shake and bake journal from friend BP

BP is a jhāna meditator somewhere in their twenties or thirties.

This is from a private conversation I had with him, that he agreed to share, hoping more people will try to incorporate jhāna into every moment of their life, and using shake and bake exercises daily to prime the body for optimal jhāna.

4👑☸ → ☯🦍 → shake and bake 🏃👨‍🍳🥧

frankk to his meditator friend BP

those are good, [those mobility exercises] you're doing. But once a week isn't going to cut it.

You don't eat once a week, and you don't breathe once a week. 

Even with your busy schedule, you can do a lot more on a daily basis.

Instead of being in a static posture every time you're in deep thought working on your [job] or whatever homework, you can deep think while in a standing forward bend, or shake and bake, stationary bike, whatever. 

Shake and bake is a miracle game changer.

I've fixed health problems and my knees, leg parts, are getting better than they were when I was in my early thirties. 

In my early thirties, I could sit full lotus 20-30m comfortably, 45m to 60m things start to hurt. Now in my fifties, I can sit 60-90min comfortably full lotus.

Some of my meditation injuries were feet, ankles, parts of leg nerve damage and partially numb from too much sitting meditation. 

This is a common problem in burmese meditation systems.

Nerves are slow to regenerate, but they do. Shake and bake and the other exercises do are essential.

Without shake and bake, the same things I'm doing daily would not be nearly as effective.

This is especially true with vegans, vegetarians with cold body types, but even omnivores with hot body temperature probably have cold parts. If anyone has hip, knee problems, then there are cold body parts with poor or suboptimal circulation.

   

The two really big ideas that I learned in the last few years, would have made my improvement so much faster if I knew this when I was young

1. partial jhāna can be done all the time, all postures

2. sustainable, enjoyable daily exercise, throughout the day. high volume of very easy to do things makes it enjoyable and sustainable. For example, every hour take at least 2 minutes to do something. pushups, squats, mobility exercises.

what I do daily, in terms of rough quota of time and exercises to hit full range of body expression

https://lucid24.org/tped/r/rule-of-48/index.html

The reason I asked about taiji, is if you learn a good system, it will really help you understand and be able to do partial jhāna in all postures, all day long.

That's the real key to fixing legs, and at any age. When jhanic force increases, it pushes out circulation of blood, lymph, qi, stronger and to all the extremities. That's why I can sit full lotus longer and longer as I age.

If you have strong jhana and apply it to a balanced diverse exercise regimen, do shake and bake as I recommend, it will fix most of the problems you know about that you currently have, and will fix and prevent problems you're not even aware of.

Taiji done correctly, is basically fourth jhana with kayagatisati at its best. As opposed to kayagata with lots of injuries and health problems as you get older.

I took the time and effort to write and share this, because we always hope we can help others avoid problems with easy solutions that we wish we knew about when we were young. And seeing as we have similar interests, and likely to have some similar health problems from sedentary lifestyle [common to modern people sitting on computers all day], I hope you can appreciate I have extremely high confidence in the efficacy of these exercises and methods.

At the same time, I'm not a proselytizer and taiji and good physical health is just not a priority for some people.

So I will say no more, unless you ask and show interest.

I share everything I think is of value under the qigong gorilla section, 

https://lucid24.org/misc/qigor/index.html

 but if no one's asking questions, I know they're probably not doing it. It's like jhāna, I could write a super detailed explanation, and one can understand it fully on an intellectual level, but you should have questions and your understanding of the same points will change as your practice deepens.

BP to frankk

Thanks for the comments. I meant I do the cardio about once a week. I do the stretches daily. Probably I need to do cardio 3-4 times a week instead,

but that’s where I’m at right now.

I do like doing a few shaking movements I learned from a qigong vid-“wild horse shaking” and the 8th brocade “shaking to ward off all illnesses” which are similar except for the arms being in front vs resting on the back. I also do a few other qigong-like motions, not sure what they are called (also learned from a qigong vid). These are more just things I do during breaks-they aren’t anything I have a systematic training routine for. I like the idea of moving around more while thinking, although frequently I need pen and paper to work out my ideas. Maybe dictation to my phone could work there.

I work in 50-20 cycles of work/break time. Usually go on a walk during the break, or meditate.

Yeah the partial jhana at all times thing is super important. I can’t fully maintain the “connection” to jhanic joy at all times yet, but it’s improving. I’ve noticed recently that even sometimes when getting caught in conversations with roommates it’s begun to feel like “they have entered into my practice” instead of “I have been dragged away from practice”. Heh, I end up saying some very direct things about poor behavior in a dispassionate way as a result, which seems to be helpful for everyone. [friend's] advice here to view  the defilements in another person’s mind as something to work on just as if they were in my own mind is helpful here.

Safely doing full lotus seems like a pipe dream to me! Maybe one day if I keep up the daily stretching as a “lifetime habit”. 

frankk to BP

jhanic joy (both physical and mental) is unreliable, because when fourth jhana becomes the normal, neutral sensations become the norm, just as your body stops giving you pleasure chemicals when you're not hungry anymore.

