I Am A Seaweed - Medical Qigong with Dr. Alex Feng

Take a look at Dr. Alex Feng's new instructional DVD, I Am A Seaweed Medical Qi Gong - An Introduction.

This DVD, an original work of Dr. Feng, is an accumulation of his study and teaching of Medical Qi Gong over 4 decades. Qi Gong is an ancient practice that combines mind, body, and awareness of energy to promote health. The first of a series, this DVD presents an introduction to Dr. Feng's classic teaching, I Am A Seaweed Medical Qi Gong. The form introduces the quintessential principles of Qi Gong that will help the practitioner continue to develop in all areas of Qi Gong practice - not limited to one particular style. Its magic lies in its simplicity and yet the depth of the teaching is utterly profound.

My herbal prescription from Bai Yun Guan

Watch this video in full-screen HD on youtube.

For more about 火神派 Huo Shen Pai, here is a link to Heiner Fruehauf's website (appears to be down for updates at the moment, but I'm sure it'll be back up soon). If you can read Chinese there is much more information available, as is always the case with Chinese medicine.

Dao of the Day - Preventive Medicine

Tackle difficulties when they are easy.
Accomplish great things when they are small.
Handle what is going to be rough
when it is still smooth.
Control what has not yet formed its force.
Deal with a dangerous situation while it is safe.
Manage what is hard while it is soft.
Eliminate what is vicious
before it becomes destructive.
This is called
"attending to great things at small beginnings."

A tree so big it can fill the span of a man's arms
grows from a tiny sprout.
A terrace nine stories high
rises from a shovelful of earth.
A journey of a thousand miles
begins with a single step.
Thus, one of integral virtue
never sets about grandiose things,
yet he is able to achieve great things.

-Dao De Jing, Capter 64
From The Complete Works of Lao Tzu, translation and elucidation by Huaching Ni.

Jesus Christ!

What did Jesus do between birth and age 30? The Bible provides scanty details. His birth story is well-known, and everyone knows what happened later in life when he started speaking out about the political and religious situation of the time.

Well, here's one answer: he traveled to the Kunlun Mountains to learn Daoism. Huaching Ni has written a very interesting story about where Jesus learned about the nature of the universe and how he learned his special skills (walking on water, loaves and fishes, and resurrection are all covered).

I really enjoyed this book. If you're interested in Daoism and Christianity, it's a good read.

Dao of the Day

Dr. Alex Feng is my martial arts teacher since I was a child. He's also a Chinese medicine doctor, licensed acupuncturist, and Taoist leader. Once a month, in Oakland, California, he gives a talk about Taoism and leads a meditation. Now there are two videos of these talks online, and I'm pleased to be able to share them with you!

This is a long video, but at about the 31-minute mark he talks about centenarians, those who live to be 100 years old.

There are a couple common denominators. It's not about do you smoke; it's not about do you eat fish, or vegetable or zucchini or ling zhi or ginseng, or chicken or tofu, it's not about that. Do you drink alcohol, whiskey, wine, lime juice... it's not about that. It's about number one: can you still walk? Motility, mobility. That's why tai ji says, first things first: train your legs, train your foundation.

Two, interestingly enough, all the centenarians were still working. Working. Busy. They got things to do, places to go, hands to shake, babies to kiss... people to make contact with. There's service, they're still servicing. Selflessly. Wu wei.

Enjoy.

Meet The Herbs: Bi Zi

Chinese: 田鸡
Pin Yin: Tian Ji (translation - "field chicken")
Pharmaceutical: Rana limnocharis
English: Rice Frog
Vietnamese: Nhái

In Yang Shou-zhong's translation of the Shen Nong Ben Cao Jing, this herb is listed as Bi Zi. It is sweet and warm, and mainly treats evil qi in the abdomen. It also removes the Three Worms, snakebite, gu toxins, demonic influx, and hidden corpse.

Volume II of the Vietnamese Materia Medica, Cây Thuốc Và Động Vật Làm Thuốc Ở Việt Nam, lists the herb as having different functions depending on its preparation:

• To treat jaundice: pound 1 frog with 12g unbleached black rock sugar and put inside a rooster's gizzard. Cook. When it's done, let cool and remove the frog and sugar. Eat the gizzard.

• To treat mental illness characterized by crazy talk: cook one frog until charred, powder it, and drink it with liquor.

