fight responses and more graceful responses. This fertile place of true realization in the moment that doesn’t stick around too long is what T'ai Chi cultivates. T'ai chi in combination with some other more direct combative training is a great match for walking that tightrope. Some might and some have questioned why practice T'ai Chi at all. <div><br /></div><div>I still practice it for three reasons: one, it makes my mind and body feel connected and that feels great; two, the research says T'ai Chi is good for injury prevention and pain management; and thirdly, I believe T'ai Chi develops a deeper understanding of form and biomechanics and forces me to think about movement efficiency.<br /><br /><div>When my practice was done, I got a bow saw and cut a freshly downed branch of tulip poplar into smaller throwing size sticks, and threw one about 70 feet, so my dog could fetch it. He was in heaven, prancing about with that stick in his mouth. We just played and enjoyed the freedom of the moment. I am usually very critical, almost cynical about TED talks, but I have to admit watching that TED talk about animal consciousness really helped me become more aware of his sentience as well as my own.<div><br /></div></div></div><div class="blogger-post-footer">There are many lessons out there which we can learn from and change our lifestyle to help us live a higher quality of life.</div>chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10404520347687352090noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13439323.post-90682085633429348192019-11-18T13:57:00.002-08:002020-05-19T12:35:54.911-07:00Reminiscing About How I Found Martial Arts<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif; font-size: large;">I was lucky that I grew up in the 70s and 80s when Asian culture, particularly martial arts, was becoming popular in the US. With the popularity of Bruce Lee movies, and the TV series Kung Fu it almost became a prerequisite to have a martial arts fight in many TV shows. I remember waiting for those fight scenes with great anticipation. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif; font-size: large;">Additionally, my father was practicing Tai Chi from Robert Chuckrow and he took me to one of his classes. I remember watching him and his friend practice the Tai Chi form in our yard. My father even tried to get me to stand in a Tai Chi posture and it was really uncomfortable. I was so rambunctious I was definitely not ready for the slow practice of Tai Chi. Then in the 80s, the TV mini-series, Shogun came on and I made myself a bokken and practiced cuts with it. I was so excited by Asian culture and swords that I really wanted to learn more.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif; font-size: large;">All that media exposure sparked me to explore further and I remember going to the local book store and checking out the martial arts section. It was only a few books and there was an orange book, much like this one pictured, that had historical illustrations of old time Jujitsu techniques. I bought it and became enthralled with those mysterious techniques. I tried to understand them but I couldn’t figure out the movements from the illustrations alone. </span><br /><img alt="Japanese Jiu-jitsu - Tuttle Publishing" height="320" src="https://cdn11.bigcommerce.com/s-q39b4/images/stencil/2000x2000/products/7791/231087/9784805313244.in03__72401.1567532628.jpg?c=2" width="201" /><br />
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<span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif; font-size: large;">I looked in the yellow pages and I remember seeing an advertisement for an Aikido class in a neighboring town. It seemed like it was a thousand miles away. Then I saw that our town had a Karate school so I did not have much choice. I ended up in Okinawan Goju ryu class and got my yellow belt. I remember the sensei telling us stories of the Okinawan masters he learned from, while in the military in Japan. Unfortunately, the school soon closed but luckily I found people who were into boxing. So I was still in the martial arts. However, in the back of my mind I still wanted to learn those traditional techniques found in Jujitsu and Aikido. After a couple of years of boxing I quit fighting all together. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif; font-size: large;">I had met some famous old boxing champs and realized that fighting and getting hit repeatedly in the head was not a healthy lifestyle choice. I forgot about the self development aspects of martial arts and boxing didn't teach those. So I thought I was done with the martial arts path. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif; font-size: large;">As I continued to explore other aspects of myself and grew as an adult, I once again saw a need to get back to martial arts.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif; font-size: large;">This time I was in Seattle and there I had my pick of almost every imaginable martial arts style. I lived close to the International District and visited all kinds of schools offering Kung Fu, Brazilian Jujitsu, Hapkido and Aikido. I finally had my opportunity to study Aikido and learn those amazing mysterious techniques I dreamed about as a kid. So after many years I began learning everything I could and practiced intensely. Plus, there was a great group of people and we quickly became friends. The camaraderie at the school was a amazing.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif; font-size: large;">Martial arts always came to my life in times when I needed guidance. </span><span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif; font-size: large;">In martial arts there is this important work being done that touches you on every level from the social to a deeply intimate and most personal. </span><span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif; font-size: large;">There is something compelling working out with people in a friendly but challenging manner that I have only found in martial arts. I am very thankful that I grew up in a time when it was accessible to me. I honestly don’t know what I would have become had I not found the martial path.</span></div>
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<div class="blogger-post-footer">There are many lessons out there which we can learn from and change our lifestyle to help us live a higher quality of life.</div>chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10404520347687352090noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13439323.post-31601527472449193452019-09-18T02:34:00.001-07:002019-09-19T10:53:39.241-07:00Spiraling Patterns in Tai Chi (Notes from class on 9/17/19)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: #1d2129; font-size: large; text-align: left;">Yesterday in class, I discussed thigh rotation during Tai Chi movements. In the illustration from Chen Style Tai Chi, it depicts how your body should coil during most movements.</span><img border="0" data-original-height="290" data-original-width="300" height="309" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAkmdBa3IABr_aSh6Ql5RjGz5hph7PKJQEVPtbMus8at1i5Veob827rhBmihTBkUjEqEgv2ULWqHugqg7SHMrsudYfZEr0zz9PavtXtnI1dyDFlOKLBHWfeCKFkaTQsSX90Pb5Kg/s320/SilkReeling.jpg" width="320" /></div>
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<a href="about:invalid#zClosurez" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><span style="font-size: large;">One exercise I use in my warm-ups is the reverse punch (Seen in the illustration below). Many people think the reverse punch is obsolete and a waste of time. However, they miss an important point, it is not directly for fighting but for training the body to coil, which is storing and releasing power. </span><br />
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<a href="https://www.wikihow.com/images/thumb/c/ce/Do-a-Karate-Punch-in-Shotokan-Step-2.jpg/aid3007543-v4-728px-Do-a-Karate-Punch-in-Shotokan-Step-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://www.wikihow.com/images/thumb/c/ce/Do-a-Karate-Punch-in-Shotokan-Step-2.jpg/aid3007543-v4-728px-Do-a-Karate-Punch-in-Shotokan-Step-2.jpg" width="320" /></a><span style="font-size: large;">In fact, most of the reason why Tai Chi is performed slowly is to understand how this spiraling force is transmitted from one part of the body to the other without having gaps or hiccups, which can be exploited by an external force. This slow spiral movement also "ties" up the joints to protect them by keeping them aligned. <br />This is why Tai Chi is particularly good for balance, because it develops a counter spiral which "locks" the body into a stable structure. The lines in the Chen Style illustration show how force moves through the body, and of course, it is a spiraling motion, which follow patterns found in most organic structures because we live in a spiral universe and on a rotating planet.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">When performing the reverse punch over time you will see every part of your body from your feet to your hands embodying a spiraling motion. </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></span></div>
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<div class="blogger-post-footer">There are many lessons out there which we can learn from and change our lifestyle to help us live a higher quality of life.</div>chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10404520347687352090noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13439323.post-24720611062292109322019-07-17T11:23:00.001-07:002019-10-28T07:26:29.684-07:00Kayaking trip: father and son bonding in the computer age!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br />I have two sons, both of whom are ADDICTED to video games. My 14 year old has even cried when we have taken them away and said he hates everything else about life. Well, hearing that scared the crap out of me and my wife. <br /><br />Additionally, my son has been doing typical teenage smart ass stuff, eye rolls and all. So it has been a little rough since he turned 13. It is not horrible but it is tough. Overall, he is a good kid and we love him to death. He does well in school, completes homework, and helps out with chores (but not without an argument about how stupid chores are).<br /><br />So Easter 2018 weekend, I told my wife all I want for my upcoming birthday is to go Kayaking with her and the kids.<br /><br />I was shocked when my 14 yo wanted to ride with me and surprisingly, we made great partners. I was so proud of him. He actually handled the turns and rapids really well for his first time. The whole trip he said, we have to come back and do this again. I felt so good and I felt like I got my son back. When he was younger we did everything together. Needless to say this was the best birthday present ever!<br /><br />When school got out in 2019, we found ourselves with the same battles and arguments. I saw an opportunity for just him and I to go kayaking again. And again it was really special. He really has a sense of adventure. It is so nice to share that with him. There are moments during any kayaking trip where there is a sense of danger, especially when seeing the on-coming rapids, rocks and debris. We work together to navigate it and shout out directives to each other. This is a great opportunity to bond but also to provide an example of how to deal with danger. I complimented him often and we teased each other some. There was a moment when he realized I am not such a bad guy. He joked back, saying that he has been doing the lion’s share of the rowing, with an obvious smile. <br /><br />I could tell he needed to be in a real situation with me. So we can become accustomed to each other at a different stage in our lives. As adults, we take it for granted because we raised our kids from infants and we provide everything for them. Things that are obvious like meals but also things not so obvious like school applications, vaccinations and plane tickets etc, seem like magic to them; they just appear. What I am getting at here is that they don’t remember everything we have done for them and I think we have a tendency to demand respect and appreciation but they don’t remember all that little stuff. They need to rebuild the respect and connection, while we are placing more rigorous demands on them. <br /><br />So being in semi-dangerous situations affords us the opportunity to build that connection and appreciate each other in a new context. I have found, just with these two trips, one was 3-4 hours and the other was over 6, that we came out of the river with much more love and respect for each other than before we went in. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br />Another benefit of doing these trips is it is an opportunity to talk about other things and also share skills like survival skills that could potentially be needed. Whenever I go kayaking, I bring a couple of knives like, a Cold Steel Pro-lite folder or an Ontario Rat 1, which I keep on my person. I also bring other gear I keep in a dry bag as a backup. I also gave my son one of my knives to carry on him and gave him some simple instructions on how to use it and when he should use it. I discussed with him the potential of me getting hurt and what he would have to do. I made it fun to keep it from being another boring lecture. Kayaking also lends itself to a good life lesson, one of the things my son had trouble with was the importance of setting the right trajectory as you get to a bottle neck in the river. Since the water is moving fast and if you are on the wrong trajectory you could end up stuck on the rocks, flipped over, or eating a bunch of branches. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">I used this lesson to compare it to life and school work. While, schoolwork is boring and you want to wait until the last minute, sometimes that isn't enough and you could end up not getting into the college you want or missing an opportunity that you really wanted. I didn't drive in home hard but I did connect the dots.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkAUMPzn6UHEk0WLrZvj6uAvrzTlCtBkUb9scrDDWkjXAJFVqjEKnM7Y8xzOc8HWKGLgYe5Me6RZ-_lzvk4NetcWv552MPFljosfdMcODoDBpJMHajP9qZJG1CQb5NAGiVicTT3A/s1600/IMG_1719.JPG"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkAUMPzn6UHEk0WLrZvj6uAvrzTlCtBkUb9scrDDWkjXAJFVqjEKnM7Y8xzOc8HWKGLgYe5Me6RZ-_lzvk4NetcWv552MPFljosfdMcODoDBpJMHajP9qZJG1CQb5NAGiVicTT3A/s320/IMG_1719.JPG" /></a><br /><br />Since kayaking is loved by everyone in the family, we have decided that this is going to be one of our family activities and my wife and I discussed purchasing our own kayaks. We are also researching how to work out the transportation of them. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Now, I feel like arguments and screaming matches are a cry for a new way of reconnecting and a new challenge rather than a downward spiral towards family disintegration. <br /><br />Here’s to new hope!!!</span></div>
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<div class="blogger-post-footer">There are many lessons out there which we can learn from and change our lifestyle to help us live a higher quality of life.</div>chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10404520347687352090noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13439323.post-61828998424105173792019-07-17T02:06:00.000-07:002019-07-18T07:11:33.521-07:006 reasons why the Mora Bushcraft Black is my number one favorite fixed blade. <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-size: large;">1. Mora carbon steel takes a fine edge that can easily be brought back to shaving and I have found this to be<b> reliable</b> on all their knives I have owned. The other day I saw some rubber hanging below my car. So I grabbed my Bush Craft Black and started cutting the rubber. I kept trying to cut it but it wasn't budging. I looked at my knife in horror, and I realized the entire edge looked like a boxer's teeth, craggily AF. I checked the rubber and it had a steel core. I immediately went inside using only my ceramic rods and after a moderate amount of work, the edge was back to shaving sharp. Mora's carbon steel is one of the few knife companies I trust, so I keep coming back for more.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">2. The handle is so comfortable. I can carve feather sticks for a long time with less fatigue than other knives. Plus the design of the grip really allows the knife to rest in a perfect position in my hand. Sometimes I just want to hold the knife because it feels so good. <br /><br />3. The 90° spine is the sharpest of all my knives. I have used it countless times and it bites deep into the ferro rod giving me the most sparks of all my knives. It does have to be maintained with a stone every so often but it is still the sharpest out there. <br /><br />4. It is lightweight. In a package that tics all the important boxes, like steel quality, comfort, usability, a good price, it is also lighter than other knives. Another benefit of it being lightweight is that when you have it on your belt you don't feel like it is dragging you down. <br /><br />5. Another feature I like that is unique to Mora, is there is no ricasso, or choil, so you can get right up to the guard when cutting. Just to clarify, the ricasso on a knife is the space between the handle or guard, if the knife has one, and the cutting edge. The choil is a little (usually little) notch that allows you to sharpen the edge without the stone rubbing on the ricasso (see picture below). Sometimes people confuse the two and sometimes knifemakers enlarge the choil to allow for a finger to be placed there. It is really amazing how few knife companies do this. I find it makes sharpening easier and it provides more leverage for carving too. Also, the notch doesn't catch on things you are trying to cut. For a good article on choils <a href="https://survivalcommonsense.com/five-reasons-you-dont-need-a-choil-on-your-knife-blade/">click here </a>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br />6. Another great thing about Mora is they relatively low cost, which means you can get a great knife within your budget. That also means you can use it and not feel like you are destroying a family heirloom. They are a tool to be used not kept locked up for future generations. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br />All of these great things about Mora also add up to making easier to having the knife on you when you need it. This week, there was a <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/16/us/mojave-desert-missing-woman/index.html">story</a> of a 69 year old woman, who got separated from her husband while camping and was lost for 3 days in the wilderness without anything. Having a small fixed blade and a few other supplies on your belt, like a ferro rod and some cordage could have really helped her. She survived but was severely dehydrated and in need of hospitalization. It is a good reminder that having a few tools and a little knowledge on how to use them could make the world of difference. I would definitely recommend a <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Morakniv-Bushcraft-Survival-Starter-4-3-Inch/dp/B00BFI8TOA/ref=sr_1_2?crid=2ES82I2HXCZ6G&keywords=mora+bushcraft+black&qid=1563354321&s=gateway&sprefix=mora+bush+craft%2Caps%2C175&sr=8-2">Mora Bushcraft black</a> for any hiker to carry into the woods, even for a day hike. </span><br />
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<div class="blogger-post-footer">There are many lessons out there which we can learn from and change our lifestyle to help us live a higher quality of life.</div>chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10404520347687352090noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13439323.post-65097776746664668662019-06-20T17:17:00.000-07:002019-06-21T05:06:15.625-07:00Between Postures: Where the Gold in Tai Chi Is Mined!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial";"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Every so often during practice I will have an epiphany about some aspect of the Tai Chi form or a particular movement within. When it happens I feel like I have gotten closer to uncovering the mysteries of Tai Chi. As I continue to explore an epiphany I soon realize that it has already been thoroughly explained in </span><a href="https://taichionlineclasses.com/yang-cheng-fus-10-principles/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Yang Cheng Fu’s 10 Important Points</span></a><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. This week was no different. In the past few classes, we had been working on the gap/transitions between Tai Chi postures, particularly from </span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Single Whip</span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> to </span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Wave Hands Like Clouds</span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> but it is in all transitions. Often someone learning Tai Chi will automatically go from one move to the other will little thought or activation put into the transition, thus creating a gap in their structure. Specifically, Yang Cheng Fu expounded upon my epiphany in number 8 and number 9 of his 10 Important Points. Number </span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">8 discusses the importance of harmony between the internal and external parts and number 9 discusses the importance of continuity while going from one posture to the next. </span><br />
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<span id="docs-internal-guid-1b21b8b8-7fff-2b4b-1f3e-1c85402d80ba"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What separates Tai Chi from other exercise routines is once the form has begun the training is the transition from one posture to the other seamlessly. I have found understanding the martial aspects helps focus your attention on those transitions because transitions or gaps are vulnerabilities. In analyzing transitions in the Tai Chi form there are two basic categories. Hand transitions (moving from one side to the other or raising one high and one low) and stepping transitions. </span></span><br />