The only reliable jhanic markers are the sensation of jhanic force pervading the entire body, singular focus of mind, and bubbly or electrical sensations wherever you direct attention on the body, even the entire body all at once, since nerves get more sensitive and expansive. 

It's instant on for jhana, so even in the midst of walking around talking to people, you will be able to freqeuently connect with micro moments of jhana where you feel jhanic force surge or pulse in your body.

nothing wrong with mental joy if you want to sankhara that and maintain that and feel you need it at the time. But also practice your best version of noble silence at whatever your highest jhana level is, being able to instantly turn it on, keep it on, and when it's not possible to do that, take micro jhana breaks. When I chant, every pause, even less than a second, I get a micro jhana session in there just to train that ability of always on, always zen. 

The question monastics and serious yogis should be asking is not, "can I do jhāna?"

but instead, "can I turn it on like a switch, keep it on, think only thoughts I want to think and not think ones that I don't?"

and, "can I do attain better than third jhāna, which is the 'normal' level of samādhi the buddha expects for his disciples?" 

After twenty minutes, body totally transformed by S&B shake and bake

The thing with shake and bake, if you do it several times a day, and always before you stretch, your static stretches are going to improve much more. If you really get to understand the benefits of s&B (or an equivalent cardio that you enjoy) that can heat up your body, then you won't think full lotus is a pipe dream, you'll really start to experientially understand that the 4 elements can be harmonized with the right training. When I do shake and bake for 20 minutes, after 20min my body is totally different, like a bag of water, aches in the right shoulder areas gone, tight ankles dissolved, movement and reflexes get faster, stretches are more effective when the body is pliable. Going from cold start, it's really hard to make net progress.

And my baseline stiffness for right when I start a shake and bake session is starting to improve.

I also used to think certain parts of my shoulder and back pain were never going to completely disappear, now I don't know. The shoulder tightness mild pain even from cold start is declining, at this rate in a year or two my baseline cold start will have no tight shoulders, it will be like my current 20 min. S&B mark where shoulders turn into bag of warm water with no pain. 

BP's first try at Shake and Bake

I experimented some with your shake and bake idea today. It does seem helpful, especially for shoulder and neck tension. The gentle bouncing of something like the 8th brocade is made more effective by the elevated pulse and placidity created by mild cardio and light jumping. I'll keep experimenting, thanks.

Sitting cross legged to eat lunch today also seemed a bit looser too.

frankk responds, gorilla buffet samplers

what i expect would happen is you'll keep finding out s+b is so good you should be doing it more (both more short 1-5 min. warmup before any other stretching activity  through out the day, and just in total minutes in aggregate daily).

if you want to know the effectiveness of an exercise, that's something i do in general, test it all the time. i call it the gorilla buffet sampler. example: I always do one plough helicopter suite before each sit (10-30 sec.), and based on how that feels, I'll do  2-5 more times spliced in with counter stretched backbends such as updog. So the principle is take a small bite at the buffet, and based on how good it tastes it tells you how much of it you need to eat.

So 30 years ago when my neck and shoulders were huge problems, I did a few minutes of turtle exercises every hour. Now I probably do just 2 minutes of turtle total daily, but I still buffet sampled it 10-20 times per day.

'assess to progress': basically, sati and sampjano applied to your body condition. constantly lucidly discerning what the condition is, what needs to improve

'inject bottle neck' giving more time and attention of problem areas,  

'finish diminish' decrease time in exercises that are giving you dimnsishing returns

'finish the mission of exploitation' increase time in things where you're not harvesting that benefit enough even though it's right there for the taking.

with s+b shake and bake i don't ever see it being less than 20 min a day total, divided into at least 5-10 sessions spread out the day. as you age you're only going to get colder and stiffer no matter if you've got perfect routine ever invented. So if not s+b, something gentle cardio that will warm up and make body more malleable.

and nothing gets higher quotient of jhana while warming up than s+b, though if you find something reasonably close that you like better, than do that instead.

i'm constantly still testing and experimenting too. for example, i've tried just doing a coupel minutes of pushups or squats as a warm up... 

BP after one day, feels noticable hip improvement

It seems useful so far. Surprised at how much “smoother” hip motion felt after one day of it only. Maybe it’s placebo though, will have to keep testing.

One (maybe) negative side effect is that while it feels like the stiffness in my neck and and shoulders is “breaking up”, I also feel a sense of inflammation there. The feeling is like tiny toxins are being released as a result of breaking up knots. There’s more “crackling” as well. Maybe I let my upper body wobble too much before getting used to the motions. It does seem to be fixing the knots though, just feels like there are little “pieces” of the knots knocked loose that the body needs to “digest”/“process”.

