Not so traditional

Might not seem so traditional to be enjoying Christmas music still, but I love it! Stumbled across this non-traditional version of a good old tune and love it - The Wayfarers performing The Holly and The Ivy.

A Taste of Bitter

A beautiful photo of Guilin, from another friend.

A story shared with me by a friend:

An aging master grew tired of his apprentice’s complaints. One morning, he sent him to get some salt. When the apprentice returned, the master told him to mix a handful of salt in a glass of water and then drink it.
“How does it taste?” the master asked.
“Bitter,” said the apprentice.
The master chuckled and then asked the young man to take the same handful of salt and put it in the lake. The two walked in silence to the nearby lake and once the apprentice swirled his handful of salt in the water, the old man said, “Now drink from the lake.”
As the water dripped down the young man’s chin, the master asked, “How does it taste?”
“Fresh,” remarked the apprentice.
“Do you taste the salt?” asked the master.
“No,” said the young man. At this the master sat beside this serious young man, and explained softly,
“The pain of life is pure salt; no more, no less. The amount of pain in life remains exactly the same. However, the amount of bitterness we taste depends on the container we put the pain in. So when you are in pain, the only thing you can do is to enlarge your sense of things. Stop being a glass. Become a lake.”

Like footprints in the snow

Snow waves in the sunset. - Photo by YY Gardener

“How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young,

compassionate with the aged,

sympathetic with the striving,

and tolerant of the weak and strong because

someday in your life

you will have been all of these.”

George Washington Carver

An Earthly Venus

Aphrodite of Milos (Venus De Milo). Greek,  ~1130-100 BC

Will Rogers, an actor/cowboy/humourist/1920s+30s American celebrity, was with his niece when he saw the Venus De Milo. Will turned to his niece and said, "See what will happen if you don't stop biting your fingernails?"

That's funny, but this may seem even funnier. Obsessive nail biting, the kind that feels good when you're doing it, is actually a sign of Liver Qi Stagnation. The Liver is responsible for the sinews and the nails are considered part of the sinews. Without realizing it, the nail biter is trying to open up the Liver channels.

The Wonder that is Natalie Merchant

With so much wonderful music in the world, sometimes I forget about a really great musician. I just chanced to hear this song while I was out and about today...and remembered how very much I loved it back in the day. It's aged well, like all good music. I like the start of this video too, where Natalie talks about her experience with special needs people and how the song "describes their strengths, in spite of what others would see as deficiencies."

WONDER

Natalie Merchant / Indian Love Bride ©1995

Doctors have come from distant cities
just to see me
stand over my bed
disbelieving what they're seeing

They say I must be one of the wonders
of god's own creation
and as far as they can see they can offer
no explanation

Newspapers ask intimate questions
want confessions
they reach into my head
to steal the glory of my story

They say I must be one of the wonders
of god's own creation
and as far as they can see they can offer
no explanation

O, I believe
fate smiled and destiny
laughed as she came to my cradle
know this child will be able
laughed as my body she lifted
know this child will be gifted
with love, with patience and with faith
she'll make her way

People see me
I'm a challenge to your balance
I'm over your heads
how I confound you and astound you
to know I must be one of the wonders
of god's own creation
and as far as you can see you can offer me
no explanation

O, I believe
fate smiled and destiny
laughed as she came to my cradle
know this child will be able
laughed as she came to my mother
know this child will not suffer
laughed as my body she lifted
know this child will be gifted
with love, with patience and with faith
she'll make her way

Must. Resist. Punny. Title. Horses and Acupuncture

Just stumbled across the story of Ed Millhouse, an American vet who uses acupuncture techniques on horses that "there aren't any other options for."

He's not the first doing this. According to the newspaper article linked below, Millhouse says the practice has been becoming common over the past 10-15 years. He himself got the idea after graduating from vet college and getting the chance to shadow a more experienced vet.

“I didn’t know anything about it,” he said. “But he was a good vet. And it was amazing some of the things that he did. It intrigued me, so a few years later I took that course.”

He chuckled as he remembered sitting skeptically through the first class, looking for signs of “voodoo.”

“I went from ‘don’t believe in it’ to ‘wow,’” he said. “It’s opened my eyes to how it really benefits.”

Since then, he said he’s found acupuncture especially helpful for controlling colic and musculoskeletal problems that cause back soreness and joint pain in his equine patients. He said it’s also helpful in treating lame horses.

