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.) 

80-year-old woman impresses with gymnastics routine, also does 4x4 walking

 

1min video. 
At the end, she does what I call 4x4 walking, doing walk meditation using 2 hands and 2 feet.

I'll link to my 4x4 set of exercises later.

(video copied from youtube.com/watch?v=MxxBTHoC2IY ) 

One of the great things about China is they have these parks with great exercise equipment like the lady is using, for free public use. You see old people, and people of all ages going there to these parks every morning to work out for a couple of hours and socialize. 

In the USA, you'll see that also in the parks with any heavy chinese populated community, like Chinatowns in SF, LA, NY. 

The takeaway from the video, is if you keep moving and exercise everyday, like that 80yo lady, you're going to avoid a lot of health problems most modern sedentary people suffer from.