BP after two days of S&B

On Day 3 total of trying out your shake and bake. I'm really impressed by the results so far. This is the first time I've really felt such obvious progress for flexibility and mobility in such a short time. Previously I was trying to only measure my improvements in terms of several weeks, so I wouldn't get discouraged day by day. With this, the progress is immediate and obvious. Maybe it's just 'beginner gains' though, we will see.

I've been emphasizing hip external rotation as well by externally rotating the hips (not a huge amount, just enough to activate and relax the hip) in each of the jumps for shake and bake. (As if you were trying to touch your foot with the opposite hand.). Other variations I've tried: arms in front, hands resting in back (causes more bouncing in shoulders and neck), hands overhead with palms slightly facing up, arms directly out to the sides, small side-shuffling motions (more bouncing in adductors), and slight internal rotation of hips each bounce (very slight, just enough to intend it). 

The neck inflammation I mentioned is gone already by the way. My neck is dramatically more relaxed as well-I notice this especially when laying down to sleep at night. Previously the tightness sometimes made it harder to fall asleep easily.

I also am experimenting with adding 'drop and bounce' motions to various stretches where I pull back from the stretch and then relax the muscles entirely so they drop into the stretch and naturally bounce at the end of the range of motion. It seems to have a similar feeling.

The main drawback is how ridiculous it looks. Or perhaps that's just good dhamma practice .

frankk response, wish more people would do S&B

keep tracking your progress, and please publish or give me permission to publish some form of it when you've got a good sample size you want to share.

I really want more people, not just meditators, to try it out and get the health benefits of this, and having more testimonials will help get the word out.

I don't think you're going to ever find s+b not helping.

I wake up at 2am everyday, do s+b for twenty min., then some meditation. Got on my computer (desk switches between standing and sitting, highly recommend), stood for about 90min working on sutta translation, felt my back getting a little uncomfortable, did s+b for 5 min. and instantly fixed. The older you get, the more easily you can incorporate jhana into your standing, walking, and even s+b, you're going to appreciate s+b more and more. It's like sitting meditation, eating, breathing, it's never going to go out of style or beyond your frequent needs.

After one week, BP shares progress on S&B

So still doing shake and bake, it's been a bit over a week now I think. It's a ridiculous exercise that has benefited me physically in pretty much every way possible. My hip flexibility is dramatically improving, and I'm getting to the point where sitting cross-legged is 100% comfortable, whereas in the past it's always felt tense in some way or another. My energy levels are dramatically increased (even compared with times I did "normal" cardio). Knots and tensions in my neck and shoulders are disappearing. Hip 'clicking' is disappearing, even when doing large hip motions. I noticed my sleep needs have also decreased, by how much I'm still figuring out--but now when I lay down to sleep at night I have tremendous amounts of leftover energy. Currently I've reduced my sleep by 30 minutes (reduced to 8 hours) compared to before starting shake and bake. I'm even currently sick, and despite that I have more energy when not ill than I did before starting shake and bake! My mind is also clearer, and it's easier to put in effort to annihilate the unwholesome when it rears its ugly face.

All of these benefits from a single low-intensity exercise seem unbelievable to me, and yet the improvements continue to keep coming.

I incorporated the principles of shake and bake into my stretch routines as well, which I mentioned before. I'm now of an opinion similar to you about static stretching-I can feel tensions building up if I hold a static stretch for too long. Seems the ideal thing to do is do short static holds ~10 seconds, alternated with a round of bouncing/swaying/jiggling etc near the end of the range of motion. The alternation between the two is rapidly increasing my flexibility gains. Keeping the body warm and pliant seems critical for gaining fast progress with stretches. I feel confident that I'll be sitting Burmese style in maybe 2 months, instead of the previous estimate of ~4 months. Perhaps even faster, will have to see.

Some notes on increasing the benefits: open jaw slightly to relax it more, move the neck very, very slightly in different directions and hold there while bouncing to help relax different parts of neck and shoulders, gently open and close the chest to relax the upper back, and spine more,  place the hands on the tops of the shoulders to dramatically loosen shoulders (looks like 'chicken wings', works best with jumps with both legs at the same time), emphasis should always be on maximizing the amount of relaxation and 'bounciness' instead of on going fast, short 1/2 second pauses can be helpful to let the body relax and oscillate/bounce after a jump (for jumping with both legs), and for the calves which are harder to relax for me during the jumping you can sit in a seated forward fold position and 'drop and bounce' the legs to relax them. Let me know if you want me to clarify any of these notes.

This does seem like the ideal lifelong exercise, especially for renunciants who are going to be entirely focused on health benefits instead of looking good or looking cool while doing the exercise..

Always zen, whether static, slow movement, fast movement, you can continuously remove all tension and tactile sense of body

A friend in email asked what I thought about adapting a kickboxing exercise into jhāna and taiji training. My response: 

any movement can be made into a jhāna or taiji type of movement if done with that intention.

it takes quite a bit of practice though to really completely let go of all tension, especially if you're trying to approximate a martial arts move.

so even experienced taiji players, even though they're slow, appear to be relaxed, often still have quite a bit of unnecessary tension carried around. For me, and probably most people, it's because you have the intention, this needs to be fighting/martial so even though I'm doing slow, soft relaxed, my body needs to be tough and take a hit. Result is you tense up. 