“Acupuncture can help pinpoint where the lameness is,” he said. “You can trace their body and find the sore points, which represent patterns that you see. It can help diagnose where the (problem) is and how to treat it.”

He said horses make very good patients overall.

“They have big muscles, and they get big knots in those muscles,” he said. “They’re well-mapped-out, and they don’t lie to you. There’s no placebo effect with animals.”

The acupuncture is often combined with chiropractic, and the frequency of treatment depends on the horse, he said. Combining the two treatments often results in a major difference in the horse’s muscles within just a few hours.

“The muscles on horses are so strong and tight (that) the acupuncture lasts a lot longer,” he said. “I can go three to four weeks between treatments instead of three days.”

For more on Millhouse, read the full article at the St. Croix Valley Area Lowdown.

The (Chinese) Hours

Yes, there really is a Chinese clock.
And it pictures the times when each organ is working at it's peak. Clues to things being out of balance arise when you are having issues at a certain time e.g. - waking up consistently at the same time each night? Could be problems with your liver or lungs?

Been a Long Time Coming...

That last post on 10,000 hours to mastery got some singers and their songs circulating in my head. Like Sam Cooke - taking a fairly simple tune and loading up the lyrics with that voice of his. A voice that gets right to the heart of sorrow, heartbreak, and hope. How does he do it?
Maybe the answer is that he got out on the road and made it happen. Can anyone retrace every twist and turn in their life, every path taken, every path left behind? C'mon. Sometimes just remembering what I had for lunch yesterday is a bridge too far. So I guess trying to figure out how someone got as good as they did is not an unravel-able mystery. It'll be a long time coming, but each hour invested in mastery is an hour closer to working out my own way.

Excuses?

Why start this blog?
Sometimes it can be hard to chart the progress I make in learning things. A blog seemed a good place to be able to look back, see my progress, and note where I can improve. It's about the things I want to cultivate: Tai Chi, Qi Gong, tea, meditation, my love of music, and knowledge of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and nutrition.

Tai Chi, Qi Gong, tea, TCM...what is it about this stuff?

• First off, they all make me feel good. They are easy to appreciate from the start. 
• The first time I did Qi Gong, I couldn't believe how great I felt. 
• I love the dependable lift that tea gives me no matter what the situation, from rainy day blues to big-time heartbreak to just-one-more-hour-and-I'll-have-this-done. 
• TCM has literally saved my life (another story for another day). 
• To me,Tai Chi is the "everything onion" -  limitless delicious layers.  

I read Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers: The Story of Success  a few years back - and one of the things that stayed with me is his concept of 10,000 hours of concentrated effort to gain mastery of something. That's a lot of hours, but as it's said, The journey of 1,000 miles begins with a single step.

The joy of 1,000 miles? Maybe it looks like this:

What Grace Sounds Like...

The following is a guest post in the form of an open letter from Special Olympics athlete and global messenger John Franklin Stephens to Ann Coulter after this tweet during last night’s (October 22, 2012) Presidential debate.

Dear Ann Coulter,

Come on Ms. Coulter, you aren’t dumb and you aren’t shallow.  So why are you continually using a word like the R-word as an insult?

I’m a 30 year old man with Down syndrome who has struggled with the public’s perception that an intellectual disability means that I am dumb and shallow.  I am not either of those things, but I do process information more slowly than the rest of you.  In fact it has taken me all day to figure out how to respond to your use of the R-word last night.

I thought first of asking whether you meant to describe the President as someone who was bullied as a child by people like you, but rose above it to find a way to succeed in life as many of my fellow Special Olympians have.

Then I wondered if you meant to describe him as someone who has to struggle to be thoughtful about everything he says, as everyone else races from one snarkey sound bite to the next.

Finally, I wondered if you meant to degrade him as someone who is likely to receive bad health care, live in low grade housing with very little income and still manages to see life as a wonderful gift.

Because, Ms. Coulter, that is who we are – and much, much more.

After I saw your tweet, I realized you just wanted to belittle the President by linking him to people like me.  You assumed that people would understand and accept that being linked to someone like me is an insult and you assumed you could get away with it and still appear on TV.

I have to wonder if you considered other hateful words but recoiled from the backlash.

Well, Ms. Coulter, you, and society, need to learn that being compared to people like me should be considered a badge of honor.