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<span id="docs-internal-guid-1b21b8b8-7fff-2b4b-1f3e-1c85402d80ba"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Two postures that make a great example are </span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Single Whip</span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> to </span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Wave Hands Like Clouds</span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. When you strike with your left hand/forearm (at the 12:00 o’clock) position in </span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Single Whip, </span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">your right hand is extended outwards perpendicular to your left, creating a right angle (at the 3:00 position). As soon as you have reached the apex of that left hand strike (12 o’clock position otherwise known as absolute yang), your energy should slowly dissipate from the left hand (and start moving toward yin), as you sense an attack coming at your 4:00 o’clock position. So you begin to rotate your body to face that attack. Your right hand becomes activated and dominant (now yang) while your left comes to support the right, which begins the </span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Wave Hands Like Clouds </span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">sequence.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> When moving from one posture to another you are transferring weight from one leg to the other, as you propel forward. During most Tai Chi movements there is a point where you must place 100% of one’s weight on one leg as you step. In the form, we practice weight transfer extremely slow to develop strength and stability. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #222222;">We analyzed our stability when changing hand positions, but how strong are we when taking a step? The answer to this</span> requires a two-part response. First, you would ONLY enter when you see a gap in your opponent’s defenses, and secondly, when you do see that opening you must do it swiftly, like a hawk seizing a rabbit. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To discuss entering it is important to tie it in with my boxing days. Entering is a lesson learned the hard way and it was ingrained upon me in two ways. In that awkward period when you are first learning to fight and you try to get close enough to punch someone, you quickly realize that you are also able to get hit. A lot of fear is generated and leads to stopping you from moving. You want to end the encounter, but you have to enter to do it which exposes you to a counter attack and harm. Many boxers, myself included, were told to never cross legs when moving, because you may get hit when doing so and your base will collapse, resulting in a knock down at the very least. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The important aspect of Tai Chi that is often overlooked is timing, because many Tai Chi people have never had to fight. A good example to understand timing is jumping rope; to jump over the rope at the exact time the rope should be right in front of your toes. If you jump too soon, you will land before the rope passes and if you jump too late you will get hit by the rope. In a self defense situation, the movements are hyper dynamic and the attacker doesn’t follow the rhythms of the form. It is those rhythms of entering either to the outside or the inside and look for openings with a decreased chance of getting hit while doing so. It is that “beat” which needs to seamlessly change with weight transitions. A true self defense or combative training session will work more on the timing of entering than memorization of a choreographed routine. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Transitions are where the gold of Tai Chi is mined. With training, anyone can assume a posture or stance but to carry the mindful focus of the </span><a href="https://taichiamerica.blogspot.com/2017/09/opening-your-kua-increases-benefits-of.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">dan tian</span></a><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and using the</span><a href="https://taichiamerica.blogspot.com/2017/09/opening-your-kua-increases-benefits-of.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> kua</span></a><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> to transfer energy from one part of your body to other takes real concentration and effort. This is why Yang Cheng Fu includes continuity in transitions in his ten important points. It is also why I included his 8th point, “harmony between the internal and external parts”. You can’t transition if you have no smooth energy flow from the right to the left side of your body, nor can it flow if internal and external parts are not in harmony. Working on that harmony is the gold of Tai Chi, it is the </span><a href="https://taichiamerica.blogspot.com/2018/11/what-does-it-mean-that-tai-chi-is.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">neija</span></a><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> or internal work that needs to be worked on to grow. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In sum, the form is a great general training tool but it will not fully prepare you for a dynamic encounter either with an opponent or in life situations that could arise. If you include mindful transitions into your form it will help you understand the need to focus and place attention on weaknesses in your form. It will inspire you to incorporate transitions and timing drills into your practice. </span></div>
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<div class="blogger-post-footer">There are many lessons out there which we can learn from and change our lifestyle to help us live a higher quality of life.</div>chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10404520347687352090noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13439323.post-7142434842560556812019-06-17T13:23:00.003-07:002019-06-20T17:28:47.952-07:00Harmonizing Yin/Yang<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<a href="https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0?ui=2&ik=8a3199146e&attid=0.1&permmsgid=msg-a:r-1615632077532871139&th=16b1880270a94540&view=fimg&sz=s0-l75-ft&attbid=ANGjdJ-gkd-ZHhR3ax6bG0OeosOxutPhl8uenXdCB1PhXzKdQmDTSN5sw4NFtGEdbvYpdxDYAJWRxX-e7tANmumMvbW5riOwHMoIMNg64DElWQWpf5U6r-UQbndLmHs&disp=emb&realattid=16b1880112725d02b1" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0?ui=2&ik=8a3199146e&attid=0.1&permmsgid=msg-a:r-1615632077532871139&th=16b1880270a94540&view=fimg&sz=s0-l75-ft&attbid=ANGjdJ-gkd-ZHhR3ax6bG0OeosOxutPhl8uenXdCB1PhXzKdQmDTSN5sw4NFtGEdbvYpdxDYAJWRxX-e7tANmumMvbW5riOwHMoIMNg64DElWQWpf5U6r-UQbndLmHs&disp=emb&realattid=16b1880112725d02b1" /></a>Yesterday in my Tai Chi class we joked about aging and why Tai Chi is mainly for older people (I work mostly with older adults). I have a younger women in class, and she stated, "I am not old!" We all laughed. Then I talked about self-selection, explaining that Tai Chi is too slow for younger people, who are looking for quick results.<br />
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In that particular class, I decided to start with a little boxing drill. As a change up to the typical Tai Chi posture drills, we practiced a jab and right cross for a bit and I showed how it is slightly similar to <i>Brush Knee Push</i>.<br />
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That boxing drill sparked some one to ask if it is better to punch someone with a closed fist than an open hand. I talked about the nuances of that for a bit, which led to palm strikes and I said that palm strikes, are in the following Tai Chi moves: <i>Brush Knee, High Pat on Horse, Single Whip, Wave Hands Like Clouds, and Repulse the Monkey.</i> Then I discussed how palm strikes can be strikes, grabs, or even blocks. Moreover, they can also include the forearm and even the elbow. When you find your inner structure, or in Tai Chi vernacular, <i>"Steel Inside Cotton"</i> the whole forearm, including the hand becomes a type of guard/shield or even a strike, as demonstrated by self defense expert <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSKfYqJUXvo&t=1079s">Tony Blauer </a>in the pictured above.<br />
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So when you are practicing Tai Chi and developing your inner structure you are also developing a guard that protects your vitals. The guard is present in almost every Tai Chi move from opening to close<i>.</i> Each arm smoothly transitions from attack (yang) to guard (yin) in a circular motion mirroring the yin/yang symbol or Tai Chi. When you are attacking you are also defending, part of you advances and part of you yields. At the highest levels, all movements in martial arts connect to this principle. Whenever you read online disses of a martial art they are only discussing the veneer of their perception. Aikido gets a tremendous amount of hate but there are no major difference between Jiu Jitsu and Aikido. Sure, many Aikidoka show certain moves like wrist grabs, but digging deep into the principles of both arts, you end up at the same place. Even Brazilian Jiu Jitsu uses the same principles but translated into ground fighting. I believe the biggest difference is in the training. Aikido and Tai Chi do not train for real combat, they instead work on self development.<br />
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Tai Chi literally means "the grand ultimate point" where yin/yang are perfectly balanced; and to accomplish that harmony between polar opposites takes time, and this is where we usually lose younger people. You have to become committed to unifying these opposites in your body and mind. Learning self defense is important. Many younger people are looking to learn a self defense skill but what they miss is working on that harmonization might have a greater impact on them and actually move them into a higher level of awareness that can be of more practical use to them than merely being able to stop an attack. </div>
<div class="blogger-post-footer">There are many lessons out there which we can learn from and change our lifestyle to help us live a higher quality of life.</div>chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10404520347687352090noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13439323.post-34286040852236703812019-05-14T18:50:00.002-07:002020-09-02T11:16:58.044-07:00Spyderco Tenacious Review<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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As I have written in the past, I have carried a pocket knife everyday for well over two decades. I love having a pocket knife handy for many of life's chores. Much of those two decades have seen a Spyderco in my pocket.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTGdS-1nM7ekCOcS0qMD2DmU79G3nk8rIRBhbNr5DPVv3oDWoaRGKVjWBinYBBI4AO5CPFfmcduFuSwX2P9RZZFIXLCQtrwXjQDDHU2FQkcExyvUInXSfWhjOhExH6kk-3a_rDvA/s1600/C24C1E96-4F25-4345-84B4-0B0D1A9AFD3B.jpeg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTGdS-1nM7ekCOcS0qMD2DmU79G3nk8rIRBhbNr5DPVv3oDWoaRGKVjWBinYBBI4AO5CPFfmcduFuSwX2P9RZZFIXLCQtrwXjQDDHU2FQkcExyvUInXSfWhjOhExH6kk-3a_rDvA/s320/C24C1E96-4F25-4345-84B4-0B0D1A9AFD3B.jpeg" width="240" /></a>Last time, I wrote about the <a href="https://taichiamerica.blogspot.com/2017/01/folding-knife-review-spyderco-stretch.html">Spyderco Stretch</a>, a knife I have I carried everyday for a 7 year period. Since that writing, I have found that the lock back has loosened creating too much vertical blade play. That discovery has set about a search for a new EDC. One great thing about being in many knife groups on Facebook is you get to see a ton of knives that are out there. In the past two years or so, I have carried an Ontario Rat 1, a Cold Steel Pro-lite, and a Spyderco Tenacious. If you sense a theme here it would be cheaper level knives. A few years ago, My wife and I have bought a house and there are some repairs so I haven't had money to purchase more expensive knives.<br />
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After about almost two years of having those three in my carry rotation, the Tenacious found its way in my pocket more than the others. Just a quick note, both of the others knives are excellent for the money and they still have a place for me in specific activities, such as the Rat is great for yard work and hiking; but a little too large for daily carry and typical knife chores; the Pro-lite is my designated kayaking and travel knife because it is cheap but very strong. It is a great choice for that and that Tri-ad lock is one of the toughest locks on the market.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTjWBuSSzeolMjkcDgf5guNaxlU1KBrNkjZnQs6XwKnRfZaIi7YcGwI1H_PoPTNQlhhHjgU7Qyu0o-Bosp7jwiDG5exYNN1vOUE5kWU0Yze68OJ7x3VFBi0OxV1FF3tsFWqk0pZw/s1600/IMG_8135.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTjWBuSSzeolMjkcDgf5guNaxlU1KBrNkjZnQs6XwKnRfZaIi7YcGwI1H_PoPTNQlhhHjgU7Qyu0o-Bosp7jwiDG5exYNN1vOUE5kWU0Yze68OJ7x3VFBi0OxV1FF3tsFWqk0pZw/s320/IMG_8135.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Left to right: Ontario Rat 1, Spyderco Tenacious, Spyderco Endura, Spyderco Stretch, Cold Steel Pro-Lite, Kabar Kharon</td></tr>
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One of the main reasons why I like the Tenacious is the ease of opening. Especially compared to the Pro-lite, which is a bear to open. It made the Tenacious feel like a slippy-slide. I was also surprised by 8cr13mov steel. At first I was really disappointed in this cheaper steel, mostly because of haters in knife groups, but after months and months of hard use, doing tasks like carving feathersticks in all types of wood, cutting boxes, opening packages, I have not had to do any kind of extensive sharpening to it; just a few swipes on a ceramic rod or a honing steel and it was back to hair popping sharp. Now, I prefer it to AUS8 for sure and I think it is comparable to Ontario's D2.<br />
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Another thing that added to my liking of the Tenacious was when I just started carrying it, we had a plumbing incident and when our plumber got out from under the house to fix our pipes, I noticed he had a knife in his pocket. We started chatting about knives and he took his out and it was a Tenacious. So we compared stories and he said he has been EDC-ing his on his job for over a year (See Pic below) and it has held up really well for him.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgX3h-GFMJNvh0IswcALCQ1DEEGGDOoSRSp1ViJhEg50BONer514nCGihzxRoNrSfIr6Ueyp5GsWvBL7PGjMvysneqqI2FzZTQm-Iqc_C91tiMs_yjecsIuvc2_39DFOnFTe_WfSA/s1600/IMG_8184.JPG" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1600" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgX3h-GFMJNvh0IswcALCQ1DEEGGDOoSRSp1ViJhEg50BONer514nCGihzxRoNrSfIr6Ueyp5GsWvBL7PGjMvysneqqI2FzZTQm-Iqc_C91tiMs_yjecsIuvc2_39DFOnFTe_WfSA/s320/IMG_8184.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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At $50 dollars, the Tenacious is hard to beat. Usually in knife groups, the Ontario Rat 1 is one of the highest rated knifes for under $50. I agree, the Rat is tough and cheap. If I can only have one folding knife, under $50, it would be the Rat 1. That said, for an everyday carry knife I often recommend the Tenacious. Both are great knives.<br />
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Any knife review would be remiss if I didn't give some of my criticisms. So here goes!<br />
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My biggest issue with the Tenacious is blade play. Mine doesn't have the vertical blade play my Delica, Stretch, and Endura have, but it does have side-to-side play. The blade is wobbly, so wobbly that I had to put Loctite to prevent the pivot from coming loose and the blade is still wobbly. <br />
This is where this review has to go into Spyderco's Customer Service Policy.</div><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><b><br /></b></div><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><b> NOTE: Loctite on the pivot pin has stopped the lateral blade play on the Tenacious. </b><br />
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I am really disappointed in the amount of blade play my Tenacious has and I considered sending to Spyderco,</strike> but their customer service policy is extremely limited, which is still true! It is so limited that I have decided to move my loyalty to Benchmade because they have a life-time warranty policy. Even though, I prefer Spyderco's opening mechanism and some of their designs more than many of Benchmade's, their policy sucks. Benchmade's policy makes it a much better deal. I will still carry my Tenacious but it is not going to be my main carry anymore. I recently bought a Benchmade Bugout and it is now my main carry. For the record it has ZERO blade play. <br />
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Another issue to discuss is the type of locking mechanisms. The Tenacious has a liner lock, which are great for closing with one hand and the liner protects against vertical blade play, which is the worst kind in my opinion. Vertical blade play means that when you are cutting an apple and pressing down there will be a slight give to pivot. Lateral blade play isn't as bad but it makes the knife feel cheap and means that the machining tolerances are low. Many of my knives have no play at all, like the Ontario Rat 1, or the Cold Steel Pro-lite, it can be done affordably. Unfortunately, all my Spydercos have unacceptable levels of blade play. Since the posting of this article, I have purchased a Manix, with a ball bearing lock and I have to say that is a very good lock with less blade play than Benchmade's axis lock. I have to admitt that Spyderco makes knives that I am really excited about and I will continue to carry them more than any other brand. With that said, I will not purchase any knife of theirs with a lockback. <br />
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In sum, I still carry my Tenacious and it is a great knife for the money. I still recommend it for a cheaper level knife that can be used hard for tasks you might not do with more expensive knives. My plumber would agree too! </div><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br /></div><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><b>This article has been updated on 9/2/2020 to reflect my continued experience with the Tenacious and other knives I have owned since May of last year. I carry my Tenacious more than any other folder. The Bugout is a great knife but it is too small for my hand to be carried regularly. It does make a great back up knife in a mini-survival kit (MSK).<br /></b>
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<div class="blogger-post-footer">There are many lessons out there which we can learn from and change our lifestyle to help us live a higher quality of life.</div>chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10404520347687352090noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13439323.post-69853323804601200892018-11-28T11:16:00.000-08:002018-11-28T11:48:41.639-08:00What does it mean that T'ai Chi is an Internal Practice?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-size: large;">Recently,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>a <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1876382017302342#sec0005"><span class="s1">systematic review</span></a> was published attempting to ascertain the different types of emphasis by T'ai Chi modalities. A lot of research on T'ai Chi is published, but usually the research doesn’t distinguish the approach a teacher chooses. In my experience, I have observed some T'ai Chi instructors focus on performing the form in competitions, some train to win medals in push hands, some focus strictly on health, and some focus on <i>neijia,</i> or internal martial arts. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">While all methods of teaching T'ai Chi share considerable overlap and most would be recognizable to the lay person as T'ai Chi, it is only when you delve deeper into T'ai Chi that you will be able to see the subtle differences between these general approaches. I have encountered T'ai Chi schools that focus on the performance of forms, and I have found them to be less substantive although more athletic, less internal and sometimes even rigid. For them, T'ai Chi is a more of an athletic dance than a martial art. There are many examples of this on youtube (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmST5o3usNI"><span class="s1">click here</span></a>). You can usually spot them when you see the practitioner raise their leg straight over their head. There is a ballet like aura to the movements, with a hushed silence as they slowly demonstrate their athletic prowess, albeit it in slow motion. I have also been to classes where it is purely a therapeutic movement with little or no demands on the body. Even though I enjoy T'ai Chi and love to see it performed in many ways, it is when I feel that internal body subtly moving do I completely become engrossed in the class.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">So what is Neijia?</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><i>Wikipedia’s definition is “Neijia</i></b><i> is a term in </i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_martial_arts"><span class="s2"><i>Chinese martial arts</i></span></a><i>, grouping those </i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Styles_of_Chinese_martial_arts"><span class="s2"><i>styles</i></span></a><i> that practice </i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neijing"><span class="s2"><i>neijing</i></span></a><i>, usually translated as </i><b><i>internal martial arts</i></b><i>, occupied with spiritual, mental or </i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qi"><span class="s2"><i>qi</i></span></a><i>-related aspects, as opposed to an ‘</i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/External_martial_arts"><span class="s2"><i>external</i></span></a><i>’ approach focused on physiological aspects.”<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I disagree with parts of Wikipedia’s definition. While I would agree that <i>neijia</i> is classified as internal martial arts, I would not equate the external with physiological. It makes <i>neijia</i> seem elusive and mysterious. <i>Neijia</i> is, in fact, physiological but in a deeper way than just using large muscle groups. I would characterize external martial arts as using force and tension rather than relaxation or <i>song </i>(attentive relaxation).