Let go of all martial intent

For me the key was to just completely let go of any martial intent, and just like the name of xing yi says, focus on a form/posture/shape, and use your mind's intention to effortlessly morph the physical body into that shape.

I treat my body like a bag of water or empty sack of air that I shape it into a posture. If I can feel a body, then I've still got much unnecessary tension. The more I do it correctly, the more the tactile sense of body disappears, like just an empty bag with gooey magnetic force, boneless, no sense of mass or weight. 

check zen, stay zen, always zen.

zen while static, zen while moving.

zen while slow moving, zen while lighting fast.

(zen = jhāna, maximize jhānic force and generating internal energy, charging the battery at all times).

🔗📝 collection of notes on shake and bake🏃👨‍🍳🥧

Internal

4👑☸ → ☯🦍 → shake and bake 🏃👨‍🍳🥧

External

 🔗overview of optimal health

🔗shake and bake: why and how

shake and bake: 🔗"it's better than jogging": video samples galore

shake and bake is really helpful for: 🔗jhana constipation

shake and bake: why it's so amazing? 🔗 resonant frequency

---

🔗questions, answers, feedback

🔗👣 TCM soak feet in hot water daily for excellent health benefits: contains story of monks and nuns with nerve damage who could really use shake and bake.

expert recommends at least 30min a day of cardio, 🔗as part of defense against sars-covid

🔗case study of 500 people over 2 years getting good results doing exercise similar to shake and bake

🔗🏃👨‍🍳🦎🐍 shake and bake lizard snake variation, for sleeping bag yoga to replace updog and cobra

shake and bake journal from friend BP

highly recommended: 20 min. video teaching relaxed body arm swinging standing in place exercises

 

20 min. video teaching relaxed body arm swinging standing in place exercises

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-EYOxv8fNM

My favorite of the exercises is the one starting at 11m:30sec

It's basically doing full 360 arm swings with both arms simultaneously using a clever angle.

If you try an orthogonal angle, standing straight, both arms swinging perpendicular in front of you,

you wouldn't be able to swing full circles with both arms simultaneously, only one arm.

But with a waist turn and a slightly offset angle, as video shows, you can swing both arms.

Qigor enhancement to all the arm swing exercises

I try to use no arm and upper body initiated movement at all to do the moves. I use the momentum of my legs and waist motion to drive my arms and upper body movement.

I bend and squat deeper into the moves than they do in the video to generate more force.

You can see in the video they don't use leg and knee bending force to propel the arms. Maybe the waist turns generate most of it for them, but unless their shoulders  rotations are frictionless, they're probably using some arm muscle action to get the arms back to the peak height.

optimal yogi diet

I use a food processor and make two kinds of veggie burgers. 

1. The left side is tempeh with veggies

2. the right side is tofu burger with different veggies

It takes me about two hours wash, prepare, grind up all ingredients with the food processor, mix in salt and seasoning. I then portion it out into small plastic containers and freeze them, it lasts 10-14 days.

I rarely make them into veggie burgers, I just use a pressure cook it for 10 minutes with some pre cooked rice or quinoa, and it's ready to eat. I add a few teaspoons of olive oil after steaming it, so eating room temperature healthy oils won't make it carcinogenic compared to if you made the veggie burger mix into patties and fried them.

Here's my mostly eaten meal, just the veggie burger mix and brown rice and olive oil mixed together.

Looks horrible, but tastes delicious. About the same as if you were to waste time making them into veggie patties, frying them, putting it on wheat buns. So I cut out the middle men and eat just the direct nutritious stuff.

Bread is pretty decadent, I eat very small portions and it lasts a long time.

It has walnuts, raisins, goji, cran raisins, banana, butter. So packed with goodies that it's maxed out. I couldn't stuff any more raisins or fillings, they're already spilling out as you can see.

Turn and burn, corkscrew elevator

 

(work in progress)

Turn and Burn (standard basic)

(in the video above, first 25 seconds I'm doing the basic, driving the motion with legs and waist turn, letting upper body go completely dead and relaxed, shifting weight completely from one leg to the other)

In China, even internationally in major cities, such as Los Angeles USA, you'll see in Chinatown local parks seniors gathering in local parks early in the morning, doing various qigong exercises.

One of the most common exercises you see, is they'll spend even 20 minutes continuously just doing one move,  swinging their arms back and forth with waist turning. 

Don't be deceived by how simple the move looks, and think it's only for old and injured people who can't do more advanced exercise. Trust me, this move never gets old, just like drinking water, eating food, breathing, never gets old and you have to do it every day, multiple times a day to keep the body alive and well. 