Some remedies for external use also included in the book:

• To treat pustulent open sores: remove the entrails of one frog, fry it til it's black, powder it, mix it with sesame oil, and place on skin

• To treat purple bruises: mix the frog with lá mau (sorry, don't know the translation of this herb) and the leaves of a garden egg, or Thai eggplant, plant. Chop everything finely and cook with water and rice. Wrap everything in cheesecloth or fabric, making a little bundle the size of your fist. Roast the bundle and place on bruises.

• To treat phagedena (rapidly spreading destructive ulceration of soft tissue): crush one frog with Vietnamese coriander and wild betel leaf, then press onto skin.

• To treat pink-eye: squash a live frog and place on affected eye.

I don't know about you, but I can't find enough live ones of these around to use them in my practice on a regular basis. I can, however, occasionally find the hind quarters of these little creatures at the supermarket.

It's what's for dinner!


Black bean and garlic frog legs, sauteed in a shallot and ginger sauce. Served with brown rice, steamed collard greens, and peppered acorn squash soup. Yum!

If you're interested in learning how to prepare this delectable dish, hit me up and I'll let you in on the joys of where to find, and how to cook, rare medicinal meats.

Dao of the Day

All of us, before we were born, were natural spirits. Once we have been born into the world, our original spiritual naturalness is blocked by the cultural and religious limitations of the time and place we live in. Although we are all natural spirits, because of the different kinds of worldly education, formal and informal, all of us view things differently. By becoming attached to the limited view, rather than everybody seeing the expansive natural truth, people fight. When people become developed, they do not fight anymore. They enjoy a different way of life called harmonizing with nature.

-Hua-Ching Ni, The Power of Natural Healing

Death and Destruction All Over

For some reason, today I've stumbled across more dark and disturbing information all at once than I have for a long time. It seems like the world is a terrible place. To wit:

• The real origin of AIDS (hint: it didn't come from a monkey)
  
• The Strecker Memorandum (featuring Yosan's Dr. William Thornton)
  
• War
  
• Genocide

A question that comes to mind is whether the world has always been this bad or if I'm just noticing it now. Is this what happens when you get older? What is the meaning of day-to-day activities when there is so much evil and madness in the world?

Chinese medicine has roots in Daoism, which looks backward to an idyllic pre-literate time when there were no laws, and therefore no crime. People kept records by tying knots in rope. People lived in harmony with the earth and the sky. Medicine was unnecessary. Is this still possible? Is it a metaphor for some spiritual achievement?

The cyclical and balanced nature of the universe requires that periods of darkness are followed by periods of light. The most basic example of this is night and day. No matter what, the earth keeps rotating and spinning, mirroring the tiniest particles in the universe, and the sun keeps rising over our horizon. All parts of the universe reflect an image of the whole, and I hope that the sun rises soon.

Dao of the Day

Words of truth are not beautiful;
Beautiful words are not truthful.
The good do not argue;
Those who argue are not good.
The wise are not extensively learned;
The extensively learned are not wise.
The Sage is not mean.
Simply doing things for others he feels greater fulfillment.
Simply giving to others he feels he has gained more.
The Tao of heaven benefits and does not harm.
The Tao of the Sage is to accomplish without competing.

-Lao Tzu: My Words Are Very Easy to Understand by Cheng Man-Ching and Tam Gibbs, Chapter 81

Words to trust are not refined.
Words refined are not to trust.
Good men are not gifted speakers.
Gifted speakers are not good.
Experts are not widely learned;
The widely learned are not expert.

Wise rulers for themselves keep naught,
Yet gain by having done for all.
Have more for having freely shared;
Do good not harm is heaven's Way;
The wise act for and not against.

-Dao De Jing: The Book of the Way by Moss Roberts, Chapter 81.

Microcosm/Macrocosm

I'm not sure the origin of these pictures, but they were found at totallylookslike.com, one in the family of lolcat websites.

One of the principles of Daoist medicine is that the body is a microcosm of the universe. Just as there are five planets visible to the naked eye, so there are five major organs in the body, each corresponding to one of those planets (Jupiter, Mars, Saturn, Venus, Mercury to go with the Liver, Heart, Spleen/Pancreas, Lung, and Kidney). Click here for a fun website where you can check other Five Phase correspondences.

In some systems of Daoist meditation and cultivation, there are techniques for bringing the universe inside yourself, harmonizing your energy with that of the universe, and ultimately gaining the awareness that there is no separateness between your "self" and everything else that is.

These lofty ideas have not been included in modern, materialist TCM and certainly would seem out of place in any American university science course - it sounds too much like astrology. The closest you'll find is the idea that the weather has an influence on your health. If it's cold, you could catch a cold. But the link is there - if the sun, at least 91 million miles away, can grow plants here on earth, why shouldn't Jupiter and Mars have some kind of influence on us as well? Why not the moon, smaller and colder but so much closer? We already know the moon influences the tides and menstrual cycles.