</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I have trained with a few teachers that have emphasized the internal over the athletic dance style. In a blog post I wrote last year called <a href="https://taichiamerica.blogspot.com/2017/10/"><span class="s1">“The Importance of Naturalness in T'ai Chi,</span></a>” I discussed my experience with Gao Fu at a workshop, where she illuminated the path of <i>neijia</i> for me through <i>zhan zhuang</i> (standing meditation) and <i>chan ssu jin</i> (Silk Reeling Energy/Spiral Exercises). After that 5-day workshop, I became totally enthralled with <i>neijia</i> and rigorously searched for a teacher until I found Fong Ha, in Berkeley CA. The main part of Fong Ha’s teaching is <i>zhan zhuang,</i> and what blew my mind was that I am decades younger and many inches taller than he is, but I could not even budge him. He would stand on one leg and allow me to push him as hard as I could, and I failed to move him even an inch. Then when he was finished playing with me, he would shift a little and I would stumble off balance like an infant. Fong Ha and his teachings were elaborated on in the three-book series <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Warriors-Stillness-Trilogy-Meditative-Traditions/dp/0964997622"><span class="s1">Warriors of Stillness</span></a> by Jan Diepersloot. Those books introduced me to Fong Ha’s teachers, who have developed amazing internal abilities, like Master Cai and a few Yi Quan Masters, who were taught by <a href="https://www.internalartsinternational.com/free/essence-boxing-science-interview-mr-wang-xiang-zhai-part-1/"><span class="s1">Wang Xiang Zhai</span></a>. Wang Xiang Zhai is an important figure in the resurgence of <i>neijia</i> because he developed an internal system of boxing that relied on standing meditation (<i>zhan zhuang</i>), which allowed him to push over an opponent with little external movement. While no videos exist of Wang Xiang Zhai, I have found one of a Tai Chi master doing push hands using neijia. (To see the video clip click <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmHam7Fpyak"><span class="s1">here</span></a>) Here is another more recent video clip of someone I have studied with <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EckhH4bshj8"><span class="s1">here</span></a>.</span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;"><i>Neijia</i>, the phenomenon</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Something happens in T'ai Chi when you perform it ever so slowly and also while you are thoroughly engaged in standing meditation, which I believe is unique to T'ai Chi. For sure, there are many types of bodily awarenesses like being “in the zone” or feeling things happen in slow motion, but I have not experienced in other types of exercises what happens in T'ai Chi. In T'ai Chi, there seems to be a special focus on balance, specifically <i>proprioception,</i> that I believe is unique. Proprioception is defined as “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proprioception"><span class="s1">is the sense of the relative position of one's own parts of the body and strength of effort being employed in movement. It is sometimes described as the "sixth sense</span></a>." So, for the T'ai Chi practitioner, proprioception is not an afterthought like it might be in some other exercises, where your focus could be on jumping over a hurdle or swinging a racket at a ball. Of course, those exercises would facilitate proprioception, but what sets T'ai Chi apart is that the main focus is on proprioception. You turn your focus inward and work on using the mind to direct your center and its relationship to the ground and to other people, as in the case of push hands. Then something interesting happens: you start to see your body in a different way, not simply like outstretched arms reaching for something while keeping yourself upright but like a network of cables and fibers that are stretching and calibrating from your toes to your fingertips and everything in between. You feel whole. You feel connected but separate simultaneously.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">What I have found is that the dance-like approach is closer to an external form and doesn’t feel like my whole body is fully engaged. I have to add that there are no studies I know of that research the benefits of one modality over another. It would be an interesting study but difficult to gather that many participants. So I can’t say which one is better with any credibility; however, what I can say is that being fully engaged is deeply fulfilling to me on a quality of life scale. I do think the athletic dance approach is more aesthetically pleasing, and I believe that makes people feel like it is the better approach. What I think gets lost following that path is the resistance you get from an outside force like push hands, which allows you to sense another’s intent. Then your body develops an ability to calibrate to external forces because you are directing and dispersing the force throughout your body using your intention via the network of fibers called the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascia">fascia</a>. Having that force applied to your structure allows you to listen to it<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>and is what I believe makes it an “internal” approach. Simply stretching your body and assuming an athletic, albeit slow or static position, doesn’t necessarily mean you are directing it with your intention. When you use your intention, it deepens the quality of the movement and thus improves your mind-body connection.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I haven’t done much yoga, but I know many people draw a distinction between true yoga and gym yoga, criticizing gym yoga as being merely external and athletic, while true yoga is more internal and contemplative. I think the same distinction is drawn between internal T'ai Chi and the more external athletic dance approach. I would like to see a study using functional balance as a means of evaluating which of the different approaches is more efficacious. I know which one I would wager on.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<div class="blogger-post-footer">There are many lessons out there which we can learn from and change our lifestyle to help us live a higher quality of life.</div>chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10404520347687352090noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13439323.post-28018078133596336432018-01-31T09:17:00.002-08:002022-12-22T07:35:16.074-08:00Survival Knife! Learning the hard way<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">On a plane heading to some islands off the Western coast of Canada, I met some guys who worked for a moving company. They had a large office move contract and offered me some work. I agreed, and when the job was completed, they asked me to come work with them in Vancouver, BC. I ended up working for them for 6 months. After a few months of working with them, I did not meet many people, so I was excited when my boss at the moving company asked me to go hunting with him and a few of his friends. <br /><br />We drove many hours to a place called “Hundred Mile House.” During the drive, we were drinking beer and listening to Metallica's Black Album and being rowdy. On our drive, we were pulled over by a policeman. As the policeman approached our vehicle, the driver (my boss), who had previously rolled his large pickup truck over a few months ago, totally cracking the windshield, greeted the police officer. I distinctly remember the policeman telling him that it was illegal to drive with a windshield that had a crack longer than 12.” My boss, said, “sir, I don’t think there is one crack longer than 12” on the whole windshield.” We all burst out laughing. The whole windshield was like a spiderweb of tiny cracks. He let us go with a warning to fix the windshield. We began drinking beer again. Someone in the car said they left their flask in the back bed. I volunteered to climb out of the moving vehicle and retrieve it. Driving at night in the woods, I climbed out of the window and jumped into the back bed, grabbed the flask in his bag, and climbed back in. We finally and uneventfully pulled up to our motel. We were all pretty drunk. Next thing, I remember we were up at 4 am getting dressed and heading out into the woods. <br /><br />It was a very cold, rainy November morning. My boss gave me a shotgun, pointed in a particular direction, and told me go out there and if I see a deer, shoot it. I had never been hunting before. I had been walking for a hour or so when I heard a shot. I walked over and my boss had just killed a deer. As I approached, I could tell the deer was still moving so I took out my knife and stabbed it in the throat. He was so impressed by that, he cut the deer open and removed its heart, and said I had to take a bite because it was my first kill. I balked, but he was insistent, so I reluctantly bit a chunk of the warm muscle. I immediately felt an adrenaline rush deep in my body. I now wanted to get my own true kill. Like a bloodhound in search of a fugitive, I charged off following deer tracks without taking my eye off the ground. I really do not remember how long I was searching, but when I looked up, the sun was just about to set. <br /><br />An eerie chill went through my spine as the trees looked black and gnarled against the smoky pink sky. I simply didn’t notice where I was or what was happening weather-wise. My cotton jacket had a shell of ice from the rain, and the snow turned to sleet. The winds picked up, and I started screaming for help. Realizing I was totally screwed, I frantically yelled, but no one could hear me. I yelled till my voice was hoarse, and then I cried hard. The winds were so loud that it was useless even trying. <br /><br />After a good bit of crying, A great fear hit me, I realized that wolves and bears could be out there stalking me. I searched for a clearing in the dark, and I took a long hard look around and realized I needed some protection from the elements. I started to get cold, really cold, and I remembered I had some power bars on me. I knew if I ate them, it would generate some body heat. I think I ate three. I felt around in the dark for a tree and cut off some cedar boughs with my Cold Steel SRK knife. It had a 6” blade and barely enough to cut through the boughs. I really had to use force. I remember the impact of those cuts on my wrist. As I started to make a crude shelter from the freezing rain, I found a piece of corrugated metal that was just lying a few feet away, and I surrounded myself by it and the boughs. I was still cold, so I would periodically get up and do some jumping jacks, and martial arts strikes. Those martial arts strikes really felt empowering in that dark, icy forest. <br /><br />The thought of making a fire never entered my head. I think back then, I knew so little that the fact it was raining, with snow everywhere, meant it was impossible to make a fire. I am not even sure I had matches on me. I seriously doubt I would have made it through the night without becoming hypothermic. Luckily, after 6 hours or so, the winds died down, and I figured it would be a good time to fire the shotgun into the air as a signal device. After a short pause, I heard a shot. We continued to communicate with each other through gunshots, and I was finally able to find my way to them in the pitch dark. It was about 11 p.m., and they said they were just about to leave and notify someone. I can’t express how happy I was when I finally burst through that dense icy forest into an opening where my boss and his friends were.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Obviously, an experience like this is life-changing. I couldn’t help but think of how naive I was going into the woods and all the thoughtless decisions I made that led me into a life-threatening situation. There was a temptation to beat myself up; there was also a temptation to eschew ever going into the wilderness again. But as I thought it through, I realized who I was, and I used it as a way to improve myself. <br /><br />So I set out to take my outdoor skills to a deeper level. After much reflection, three major areas can get you into and out of a survival situation: Decisions, Knowledge and Skills, and Tools. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Decisions</span></h3>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">After being a father of two young boys, I realized just how stupid it was to get into a car that was already damaged from a previous drinking and driving accident. There was also the fact that I chose to walk out into a very unfamiliar forest in poor weather conditions without any training whatsoever. I am not beating myself up here, but I am examining some of the decisions I made leading up to my survival situation. Prior to that experience, I hadn’t spent too much time in the woods. Being a city boy, I didn’t grow up learning how to survive in the woods. This is why we can’t always make the right decision. I had always desired to go hunting but never knew anyone that did it. So I overlooked the bad cues because I really wanted to get out there and hunt. Still today, many people go for a hike and don’t even bring a water bottle or even carry a swiss army knife. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Knowledge and Skills</span></h3>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">In short, I had none of either. Although I had never heard of hypothermia, I did know enough to keep my wits about me. I was fit; my martial arts background had given me a way to keep my body heated up. Eating something really helped me with increasing body heat, comfort, and keeping a positive outlook. Also, I intuitively knew I should cut some cedar boughs down to protect me from the icy rain. I had zero knowledge of shelter building, but somehow, I made a crude shelter in the night without a flashlight. I also didn’t know anything about navigation, and I lost contact with my hunting party. I am not sure I would have survived the night. I have not dressed appropriately for the weather. Back then, I knew nothing about gore-tex and the difference between waterproofing and water resistance. Most wilderness survival sites and instructors will tell you that knowledge and training are the two most important things to keep you from becoming a tragic news story, and I also endorse that thinking here. There is a wise saying in the survival world, “the more you know, the less you carry.“</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">If you search "survival situation preparedness”, you will find a ton of survival kits that talk about the gear you need. There is certainly a bunch of things I lacked in that situation. However, I did get four things right: I had a shotgun and shells, a decent-sized fixed-blade knife, really good boots, and those power bars. I lacked a proper jacket, a fire-starting kit, a whistle, a flashlight, and an emergency blanket. If I had all of those, I could have easily spent the night out there in the woods. I neglected to include a cell phone since this occurred way before the days' cell phones were carried regularly. If I had one, I would have called my boss, and we would have found each other in probably 20 or so minutes. But it is important to remember that a cell phone doesn’t not obviate the need for solid skills and training; batteries run out, and signals can be hard to come by in remote areas. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Going Forward</span></h3>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">I should also mention that my experience was, typical of most survival experiences, a lost hunter, which is similar to getting lost hiking or fishing. It is important to acknowledge that while my experience was very challenging, it wasn’t as hardcore as Robinson Crusoe or plain crash survivors in the Andes. So I never would equate my 6-hour or so experience with people who were lost for days on end. But it does bring modest insights into the harshness of nature and what it takes to survive. I hope reading about my experience, you learn from my mistake and get inspired to learn a few skills and ensure that you have at least a few items in your bag to prevent you from getting into a survival situation. And if you are an experienced outdoorsman, look to my experience as a person who did not have many opportunities to get out in the woods and jumped at the first opportunity to get out there way too early and reflect on possibilities to share your skills with people who do not have opportunities to get out there. </span></div>
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<div class="blogger-post-footer">There are many lessons out there which we can learn from and change our lifestyle to help us live a higher quality of life.</div>chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10404520347687352090noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13439323.post-71210987145086879862017-10-24T07:31:00.003-07:002017-10-26T08:31:57.209-07:00The Importance of Naturalness in Tai Chi <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<i><b>Tao Te Ching - Lao Tzu - chapter 53</b></i></div>
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<i>If I have even just a little sense,</i></div>
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<i>I will walk on the main road and my only fear will be of straying from it.</i></div>
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<i>Keeping to the main road is easy,</i></div>
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<i>But people love to be sidetracked.</i></div>
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<i>When the court is arrayed in splendor,</i></div>
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<i>The fields are full of weeds,</i></div>
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<i>And the granaries are bare.</i></div>
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<i>Some wear are gorgeous clothes,</i></div>
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<i>Carry sharp swords,</i></div>
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<i>And indulge themselves with food and drink;</i></div>
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<i>They have more possessions than they can use.</i></div>
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<i>They are robber barons.</i></div>
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<i>This is certainly not the way of Tao.</i></div>
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<i>(translation by </i><a href="http://www.wussu.com/laotzu/key.html#gfje">Gia-fu Feng and Jane English</a>)</div>
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When first studying Tai Chi, a common question usually arises about coordinating breath with the movements. That one question needs a little background before it can be answered. Let's start with a seminar, I attended in 1999 with Madame Gao Fu. She was 82 at the time. It was a seminar in which you could choose who you want to workout with. I was new to Tai Chi and did not know who was famous and who was not. There were other teachers there who offered exotic styles with even more exotic names. <br />
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But all this 82 year old Chinese woman taught was zhan zhuang (standing meditation), and chan ssu jin (standing and doing spiral movements) for 3 hours per day. I thought there must be something to this because her practice is so simple while the others at the workshop presented more complicated esoteric forms. I ended up practicing with her for the rest of the 5 days. Towards the end of each practice we got a chance to ask questions. Someone in the crowd asked about matching the breathing with the movements. Madame Gao Fu said it was not necessary to try to match them up. Adding that after continued practice they would come together naturally. During one of those question sessions I asked, "my connection to my Qi comes and goes; sometimes I feel really in tune and then it goes away." "Is that how it is supposed to be?" She said that the more you practice the deeper the connection until you are <b>never disconnected.</b><br />
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What Madame Gao Fu espoused was a type of natural unforced but committed practice, while standing in place or moving. Now in 2017, 18 years later, I still remember that seminar and I am still deeply committed to the wisdom she passed on.<br />
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Often when simply being natural you are perceived as lazy and in America laziness is the enemy. To just be natural in America is difficult because so many experts want you to DO STUFF, ACCOMPLISH GOALS and ACHIEVE RESULTS. I have found a lot of conflicting messages being promoted by health experts in America, "you should diet," "go jogging," "think positive," "have social networks," "sleep 8 hours per night,""set goals," "be successful," "challenge yourself," "meditate daily" and "reduce stress." The problem is that people are lost and the experts are lost. The Tao just is. All you have to do is follow the current. Where is the current? It is everywhere but the best place to start is in your body. <br />
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Many years ago when I visited Mississippi. My wife wanted to take me to her family summer vacation spot, the Buffalo River in Arkansas. There my wife and I went in a canoe and her father and mother went in a separate canoe. My father-in-law is a very devout Christian in Mississippi and I was this Tai Chi practitioner who KNEW the Tao, After all I have been studying the Tao Te Ching since the 80s. But this very '<i>square,</i>' in the 60’s sense, school district superintendent, put his canoe in the water as I did. As he entered the river he effortlessly glided towards the part of the river where the current was strongest, whereas I battled the water and huffed and puffed and shouldered my way to that same current then it changed, as currents tend to do, and I lost it. So I again struggled to get into the right path. I would look up and there was this old guy blissfully gleaming along. Granted it was my first and really only time canoeing in a river but it is a good example of how to find the Tao.The Tao is not exclusively found in China, it is not owned by Taoists it simply is. You don’t even have to do Tai Chi to find it, although, I find that the pace of Tai Chi and the movements themselves reveal a deep understanding of the spiral energy that is part of the universe and doing them assists in finding the current within yourself. <br />