I'm not sure what the name of the move is, I call it "turn and burn", because the waist turning and loose arm swinging burns away tension and knots in the hips, shoulders, elbows, etc. 

My version, the qigong gorilla 'turn and burn',  takes the move off the rails by introducing many angles and range of motion not done in the standard version of the move done worldwide.

Tips for doing the basic version well

1. Let your upper body go completely dead/limp/relaxed, not using any upper body muscles (other than to maintain posture and form): move with the whole body, don't just swing your arms pivoting at the shoulder joints. Avoid tail wagging dog problem. You'll still get some exercise benefits by doing it inefficiently, but you'll get a lot more benefit if you train yourself to move in a unified, coordinated way. Completely let your upper body go dead, let your leg crouching and waist turning drive all the upper body motion. This way you can really sense where you have hard knots, stiff areas and impeded energy flow in tight areas in shoulders, neck, upper back, waist, hips. 

2.  many people will probably find it's not actually easy to follow the first tip! It may take you days, weeks even, to learn to completely let go of the upper body, arms, etc, and just let the lower body momentum drive the limp upper body. This is quite telling. We're used to being hyper control freaks, impatient, using our hands to grab things, tensing up the shoulders and neck from greed, so when we're told to do 'turn and burn' which looks like arms swinging, we use our greed and impatience to tense our greedy little hands and arms, using arm muscle, upper body muscles, even gritting our teeth, tensing our neck, furrowing our brows instead of following the simple instructions  to completely relax the upper body above the waist. If you have trouble doing tip one, almost guaranteed your static sitting and standing jhana will also have some blockages and suboptimal energy flow and performance.

Moving on to major Gorilla Enhancements to 'turn and burn'.

Starting at 25sec mark of video

Corkscrew Elevator

from 25 sec to 55 sec of video

1. completely rooted in one leg, you are a one legged man with 3 arms.

This is 'turn and burn', except instead of shifting from one leg to the other with each swing, you stay completely rooted in one leg, 100% of your body weight supported with one leg. This means your other free leg, is completely free, that other hip is completely relaxed, you could lift that leg and your body won't tip over. If your body tilts visibly when you lift your free leg, then you're not 100% rooted in that other root leg. The free leg should feel like a 3rd arm. Rooting into your strong leg, if you were to randomly move your 3 arms in various directions, you wouldn't throw yourself off balance. 

2. 'corkscrew elevator' gets it's name

The video footage shows me rooted on one leg, then the other. You can't see the 'corkscrew' that I'm doing, because the motion is small, not visible to naked eye easily, also not great camera angle to see this. 

What I'm doing the whole time in the video on one leg, is I'm slowly squatting lower and lower, maybe just millimeters at a time. So even though you can't see it, what I'm feeling is that my body is gradually and smoothly going down lower and lower, and it feels like I'm cork screwing myself and rooting into the earth. Then when I've gone as low as I wanted to go (usually between 1 and 2 in.)  to get the workout and strength development that I deem beneficial and not wasting a bunch of energy, I start elevating myself up. So in the video, I'm slowing spiraling down, then spiraling back up ('elevator', 'corkscrew').

This is harder than it looks, especially if you haven't had taiji or qigong training to strengthen your legs. 

How low should I go in the corkscrew elevator?

Build up your leg strength gradually. 

You don't have to squat low, in fact, don't. You don't get any points for doing that, on the contrary, taiji and other wushu that do the forms with very athletic low squatting really wastes a lot of PIE (precious internal energy). At a conventional biomechanical level of reality, squatting your body lower, lowering your center of mass, gives you some leverage and balance stability relative to your opponent, but true taiji at a high level, when you're operating at the PIE level with 4th jhana, does not depend on these coarse biomechanical advantages. Mastery of internal energy, jhana, trumps muscular strength exponentially. That's why you see the rare real taiji and internal martial arts masters throwing around people who outweigh them by 100 to 200 bls, who are super muscular, etc. PIE doesn't depend on weight or brute muscular strength.

The real measuring stick of what kind of strength and balance you're aiming for, is be a one legged person, and you should be able to give your 3 arms (free leg is the 3rd arm) should be F.R.E.E. (full range of expression, elasticity), complete range of motion and extension, without affecting your balance on your one leg.

I can't emphasize enough how important 'turn and burn', 'corkscrew elevator', and one legged three arm exercises are. 

Between shake and bake, flying cat cow, turn and burn, plow helicopter, you will fix so many health problems, and prevent so many health problems from happening.

It took me about 90min. just to write this much.

I could write a lot more about the subtle nuances of the move, but it's kind of difficult to explain if you don't have competent jhana and/or taiji fundamentals already.

It's time consuming, energy draining to try to explain the benefits of a few simple exercises, because I know how it looks, especially what my reaction would have been decades ago before I could do jhana. It sounds like a joke, these amazingly simple little movements being worth doing every day, an hour a day or more. 

But to quickly summarize,

Do this everyday.

