Happy New Year!

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If you're just hanging around killing time you might enjoy this funny video:



I justify adding it to my blog because one chapter of the Daodejing (also called the Laozi) just happens to reference mothers milk.  Individual chapters of the Daodejing often have two or three slightly different voices saying similar or supporting things, but this one, more than any other, sounds personal:

Daodejing Chapter 20 (Wangbi)

Get rid of "learning" and there will be no anxiety.
How much difference is there between "yes" and "no" ?
How far removed from each other are "good" and "evil" ?
Yet what the people are in awe of cannot be disregarded.

I am scattered, never having been in a comfortable center.
All the people enjoy themselves, as if they are at the festival of the great sacrifice,
Or climbing the Spring Platform.
I alone remain, not yet having shown myself.
Like an infant who has not yet laughed.
Weary, like one despairing of no home to return to.

All the people enjoy extra
While I have left everything behind.
I am ignorant of the minds of others.
So dull!

While average people are clear and bright, I alone am obscure.
Average people know everything.
To me alone all seems covered.
So flat!

Like the ocean.
Blowing around!
It seems there is no place to rest.
Everybody has a goal in mind.
I alone am as ignorant as a bumpkin.
I alone differ from people.

I enjoy being nourished by the mother.

Finally Ballet is Being Replaced by Kungfu

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Ballet has had a dominant role in American and European stage dance for a century because it has been the "thing to do" for 5 year old girls. That has meant that ballet dancers were simply the best trained professional dancers. Unfortunately the chivalrous dainty movements of ballet are mostly terrible for telling stories in the crazy modern world. That has contributed to dance performance often being viewed as the boring fantacies of little girls and gay men. While the 20th century saw the invention of numerous "modern" dance techniques, the sometimes lacking skill of "Modern" dancers and the relentless influence of ballet has kept people from seeing dance.

While there is no doubt that popular dance has flourished through music videos, the last 20 years has also seen the growth of classical and lineage ethnic dance techniques as the basis for telling stories. These are starting to replace ballet in the world of dance performance. Kungfu, Capoeira, Indian Dance, African dance, Indonesian Dance, and circus arts are just some of the in depth movement forms that are replacing ballet. (Please put some of your little girls in kungfu classes, anything but ballet.)

This performance uses Shaolin:

Celebrated Flemish/Moroccan choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui presents a brand new dance work inspired by the skill, strength and spirituality of Buddhist Shaolin monks. He has collaborated closely with Turner Prize-winning artist Antony Gormley, who has created a design consisting of 21 wooden boxes which are repositioned to create a striking, ever changing on-stage environment. Polish composer Szymon Brzóska has created a beautiful brand new score for piano, percussion and strings which is played live.




hat tip: Daniel Mroz

Daoism in History

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Check out the latest must read for Daoism scholars.  It's got some essays by some of the best scholars in the field and it is available free on-line as a PFD from Buddha Torrents.  An unbelievable gift.  Time to make sacrifices for the Lords of the Internet!  Daoism in History. (To down load click on the link at the bottom of Buddha Torrents and unzip!)

Hat tip to: Harry for the link.

An Unwelcome Symbol

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I was just about to write another post when I thought I'd look back and see if I'd said anything simular before.  I noticed on a lot of my old post that this symbol is scattered all over the text:

Â


What a pain in the Â!!

How does one even search for a way to solve these problems?  Sometimes it seems like I'm the only one that has to deal with this stuff?  Well, that funny hat on the "a" is called a circumflex.  From doing searches for wordpress and circumflex I determined, dudes, that it is like a deep code problem.  Perhaps the symbol shows up every time I hit the save button.  Whatever, it wasn't like that before I did an upgrade.  There seems to be no shortage of things out there designed specifically to increase hair loss.

Do me a favor, look at some of my old posts (anything before October) and tell me if you would still read them even though they have that crazy symbol all over the place.  I've lost all sense of judgment.  Does it need to be fixed or can I pretend it didn't happen?  Should I just go live in a cave or is there hope for this world?

UPDATE:  It only effects posts from June to Oct 2008.  Still it sucks.

Shoulder Stretch Failure

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Doesn't Work Doesn't Work

I broke my arm skateboarding down a monster hill on a homemade skateboard when I was 14.  It was a hill I had skated many times but there was a section that required slowing down, a section with increased steepness and a sharp turn.  I was late on my way to school and just didn't slow on this particular day until it was a little late.  I slid for a distance on the inside of my elbows and my huge brass beltbuckle--both were shreaded.  I know what you're thinking, "knarly dude."

But it wasn't very bad.  A little disinfectant to keep the exposed elbow bones from getting infected and I would have been fine.  Unfortunately I went to see a doctor, more to get out of school than because I felt I needed anything.  Even though I didn't need it, the doctor put a cast on me for two weeks because he thought it would discourage me from skateboarding.  It didn't.  But it did mess up my shoulder because I was in the middle of a growth spurt.

Waste of Time Waste of Time

So skip ahead to age 23.  I'm doing 6-8 hours a day of Martial arts and Dance and I figure my biggest problem is that my shoulders are stiff and a little uneven.  I get to work trying everything under the sun and moon.  The first thing I figured out was that I needed to sleep with a shirt on because my shoulders would get cold at night and the muscles would tighten up over night.  Without keeping them warm at night any progress I made in loosening them would be reversed by the cold.

Next I did a thousand experiments with bodywork and massage.  About 3 hours a week for 4 years.  I think this was positive at first but over the long term I simply learned more about how my own body relaxes than the people who were working on me.  Now I almost never get bodywork.

At the same time I started creating tools to help me stretch.  I had poles, staffs, ropes, bungee, a range of rubber balls from small to big to roll on, lots of eye-bolts in the walls with loops hanging from them, slanted boards, I even modified a door frame so it would be a better jig for me to stretch in. I was very disciplined.  My housemates were very accommodating.  I think they liked it that visitors to the house asked if our living room was a torture chamber.


The results, nada, nothing, waste of time.  Stretching the shoulders doesn't work.

What does work?   Slow qigong movements.  Expanding and condensing from the dantian.  Arm circles.  Making sure your qi gates are open, that circulation is optimised, and that your alignment is efficiant.