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There are two parts to this naturalness, one is the release to the Tao, the state of which is wu wei. I have explained <a href="https://taichiamerica.blogspot.com/2017/09/the-yin-yang-of-survival-toxic.html">wu wei</a> before. It is a type of thoughtful non-action. It is not simply doing nothing, which many interpret it as and it is not using force to make something happen either. The second part of naturalness is song. Song is a state of being, like being relaxed but with a slight level of attentiveness. So it is not standing at attention like a soldier nor is relaxing at a beach in Cabo. It is somewhere in between.<br />
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Song is also applied to parts of the body and it involves conscious releasing of control of the waist, neck etc. The hardest part of Tai Chi is to release these parts of the body where most people store their tension. You find when working on this release that you are more able to find your center of balance because many of us are living in a shell like body that is not even aware of our true place on earth. <br />
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So to attain song is the first important but hardest step because it allows for the energy to settle in your dan tian and then it can start is transformation process. <br />
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<i><b>Tao Te Ching - Lao Tzu - chapter 15</b></i></div>
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<i>Who can wait quietly while the mud settles?</i></div>
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<i>Who can remain still until the moment of action?</i></div>
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<i>Observers of the Tao do not seek fulfilment.</i></div>
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<i>Not seeking fulfillment, they are not swayed by desire for change.</i></div>
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<i>(translation by</i> <a href="http://www.wussu.com/laotzu/key.html#gfje">Gia-fu Feng and Jane English</a>)</div>
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There are a lot of hours, maybe a lifetime of work that goes into what was just described above. In fact that is the main practice, whether you chose to just sit and meditate or do the most esoteric ancient qi gong, song is the main activity to find the Tao. You can not find your center without song, you cannot do Tai Chi without song, and you can not attain wu wei if you do not song.<br />
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<b>Note:</b> Tai Chi could mean the series of postures most people think when Tai Chi is mentioned or it could be the balancing of yin/yang energies to canoe a river more adeptly or live to a ripe old age of 88 and still be teaching a physical activity. <br />
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<i>"Madame Gao Fu died in Beijing January 17, 2005 at 88 years of age, following a brief illness." </i><br />
<a href="http://seattletaiji.oo.net/bio.htm">http://seattletaiji.oo.net/bio.htm</a></div>
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<div class="blogger-post-footer">There are many lessons out there which we can learn from and change our lifestyle to help us live a higher quality of life.</div>chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10404520347687352090noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13439323.post-78765765872904888842017-09-25T11:34:00.005-07:002017-09-26T07:31:49.932-07:00The Holy Grail: A Literal Cup or Metaphorical Chalice of the Divine?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span id="docs-internal-guid-c0cd3820-ba48-732a-1fd4-007d2e88056b" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img height="400" src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/DDODK9PDYeo9IkJtnGi2UK66CN4crfo-co78-duQw-k6owY6pWM1d1Vg5QpYYRAJ1JYQ9egi3B5JwTlcwVsB9g9B_i7wxxX3wzs1YBhK9bqzXvPeRhDscJ3vcVP4CEkctEVoSzgM" width="342" /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">Finishing my undergrad in Psychology after years of Tai Chi, Qigong practice and other Asian practices, I asked my neuroscience instructor if there was a pathway between the perineum and the spine. He gave me the strangest look and that was the first time I realized that much of my knowledge from Tai Chi wasn’t going to hold up to anatomical scrutiny. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That said, there are still many important contributions to be gained from many ancient practices. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Anyway, I wasn’t a total idiot for asking about that pathway, here is a </span><a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4213433/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">medical stud</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">y that discusses Davinci’s thoughts on the subject and one of his drawings pictured.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Moreover, that pathway is ubiquitous throughout ancient texts from India to China and even in Catholicism, which is what captivated me. It is such a part of world knowledge and especially religious knowledge but it is rarely discussed. So I had to investigate it further. Experiential knowledge from my own practice with Tai Chi and internal alchemy led me to believe that the search for the Holy Grail was more about the dan tian and the kua than it was about a cup. I always found those stories about the search for the Holy Grail kind of dumb, although people are that dumb, ever watch antique road show? I mean seriously, what would be so significant about a cup that Christ drank from? Magical powers? It all just sounds so silly. Even the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Da_Vinci_Code">Davinci Code</a> adds a spin on the theory of the Grail as a bloodline from Jesus that is still alive today. I find that hypothesis equally ridiculous. However, I would not put it past the multitudes of non-initiates who think they can attain religious growth or supernatural power from these comic book stories. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What I do find compelling and more believable is what if these ancient seekers of the Grail actually thought that Christ was a yogi or something similar, and that the Holy Grail was actually inside one’s body and spiritual development was attained through cultivation of the body? After all people are born from a woman’s womb which is located in that exact region that happens to look like a cup (see picture below). </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To me the idea of self cultivation to bring about spiritual development is central to many Asian religious traditions to name just two, Indian yogic practices and Taoist bodily practices both of which were present during the time of Christ. However, it is not explicitly linked to Christianity but there is evidence that religious initiates did travel to India from Jerusalem. But you have to dig a little deeper and take into account that some how there is no documentation about Christ’s life between him at 12 and 33, early Christian symbolism has some evidence and some of Davinci’s drawings and writings do as well. Then maybe it is hidden in Christianity as well? </span><img height="320" src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/T9dlItdSkIh4KplCkEX30xYVaOGTfU8aIlTBP6telOAsCZDYVyuI-J80fGMF708lLUGigCfFVZq2K_Y1CZfQUlndWoU8wlHEyZorr-VI1uDXz1HhsabWoE7gA_ROI3deCv0U6pNe" style="border: none; transform: rotate(0rad);" width="253" /><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This topic is interesting to me because as a Westerner, and the trend in the West for some reason is/was to separate the mind and body into two distinct halves, whereas the East chose to keep them unified. I am really not sure why but I think this is why so many Westerners pursue Eastern martial arts, and other mind body practices like Yoga. <i>For a paper on the Cartesian mind body-duality and its role in medicine read</i> </span><a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3115289/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">here</span></a><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I believe that early Christian teachers actively sought to suppress body cultivation methods, like Yoga and Tai chi, and the idea that Christ may have practiced them, which is why we do not have any accounts of Christ’s </span><a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-davids/jesus-lost-years-may-fina_b_179513.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">missing years</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> even though Christian writers have every</span><a href="https://bible.org/article/daily-life-time-jesus" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> last detail</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> of his life documented except those 18 years. This might not be so outlandish when you include how secretive the church is and the mysticism of many of its sculptures,symbols, and texts for example, there is a </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fontana_della_Pigna" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">pine cone in the courtyard of the vatican</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Pine cones have long symbolized human enlightenment through the third eye or pineal gland and carvings of them are also found on staff of the Pope, the Egyptian God Osiris and in many religious motifs around the world (I will tie in the pineal gland to the dan tian in my next essay)</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Adding to this that </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Thomas_Church,_Palayoor" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">St.Thomas began a church in Kerala, India, in 52 AD</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> adds some credence that there was a connection between India and Jerusalem during Christ’s life and that the church knows more about internal alchemy than it shares.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Let’s not forget that the church actively sought control over people and knowledge and there are even accounts of</span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Tyndale" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> people being killed </span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">for printing and translating the bible.</span> It also shows that the West had access to this knowledge but sought to keep it from public view while in Asia it was more available. </div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Connecting it back to Taoism</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In Taoism, there are what are called the 3 treasures, Jing, Qi, and Shen. </span></div>
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<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jing_(TCM)" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #0b0080; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10.5pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Jing</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><a href="https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E7%B2%BE" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #663366; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">精</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> "nutritive essence, essence; refined, perfected; extract; spirit, demon; sperm, seed"</span></div>
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<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qi" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #0b0080; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10.5pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Qi</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><a href="https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E6%B0%A3" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #663366; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">氣</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> "vitality, energy, force; air, vapor; breath; spirit, vigor; attitude"</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 1pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shen_(Chinese_%22spirit;_god%22)" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #0b0080; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10.5pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Shen</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><a href="https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E7%A5%9E" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #663366; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">神</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> "spirit; soul, mind; god, deity; supernatural being"</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">These need to be stewed in the cauldron to refine the elixir of life which is held in the dan tian along with the three treasures. Is it possible that the “caldron” referred to in Taoist texts is what the people in the West called the Holy Grail. </span><img height="278" src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/lR0OW_xG7jxHurxkihuBvQF68w1tYWmQ6Qw8o1_zJpdJBsweGN9Ff7k__Jxd13zUN7icsBR_Q6bUQIUARMdxBRX6NzW6SitqiHRX4LGjL-n_RH4qigZ6unHxEfV1M01TM-JYk7Zt" style="border: none; transform: rotate(0rad);" width="230" /></div>
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<i>From Wikipedia: "The (late 16th century) <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journey_to_the_West">Journey to the West</a> novel provides a more recent example when an enlightened Taoist patriarch instructs <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Wukong">Sun Wukong</a> "Monkey" with a poem that begins:</i></div>
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<i>Know well this secret formula wondrous and true: Spare and nurse the vital forces, this and nothing else. All power resides in the semen [jing], the breath [qi], and the spirit [shen]; Guard these with care, securely, lest there be a leak. Lest there be a leak!</i></div>
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<i>Keep within the body! (tr. Yu 1977:88" </i></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Storing seminal fluid is also vital to Christian thought and Leonardo Da Vinci adds some credibility to this thinking as does the </span><a href="http://www.christianbiblereference.org/faq_masturbation.htm" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">coitus interruptus views of the Catholic church</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. I think the reason is that to ancient peoples sperm was sacred and I can’t speak for the Catholics but beyond a shadow of doubt the Chinese thought that storing it was the only way for your spirit to leave your body and become immortal. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So if you are a spiritual person and believe that this earth is the place where you train to attain higher levels of consciousness then many religions point directly to your dan tian and my belief that it is also the Holy Grail as to where you cultivate your bodily essence and lead a spiritual life. Having said that, I have explored many aspects of these practices of self cultivation and I am certain there is some <a href="http://taichiamerica.blogspot.com/2017/09/opening-your-kua-increases-benefits-of.html">benefit to your health and longevity</a> but I am uncertain as to whether bodily fluids are supposed to be kept internally and heated through mind-bodily cultivation which purportedly leads to immortality. Next I will write more specifically on the whole process of attaining immortality. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For more information on this topic you can read:</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Eva Wong's Cultivating Stillness</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Stuart Alve Olson's The Jade Emperor's Mind Seal Classic</span></div>
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<div class="blogger-post-footer">There are many lessons out there which we can learn from and change our lifestyle to help us live a higher quality of life.</div>chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10404520347687352090noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13439323.post-54032249570586462752017-09-21T12:28:00.000-07:002018-10-30T09:04:46.625-07:00Opening your kua increases the benefits of Tai Chi <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<img alt="Image result for chen zhonghua kua" height="308" src="https://internalartsia.files.wordpress.com/2007/10/2-chen-zhonghua-pushes-hands-with-ronnie-yee-in-2004_jpg.jpg" width="400" /><br />
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">One of the joys of teaching Tai Chi to older adults is that you can see progress as they develop. The people who come into my class for the first time have very little balance or coordination so if they decide to stick with it you can clearly and profoundly see your impact as a teacher.</span></b><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Knowing </span><a href="https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2016/p0922-older-adult-falls.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the impact of falls on that population</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and helping some people avoid some of those negative outcomes is quite rewarding. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The major challenges I see in people when they enter my class is not knowing the location of their center. This becomes increasingly evident when they are constantly overreaching, which places a heavy load on the vertebrae, and makes them top heavy. They also do not have their feet flush on the ground, which can again result in a fall. Overall, there is little coordination between the upper and lower half. I am always discussing the importance of the top half and lower half moving in agreement with each other and that discussion leads directly to t</span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">he person responsible for the popularization of Tai Chi, Yang Cheng Fu. Yang Cheng Fu promoted the health benefits of Tai Chi, and created a list of 10 important points to do Tai Chi correctly (below). </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">An excellent book on his teaching can be purchased </span><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Tai-Chi-Touchstones-Family-Transmissions/dp/091205901X" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">here</a><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">Yang Cheng Fu’s 10 important points:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">1. Empty Neck, Raise Spirit </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">2. Contain Chest, Raise Back </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">3. Loosen Waist </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">4. Differentiate Empty Full</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">5. Sink Shoulders, Drop Elbows </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">6. Use Intention not Exertion </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">7. Upper Lower Mutually Follow</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">8. Inner Outer Mutually Harmonize </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">9. Continue without Interruption </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">10. Move from Centre, Seek Calm </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">One of those important points is, "<i><span style="font-size: 14.6667px;">Upper Lower Mutually Follow</span></i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">" where I see most people have difficulty when they are learning Tai Chi. Most older adults I teach think that the Tai Chi form is a series of choreographed dance moves and want to memorize steps and hand positions. I guess being American and older they come to class with their prior experiences from square dancing and other American dance forms they grew up with. What they are missing is their whole structure is a shell with little or any understanding of the internal work that Tai Chi demands.The one exception to this is a woman who was married to a Spanish gentleman and they did a lot of Latin dancing. She had a very well cultivated understanding of her dan tian and could root quite well. Currently, she is 82 years old and still going strong. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I often share with my students </span><a href="http://www.thetaichilife.com/yang-cheng-fus-10-essential-principles.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Yang Cheng Fu’s important principles</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> because I think they are essential to truly practice Tai Chi. In fact, my teaching of Tai Chi focuses on cultivating these principles rather than rote memorization of the 24 form, because if you can attain some level of proficiency with these principles it will be more beneficial to your health and well-being. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">One of the things I continually notice in class as people age is they use their kua less and less, and those who have the most balance issues seem to be the most rigid in their </span><a href="http://www.stltaiji.com/media/documents/Taiji/Sung%20Kua.pdf" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">kua</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (Pictured below). The kua is known anatomically as the inguinal crease or the grove where the femur meets the pelvis. In a quote from Zhang Xue Xin, a renowned Chen-style Tai Chi master,</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> “Americans know how to use the hips and not the kua.”</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (this quote is from the hyper link to a paper on the kua above)</span></div>
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<a href="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/hpMnrK1pU8oQ9yLVbZjcXFrhM8U85UmMNGRmhjotPrpVUCYAH0bxgZ8pbqerym94E_M4mXG-01JgZhPhZ0NmhY6IWjPOeRGQzIXWQX7arJ_MxcEU7cP5Hv0N-5tjRp4sXCwEC_Nw" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/hpMnrK1pU8oQ9yLVbZjcXFrhM8U85UmMNGRmhjotPrpVUCYAH0bxgZ8pbqerym94E_M4mXG-01JgZhPhZ0NmhY6IWjPOeRGQzIXWQX7arJ_MxcEU7cP5Hv0N-5tjRp4sXCwEC_Nw" style="border: none; transform: rotate(0rad);" width="276" /></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The kua and the dan tian work together to create a kinetic chain that:</span><br />
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<li>Is the "glue" between the upper and lower halves of the body.</li>