Chinese people will do JUST this move continuously for 20min., but I found you get much better results mixing it with other moves. For example, shake and bake 10min, then when you're really nice and warm, splice in turn and burn, flying cat cow with more shake and bake as needed to maintain body heat and pliability.

(to be continued)

Flying Cat Cow, Turn And Burn, Cat Cow Tornado

 

 

Explanation of terms

🐱🐮 cat cow, flying cat cow (link to detailed article and explanation)

the principle of alternating forward and backward bending of the spine, as well as all other directions of spinal flexing (left, right, and everywhere in between)

Turn and Burn

In China, even internationally in major cities, such as Los Angeles USA, you'll see in Chinatown local parks seniors gathering in local parks early in the morning, doing various qigong exercises.

One of the most common exercises you see, is they'll spend even 20 minutes continuously just doing one move,  swinging their arms back and forth with waist turning. 

I'm not sure what the name of the move is, I call it "turn and burn", because the waist turning and loose arm swinging burns away tension and knots in the hips, shoulders, elbows, etc. 

My version, the qigong gorilla 'turn and burn', shown in the video up top, takes the move off the rails by introducing many angles not done in the vanilla standard version of the move done worldwide.

For example, starting at 25sec, and right around 30sec mark in the video, that particular angle with the head and spine forward bending somewhat really targets the same trouble area that the 'plow helicopter suite' addresses. 

finish diminish, finish the mission of exploitation

In the video clip above, I only swing a couple of times at the various angles to quickly demonstrate the range of possibility. 

But in your practice, you should be noticing as you sample various angles, what your body really needs.

spend extra time in the especially problematic areas you have!

For example, the angle at the 30sec. mark, I'll spend 2-5 minutes there. 

Your body will give you feedback letting you know, often endorphines and pleasure chemicals, that it wants you to spend more time there. Ride it out, finish the mission of exploitation, getting the most benefit out of that.

conversely, at other angles you don't feel feedback sensations letting you know there's any special need there, no need to waste too much time at those angles ('finish diminish', drop activities with diminishing return). 

But do quickly try out all the possible angles and assess the situation ('assess to progress' and 'measure for pleasure'). 

(to be continued)

Plow Helicopter Suite - Yoga Ball Backbend

Hala-asana (plow posture) Basic info

 Hala (pali + sanskrit) = plow

Asana = posture.

seema.com › an-introduction says:

Is Plow Pose good for you?

Plow pose has many health benefits that include giving strength to your spine, shoulders, neck and stomach. As your neck and shoulders are open, this is an ideal way to stretch the neck, spine and shoulders. You're also able to lower your blood pressure as you focus on calming the brain and having a restful mind.

A couple of short videos showing basic plow pose:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1i54Ejpq98Vz5Jeh0fqcdrQ1fermU7PSy

Plow Helicopter: major improvements over basic plow

prerequisite: First, make sure you can do the basic plow above safely, without pain or discomfort.

This is a 6 min. video where I demonstrate several things, the plow pose starts at 1:40

I start with a standard yoga plow pose, and then I go into a series of gorilla improvisations that add an infinite variety of stretches that the standard plow just doesn't reach. 

What makes the plow pose so amazing?

(1) hit the hot spot where you need it the most

There so many ways to stretch the back with forward bending motions, from standing, sitting, lying down, etc.

The plow, what makes it special from all the other forward bends, is that your body weight pressing down on your upper back, shoulder, and neck area, ensures that the stretch will loosen and stretch that tight upper back area. When you stretch in general, the stretchiest part gets most of the stretch, but the tightest part, the part you really want to stretch the most, gets the least stretch. 

What the plow does, by anchoring that tight region in the upper back with gravity pushing most of your body weight down on it, allows the radius of that tight region to all get stretched.

Here's an example to illustrate the principle. Suppose you have an old rubber band, parts of it are dry and brittle. If you stretch the rubber band, the stretchiest part of it gets most of the stretching, rather than the tight dry parts you want to stretch the most. But if you anchor the tight brittle area of the rubber band, for example hold your fingers down on that tight brittle region, and then stretch, than that tight part will get most of the stretch on both ends of the tight region. 

 

(2) Opens up the main blockage for most people who are working on first jhana

(more details another day)

Qigor RDA 

(Qigong Gorilla Recommended Daily Allowance)

At least once a day.

Always pair the move with a back bending counter stretch (the video showing yoga ball backbend is the best for many reasons, but any backbend pose will suffice). 

I do it before every sitting meditation session, typically at least 2 or 3 cycles, but often 5-10 if needed (1 cycle = 1 forward bend + 1 back bend).

for example:

alternate 3 seconds plow, 3 seconds backbend, for a few cycles.

