Learning the Tao and Learning About Myself

Sorry for the delay but I really do not like to post unless I have something useful, in my mind, to say, but I am going to try and keep a weekly account of my successes and failures.

I forgot that failure is a key indicator to get to success. It tells me what isn’t working.
For a long while now I have not been able to keep strong after difficult workouts. I would pace myself, take the proper care and nutrition to recover but something was always depleting me when I would do Dr Mercola’s Peak 8, Wuji Qigong, Pa Kua, or Yoga.

How could I be doing so many beneficial things for my body and then feel terrible, have some bad mood swings, and not be reducing my weight or my waist?

Thankfully, when you put down on screen or paper what you are trying to do to heal yourself, you find some kindred spirits and mentors who care about you and want to help you. In the past 2 years I really have found some intelligent people who have a love for each other, their well being, and me. From them I have a few people who now mentor me with their writings and their personal advice.

One is my friend Kim from Singapore who has access to the most wonderful schools and training facilities in her small town. For her, Ba Gua, Yoga, Qigong, and Taoist healers are easily accessible. She is a long time student of many internal martial arts and has a great master. 

 
  She listened to my complaints about my health and the stagnation in my training. She asked her master and came back with an answer I didn’t expect. Internally, I need to crawl before I walk. I had to learn to breathe.

    Mr. Mia-gee was right when he told Daniel-san to breathe.

I have heard this before and applied it in my different practices but these practices were too advanced. They were hindering me instead of helping. It appears that when you work on internal martial arts you need to take it slow. Some of the movements and Chi that I was calling within my body were expecting a much better prepared (physical) individual. Since I was far from the level the movement expected, I was being drained of energy.

I know this can take on a very mysterious and religious aspect to training. It isn’t. This is built into our DNA somehow. It’s a fact that you have not discovered about yourself and many others hope you do not.

Think about the first day you ever picked up weights or your first yoga class. It was incredible if you came focused and prepared. You couldn’t believe what your body could do. You were working out and couldn’t wait until tomorrow.
“Look at me I am matching this Yogis every pose!”

Until of course tomorrow came and every part you worked or stretched to the limit came back to haunt you. Your body was screaming, “What the hell were you thinking?”

At best, you were painfully sore and waited a few days or never went back. Or worst, you ended up being seriously depleted of energy and caught the nearest infection and was out of commission for a week. That was what my first night of weight lifting was like in 1982. It was heaven and the next week and a half I was in bed with tonsillitis. My body was not prepared for the beating I gave it.
Stupidly I never put two and two together until Kim told me to learn from Dr. Stephen Chang, a Taoist, and medical healer with tremendous credibility who took the eight pillars of Taoism and make them into a practical set of books for anyone to learn. He didn’t invent the exercises but he took them from their 6,000 year old origins and publication in Chinese and made them available in English. He is a real medical doctor in the U.S. and holds two law degrees. He didn’t believe in the medicine of his ancient masters until he was diagnosed with a terminal disease and healed himself with Taoist internal medicine and herbs.
Kim and her master knew what I needed; to begin at the beginning.
There is a line in the Tao Te Ching that says, “The Tao that can be explained is not the real Tao (sic).”

I wish I was prepared to explain what it all is but I couldn’t possibly since I have only been at my practice now, every day for the last 14 weeks. All I can tell you that Dr. Chang created a series of books of internal exercises as well as proper eating, herbology, and mastery. I bought two of the books, read them and re-read them; they are not large and you use them as guides every day.

This lead me to want to know more about the religion of Taoism but I can only say that after reading the “Tao Te Ching” is that it isn’t a religion as you think but one that centers around your humanity and God. I think in many ways it has helped me to understand my role in Christianity better. I guess you can be a Taoist Christian. To think about what Taoism wants for you is to realize there are about 10,000 things on most peoples minds every single day and they are accompanied by rules, sins, fear, and anxiety. So many drink their way, beat their way, or do not sleep their way through it all while their bodies decay and their minds cannot focus on what is important and what is not. Taoism teaches you how to drop the stuff that means nothing and to empty your mind. This allows you to do the stuff that’s important. When those important and few things are done, you can relax because you learn to accept that the world will beat to it’s own tune regardless if you try to change it or not.

Hehe, I am laughing because the Tao that can be explained is not the real Tao.

It’s internal, a mechanism for healing you from the inside out. I look at the last few lines and I am dumbfounded. I apologize. It is impossible for me to explain anything further except to tell you to start with Complete System of Self-Healing Internal Exercises by Dr. Stephen T. Chang, read it, and follow the morning routine every day.  I am so happy now that the 10,000 things can take care of themselves. I am now very happy that my baby steps are paying off. Without the morning exercises in the book I was having trouble with external workouts like Peak 8, weights, and my much loved Pa Kua circle practice. But with them I am able to workout, increase energy, heal properly and best of all, lose inches and pounds again.

I would have delivered this post sooner but I delayed by a stomach flu.

Normally, I would have been puking, retching from the pain, and having a bad case of the big D’s causing some serious time on the Great White Round One. But this year was very different. If it wasn’t for the 8 weeks of preparation and proper eating I would have had some serious stomach and intestinal problems, instead I had some aches, pains, and a cough that went away. I also was able to workout for 45 minutes or more each day using the Taoist forms I have learned without causing any strains to my body while I was sick. I know that stomach flues are 24-48hrs but they are the worst two days of your life and are usually followed by coughs, colds and infections. Instead I found the stomach rubbing reduced the pain and kept things solid. The liver, spleen, and pancreas rubbing kept my immune system strong. The balanced eating kept things digesting and not being eliminated from where they arrived. The breathing exercises reduced pain and kept my lungs working at full capacity to reduce infections. Just so much from such easy-to-perform routines. It didn't work as perfect as I would have liked because I still needed Mucinex to rid my lungs of a buildup of uncomfortable and potentially dangerous phlegm but as my daughter pointed out, "You can’t expect to be a Taoist in 8 weeks!”

Wow good words from a 15 year old. I think she can have those driving lessons now.

So now I am headed into the 15th week of daily practice and can't wait to do them again tomorrow. I am able to do Peak 8 exercises 3 times a week which is a series of short fast sprints in between a couple of minutes of walking for a series of 8 repetitions. I am able to breath my way better through Pa Kua circles and feel a pull of energy instead of being drained.

You are responsible for your health and if you give that over to someone else who doesn’t know or love you, they will just want you dead. Plain and simple. What do you expect from governments that are afraid of population growth?
The doctors, drug companies, and the government are really in bed together and trusting them with your health and money is like trusting your mountain climb to old frayed twine.

I think you are worth more than that. I know I am.