It's easy to dismiss these ideas because there is no scientific evidence for them yet, but it's quite possible that our instruments just aren't advanced enough yet. In the Daoist tradition, your body can be the most finely tuned instrument in the universe, and physical practices such as qi gong and dao yin are the methods of refinement.

Medical traditions across all cultures, until recently, put higher value on the doctor's ability to wring information from the body with her questions, hands, eyes and nose than the ability to order tests. What will you do if you have no X-rays, no MRI machines? Throw up your hands and give up? In TCM, we learn to pull information by palpation, feeling the abdomen and the pulse, looking at the tongue, even observing a particular patient's odor. There is a wealth of information there - it's just a matter of sorting and ordering it with this system we call Chinese medicine and giving a diagnosis, which then gives us a roadmap for treatment.

Dao of the Day

In previous posts we've explored quotes from the Dao De Jing, the classic attributed to Laozi. Today we strike out in a slightly new direction: the Zhuangzi! Zhuangzi was a philosopher in the Warring States period who is supposed to have been Laozi's student and successor. The two are linked so closely that the school of thought attributed to them was known as "Laozhuang thought" before there was such a thing as Dao-ism.

Today's quote is from Thomas Merton's translation of the Zhuangzi. Thomas Merton was an interesting fellow - he was a Trappist monk who didn't read or write Chinese, although he was fluent in several other languages. His method of translation was to gather together the translations available in the languages he knew, read and assimilate them all to make an English version.

If a man steps on a stranger's foot
in the marketplace,
he makes a polite apology
and offers an explanation
("This place is so terribly
crowded!")

If an elder brother
steps on a younger brother's foot,
He says "Sorry!"
and that is that.

If a parent
treads on his child's foot,
nothing is said at all.

The greatest politeness
is free of all formality.
Perfect conduct
is free of concern.
Perfect wisdom
is unplanned.
Perfect love
is without demonstrations.
Perfect sincerity offers
no guarantee.

Great Medical Advice from Thousands of Years Ago

The sages of ancient times emphasized not the treatment of disease, but rather the prevention of its occurrence. To administer medicines to diseases which have already developed and to suppress revolts which have already begun is comparable to the behavior of one who begins to dig a well after he has become thirsty and of one who begins to forge his weapons after he has engaged in battle. Would these actions not be too late?

- The Yellow Emperor's Internal Classic, Simple Questions, quoted in Tao: The Subtle Universal Law and the Integral Way of Life by Hua-Ching Ni

Seems pretty straightforward, doesn't it? Hua-Ching Ni goes on to explain that, in the Chinese system, "it is possible to detect energy imbalances long before they are seen as an overt disease."

From the point of view of modern medicine, health is merely the absence of disease. But, by taking a preventive route, one may elevate one's general state of health to a level at which one may consistently enjoy a positive feeling of well-being with an abundance of physical and mental energy.

Sounds great, doesn't it? How does one get there, to a state of health where you just feel great and have lots of energy all the time? Four things: regulation of the mind and your emotions, proper physical activity, proper diet, and staying in tune with the four seasons ("proper" here means both the right amount and the right type).

Dao of the Day

Today's quote from the Dao De Jing:

The five colors cause man's eyes to be blinded.
The five tones cause man's ears to be deafened
The five flavors cause man's palate to be cloyed.

Hard to obtain merchandise causes mankind to do wrong
So the Sage concerns himself with the abdomen and not the eyes
Therefore, he rejects the one and chooses the other.

This is from Lao Tzu: My Words Are Very Easy to Understand

Taoist Conference Update

After taking a closer look at the program for the upcoming Taoist conference, I thought I should highlight some of the teachers who are presenting there. The mix is very interesting - people from many different Taoist traditions will be sharing their view of the path. Dr. Alex Feng and Charlene Ossler, the conference organizers, will of course be presenting, on Hua Tuo's Five Animal Qi Gong and the Taoist approach to health, respectively.

• Dr. Jerry Alan Johnson, founder of the International Institute of Medical Qigong
  
• Austin Ahern, who comes from the Ni family Integral Way Society
  
• Chris Tompkins, a PhD candidate at the University of California
  
• Liu Ming, founder of Da Yuan Circle
  
• Professor Bing F. YeYoung, founder of YeYoung Culture Studies.
  