Gradually increase hold times if desired, better to constantly experiment with hold times and do what you need for that day, that time. Early in the morning maybe I only do 2 seconds hold, later on, maybe 10 seconds.

assess to progress, finish diminish, finish the mission of exploitation: 

assess to progress: Using sati to remember what a limber loose upper back feels like, as you're doing the plow, note the current condition and compare to memory of limber state. That will give you an idea of how many reps, how many minutes you'll need to achieve limber state.

finish the  mission of exploitation: Do enough cycles of reps alternating plow and backbend until you're feeling good and limber in that tight region. Don't just do one mechanically without sensing what your body needs and call it a day, saying you met your quota of Qigor RDA for the day. I will spend 10-20 minutes on this move when necessary. How do you know if you've done enough?

finish diminish: The point of diminishing returns. When doing more repetitions isn't improving your pliability, and/or you stop getting endorphines and pleasure chemicals from the increased blood flow (measure for pleasure). 

measure for pleasure, no pain to gain: While doing the gorilla plow helicoptor suite, note how good the move feels, that will guide you on how long to stay on each phase between forward bending and backbending. Try to keep the timing balanced, so that whichever is the bottleneck, say you can only do 2 seconds in plow comfortably, then do about the same time on the backbending counter stretch. If you don't feel you're getting enough time backbending, Do more reps of the whole cycle (alternating forward and back bend).

important point: explore lots of subtle movement, don't freeze into static positions. Of course if it feels great while frozen, explore it, but you'll find find you unblock a lot of energy channels by developing this habit of exploring all the nooks and crannies. We're not limited robots with joints that can only rotate in a line or plane. Explore movement in spherical three dimensional space. Jiggle and wiggle in 3 dimensions. You'll see me "going off the rails" in most of my videos, but what you probably can't see in the video is that even when I seem to be frozen in a static position, I'm often exploring tiny movements both physically, and with internal energy.

Misc.

Plow helicopter: Every sitting meditator should do this movement at least once a day.

no tail wagging dog taiji

 

the tail wags the dog

1. the less important or subsidiary factor, person, or thing dominates a situation; the usual roles are reversed.

   "the financing system is becoming the tail that wags the dog"

This is one of the most common problems  in practitioners of  taiji quan, even long time players, even some experts.

With the beginner learning the form, it's easy to see why.  They watch the model, look at what the model's hands and arms are doing, and then try to follow along with their own arm motions. The legs, core, are an after thought. The result is the motion is rooted in the hands and arms, and then the hand wags the whole body. Tail wags the dog. 

This is why there are guidelines for good taiji, such as sinking the qi, originating motion in the feet, turning the waist, etc. All of those details are to try make sure the dog wags the tail, and not getting the bad tail wagging dog situation. But if you slavishly follow those detailed taiji rules and don't understand the purpose behind them, then you can still get some problems. Really what you want, rather than this part moves first, then that part, then another part of the body, is you want your mind, body, motion to be completely unified and moving all at once in perfect harmony. But if you're going to err slightly, much better to err with dog wagging tail, and if the tail lags the mind and intention of the dog, that's far better than the discombobulated scattered energy of the tail wagging dog.

The relevance to jhana force equation and ekaggata

 Tail wagging dog is not just an aesthetic issue. For jhana meditators who do taiji, this is an important concept to grasp, because it affects the power of jhanic force and ekaggata. 

In western boxing, if the boxer is a 'tail wag dog' type of puncher, his opponent feels like the punches 'sting'. In contrast,  the boxer who is a 'dog wag tail' guy, the result is the opponent has 'heavy hands', like the whole weight of the dog's entire body is in the had. Instead of being lightly stung by a punch with the weight of a hand, it feels like running into a brick wall where the hand makes contact.

Another example, a golfer swinging the club, if the arm gets decoupled from the whole body as he uncoils his swing, then his power only goes a small fraction of his full whole body power, losing more than half the distance of a coordinated, unified full body swing. 

 

breathe like a volleyball in your belly that expands uniformly in all directions

(article is work in progress)

The article title ("breath like volleyball..."), is my way of succinctly visualizing and doing the optimal breathing for health from Taoist principles. 

(WASTE FREE) acronym and concept explained here:

https://lucid24.org/misc/qigor/heart/index.html

taiji quan and qigong essentials for jhana meditators


FREE breathing
breathe naturally is the default mode, maximizes jhanic force equation


belly relaxed, imaginary volleyball in belly expands uniformly in every direction

however, modern sedentary habits, and natural aging causes contraction and calcification, leading to worsening of
energy blockages.


to counter this, core strengthening exercises done at low intensity, lower impact, reduced range of motion (to maximize jhanic force equation which opposes tension)
will build out the FREE (full range of expression & elasticity).

why do we have such tense belly area?

because we've developed a habit over our life time from chronically tensing that area, to the point it's an unconscious, natural response that becomes our new sense of 'normal'. 

1. there are legitimate reasons that we've had to tense our belly area for prolonged periods of time.

   a. you drink too much liquid at night, you have to hold in the pee with tension over the 8 hours or whatever time your overnight sleep is. 

  b. you have to hold in your bowel movement until you can get to a bathroom. Sometimes people have to do this for hours. 