<li>Keeps the center of balance aligned and sunk.</li>
<li>Provides better alignment of the body for smoother movement with less chance of sprains.</li>
<li>Creates a "mutable" joint that increases leverage and disperses force by tricking the opponent as to the actual location of your center.</li>
<li>Increases power output, i.e. force multiplier.</li>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The dan tian is a Chinese term that means “Sea of Qi.” If you read ancient Taoist texts there is a lot of mystical abilities attached to this area. <a href="https://taichiamerica.blogspot.com/2017/09/the-holy-grail-literal-cup-or.html">For an essay on that topic click here</a>. Suffice to say, that the dan tian is the center of balance for people, it is located 1”- 2” below the navel and midway between the lower abdomen and the spine. Many people argue about exact locations but this is not meaningful to our purpose here. There is no anatomical distinction for the dan tian. It is however your true center and that is the most important thing to remember. </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Every object has a center of balance because gravity makes it so.</span></div>
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One of the best explanations on opening the kua is by Chen style practitioner, Chen Zhonghua. He has a <a href="https://youtu.be/lnPHtijTH0U">trailer</a> for his video that can be purchased <a href="http://practicalmethod.com/2010/11/thigh-in-tai-chi-chuan-online-video/">here</a>. Unfortunately, I can not find anyone on youtube who explains it as clearly as he does. </div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Training your body to move from the kua and its relation to the actual physical center of your body (dan tian) is a real game changer for your practice. If you were to go up to the average person on the street and ask them where their center was, they might point to their heart or to their stomach area but I will bet you most will not be close to knowing where it is. Imagine you have this body and every day you are walking around on this earth and you are completely clueless as its proper alignment with its true place in the universe? This awareness changes your life because for years you have walked, played and slept thinking it was way higher than it actually is and once you embody its placement your body is unlocked and you can experience so much more of life. </span></div>
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<div class="blogger-post-footer">There are many lessons out there which we can learn from and change our lifestyle to help us live a higher quality of life.</div>chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10404520347687352090noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13439323.post-48677761534690743782017-09-15T06:53:00.002-07:002017-09-16T12:31:31.757-07:00The Yin-Yang of Survival: Toxic Masculinity, and Taoism<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEis5oKG4lvWHqxpRbPfAwYu39bKuF0HU8udmnpka9lkZZvfBDlWTAXJCI7yVW4sS5Twia2RRQt2jiFfWdneyWsO2al7bbxeE3THm3lm61BYm8ru_RvV7pTeOdGi7mVI1SnFD_zR0w/s1600/Naked-and-Afraid-XL.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="675" data-original-width="1200" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEis5oKG4lvWHqxpRbPfAwYu39bKuF0HU8udmnpka9lkZZvfBDlWTAXJCI7yVW4sS5Twia2RRQt2jiFfWdneyWsO2al7bbxeE3THm3lm61BYm8ru_RvV7pTeOdGi7mVI1SnFD_zR0w/s320/Naked-and-Afraid-XL.jpg" width="320" /></a>Once in awhile when I am resting on the weekends I will watch a reality TV show. Unlike many people I find of them interesting to see how people behave in certain stressful situations. Last week, I got caught up in the Naked and Afraid XL season. This latest offering featured 12 people who had already survived for 21 days in the wilderness with a single partner totally naked. So these 12 naked veterans were tasked with surviving in the wilds of the Orinoco river basin in Colombia with two other veterans, who were chosen by the producers. They were only given a knife, a bag, and each person got to chose one survival item: either a water container, a net, a fishing kit, or a fire making kit. So no one person had everything they needed to make it the whole 40 days. They were not given food, or water, or clothes.<br />
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There were four groups of three. The only group I am going to analyze is the one with a male, who described himself as, “The Alpha Male” and specifically said that he is not “an” alpha male but “The” alpha male. He was matched with two women, one of whom was a vegetarian. Literally within minutes of arriving the alpha male started cutting large trees down and building a massive shelter. The one item he chose to bring along was a bow and arrow. He tried hunting for food but was unsuccessful. In the first few days he expended lots of precious energy doing many tasks. He derided the women for being lazy and hurled other abusive insults at them. The women stood their ground and cautioned him against expending too much energy. At one point he moved into a separate camp, which he had to build himself. After he had completed that and expended even more energy, he realized he had no means of making fire, as the women had the fire starter. So he went back to them asking for the fire starter. He tried to make amends but he was not clear in his intention and could not resolve the conflict he instigated. This decision left him without the means to start a fire, a necessary part of surviving. Needless to say, the women chose a better survival strategy and they made it the full forty days by having a wise understanding of resource conservation and “the” alpha male tapped out early and was sent home.<br />
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The reason why I took the time to explain that show is because this is a clear cut example of how Taoist principles can work and how toxic masculinity can lead to one’s downfall. I say Taoist principles, but clearly the women in the show did not say what their philosophy was so I am kind of using their survival strategy as an example of Taoist principles in action. Come to think of it, these woman gave a better demonstration of Taoist principles than some old dude with a man bun posting his lecture on YouTube. <br />
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The alpha male in the show was the poster boy for toxic masculinity, with his need to be right, to not listen to “weak” women, and a vegetarian no less. He ignored numerous cautions, at his own peril. As a Tai Chi instructor who has been teaching older adults since 2001, I have seen this play out time and time again. In fact, <a href="https://www.jscimedcentral.com/CommunityMedicine/communitymedicine-1-1005.pdf">most older males </a> do not chose Tai Chi as their exercise and would rather drop their wives off to their “dance-like” exercise. Those women being dropped off have taught me many lessons about checking my own masculinity. I have learned that women are more likely to go to the doctor’s and older men who live with their wives go to the doctor more and live longer. Women are open to feedback and listen to others more and they live <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-art-and-science-aging-well/201702/why-do-women-live-longer-men">six and a half years longer than men in the U.S</a>.. Whether by script or by personal choice the women in the show clearly demonstrated the qualities Taoists would characterize as Yin, or soft.<br />
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Taoist models of gender account for the fact that feminine qualities are important and even superior to male qualities. Before we go any further, it must be stated that Chinese culture did not bring about a gender revolution by any means and there are numerous accounts of women that have been persecuted. However, it must also be acknowledged that Taoism is unique in that it gave a highly significant placement of women and feminine qualities in its value system, especially when comparing it to other systems of that era like Christianity, and Buddhism etc..<br />
The main symbol for Taoism is the Yin-Yang symbol, or Tai Chi doh, with a Yin half, that is soft, dark, and feminine, and Yang half that is hard, bright, and male. Yes, it is a binary view of the universe but it is important to note that each half has a bit of its other within it. That significant dot means that each has the other within them, meaning there is always a little masculinity in a female, and a little femininity in a male. The most important part of the symbol is that both aspects are intertwined and equal in the creation of the universe. <br />
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In chapter 6 of the Taoist classic by Lao Tzu, as translated by Gia Fu-feng and Jane English, he mentions the valley spirit, <br />
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<i><b>Tao Te Ching - Lao Tzu - chapter 6</b></i></div>
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<i>The valley spirit never dies;</i></div>
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<i>It is the woman, primal mother.</i></div>
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<i>Her gateway is the root of heaven and earth.</i></div>
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<i>It is like a veil barely seen.</i></div>
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<i>Use it; it will never fail.</i><br />
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Stand by the door of any Tai Chi class in the world and you will hear talk about using hard force as opposed to soft force. Hard force is usually characterized as a male trait, which is in juxtaposition to the female trait of yielding, that is considered to be the highest level of internalizing the Tao. <br />
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The ultimate expression of Yin energy is in Wu-Wei, or non-action. I was always thrown off by that, and many Americans have difficulties grasping it, instead they see it as Jesus-take-the wheel, kind of non-action; totally letting go without any “human” help. I confess it took me a while to understand, but now I have come to understand it as “strategic” or thoughtful non-action. So the women in the alpha male’s group definitely exhibited Wu-Wei. They did it so well that the alpha male called them lazy but they were not lazy at all. Instead of cutting massive trees down they used a sparce shelter, even though they used the shelter the alpha male built, remember they did not ask him to build it, they would have made a simplier shelter. Additionally, while he was out hunting and climbing trees, they wove a fish trap and foraged for fruits and nuts. The vegetarian was practicularly smart in her awareness of her nutrient intake. She rationed her foraged food to make it until the 40 days. They also met up with another group which created a larger team effort. The women were able to work with in another group and therefore increase their chances of surviving.<br />
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The Yin, feminine trait of yielding allows clarity and opens up the opportunity of using the force of the earth. So in Tai Chi we relax so that we can use the force of the earth (gravity and leverage) more effectively. If we relax (let go) and don't force it, we can increase our impact. If we move with fear and tension Yang or male qualities, then we have to use even more non-Wu Wei force. Thus creating a non-harmonious trajectory. Often Wu-Wei is poo pooed by martial artists and fighters as weakness or fantasy. More on that in a few paragraphs but first I have to address the binary approach. <br />
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I can see that feminists might object to this binary approach because Taoism assigns traits to gender. But this is where the Yin-Yang comes into play, a female can have male traits, and a male can have female traits. So in Tai Chi, I consciously cultivate Yin- female traits to temper my Yang- male traits. Sometimes in everyday life, I get frustrated and become aggressive, which leads to as my wife says, me manhandling things. Tai Chi, helps me temper that Yang aggression and bring about a clarity of action and peace of mind. Just because we say that there are male traits and female traits doesn’t mean that gender assignment is rigidly in one group, the Yin-Yang symbolizes fluidity between gender and the transformation of energy from one group to the other. <br />
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All this talk of Yin energy does get dicey though, especially when it comes to martial arts, In combative situations things happen fast and there is a time and a place for the use of Yang force or violence. But right now in our time period violence is low but this could change. The alpha males of the world might rise again. This is why I see liberal idealism as too idealistic because it doesn’t acknowledge a world in which there are violent alpha males. All too often, liberals try to explain that behavior as it being socially constructed, where as the Taoist approach understands it is a way in nature, but not the best way, not the way of the Tao.<br />
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I grew up in Brooklyn in the late 60s and early 70s. It was not for the faint of heart. Men there were very aggressive, I witnessed my maternal grandfather beat up a guy and his wife after we left a restaurant. They had a disagreement about who had the right away and it came to blows. All this is typical male machismo of that era, but liberals seems to think this behavior is gone for ever. Unfortunately, I believe it is just dormant. I have a Hobbesian view of nature. So if the group from Naked and Afraid XL that I have been discussing were in a Hobbesian world, where there is no governing body, he could have cannibalized one of the women, taken the fire starter and made the other women his wife or in a less dramatic turn of events, the women might have seen him as more of an asset than an ass because of his 6 foot 5 stature and bold nature. So even the alpha male strategy is a viable solution in certain contexts and it is not socially constructed as many social scientists would have you believe. But again, following the Tao leads to a more fruitful relationship and even in a Hobbesian world working as a team with full support is better than cannibalizing each other. My point here is that hyper-masculinity is not socially constructed and it is important to practice martial arts because the Hobbesian world is never far from civilization. <br />
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This is why martial arts, especially Asian martial arts, like Tai Chi, Aikido, Judo, Jiu Jitsu, Wing Chun and others preach tempering hyper-masculinity and using one’s mind to leverage the anger in others. Anger creates a loss of balance and a lack of clear vision, and tempering doesn’t only work on Yang energy, it also can bring up Yin qualities. My friend Bishop, who is a university policeman and a Wing Chun instructor, told me that he discusses the balance/blending of Yin and Yang energies to his students all the time. “Too much of one or the other is never a good thing, but when COMBINED in the right way, the result is greater than the two parts.” <br />
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My close friends in martial arts, Dave, Larry, and Bishop all work on using Yin traits when dealing with angry male behavior, specifically Dave and Bishop who work directly with that behavior in public settings as a bouncer and a university police officer. I have heard countless stories of how they have used their martial training, specifically leverage and a cool clear head to not engage in the heightened emotion that often happens when young males, who have been drinking alcohol, come in contact with the opportunity for sex. My other friend, Larry teaches younger professional fighters the discipline it takes to check your wildness and throw accurate punches that hit their target with brutal efficacy. Larry and I often discuss the difficulty many of his students, mostly males have with listening and controlling their hyper masculinity. He has said that the ones who do become great are the ones who don’t get trapped by their hyper-masculinity/overly aggressive nature.<br />
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Practising martial arts and internalizing the principle of Yin-Yang deepens one’s understanding of themselves. It shows one how to take control of anger and hyper-aggression so that one can think clearly and make better decisions that lead to positive outcomes. Moreover, it also gives us an insight into human nature because you have seen the ugliness become tame.</div>
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<div class="blogger-post-footer">There are many lessons out there which we can learn from and change our lifestyle to help us live a higher quality of life.</div>chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10404520347687352090noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13439323.post-2679287727844218112017-09-13T07:54:00.001-07:002018-09-17T13:14:46.643-07:00I Literally Walked into Sacred Geometry<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<b id="docs-internal-guid-c2f4374f-7bb9-4bbd-9cfe-f0ae6f87f7df" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In teaching Tai Chi to older adults it is best to combine teaching the internal principles along with the form, which means you are basically reteaching people how to walk and move. After warm-ups, I have everyone pick a linoleum tile and place the feet heel to heel in a right angle on a corner on a tile. We stand like that for a moment and I have them take a step forward with their right foot, and about 4" over with their left foot, leaving their right on the square but turned at a 45 degree angle. As you are reading this you might be trying to visualize a bunch of older adults assembled in rows standing on a grid-like pattern. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><img alt="taichi-wisdom.ppt (2).jpg" height="389" src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/_o6uVcqHyoQEsw8haSsk8FkP-bzMwEcA5vwaT53ueH5YHZKft0cOfD1A2-_XoP20LYPyCSJeTOA6FWETmwG8Yyjkn7D6o6sPAFjGuJYS09kkS3IiwpamtOLBVRrF1CCyYmB-5R8W" style="border: none; transform: rotate(0rad);" width="517" /></b><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I have been teaching Tai Chi to older adults since 2001 and it took me awhile to catch on how to difficult it is for older adults to get into a bow stance and especially when turning 180 degrees with clear aligned movement. After so many students having difficulty I started using the tiles on the floor along with a cardinal directional sign on each of the four walls. As I started to create these methods of teaching people to do Tai Chi I realized that there was a geometric logic to how we align ourselves to the earth. When looking at the illustration (above) you can see one possible way sacred geometry developed. If you stay in one place facing north and turn around in a complete circle it will be 360 degrees. Then going back to basic geometry you can divide that up an infinite amount of ways but typically we divide it up first in quarters and then in eighths, hence the origin of the bagua (Pictured below). </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><img alt="Related image" src="https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRM-feDLUVIGnz5AcL8z1zksseuWBqKqDgJWKHe_H8wGXh_qWt-" /></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That inspired me to seek out geometric relationships in Tai Chi, moreover, when I was exploring Tai Chi I became aware of </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feng_shui" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Feng Shui</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and their usage of the bagua. I also knew that the original 13 postures of Tai Chi are patterned off of the very same bagua symbol; eight main postures and five secondary ones (pictured below). These connections made me appreciate Tai Chi even more because the whole Taoist system worked in concordance with one another. There was not too many contradictions, although there are smaller discrepancies with certain assignments of what fits into which area, for instance, an animal and an emotion and actually everything in existence is prescribed to each cardinal direction. </span><img height="260" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/oMdNfMn2SsP7iCj2S3xZVXmK7ys2yxGC-F0kiMKlQfeqU1tOF2k5mQaYLX81ybhIV5g7I6wUF569C8J2hHAYTwK0pIsTKxPdAJCQBr-D_qtm7VO5B3CxyeOfEMKNR_V1kFiTxW7z" style="border: none; transform: rotate(0rad);" width="385" /></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As the caption states in the 13 postures of Tai Chi, there are 8 energies and directions, which are also added to the elemental directions of the 5 elements, north, south, east, west, and center.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The early Chinese people created a compass (pictured below) that linked up the waxing and the waning of the moon with the 8 directions and this was used to predict floods and then more was added on to it. The I Ching or Book of Transformation was also created from there. The early Chinese people figured that significant events occur during the seasonal changes, i.e. floods, winter, harvest season etc. The idea is that by understanding the natural forces one could prepare ahead of time and avoid more acute emergencies. </span><img height="394" src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/2oPveHw985mB81fD7tQPxv993Rm-WHgMMiloScJWiTge0SKftIzEJMOuGA8BLmvW2S2DQuAS79oil4gjunfvXiHxWR7hFBxLlMGGBRNUWM0rBU16g4Dt4CSyR1xdi7Xpup9NVhI7" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0.00rad); border: none; transform: rotate(0.00rad);" width="394" /></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Other cultures have discovered many of the same ideas; <a href="https://www.windows2universe.org/the_universe/uts/stonehenge_astro.html">stonehenge</a> follows the same circular formations as does the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabbalah">Kabbalah</a> with its numerical structure. The phases of the moon are based in reality but the socially constructed aspect of attributing certain emotions, elements, animals to each phase is where there is not cross cultural corroboration. This doesn’t mean it is not worth studying. I view it more as an art form that deserves respect and consideration. An interesting fact is how deeply our psychology and physiology is tied to night and day. </span><a href="http://europepmc.org/abstract/med/10548874" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Circadian rhythms</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and </span><a href="https://www.livescience.com/8639-change-seasons-affects-animals-humans.