Circles

There's a good article on the circle in the NY Times, which uses Vasily Kandinsky as a jumping off point.

This being December, I’d like to honor Kandinsky through his favorite geometry, by celebrating the circle and giving a cheer for the sphere. Life as we know it must be lived in the round, and the natural world abounds in circular objects at every scale we can scan. Let a heavenly body get big enough for gravity to weigh in, and you will have yourself a ball. Stars are giant, usually symmetrical balls of radiant gas, while the definition of both a planet like Jupiter and a plutoid like Pluto is a celestial object orbiting a star that is itself massive enough to be largely round.

On a more down-to-earth level, eyeballs live up to their name by being as round as marbles, and, like Jonathan Swift’s ditty about fleas upon fleas, those soulful orbs are inscribed with circular irises that in turn are pierced by circular pupils. Or think of the curved human breast and its bull’s-eye areola and nipple.

Our eggs and those of many other species are not egg-shaped at all but spherical, and when you see human eggs under a microscope they look like tranquil suns with Kandinsky coronas behind them.

Full article here.

Exercise Prevents Senility

Master Guo Lian Ying (aka Kuo Lien Ying)

Yet another reason to exercise...

For the past week I've been getting up at roughly 6 a.m. and going to Mar Vista park to stretch and engage in a little "physical culture." I've been doing a mix of kung fu exercises, qi gong, tai ji quan. People get out early to this park - there's a dedicated group of middle-aged Chinese women who are out practicing their tai ji sword form, and occasionally you see others doing different kinds of tai ji. The basketballers and the soccer players are out pretty early too. People are there with their dogs, too, but mostly they let the dogs play for them.

It's been a long time since I've dedicated myself to practice everyday. The difference is incredible. My digestion is better, my energy is flowing and relaxed at all hours of the day, my jokes are funnier and my mood is better. This is one of the benefits of running your own business - you can set your own hours.

Qi Gong For Diabetes

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...

太极图 Tai Ji Tu

The 太极图 Tai Ji Tu, or tai ji diagram, illustrates the everchanging nature of yin and yang. Yin and yang are mutually supportive, oppositional, dynamic, and so on. For every up, there is a down. For every inside, there is an outside. Not only that, for the concept of "inside" to exist there must be an "outside". If everything was "inside" there would be no need for the term "outside".

This philosophical argument becomes real when applied to medicine, fighting, art, sex or any other area of life. What starts as the common cold, affecting the yang or upper part of the body in the nose and sinuses, can become pneumonia, affecting the deep interior or yin parts of the body. When your opponent attacks high, you attack low. When he advances, you retreat. When he retreats, you advance. Tai Ji is the separation of the essential wholeness of the universe into two parts, yin and yang.

Yin and yang must work together harmoniously in your body and in relation to the "outside" world. When there is a disturbance, you get sick. When there is no disturbance, you have health. All we do in acupuncture is balance yin and yang. There are further divisions of yin and yang, complicated disease models and mechanisms, but it all comes back to yin and yang.