No one overcomes more than we do and still loves life so much.

Come join us someday at Special Olympics.  See if you can walk away with your heart unchanged.

A friend you haven’t made yet,
John Franklin Stephens
Global Messenger
Special Olympics Virginia

Above text and photo are from http://specialolympicsblog.wordpress.com/2012/10/23/an-open-letter-to-ann-coulter/

Feeling Blue? A Fine Frenzy Can Help You...

How can you resist listening to a musician who calls herself A Fine Frenzy?  Genius name. More, she shows a fine balance of delicate (yin) and strong (yang) in both the lyrics and the tunes. Lyrics like 

"Unafraid you can name your scars 

with a touch of a new heart..."

are from the video above, Now is the Start, where the written lyrics are artistically incorporated into the video. Watchable, danceable, singeable...a fine frenzy indeed!

But wait, there's more. Alison Sudol aka A Fine Frenzy is quoted in Huffington Post's GPS series on how she handles feeling blue. A couple of her suggestions:

Get outside! "When all my soldiers are fighting each other inside and I can't seem to get things calmed down, nothing fixes things quite like a walk through some sort of tree-filled place. Preferably, a body of water is involved. If real wilderness is an option, that is the best. Sometimes, just sitting in a grove of tall trees, listening to the chatter of the birds and the rustle of leaves overhead, sunlight peeping through the green, can suddenly make all the pieces fall into place...That's when I can start to hear what I really think and feel what I really feel. I feel big and small at the same time, just one tiny body in a world far older and wiser than I'll ever be...and yet, I get to be a part of it, and so do you. Lucky us!"

Get sleep! "Sleep and I are not always friendly. When I don't sleep enough, not only am I a big horrible grump, everything seems much harder to deal with. Here are some things that help me sleep: hot milk with cinnamon and honey (soothing and yummy), stretching, enough exercise and fresh air during the day, and meditation (I use Deepak Chopra's meditation CDs, they're great, even if you've never meditated before...I like "The Soul of Healing Meditations"; it's a good place to start.)"

Great advice - even better would be to make the hot milk non-dairy. Cinnamon is a warming ingredient in Traditional Chinese medicine; dairy and soy is cooling.

The Changeable Mr. Bowie

"Time may change me, but I can't trace time..."

You Yourself

"Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life's cultivation, but of the adopted talent of another you have only an extemporaneous half possession. That which each can do best, none but his Maker can teach him."

                                                                        - Ralph Waldo Emerson from Self-Reliance

Tea and The Master of Simplicity

The Master of Simplicity shook out a small handful of the tea leaves and placed them into a small clay pot that stood by the side of the fire.  “Now,” he said, turning to Lu Yu, “we have to perform the marriage of tea leaves and water.” He then lifted the pot of hot water, no longer dancing, and poured it very slowly into the pot with the leaves. 

“We have to go slowly,” he said, “so that the water and the tea leaves can greet each other properly.”

 Lu Yu had never heard anyone talk about tea in this way... 

For the complete and beautiful story, head to http://www.communityawake.com/a/lu-yu-meets-a-true-tea-master

The Yin and Yang of Learning

 " Always remember that knowledge is only the Yin side of study. 

To become proficient you also need to manifest the Yang side through action."

                                                                - Dr. Yang, Jwing- Ming

You are Here

You wonder why you wonder when
You wonder how now and then
How you became who you’ve become

You are here
And yet you dream of being there
Of being where you think the good life has begun

Every darkened hallway
Every fallen dream
Every battle lost and
Every shadow in between
Will bring you to your knees and
Closer to the reason

And there’s no making cases
For getting out or trading places
And there’s no turning back
No you are here...

The Wailin' Jennys - beautiful harmonies, beautiful lyrics: all about how you are here.

More and Quicker

When it comes to learning things like tai chi (or other things that you want to integrate into your life), more and quicker is not necessarily better. Wise words from Dr. Paul Lam. Here's an introductory lesson of his.

The Tao is Called the Great Mother

The Tao is called the Great Mother:
empty yet inexhaustible,
it gives birth to infinite worlds.
It is always present within you.
You can use it any way you want.

Tao Te Ching, Chapter 6
Written by Lao-tzu
From a translation by S. Mitchell
http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/core9/phalsall/texts/taote-v3.html