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">seasonal patterns</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> are strong determinants of hormonal secretions and </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><img height="245" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/qBBc24x5BAybVmsSgeElyCBaYV7GePluPj9jk13i6swXC-nfUDxuCS0FbCR8BbFJZ9YeRiUhHbbxkLl0DYo-_1yRxQ8QcpyymnYX-5MTDg_oSyYv24p-XOi-C3REzkhHX7xI167t" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0.00rad); border: none; transform: rotate(0.00rad);" width="250" /></b><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">they play a major role in our psychological functioning as well of the well being of our vital organs. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As you can see there are many connections with codified symbols found in Taoism that connect the heavens to man and to the earth. Another example of this intense connection is the 64 hexagrams, 32 yin and 32 yang found in the I Ching, and their exact match with the 64 codons found in DNA.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Here is the conclusion of a </span><a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3575644/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">paper </span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">on the connection between DNA and the I Ching:</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“ —We defragged three I Ching representations of the genetic code while emphasizing Nirenberg's historical finding. The synthetic genetic code chromosomes obtained reflect the protective strategy of enzymes with a similar function, having both humans and mammals a biased G-C dominance of three H-bonds in the third nucleotide of their most used codons per amino acid, as seen in one chromosome of the i, M and M' genetic codes, while a two H-bond A-T dominance was found in their complementary chromosome, as seen in invertebrates and plants. The reverse engineering of chromosome I' into 2D rotating circles and squares was undertaken, yielding a 100% symmetrical 3D geometry which was coupled to a previously obtained genetic code tetrahedron in order to differentiate the start methionine from the methionine that is acting as a codifying non-start codon”</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The depth of early Chinese people is astounding, even today this at least 4000 year old symbol still influences and explains phenomena in our lives. I think the reason why is that these early Taoist masters discovered a spiral network of energy vectors that determine all growth on this planet. They called these energy vectors “Chi” or “Qi.” Admittedly, the word Qi did not arrive until later years after the I Ching was created, nonetheless is it currently used in this manner to describe these energetic vectors and hence the 8 energies of the Tai Chi movement. So from a simple j</span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_lock" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">oint lock</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, to the structure of DNA to the Milky way solar system we are constrained by a spiral force that connects all life and all inanimate objects to the earth rotation and its evolution around the sun. Just to be clear, I am not a proponent of divination. I know this kind of thinking has led to over use to put it mildly. I am speaking from a physical science perspective. That said, this movement has an affect on us and it is hard to figure out just how much because there is no counterfactual ideal. We do not have another galaxy to measure its effect on the beings there. You may think I am starting to go off the deep end. There are people who I have run into who love sacred geometry but end up tying the origin of it to aliens. Believe me it gets even weirder with when the illuminati conspiracies start piling up. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As with many of the phenomena I write about, I am able to parse out the wheat from the chaff and where there is unknown I simply leave it at that. I don’t need to believe in aliens or a personal god either to substantiate the physical reality of certain things. I also don’t need to deny it all and be an atheist either. </span></div>
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<a href="https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcT0ywoFQT1OY6YIzdkLKcAHCEbLvvu25gv3z9hPK5Ko8Gg_bPcmFg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Image result for flower of life" border="0" src="https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcT0ywoFQT1OY6YIzdkLKcAHCEbLvvu25gv3z9hPK5Ko8Gg_bPcmFg" /></a></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Another thing that happened when I was teaching the 180 degree turns was I saw how the foot positions fit within a box grid and if you draw diagonal lines and add circles it can become a flower of life.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overlapping_circles_grid#Modern_usage" style="text-decoration: none;"> The flower of life </a></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (pictured above)is something in many cultures together, even Leonardo Da Vinci drew this in his </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codex_Leicester" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Codex</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Of course explaining the relationship between Davinci, stonehenge, the Kabbalah, and the I Ching could be an endless exploration that is not suited to the purpose of this blog post. If you are interested there are hundreds of videos and books on this topic but be forewarned that you will be hearing some crazy theories. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Anyway back to Tai Chi</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I have always wondered why all the Tai Chi forms don't sync up with the bagua (8 directions),<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wu_Xing"> wu xing (5 elements)</a> (pictured below) and ultimately the I Ching. Fortunately, I found </span><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Tai-Chi-According-Ching-Principles/dp/0892819448" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Tai Chi According to the I Ching </span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">by Stuart Alve Olson who brilliantly tackled my dilemma. Per usual for Olson, he breaks everything down and backs it up with the ancient texts to support his reasoning. I have been searching for a truly symmetrical form for years and thanks to Mr. Olson I finally have that.. </span></div>
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<a href="about:invalid#zClosurez" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Image result for wu xing" border="0" 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" /></a></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Conclusion</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">One of the reason why I love Tai Chi is because there is this internal logic that starts really small like with a step and then expands outwards to encompass the whole universe, the Chinese call it the microcosm and the macrocosm. Is it scientifically sound? I am not sure but I think it is worth investigating. Moreover, humans love symmetry we seek it out whenever we can and I find discovering the underlying symmetry in Tai Chi increases my love of it and enhances my personal practice. </span></div>
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<div class="blogger-post-footer">There are many lessons out there which we can learn from and change our lifestyle to help us live a higher quality of life.</div>chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10404520347687352090noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13439323.post-38416611344451174292017-08-22T11:31:00.000-07:002017-08-24T13:57:26.772-07:00Every Time I Hear “Opioid Crisis” It Makes Me Angry!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I have been teaching Tai Chi part-time in Oxford, Mississippi on and off since 2001. I love teaching and recently, I had to reluctantly send an email to my Tai Chi class saying that I had to cancel because of a backache. I was laid out in pain for 5 days. I did go to work but I was in unbearable pain. I called my chiropractor, John Gianini and my massage therapist, Shireen Mullink, and set up a bunch of appointments. After two weeks and over $400 out-of-pocket, I was much better.<br />
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While I was laying in bed, I got a chance to catch up on current events. One of the stories that struck a chord was The Opioid Crisis! It seems like there were all of a sudden hundreds of articles on this one issue. It appears that people are worried about chronic pain only when people are overdosing. Obviously, my back pain drove home all the components of this issue for me such as, cost of treatments, time off from work, pain, pain and more pain. It sucks to be in pain.<br />
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So the <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/epidemic/index.html">Opioid Crisis</a> is an important issue without a doubt, one person dies every day from an opioid overdose in the US and many more have misused them and some even resort to heroin after they are no longer able to get their prescribed drugs. Government agencies are taking this serious and <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2017/05/18/miss-drug-probe-nets-doctors-nurse-practitioners/329362001/">arresting doctors</a> for selling them illegally and <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/lawsuit-accuses-purdue-pharma-of-worsening-opioid-crisis">suing </a>pharmaceutical companies for not disclosing risk levels and recommending that doctors prescribe them for diagnoses beyond their proven effectiveness. <br />
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<i><b>So why does hearing about the opioid crisis make me angry?</b></i><br />
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All the aforementioned activities are great but what you are not hearing about the Opioid Crisis is that it is about pain, real pain people are feeling and zero promotion of nonaddictive alternative treatments for their pain. In one 2006 study that sampled a total of almost 8,000 people, 262 of which were opioid users, of which 59.3% of those had chronic lower back pain, and 89.6% of those 262 people also suffered from multiple pain issues. So for the most part the opioid crisis is affecting two groups, older adults in pain, and <a href="https://www.drugabuse.gov/related-topics/trends-statistics/infographics/abuse-prescription-rx-drugs-affects-young-adults-most">younger adults </a>who are abusing opioids to get high or experiment. It looks like we need to separate out target populations and address substance abuse in younger adults, while addressing chronic pain in people over 40.<br />
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In this <a href="https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/8/1/15746780/opioid-epidemic-end">story by Vox</a> entitled, <i>How to Stop The Deadliest Drug Overdose Crisis In American History</i>, there is not even a sentence regarding alternative non-addictive, non-drug treatments, like chiropractic, acupuncture, massage, Tai Chi and yoga.<br />
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From drugabuse.gov’s <a href="https://www.drugabuse.gov/about-nida/legislative-activities/testimony-to-congress/2016/americas-addiction-to-opioids-heroin-prescription-drug-abuse">website</a>, <i>“The bulk of American patients who need relief from persistent, moderate-to-severe non-cancer pain have back pain conditions (approximately 38 million) or osteoarthritis (approximately 17 million.) “</i> It mentions nothing about alternative treatments for chronic back pain. <br />
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The real issue at the heart of this crisis is that the conventional medical world promotes pain pills and surgery for many problems when they are not needed and they scoff at chiropractors, acupuncturists and anything outside their area of expertise. There has been a battle in this country since the advent of conventional medicine. I am not going to go into the whole issue here but complementary and alternative treatments for back pain have been researched and much of it looks promising, for <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15834340">acupuncture</a> , <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15125860">Chiropractic</a>, <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12221356">massage</a>, <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4878447/">yoga</a> and <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22034119">Tai Chi</a>. I say the research looks promising but some of it is older and it is not as rigorous as other medical interventions because frankly the funding for research is not there for these treatments. In other words, they do not rake in huge profits for the power elite of the medical world. Another part of the problem is that many of these alternative treatments are part of the anti-vaccine crowd, which irresponsibly encourages the public to stop vaccinating their children and they promote of unverifiable theories regarding how the body works, i.e chi, prana and meridians. These types of issues make it hard for medical professionals to promote alternative treatments. However, it is possible to separate out what is effective and what is not, just like what we have to do with many medical practices. <br />
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In the first paragraph in this article I said I had been teaching Tai Chi since 2001, and that was also when I started my first healthcare job in an elderly facility as an activities assistant. After a few years of working with older adults, most of whom had some kind of disability, I noticed that many disabilities were totally preventable and had they done some kind of alternative treatment might never have needed to enter an assisted living facility. I started to formulate a larger mission to my classes and was soon teaching at the local community center. There were difficulties in funding which curtailed the growth of the class and I was against creating a business because I wanted to reach all older adults, most of whom are on a very tight budget. That vision prompted me return to university and get my BA in psychology, and on to graduate school to complete a master in public health. I chose public health because I wanted to prevent these easily preventable disabilities with Tai Chi and other alternative treatments. I enjoyed my time in academia and published a few papers. Unfortunately, I was so naive to think that Tai Chi would be accepted as a credible intervention. I even did my master’s project on Tai Chi as a prevention for cardiovascular disease. I found that the evidence required to prove the effectiveness of Tai Chi is hard to acquire because there are only a few good studies out there. Basically, it all comes down to funding. Recognizing this I shifted my focus on nutrition and worked with some nutrition researchers documenting dietary behaviors and their association with indicators for cardiovascular disease. It was a great learning experience but it was also a departure from my life's vision, which is the use of Tai Chi and alternative healing for the prevention of chronic disease and disabilities.</div>
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One of the things I attribute to my success as a teacher, an activities person and as a researcher was that I also suffer from a chronic pain problem. As I have<a href="http://taichiamerica.blogspot.com/2009/05/my-letter-to-barack-obama-about-health.html"> written many times before</a>, when I was 19 and working my way through college I fell off a ladder while painting a <a href="http://fmo.unl.edu/utility-services/images/ccup/chillersv2-compressor.jpg">giant boiler</a> in an office building. It resulted in a broken <a href="http://www.houstonmethodist.org/orthopedics/where-does-it-hurt/wrist/scaphoid-fracture/">scaphoid bone</a>, which is a small bone in the wrist. The problem with that kind for break is that it “heals” quickly and is often misdiagnosed as a slight sprain. Once the sprain "heals" many, myself included don't go to the doctor,. The real problem starts as one ages because the hand becomes weak and then pain increases. Then you go to the doctor and it is often misdiagnosed as carpal tunnel syndrome. So years later when I finally went to see a doctor for the pain in my wrist, I was given a carpal tunnel syndrome diagnosis and he only wanted to give me pain meds. I was 30 years old at that time and I thought that was weird; surely there was something else? I didn’t see how pain meds would cure my pain. <br />
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That off putting experience with a conventional medical doctor prompted me to seek out an alternative doctor; I soon found a naturopath. He suggested I find a Tai Chi class and he also offered acupuncture in his practice. I tried those treatments and they have been successful in managing pain and maintaining my range of motion. I am 52 now and have been working with these healing treatments consistently for the past 22 years. My wrist is not healed in the sense of a normal injury. Scaphoid injuries never truly heal for a number of reasons, so I suffer from <a href="http://www.assh.org/handcare/hand-arm-conditions/kienbocks-disease">avascular necrosis</a> and feel pain daily. I do take pain meds every so often when it flairs up. Since I have been living with this for a very long time I know myself and my body and have come to realize that massage works the best because the pain builds up from being used when other parts of my body are tight and exacerbate the pain in my wrist. A massage works out the stress in my forearms, shoulders and hands, which reduces the wrist pain. Unfortunately, the problem is massage costs anywhere from $70 to $100 dollars for an hour visit. And I do not always have that kind of money to spend. I feel if I were able to get at least one massage and a few chiropractic adjustments per month I would much better manage my chronic musculoskeletal pain. </div>
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Unfortunately, alternative treatments are not promoted by the professionals who are on the front lines of this pain epidemic. When someone sees a doctor, few if any doctors are going to offer an alternative treatment. Moreover, even if doctors did recommend an alternative treatment it would have to be paid for out-of-pocket as few insurers reimburse for them. I believe that if our health system integrated and reimbursed for alternative treatments for pain we would see less people becoming addicted to opioids.</div>