• Dr. Ted Cibik, founder of Inner Strength, an integrative medical practice in western Pennsylvania.
  
• and Yosan's own Dr. Brady Chin!

The list goes on...

Taoist Conference in Oakland October 24-26

The Fifth Annual Taoist Gathering will be held the last weekend in October in Oakland, California. The theme is renewal.

The Taoist Gathering is organized by Zhi Dao Guan, the Taoist Center in Oakland, founded by Dr. Alex Feng and Charlene Ossler. Zhi Dao Guan offers classes in martial arts and qi gong, acupuncture and Chinese medicine treatments, and Taoist meditation classes.

Dr. Alex Feng has been my martial arts teacher, mentor and spiritual guide since I was eight years old. Our family had the good fortune to be living around the corner from his martial arts school when The Karate Kid came out, sparking renewed interest in martial arts in kids across America, including me and my brother. Dr. Feng's teachings reflect his multi-cultural heritage: born in Guangdong province in southern China to a Chinese father and a German mother, his family moved to Taiwan after the Communist party won China's hard-fought civil war in 1949. There he was forced to defend himself against both people who suspected his family of having Communist sympathies as well as narrow-minded bigots who disapproved of his mixed heritage. At the age of 16, the family moved to the racial and cultural melting pot of Oakland.

From an early age, Dr. Feng studied martial arts, starting in China and continuing in Taiwan and America. The Bay Area was fertile ground for martial arts in the 1960's and 70's. Besides Bruce Lee, who opened his first school there, there were many who promoted the path of martial arts before there was a Tae Kwon Do school in every city.

At Dr. Feng's first location in Berkeley, the system of Wu Jian Pai included both kung fu and judo. I remember there were classes five days a week: on Mondays and Wednesdays there would be kid's kung fu classes followed by adult's judo, and on Tuesdays and Thursdays there was kid's judo followed by adult kung fu class (there was also an open Sunday class for anyone to come and practice). As a youngster I often came to the kids class and stayed on through the adult classes. Although we wore different uniforms and bowed differently in each class, Dr. Feng and his senior students taught all the classes and made the connections between the traditional Japanese and Chinese systems. Long before the term "mixed martial arts" could even be Googled, we were mixing judo's highly refined and powerful throws and groundwork with our kicks and punches during sparring.

Later, as interest increased, Dr. Feng started teaching tai ji quan, qi gong and other internal energetic work. Wu Tao Kuan School of Martial Arts recently celebrated 35 years of teaching.

Dr. Feng is an electric, charismatic teacher who has probed the depths of his self and come out with important lessons for anyone willing to listen. Refusing to be bound by orthodoxy, he has searched the world for superior teachers in the spiritual, medical and physical arts. Some of these great teachers will be at the conference in Oakland. Acupuncturists, martial artists and anyone interested in Taoism should take advantage of this opportunity.

In these perilous economic and political times, when the whole world seems to be collapsing around us, it should be wonderfully refreshing to rub elbows with people who are more concerned with things like this, for instance: Research Project on Higher Consciousness: What Inner States Do People Experience when Emitting High Frequency Brainwaves from the Upper Forehead Region? (To be presented by Dr. Beverly Rubik on the second day of the conference) than with this or that.

Guan Yu

He is worshiped as a guardian god to some, god of brotherhood and loyalty to others, and sometimes as one who protects the money of the upright from the crooked. He was also a real person: a general during the late Eastern Han Dynasty.

During one of his battles, Guan Yu was struck by a poison arrow in his arm, and although the arrow was immediately removed, the poison had seeped into his bone. His subjects sent away for a physician, and none other than Hua Tuo came to the rescue.

When Hua Tuo arrived on the scene, Guan Yu was busy playing Go with one of his men. Hua Tuo examined his wound, and said that surgery would have to be performed immediately to save his arm. He suggested that Guan Yu put is arm through a ring that was fixed to a post - to keep him from flailing around while Hua Tuo scraped at his bone (without anesthesia) - and to put on a blindfold.

Guan Yu was like, "No way dude! Do what you need to, I'm going to keep playing this game of Go." Supposedly, he didn't want to affect the morale of his men, and talked and drank without flinching while Hua Tou scraped at the bone in his arm.

Minutes later, Hua Tou put medicine (presumably herbs) into the wound and sewed it up. Guan Yu no longer felt any pain in his arm, and Hua Tou left without accepting rewards for his work.

Large Hadron Collider Now Online

What is the Large Hadron Collider? The video above explains it better than I ever could.

