Daoism Explained to Atheists

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Daoism Explained to Atheists

...We really do not know the ultimate causes of things, much less the ultimate causes of our own behavior. We do, as a habit of mind, tend to ascribe agency. And, of course, we can use rational processes like deductive or inductive reasoning to walk back, or walk around, discrete causation. Within the boundaries of a closed system of logic, these processes can become praxis.  That is, they become a "way of seeing, doing and testing," like engineering, or ballet. The dominant versions of this are

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Better Sharing

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Better Sharing

I am delighted with Dave Tilley's website/blog Shift Movement Science .  It is exciting to be learning from people who are a lot younger than I am.  He was a competitive gymnast, and he teaches gymnastics to children at beginning and advanced levels.  

Dave has detailed explanations with videos, photos, and academic references.  He isn't using this format to teach tricks or gymnastics skills.  What he does is pick a problem, and show you how to fix it.  

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Changing on the Outside

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Changing on the Outside

I want to change the name of this blog.  Nine years ago I chose "Weakness With A Twist" specifically because I wanted to provoke.  "Cultivate weakness" is a Daoist precept from the first century C.E. and I thought that I could bring attention to what was probably originally a provocative idea rooted in the Daodejing.  That was eight years ago, and today I still teach that aggression can blind us to what is happening and profoundly limit our options and development.  That is not an argument against strength or even against "natural" aggression; it is just a fact, something to be aware of.  Limits are part of life, they are part of having a body. I liked "Weakness With A Twist" because it pointed away from the limited development of methodologies, and towards the true limitlessness of possible experiences.

But I think not too many people got that from the title.

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Body Learning Inside the Box

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Rebecca Haseltine, a long time friend and one of the best bodyworkers anywhere, has been writing about her work lately.  She has specialized in the extraordinary, working for instance with the severely disabled.  She is an artist too.  She approaches the body as art, which means you don't get sales pitches from her, you don't get stock explanations either. 

She interacts with consciousness as expression, allowing bodywork to happen at the subtlest yet most profound levels.  She also does group workshops and I would love to see her knowledge and experience more widely shared.

Most bodyworkers try to work outside the box, but Rebecca works with the box as it is.  Because of this profound wisdom, sometimes people find working with her confusing. That can be a big plus if you are one of those people who is nourished by not-knowing.  

Yet I find this new writing Rebecca is doing highly accessible.  She has realized that her life's work can only live on if she can figure out ways to make the intangible tangible.  I think many of us share Rebecca's quest to find metaphors for our experiences of bodies; metaphors that carry ways of refreshing the perception-action mobius loop.  

Teaching Three Classes in Portland

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I'm teaching two workshops in Oregon at Portland Shaolin.  I'm also giving a lecture demo where I'm going to spill the beans on the last several years work figuring out the origins of Baguazhang.  This is mind blowing stuff, like nothing anyone has said before.  And the scholarship is strong if I do say so myself.  If you are anywhere near Portland, please come out.  The lecture/slideshow is free!  

The workshops are going to be amazing!  Everything is on this page, check it out!

May 13th, 14th and 15th.

The Creation of Wing Chun

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The Creation of Wing Chun

The Creation of Wing Chun, A Social History of the Southern Chinese Martial Arts, by blogger Ben Judkins and his Wing Chun teacher Jon Nielson, is the first work of its kind. Anyone interested in the history of Chinese martial arts must read it. Specifically, it is the first book to take an existing Chinese martial art and trace both its origins and its development to the present day.

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When Was Shaolin Temple Burned?

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When Was Shaolin Temple Burned?

This short piece by Adrian Chan-Wyles is worth reading:  "Why the Shaolin Temple was Burned in 1928."  I agree with everything he says, but I would add that toward the end of the Qing Dynasty there was a powerful movement to suppress religion.  It was pitched as the movement to replace temples with schools.  That intensified throughout the 20th century until the 1980s when things started to open up.  He also has a page of Shaolin Temple photos taken by Japanese tourists from before 1928.  

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Channelling Zhang Sanfeng

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Channelling Zhang Sanfeng

Manuals explaining secret martial arts techniques in China written before the 20th Century are rare.  A text translated by Paul Brennan, Explaining Taijiquan Principles, attributed to Yang Banhou [circa 1875] is a particularly interesting one.  But before I get into discussing it, I would like to frame it culturally.  

In China, learning to read and write was preparation for taking an exam that allowed one to become a government official.  Those jobs were extremely competitive and required full-time dedication to study.  It was not unusual for someone to spend forty years studying before getting an appointment, many people never got appointments, yet the possibility of getting one was valuable enough to keep studying.  

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