candide

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About candide

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  1. Fasting Weekly

    What does work well for me is to spread the 24h fasting period over two days, e.g. I stop eating on Monday at noon and start eating again on Tuesday at noon (the start/stop times are arbitrary, pick whatever suits you). That way I have a 24h period of fasting yet I have food on both days so I don't feel hungry. I usually do this twice a week. I've discovered this idea in a book called Eat Stop Eat.
  2. To the spirit of Steve Jobs

    Dude had a giant, giant ego. He'll be back :-)
  3. Your Favorite Martial Art

    I've just finished reading "The Art of Learning" by Josh Waitzkin. It's an interesting book where he talks about his chess and later tai chi training. For tai chi, he doesn't mention chi development at all, instead he talks about refining his techniques to be more and more subtle, while keeping their power, tuning into the opponent and uprooting him etc. I would like to ask people skilled in internal arts like tai chi or bagua - how does your training fare in situations where raw power is needed to move dead weight? For practical life/works situations, when you need to haul furniture or carry heavy stuff, that kind of thing. It seems to me lifting weights would provide more benefits for these tasks.
  4. Living proof that qigong works!

    Congrats on your success, this is very encouraging. I got interested in internal arts only a while ago for health reasons (I have a sick liver too). My condition is not life threatening and I have a solid hope that it won't become that way either if I do my part. :-)
  5. How about sleeping in hammocks?
  6. Young Body Old Soul

    I've read somewhere that "young" people engage with life and activities, while "old" people prefer to stand back and observe what's happening. I quite like that definition (and based on it I've always been an "old soul")
  7. chi running

    I've been a long distance runner for years and I'm somewhat familiar with the chi running method, having practiced it for about two months last year. My only problem with cultivation through running is that you can't really listen to podcasts/music while you run, because that makes you zone out and you are not mindful of your body. Which is exactly the point you might say, but running with music is something I've always enjoyed a lot and struggle to give up.
  8. Organic Farming: The revolution of the future.

    1 kilowatt = 1000 watts, so that would be one hell of a light bulb. 1 kWh just means 1kW used for an hour. Traditional light bulbs are usually around 40-60W, 100W is a very bright one. Modern lights (like say LED lights) draw much less power.
  9. I would advise against grounding yourself with a wire or something when you are around electrical appliances, you are risking your life. The protection electrical circuits use is based on the fact that humans typically have a much higher resistance than a (grounded) socket, so if there's a problem the dangerous current will flow through the socket (and trip breakers/fuses etc) and not through you. If you are grounded this stops working and you can get killed.
  10. Great interview, thanks to everyone involved. But holy crap, a car accident every year for 7 years?!? Bruce really seems to have a bad kar-ma in that regard
  11. PC Zaps Qi

    I wonder if people have any experience with this? I'm a software developer so I spend vast amounts of time in front of my PC. Recently I've decided to try standing while working to see if it's a better fit for me. I have the desk part sorted out, so currently I work half an hour standing and half an hour sitting (I can't stand much longer than that yet, nor do I think I want to switch to only standing all the time). The question however is - what's a good way to stand? Good not only in the sense of natural, but also hopefully with some internal training thrown in. Maybe something like the standing/pole qigong posture? Would that be a good idea given that I have to use my hands on the keyboard etc.
  12. What would YOU ask Bruce Frantzis?

    Reading this whole thread (didn't find it earlier as I wasn't a member back then) gave me some pauses. I've signed up for Bruce's Bagua Master Program last year, and it's pretty much my first contact/exposure to the whole internal energy world. I've been doing the exercises for over two months now, and the silly/competitive part of me asks questions like "why bother if you're never going to become a master?". It's true that I won't reach Bruce's level, and his teacher was on a higher level still, but so what? Why do anything in life? I enjoy doing it and that's reason enough. There's an interview with Bruce from 1987 on youtube, where he said that high level internal arts will either see a renaissance in the next 20-30 years or just disappear. 20 years have passed and unless I'm mistaken the second scenario seems more likely. However, I wonder if that's a terminal thing. The old masters of the past had to figure it out all themselves too, didn't they? Knowledge didn't grow on trees. It probably took them hundreds of lives, but the question is, can we recreate it? I don't see why not. We are in a much better position nowadays - we can communicate with each other, live longer/easier, have incredible amount of information available... this should probably be a separate thread though.
  13. Dabbling in bagua zhang

    I've signed up for Bruce Frantzis' Bagua Mastery Program too and been practicing it since december. I'd say on most days I like it, but sometimes I can almost hear my mind screaming as I try to pull it out of its hiding place in the head and connect it to the body, that gets very exhausting. I don't know where bagua will take me, but it's kinda comforting that everyone, from bumbling idiots like me to enlightened masters walks the same circle and there's no lap counting and no finish line, you just keep walking.
  14. Shhh ... don't tell anyone

    Hellos! I've mainly registered here because I love the site's name :-) Isn't it nice to have a bum? *bursts into a monty python song* My path to taoism was short and uneventful. Last summer, during my ongoing search on how to help myself - I'm not very healthy and suffer from several chronic illnesses, I've stumbled upon the whole chinese energy worldview. I already knew tai chi was helping people to stay healthier, but I thought it's just a set of physical exercises to keep the joints oiled. So I've discovered there's much more behind it and also qigong, bagua, taoist meditation... Bagua especially caught my interest, because I've studied philosophy a bit before, but only on an intellectual level. And here's a living art literally based on the I Ching, very fascinating. As it often happens, life handed me the next piece of the puzzle when I was ready for it - Bruce Frantzis announced his Bagua Mastery Program when I was researching bagua, so now I'm a member of that, and also his new Taoist Meditation Circle. I might be the worst adept for this kind of stuff - a westerner with deeply analytical mind (I have an engineering degree) "living in his head". But I'm also a very curious person and I want to see if I can feel and experience all the life energies myself. You folks seem like a fun bunch, so I'm happy to be around.