As I understand it, part of what they're doing there is searching for the smallest particle in the universe. My guess is, they'll never find it. According to the laws of yin and yang, they certainly never will, because yin and yang are infinitely divisible. This might seem like an easy, almost flippant thing to say, but it's actually based on thousands of years of observation and fine-tuning.

Modern physics is a fascinating area for anyone interested in the natural world. Chinese medicine, with its roots in Daoism, is a natural area of research for physicists. As the tools and equipment get more sophisticated, we are able to detect different frequencies of energy waves we weren't able to see before. Experiments have been conducted which measure brain waves of experienced meditators, heat or cold in patients and practitioners as a result of qigong therapy, and other "insubstantial" or non-physical therapies which have a physical effect.

This is a complex subject which branches out in many directions. For now, enjoy the video!

The Origin of This Picture is Unknown

Take a look at the first two characters of the third line. 阴 is romanized as "yin", as in yin and yang. Yin and Yang are a set of opposites that underlie all creation. In general, yin relates to the moon and things that are cold, dark, contracting, downward moving and female. In general, yang relates to the sun and things that are warm, bright, expansive, upward moving and male.

Everything (absolutely everything) in the universe has yin and yang within it. Although yin generally relates to the "female principle" and yang generally relates to the "male principle", it is an elementary mistake to equate everything female with yin and male with yang (see Charlotte Furth, "Blood, Body and Gender: Medical Images of the Female Condition in China, 1600-1850", 1986. Chinese Science 7: 43-66 and "Concepts of Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Infancy in Ch'ing Dynasty China", 1987, Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 46, No. 1 for an example of this mistaken thinking).

The next character is 道, which is romanized as "dao". This is the Dao or (Tao) or Daoism, and can mean the Way, a road, a path. If your mind works a certain way, your next question is, path to where? Way of what? In regular Chinese grammar, 道 is usually preceded by another character - 武道 meaning the Way of martial arts or war, 茶道 meaning the Way of tea. Taken by itself, 道 becomes a subject for philosophical inquiry, meditation, contemplation.

In the case of our unfortunately translated picture above, the 阴道 is the pathway of yin - the vagina. The vagina can be thought of as a pathway to the ultimate physical expression of yin in the world of humans - the interior world of a woman. It should therefore be treated with respect and care by those fortunate enough to have one and by everyone who is fortunate enough to come in contact with one.

Dao of the Day

Something looked for but not seen,
Or listened for, not heard
Or reached for, not found:
Call one "dim," one "faint," one "slight,"
Not for summons nor for challenge.
Combined these three make one -
The One, the foremost number,
When daylit sky and dark of night
Have yet to be.
Through this One all living forms coil forth
Helter-skelter - how else to name it? -
Only to go round home again
To their unbodied state:
Form before form,
Guises of the unbodied,
Or gleams in a dim void.
Who can engage them?
Who find the foremost?
Who can pursue them?
Who find the last?
Hold fast to the Way of ancient days
To guide us through our present world;
To know how things began of old
Is to be grounded in the Way

From Dao De Jing: The Book of the Way, translation and commentary by Moss Roberts.

Previously:

• Dao of the Day from August 3
  
• Dao of the Day from July 23rd

Let It Flow!

D'oh! In yet another example of the unintended consequences of modern medicine, new research has found that birth control pills may interfere with a woman's selection of a mate.

We all know the scent is a powerful factor in sexual attraction and breeding throughout the animal kingdom. Normally, women prefer the smell of men who have immune systems that differ substantially from theirs, thus giving their potential children the best mix of genes. When they start taking the pill, they prefer the smell of men who have immune systems that are similar to theirs. When they go off the pill, their preference returns to normal.

Here is a good article from the Times of London, and here's a much snarkier version from the L.A. Times. (This woman may or may not be on the pill - she seems somewhat indiscriminate when it comes to scent.)

Seriously though, the birth control pill is powerful medicine. Sometimes it is the best option, but keep in mind that if you're taking "the pill", you are voluntarily medicating yourself every day. That goes for both men and women - yes, there are male birth control pills in the works. (Beware of articles like this, which uncritically parrot the pharmaceutical industry's line that birth control pills are "safe, effective and reversible.")

Classical Daoist energy practices enable men and women to control their sexual energy in such a way that pregnancy can be avoided if desired. But this takes a lot of dedicated practice and study with an accomplished master. Please don't assume you can just read a book by Mantak Chia and use that as your contraception! Condoms are still an essential ingredient in safer sex - even if you're in a monogamous relationship, they may be the healthiest option.

(Thanks to DJ Lady Sha for the tip on this one)