2. these are unnecessary, self imposed reasons that we can learn to become aware of, and cease these bad habits.

 a. body image issues, worry about belly fat, getting body shamed, not having a 'six pack' superhero shredded abdominals look.

 b. people, especially women, holding in their farts because they want to maintain a ridiculously unrealistic idea that they're 'clean', 'pretty', and would not dare do the impolite thing such as publicly releasing a loud smelly fart. I've seen women repeatedly do this, hold in their fart for hours, then have bad stomach aches, cramps later when they've left the public event. This is just completely unnecessary self torture. 

Solution: Be polite, announce to nearby victims that you're about to pass gas, move away some distance if convenient, release.  If they look horrified, ask them, "what, don't you ever fart?"

when you walk, do this exercise.

completely let your stomach go. This is especially noticable walking after a big meal.
many people have body image issues, conscious about our 'food baby', the huge protruding stomach.
walk, completely release all stomach tension.
you should notice, if you're really relaxed, the belly jiggling with each step, the vibrations traveling and reverberating down your legs, throughout your body, the pleasant feeling of relaxation (sukha) compared to the tension you felt before unconciously holding in the stomach.
most people do this, hold unnecessary tenion, and over a life time you see th negative health results.


now, do this kind of relaxed walking every time you walk, not just after big meals, and notice the difference between relaxed, belly jiggling vibrations and sukha (of partial jhana all the time), and ordinary unconscious tension we add all over the body without even noticing.

check for FREE breathing in your sitting meditation.

skilled meditators will of course know how to quickly relax most of their body, but very likely there are blind spots that they're missing, and continue to miss because they're acclimated to those tense parts being 'normal', or somewhat numb from years of continuous tightening.

for me, a great example of this is the lower back, and some parts of the buttocks, legs connected to the lower back. I had a slight bias leaning forward in my sitting posture. This tightness wasn't enough to block my jhanas, but it was definitely a problem, that for example, prevented me from sitting more than 2 hours in jhana, and also the tightness prevented my belly volleyball from expanding in all directions uniformly in all postures throughout the day, especially the part fo the volleyball attached to the lower back direction.

typical 'conventional western and qigong wisdom' would say you want to stretch out the lower back, and avoid hard calisthenic type of western exercises that contract the core muscles.

But here's gorilla wisdom from trying out all the conventional ideas and trial and error experimenting different other ideas. NWBH. It's not what you do, but how you do it. If you do situps and other western core strenghthening exercises in a completely relaxed, jhanic way, with reduced range of motion to stay in your 'jhana zone', then you are contracting muscles (the usual warning flag of "building tension, anti-jhana"), but opposing tissues at the same time you're contracting some muscles, are getting stretched. So it's not about avoid 'contracting muscles' unilaterally all the time. You just have to be very strategic about how much you contract, how often, and how relaxed you are when you do it. By doing this correctly, you can do a version of any western exercise typically thought to be opposing taiji principles of relaxation, such as jogging (see shake and bake), pushups, jumping jacks, sit ups, but you do them in a way that maintains partial jhana, and rather than having the negative effect of contracting, tightening and building tension in the body, it is actually stretching, maintaining FREE (full range of expression, elasticity) of the WASTE (warm and soft, tension eliminated)  FREE jhanic condition of the body.
WASTE FREE breathing, WASTE FREE core breathing and full volleyball unifrom expansion in any posture, all day anytime anywhere.

This is how I was finally able to get the lower back direction of my belly volleyball to relax and start expanding in normal standing and walking. I had to counter intuitively do regular daily sessions of western core strengthening exercises (done in relaxed jhanic away). 

Notes from optimal Taoist breathing for health from a Chinese Medicine Doctor:

6 ways of breathing

1. chest expansion upper lung

2. diaphragm lower rib cage expansion

3. dan tien (point near navel) belly expansion

4. ming men (point behind kidneys) lower back expansion

advanced:

5. hui yin (perineum breathing)

6. bai hui (brahma aperture at top of head)

(baby in perfect health expands like a yoga ball, all 6 ways of breathing simultaneously)

yoga ball breathing

allergy: neck, back of head tightness, shifting plates in skull, sinuses. 

(don't remember what this note means exactly, I think lack of proper expanding yoga ball breathing (or inability to do so because of blockages in the body) in all directions is what causes those ailments of allergy, etc.)

ming men breathing, is key to activating more body heat (for vegans and meditators getting cold body easily)

add as much ginger and cinnamon to daily consumption as much as I can comfortably tolerate.

Qi is vibration. When the body is in optimal shape, we should not be able to "feel qi".

(What this means is if you feel bodily sensations, such as hardness, roughness, even fluid hydraulic feeling circulating, the body is still relatively a coarser state of qi refinement. The more refined and unimpeded the body is by blockages, the lighter and more empty of sensation the body becomes.)