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<div class="blogger-post-footer">There are many lessons out there which we can learn from and change our lifestyle to help us live a higher quality of life.</div>chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10404520347687352090noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13439323.post-32418370066332678112017-06-22T08:10:00.002-07:002020-01-23T08:15:26.467-08:00Martial Arts Restored My Self Respect<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As I have mentioned in a few blog posts already, my parents were hippies from Brooklyn and moved to a working class town where there were no hippies, while I was in elementary school In the early 70s. I already discussed my</span><a href="http://taichiamerica.blogspot.com/2015/07/my-first-step-on-martial-arts-path-and.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> first steps on the martial path</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> but in this post I am going briefly review what I went through and then detail how I went about restoring of my own self-respect. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">During that 5 to 6 year period of being bullied, I truly felt horrible about myself. I dreamed of killing my classmates often. I wanted nothing out of life but revenge and I thought of little else, my grades plummeted and I was put into Special Education, after the football players in honors class kept punching me when the teacher turned his back. People laughed at me daily; teachers were of little help; and girls stayed far away from me. To this day, I remember those kids surrounding me in the bathroom, while the head football player peed on my sneakers. They all just sat there laughing but that was the moment I said enough is enough!</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Then I saw Bruce Lee's movie, Game of Death, and I instantly knew what I had to do, I enrolled in a karate class. Even though it sounds a lot like the movie Karate Kid, this happened 5 years before the movie came out in 1984. I got into weapons right away. I was also in shop class and I started making my own weapons, like wooden swords, a kai, which is a Japanese oar used in traditional karate, tonfas and many others. Even though, I didn’t see it at the time, it was an exciting period because I was unifying my creativity, my physicality and my mind, as I began doing my own research. I started going to the library and bookstores finding the information I needed to solve my bully problem. School had a little value to me, no one there either cared or tried to uncover what was going on with me. I may have put up a wall I am not sure. Regardless, for the first time in my life I had a plan, it was plain and simple...fight back. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">At 14 years old, I was the youngest person in my karate class, most of the people were in their 20s and 30s. When we sparred they knocked me on my ass. This was not a kid's class. I started training regularly and I would find peace of mind for the first time in my life, when I was doing the numerous katas I had to memorize in my backyard. I loved karate weapons but my teacher would not teach them to anyone until they were older. So I had to find access to weapons on my own. I made a lot in shop class or when my family went to Chinatown in Manhattan every now and again, I would go to the kung fu shops and buy Bruce Lee posters, nunchaku, throwing stars, etc etc. I loved everything about karate and kung fu. It gave me a purpose and things really started looking up for me for the first time in my life.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Then one day after school, as we were all chaotically heading to the buses, one of the bigger football players, also wrestler, confronted me in the parking lot. I don't recall the details as I was pretty nervous, but I do remember that he made a move to grab me and I let go a round house kick to his head. All the students stopped motionless, and he hesitated and backed off. This was no small feat, no pun intended, because a few months ago, I was this kid who didn't do anything when a group of kids peed on his new sneakers, and now that little cry baby just kicked him in the head in front of everyone in the school. Luckily for me it shocked him so much that he left me alone that day. I really got lucky because a few weeks earlier he had beat up one of the larger hippie freaks, yes this was the era of the freaks and the jocks. Not only did this football player beat that kid up but he had hit him so hard that the hippie went into convulsions while he was unconscious on his back. I did not witness it but it was the talk all over the school for weeks and here I am kicking this guy in the head. Well, my luck did not last long, I soon became labelled as a fighter and being 130 pounds soaking wet, people were eager to test me and the football players smelled blood. So the stakes increased and on top of that my karate school closed down. My father also said we couldn't afford it. I cried and cried I still feel the pain of that closure. I did not have the luxury of withdrawing in my shell, I had to adapt to the new circumstances. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">One of the very few positive moves my father made was to buy a home with a wood burning fireplace in it and he made me chop all the wood for it. I should mention that I was diagnosed with dyslexia and there wasn't much being done for people like myself in the 70s. If it had been today I would most definitely have been given Prozac because in my later years I was diagnosed with ADHD. So my father knew I was a handful and this "prescription" of chopping wood was perfect for me. My strength and power increased tremendously but I no longer had a teacher. I searched and searched, remember this wasn't the day when there was a karate school on every block. That school was the only school in town.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The karate school closure coincided with the rise in popularity of boxing, between Rocky movies, and Martin Scorsese's The Raging Bull, and famous fighters like Sugar Ray Leonard, Roberto Duran and Thomas Hearns people were really into boxing in those days. Being Italian-American those movies of Italian boxers really spoke to me and one of my friend's brother was a boxer in the Marines. He taught me a few moves informally. I began to train. I sold my karate and kung fu weapons for boxing equipment, a heavy bag, a speed bag and a jump rope. I began running and training daily. I developed a routine, I would come home from school and instead of practicing my katas, I began running, and training hard by shadow boxing, hitting the heavy bag, jumping rope and doing push-ups. I did this routine right up until dinner time. I knew that the football team trained hard and even had their own weight-training coach. So if I was going to fight them I would have to work as hard as them. As I started to train word got out, people saw me running around town throwing punches in the air. Since boxing was popular many people got into it. People began asking me to spar with them. I had my own informal sparring ring in my basement, instead of rope it had brick walls. I began sparring and sparring and sparring. I sparred as much as I could. I even had to promise my friends, who wouldn't spar with me otherwise, that I wouldn't throw any punches and they could try to hit me. We did that often and I got good at dodging punches, and I have the scars on my left eyebrow when I let them hit me as hard as they could until I bled-I had to imitate that scene when Jake LaMotta told his brother to hit him in the face in the movie the Raging Bull. I was Italian-American after all. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As my skills were improving and I started turning the tables on those bastard football players, I decided to enter the Golden Gloves tournament in NYC. Without any coach or anyone but my uncle and my dad in at my corner, I entered the ring against a seasoned fighter from Fort Apache Bronx Boxing Gym. They put out top professional fighters. As soon as I stepped out when they called my name to fight, I was bombarded by lights and TV cameras. The ref made us touch gloves and bam bam, this guy was all over me and the ref stopped the fight within two minutes of the first round. I did not get knocked down but I was totally outclassed and overwhelmed. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">After that experience, word must have spread about me in my little town, and some old Irish guy, named Pat Finneran showed up at my house asking if I wanted to learn how to box. He was 72 years old and worked as a boxing coach in the Bronx. He was the first person to actually genuinely express interest in my well-being. He was the first person to show me why discipline is so important. He made me shuffle with my left leg leading up and down my driveway over and over again. We didn’t do all kinds of crazy drills, or 20 different punches. He simply made me shuffle in and out, with a left jab over and over again. He eventually added a right cross and a left hook and that was all we worked on for 6 months. After those six months no one was able to hit me or to last long with me. I totally outclassed everyone. I fought most of the football team members and beat them bad. The only one who I could not beat was the one guy who peed on my shoes. He was 6' 3" or 4" and around 200 pounds. He was captain of the football team and an all-star baseball player. I fought him 7 times and one time he busted a blood vessel in my eye but I kept fighting him. After those fights no one ever messed with me again. I was liberated and could say and do what I wanted and no one called me names or tried to bully me again.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">After accomplishing that I felt like my self respect had been restored and with my new coach I signed up for the next golden gloves tournament but then I met a girl. It was my first girlfriend ever and I was about to graduate high school. I was on top of the world and I went to Pat Finneran and told him I didn’t want to fight anymore. Looking back at myself at that moment I feel terrible because here was a person who really helped me and I left him without so much as a thank you. I hope he knew how much he helped me in my life. When my second son was born I named his middle name Finneran. </span></div>
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<div class="blogger-post-footer">There are many lessons out there which we can learn from and change our lifestyle to help us live a higher quality of life.</div>chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10404520347687352090noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13439323.post-19684817287043685402017-06-13T14:10:00.000-07:002017-06-20T06:36:55.460-07:00The A.B.M.S. Mindest<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #333333; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As I have mentioned in <a href="http://taichiamerica.blogspot.com/2015/07/my-first-step-on-martial-arts-path-and.html">other posts</a>, my parents were hippies that made hand-sewn leather goods and sheepskin coats for pe</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">ople i</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #333333; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">n the 70's. As a young child to young parents I would play with the scraps while they were working-I have the scars to prove it. I specifically remember gluing together a leather bag with those scraps. My parents were very creative people and set me off on the road towards making stuff. </span></div>
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<div style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #333333; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When I graduated high school I wanted to be an artist and began taking classes at a community college. I started in drawing and painting but soon found myself in sculpture. I started carving wood and researching primitive carvings and carving across cultures. I loved anthropology and incorporated many styles in my work. I have carved totem poles and small work alike. </span></div>
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<div style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #333333; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Then my wife and I decided to move to Mississippi, where she was born. Whenever we visit her parent’s land I head off to the woods. They live in a small rural town that doesn’t even have a police station. I call my jaunts in nature, a bushcraft walk because when I go I always do some bushcrafty activities like, build a shelter, identify wild plants or make cordage from plants. I also gather materials and spot and identify them. It is a like a mini-adventure. When I was a kid I loved those shows about a jungle expedition where someone always got stuck in quicksand. Anyway, this is my little way of having an adventure. I have been doing that for over a decade and haven’t gotten caught in quicksand yet. </span></div>
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<div style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #333333; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">After doing some research I purchased VHS tapes from</span><a href="http://www.survival.com/about/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Ron Hood’s Woodmaster </span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #333333; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">series. In them, he demonstrated all kinds of projects to make with wood and other natural and found materials. Watching those videos I realized that I could make that stuff while I was in the woods. What really grabbed my attention was the innovative, out of the box thinking, which I think is the hallmark of bushcrafting Ron displayed. In one, he magnetizes a small thin piece of metal and places it on a leaf in a cup of water to determine north, and in another, he sharpens both ends of two 12” long sticks and interlocks them to make a primitive weapon. There were tons of ideas that you can make from everyday items around you. From that moment on I was hooked and it became a life long hobby. It also paired well with my background in the arts and it made me feel more confident in nature. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;">
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<div style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 5pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #333333; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To me ABMS is a daily mindset, I am always looking for a resource and seeing what I can make from it. I also try to make something everyday, even if it is a little feather stick and a small fire. Now these things are not pieces to sell at a crafts fair but they keep the juices flowing. The ABMS mindset puts me in creative mode, it builds body heat (during cold days), teaches me about the properties of different materials and finally it keeps my mind occupied. I don’t know if you are like me but my mind is constantly racing around, so this activity keeps me positive and focused. </span></div>
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<div class="blogger-post-footer">There are many lessons out there which we can learn from and change our lifestyle to help us live a higher quality of life.</div>chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10404520347687352090noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13439323.post-86994639142531655962017-05-26T15:42:00.001-07:002022-11-18T11:08:27.240-08:00Five Reasons Why Martial Arts Forms Don’t Suck!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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“Those who are enlightened never stop forging themselves. The realizations of such masters cannot be expressed well in words or theories. The most perfect actions echo the patterns found in nature. “ ~ Morihei Ueshiba</div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The martial arts forms suck argument has been going around the martial arts world for a long time. It states that traditional martial arts are rigid and spend too much time mindlessly following the choreographed forms passed down from antiquity, while a fight in real life is dynamic, unpredictable and spontaneous. The purpose in me writing this is not to totally lay to rest that argument because there are valid points to both. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That said, I do believe that there are good reasons to continue to practice forms. For starters, forms have combat tested moves within them BUT it is up to the motivation of the practitioner to unlock them. It is hard to balance keeping the knowledge alive for future generations, and then letting that commitment go to follow the current trends in fighting. Whether or not the two sides of the argument are right or wrong depends on the context in which we are living. So if you were a police officer I would recommend focusing more on the dynamic fighting part and less on forms. On the other hand, if you are looking for a healthy alternative to gym exercise and want a just little understanding of martial arts then forms are perfect for you. I think the problem comes in when you get confused as to what are your main objectives.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Currently, at this point in the </span><a href="http://www.factcheck.org/2016/07/dueling-claims-on-crime-trend/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">US, violent crime has been decreasing since the 70’s</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Sure, there are places where it is bad and it is up to you to understand that in your environment. Moreover, your context can change for a number of reasons and if it does we have adapt our training accordingly. Currently, </span><a href="https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leading-causes-of-death.htm" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">chronic disease and accidents top the list of causes of death, with murder not even making the top 10.</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> When I assess my environment I look at national trends and local ones. In my context, I just don’t see a danger by other humans. Does that mean I turn a blind eye and go on my merry way? Absolutely not, I think it is important to prepare for a possible violent encounter. I just do not think it is necessary to focus everything I do on it. So this is where forms come into play. Like I mentioned previously, the moves are there. So why not practice them to develop your body as a weapon, and in the age of steep cuts to Medicaid, use it to prevent chronic disease? </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Without a doubt, one of my favorite forms is the Aikido 31 Jo Kata. A “jo” is a Japanese term for a 55” long wooden staff. O’Sensei, who is pictured above holding a jo, created Aikido, a Japanese martial art that uses the flow of spiral energy and joint locks to redirect an opponent’s momentum. O’Sensei used the jo often and created some small sets, consisting of a few moves together. It is said that he developed his love of the jo </span><a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=P-Nv_LUi6KgC&pg=PA580&lpg=PA580&dq=osensei+bayonet+training+for+war&source=bl&ots=I6ODN-pURO&sig=Lco6FaFuytlQ0TcMZosvXKSmjPY&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiqxtz534jUAhUQ3mMKHUoJCrEQ6AEIWjAI#v=onepage&q=osensei%20bayonet%20training%20for%20war&f=false" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">from bayonet training</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> he did during his service in the Russo-Japanese war. He continued using the jo until he was a very healthy elderly man. His student Morihiro Saito created the 31 Jo Kata from the different sets </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">O’Sensei </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">passed to him. Here is a </span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCWpvAD1Dzk" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">video of Morihio Saito</span></a><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> performing the 31 Jo Kata.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I did Aikido intensely for two years starting 1995 until I got a wrist injury that interfered with my progress in Aikido. I moved to Tai Chi because of the healing benefits, but I really missed Aikido and kept the form in my practice. Despite my love of the 31 Jo Kata, I eventually forgot the moves after a few years. I always wanted to bring it back. I did keep a smaller set memorized and then one day I decided to study Morihiro Saito’s video and regain the form for my training. Now it is a major part of my practice. </span><br />
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I wanted to bring it back because I find that the jo form is beneficial in 5 ways: </div>
<ol style="text-align: left;">
<li>Power </li>
<li>Fitness</li>
<li><i>Riai </i></li>
<li>Self defense</li>
<li>Fun</li>
</ol>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Power </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">Doing forms, especially weapons forms, helps you develop proper body mechanics to build power. When you repeatedly strike and move from one posture to another you can work on your body mechanics, which helps you understand the rhythm of releasing power. A great example is let's say you had to break a down a door with a stick or shovel. There are postures in the jo form that follow the same kinetic chain needed to muster the power to accomplish that action. It is not the form that teaches you how to apply the moves, it is your imagination. I figured that one out and now when I practice the form my intent is totally different. Can you practice that move without the form? Absolutely, yes, but the question I would ask is will you. Hell, you might even forget it. The form keeps the postures alive for as long as people practice them, even if they are taught by someone who doesn’t understand them and is a terrible teacher.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">Fitness </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Doing the form over and over again for an hour is a great workout and gets my heart rate beating really hard. I haven’t measured the VO2 Max of it but but I would say that is definitely qualifies as a high intensity cardiovascular exercise, which the </span><a href="https://www.cdc.gov/physicalactivity/basics/adults/index.htm" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">CDC recommends</span></a><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> you do 75 minutes per week, along with some whole body muscle strengthening exercise. Since the staff weighs about 1-2 lbs and you are swinging it at pretty good speeds, you are definitely strengthening your muscles. Just take a good long look at that picture of O’Sensei (above). He is around 80 years old in that picture. Additionally, there was a <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1724769/pdf/v038p00143.pdf">study</a> done comparing middle-aged martial arts practitioners with sedentary people of the same age, and it found that the martial artists were healthier on a wide variety of measures.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b><i>Riai</i> </b>is a Japanese martial art term that means </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">understanding of the core principles behind the mechanics of punching, joint locks, and throws in relation to weapons training. For example, if you practice </span><i style="font-family: arial; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">yokomenuchi</i><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">, </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">an overhead strike to the side of an opponent's head,</span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"> you can see that the mechanics of that strike can be done without a weapon, such as using a hammer fist strike. That same motion can be used in grappling and in a forearm block. The idea of forms is to use your imagination and partner practice to unlock these relationships and innovate other uses. To me this is the main reason to keep forms alive. The danger comes when we mindlessly practice these forms and then think mindless practice alone will help us overcome an attack, or worse when we think we are invincible simply because we practice them. This is why I think the argument against forms is important. It keeps us honest.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Self defense</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/qCsY2Qi8LMjZbCxNao3t9aEHt-za2mgdmmmgaVil8HSQjnKIj5cD7M1rJG2SeY8_vulGOLeXRjHzr4t5YXLl2go4UG6kCaIGf7OgjT-TrHUzoAmzq1jT3Oed1jU24Sr92wFOHRf_" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="chris-kid-martialarts_0009.jpg" border="0" height="185" src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/qCsY2Qi8LMjZbCxNao3t9aEHt-za2mgdmmmgaVil8HSQjnKIj5cD7M1rJG2SeY8_vulGOLeXRjHzr4t5YXLl2go4UG6kCaIGf7OgjT-TrHUzoAmzq1jT3Oed1jU24Sr92wFOHRf_" style="border: none; transform: rotate(0rad);" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The author in his teens</td></tr>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">First, check out this </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><a href="http://www.king5.com/news/crime/woman-fights-off-burglar-with-baseball-bat/435726218" style="text-decoration: none;">news story</a>.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> It depicts a woman, who most likely had little to no self defense training, and probably less training with a weapon, fending off an attacker with a baseball bat. She got in some good hits, but she could have used some training to increase her effectiveness. The fact is a little training goes a long way. One could do forms with a little self defense application and in a dire situation be effective in deploying a weapon similar to the training weapon. There is no way that someone with little to no combative training can pick up a baseball bat and beat a competitive stick fighter, but if </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">you have been working out with a staff for a while and</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> a dog attacks you you would definitely have a better chance than someone with no training. I have been working out with weapons since the early 80s, and I can tell you honestly that I would not be able to compete in a stick fighting competition. But in the very rare possibility that I had to wield my staff to defend my family, I believe I am confident enough to dissuade any would-be assailant from co</span><span style="color: black; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">ntinuing. In addition, a jo is first and foremost a common stick, which is ubiquitous in many environments from urban to rural. Sticks, pipes, and baseball bats can be readily found throughout the world, from India to Southern California. A stick is a feature of mo</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">st environments. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Fun</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Lastly, it is fun to move with a stick and develop your body at the same time. O’Sensei saw his jo practice as a sacred connection to the universe. I feel that same connection--it is kind of like a pantheistic dance partner! We all know that the more you see an activity as fun, the more likely you are to continue it. So I am counting on my love of the jo to increase my health, to decrease my health bills, and, if need be, to protect me in a dire situation. </span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The author pictured with his dog and walking stick</td></tr>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As the quote at the beginning of this post says, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>the most perfect actions echo patterns found in nature,</i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and I believe that the moves collected in the 31 Jo Kata do just that. They echo patterns that are found in nature, while intrinsically embedding them inside you. You are learning how to develop power and when to release power. These are not the only parts of the equation if you want to learn to become a skilled fighter. But in my context, where self defense is not a high priority, practicing these forms helps in the pursuit of health and provides a small amount of security. But most of all, I do it because it is fun. It genuinely brings a smile to my face when I practice. </span></div>
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<div class="blogger-post-footer">There are many lessons out there which we can learn from and change our lifestyle to help us live a higher quality of life.</div>chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10404520347687352090noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13439323.post-70924316993032335872017-05-19T18:43:00.001-07:002022-12-01T15:22:53.496-08:00Bushcraft, a Hobby With Benefits<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When I was a kid we often went out into the woods and wandered with no specific purpose. Eventually, someone would come up with an idea that a few of us would become involved in. One day it was digging into China, and another was digging an underground fort; next, it was a tree fort. We explored, roamed, and challenged ourselves. Movies and stories about people like Daniel Boone, Robin Hood, and Native Americans really inspired me to get into nature and be comfortable there. </span><img height="216" src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/fKh9Ibetbvz31o1WeOzl5uBdBSMNBWeSEQySAJrQpkbRFsiZIaC7W4Nen1HKJTyHSl99VUNJklLKAWwxxFD72P-Hxn22L3edZlAfUJSbYbJigSV6doU0Iinwp8PQVp8apcvO4gpX" style="border: none; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-weight: 700; transform: rotate(0rad); white-space: pre-wrap;" width="320" /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">Of course, as we enter our teens and early 20s, these kinds of adventures mixed with testosterone morph into camping, partying, and risk-taking. This often lethal combination leads directly to a life-threatening situation, which wakes us up to the realities of life; our life is fragile; hubris can get you killed quickly, and that nature still has the upper hand. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When you realize that nature still has the upper hand, you either shelter yourself in the comfort of civilization or you decide to step up your game and learn how to work within the dominant force of nature. That is when you research wilderness survival and bushcrafting, and you come across names like </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mors_Kochanski" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Mors </span></a><span style="color: #1155cc;"><u>Kochanski</u></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and </span><a href="https://www.raymears.com/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Ray Mears</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. You might watch some reality survival shows, and you might even buy a knife. Then you will find yourself practicing how to make fire, build shelters, hunt, and other skills. </span></div>
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<a href="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/UwcHIKCRb6Psn4UxHKU1rxgfDXpU8rns5qA78n__k7SJkbDZfAjT4p0IzNyvlSkd5NtMp-G6qGoqU_2D2X3pqudFu9pcLxBX-XBaCYj9pBFHFRtcqZ49tlrEDuspwban54zsOvnM" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="Scan.jpeg" border="0" height="210" src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/UwcHIKCRb6Psn4UxHKU1rxgfDXpU8rns5qA78n__k7SJkbDZfAjT4p0IzNyvlSkd5NtMp-G6qGoqU_2D2X3pqudFu9pcLxBX-XBaCYj9pBFHFRtcqZ49tlrEDuspwban54zsOvnM" style="border: none; transform: rotate(0rad);" width="148" /></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">During the decade of my 20s, I had a more than a few run-ins with that dominant force, and towards the end of my 20s, still alive, I realized that I needed to step up my game and learn the basics. Having gone to art school and taking art history helped me understand how primitive cultures used natural materials to make things. I started carving wood. Also, my parents were hippies and made hand-sewn leather and sheepskin jackets for us. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">They sold some too! My father also made these possible bags for your belt, but his were for pot and pot paraphernalia (during the 60s and early 70s). After dropping out of art school, I started carving wood because it was accessible. This path grew to carving a few very large totem poles (the one pictured on the right I carved sometime in 1990), which helped me develop a lifelong admiration for primitive cultures and how they lived. It was a natural progression to tie together art and wilderness survival skills, otherwise known as bushcrafting. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Many people will argue about the meaning of bushcrafting, but to me, it means the constellation of skills one needs to live in the woods without electricity or gas-powered machines. So many of us will make spoons, cut wood, build fires, study plants, and their uses. Bushcrafters don’t necessarily want to live in the woods, even though they dream about it daily and they don’t have disdain for modern conveniences but they/we see value in keeping the skills alive for a few reasons. Keeping these pre-industrial skills alive is empowering because you can live and thrive in the “real” world. I say this because modern technology and our society is dependent upon a steady stream of oil and other means of harvesting energy all dependent upon very complex technology. Take, for instance, heating your house; most houses are not equipped with a fireplace. So you are left with propane, electric, or solar. Solar is dependent on batteries. At some point, these technologies will need to be replaced, and most individuals cannot do that themselves they rely on the vast and complex means of production that is our society. If you juxtapose that previous sentence with the simplicity of wood-fired homes and products made from wood, you can see my point. Just to be clear, I am not advocating that we all become Luddites. I know wood supplies would quickly dwindle. My point here is that most of us live near resources or in places where primitive people survived and thrived with the very same resources we take for granted or even despise. Common weeds, which many of us pour expensive chemicals over, were used to make life-saving cordage, medicines, and literally thousands of other things. I can’t tell you the pain I feel every time I see a development going up and that ubiquitous massive pile of wood resources being hauled to the city dump, often to be burned off. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So the bushcrafter learns and appreciates the skills and knowledge of the people from before the industrial revolution. They don’t expect to live off the land and shun the use of modern technology. They simply want to become more in tune and closer to the environment in which we live, and what better way to do that than by using the materials found nearby.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Now that I spent the first few paragraphs explaining bushcrafting, I will try to explain some of the benefits I get from doing bushcraft. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The main benefit I get is, ironically enough, because bushcraft is mostly physical activity, a cognitive one. Ask yourself how many tulip poplars you passed by in your life, and have you ever once imagined that you could make a </span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvCC0AFwZ0E" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">knife sheath </span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">or a </span><a href="https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRViBdUbuqMhAS7eSymGQaliKbYH0iIrfLqaQZDYinMtXjmzuhy5w" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">basket to carry water</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> in with its bark and consider that there are infinite items like this to be made from natural materials all around us in everyday life. So from my point of view, this part of us humans is dialed into innovation and outside-the-box thinking,</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> which</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">is an integral part of bushcraft. Taking the raw materials from nature and making useful items that have aided in human survival is what bushcraft is all about. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The real underlying benefit of bushcraft is tapping directly into human creativity at its earliest stages by connecting with our ancient side. I believe that humans feel better about themselves when they are participating in activities in which we need to survive on the African savanna. We needed to make tools, so we looked at nature in its raw form and figured out how to manipulate those materials to bring about better chances for survival. Just look where we ended up? We put a guy on the moon!! </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">Impressive, but many of us have lost track of the baby steps it took to get us there, and those are the very same baby steps that lead us back to mother nature. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I have written many posts on <a href="http://taichiamerica.blogspot.com/2005/06/so-what-is-tai-chi-anyway.html" target="_blank">Tai Chi and how it connects us to mother nature</a>,</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and when we are disconnected, we feel depressed, disempowered, and alienated. Tai Chi and bushcraft do similar things; they are both connected because they originated long before the modern era when we had to acknowledge the power of nature and work within that hierarchy of power and not against it. Since this connection with nature is deep within our DNA, we need to be as close as possible to it, or we risk becoming alienated from it and really a large part of ourselves. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Another benefit is that if we are ever without power or get lost in nature, we have the ability to make it through unscathed. I also think it is important to teach these skills to my sons because they can get lost or <a href="http://science.sciencemag.org/content/341/6145/435" target="_blank">who knows what the future will bring with climate change</a> </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">lurking on the horizon. It is a simple fact that humans can find themselves in short supply of technological resources and may once again need to make some of their items from the materials around them. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Bushcraft is a great hobby that has multiple benefits for your well-being and your survival. Plus, practicing these skills keeps them alive because it was developed by people who lived before the advent of technological advances. While technology is amazing, it creates a consumeristic type of dependency that dissuades one from taking the initiative and making their own stuff. So go out and make your own stuff and see how rich you truly are with the resources around you. </span></div>
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<div class="blogger-post-footer">There are many lessons out there which we can learn from and change our lifestyle to help us live a higher quality of life.</div>chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10404520347687352090noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13439323.post-58180598813754536162017-04-27T08:11:00.001-07:002017-05-17T10:40:33.929-07:00Principal Vs Pinciple<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "old standard tt";"><span style="font-size: 14pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">Most religious people believe you must believe in an omnipotent "Principal" to get into heaven, or at the very least, it is a </span><span style="font-size: 18.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">prerequisite</span><span style="font-size: 14pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"> to be saved from eternal suffering. </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #333333; font-family: "old standard tt"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">According to Online Etymology.com, principal as a noun originally meant a "ruler” or “governor." It also meant a “person in charge of a public school." On the other hand, since the 14th century, principles have been seen as a rule or basic set of truths. Said more simply, a principal is a high-level authority figure who administers laws or principles, while a principle is a basic set of fundamental truths. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #333333; font-family: "old standard tt"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">You probably see where I am going with this, but it is something that I have not seen discussed much. Within religious groups there is clearly a desire to </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "old standard tt"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">differentiate one group from another by claiming allegiance to a specific set of deities and rituals, while also showing that the other group is less than holy and even that they are evil. This is classic, “in-group, out-group” stuff, which many humans are trying to get beyond. Yet we keep </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #333333; font-family: "old standard tt"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">bumping into it. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #333333; font-family: "old standard tt"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Regardless of the basic instinct to continue excluding others I see no spiritual reason to continue it. In my own spiritual exploration I have been trying to understand where to place my faith, or hang my hat and this line of inquiry has led to me try to lay my faith on principles thus obviating the need to “out-group” someone based solely on the name they have chosen as their ruler. I would argue what is the point of the name of the leader at all, except beyond in-group/out-group. I see no value in it at all. I know the second commandment in the Judeo-Christian bible there is a rule which states that “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” While there are two others that also place great value on the name of god. However, those commandments hold little spiritual value to me.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #333333; font-family: "old standard tt"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Regardless of how much value I place on it or someone else does, why is it important to acknowledge name of the principal? If god is almighty and omnipotent, then why would they care for such trifles in a name? Wouldn't the person/god you worship love you even more if you studied the principles that he/she/it has established? </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #333333; font-family: "old standard tt"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Taking this line of thinking further, there are literally hundreds of names of God, and add to that the many different cultural pronunciations, along with metaphors and such. Taking all this into account it is quite a foolish activity, trying to exclude people from heaven because they do not use the same 900 codes words that your group does. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #333333; font-family: "old standard tt"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Now if someone, does not heed a principle that you have established as important to you or your belief system, for instance, I follow many Taoist principles, and one I find particularly important is that the human body is a microcosm of the universe, the macrocosm. Thus harmonizing your body with nature is a legitimate path to harmonizing with the greater procreative life force or the creator of the universe. So it follows, if someone shows no value for their own body then they would not be abiding by the principles I believe are deeply important to being a spiritual person. Taking another angle on this line of thinking, lets us say there is a group of people who call their practice Yoga, and follow their own energetic system. Does this mean they are wrong because they use a different set of names? Since we have established that they follow the same principle, health of the body. Should I, following a Taoist approach condemn them? </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #333333; font-family: "old standard tt"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I remember having a conversation about religion with a Christian fundamentalist and he said if you don’t follow Jesus, and his specific denomination you will go to hell. I questioned him further, first I asked him to listen to a story I had heard a long time ago about a Methodist preacher, who witnessed the freeing of concentration camp detainees. It goes, the preacher said that many of the ex-detainees were beating up the guards but a lone women was not participating in the melee. He went to her and asked her why she was not taking vengeance on her tormentors. She said, it would make her like them. So I asked my fundamentalist friend, is she going to hell because she is Jewish? He said without hesitation, yes. I was floored. To this day that story tears me up because I am not so sure I could be like her. I know that I might not be able to control myself if the tables were turned on my tormentors. I know if I were in her situation, I would be counting the days and looking for any possible opportunity for revenge. Hell, I do it when someone cuts me off on the road. But yet, in some perverse world, she will be in hell suffering all because she didn’t proclaim one of the correct names of god as her savior. Puzzling. I told my friend if the god in his head would think that woman was not a saint than I would have nothing to with said god. That conversation with the fundamentalist was formative in my own thinking about god, worship and religion. But honestly it has taken me a long time to reconcile these thoughts that lead to the proverbial fork in the road. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #333333; font-family: "old standard tt"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Pascal's Wager and the “Live a Good Life” Quote</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-right: 5pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #333333; font-family: "old standard tt"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Then I came upon a fork in the road with Pascal pointing in one direction and the “Live a good life” quote heading in another. Pascal’s wager asserts that the loss of not believing, eternal damnation, greatly outweighs the very limited earthly pleasure you could gain. The "Live a Good Life" path states that if you live a good moral life and if there is/are a god/gods and they abide by moral principles they will not care about your devotion to them. If they do not have principles than what kind of god are they and you shouldn’t want to believe in them, and if there is no god, you still win because you have spread that morality to your community. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #333333; font-family: "old standard tt"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">At 51 years old, I have worn out many shoes walking on the “live a good life path" and I know it is good for me on every level I can imagine, and deep, deep down in me I can’t believe that the most omnipotent entity in the universe would condemn me, knowing how hard I work on principles and yet somehow mispronounced one of his/her/it’s 900 or so names. </span></div>
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<div class="blogger-post-footer">There are many lessons out there which we can learn from and change our lifestyle to help us live a higher quality of life.</div>chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10404520347687352090noreply@blogger.com0