Regulating the sympathetic nervous system

This part of the ANS controls the “fight or flight” responses. It can produce body reactions such as increasing blood flow to the skeletal muscles as much as 1200%! Whoa. I would think zhan zhuang is more about calming the sympathetic and the parasympathetic nervous system (controls “rest and digest”). However these systems are [...]

After microcosmic orbit

I’ve been doing a lot of study on qigong lately and there seems to be a clear consensus that people (at least men) should open the downward channel first (down the front for men) because

it’s more difficult than opening the upward channel (up the spine for men),
only opening the upward puts [...]

Trapping hands range?

People comment that Bruce Lee’s JFJKD was a prototype for modern MMA with its ranges of combat concept, how most arts specialize in a range, the need to “accept what is useful, reject what is useless”, anti-”dead forms” and pro- “alive” training and so on. So what happened to the trapping hands range? A friend [...]

More on the gyroscope-like mechanism for balance

More on the gyroscope-like mechanism that helps us keep our balance:
The inner ear functions like a gyroscope. Three orthogonally oriented structures, called the semicircular canals, sense the orientation of the head via movement of fluid within the canals. Nerves connected to these structures send a train of neural signals to the brain, which integrates that [...]

Adhere and stick

Usually in English descriptions of taijiquan, there are four words translated roughly as adhere, connect, stick, follow. The ones I’ve been confused about are “adhere” and “stick”. Those English words seem like synonyms. I’m not sure if 黏 - nian - is translated as “adhere” or “stick” or if 貼 - tie - [...]

Press 擠 or squeeze

擠 - the character ji is usually translated as press or squeeze, which I’ve always found a bit confusing.
Ji also means crowded, or to crowd, or to squeeze. It could have a connotation like the attendants pushing or squeezing or crowding people onto the Tokyo subway. It could also mean something like “it’s crowded in [...]

Learn to be kind via meditation

More from neuroscience (the stories just seem to be everywhere, in this case from Scientific American):
New research from the University of Wisconsin-Madison finds that we can acquire a greater capacity for compassion through meditation training, in much the same way as athletes or musicians train to improve their skill.
Again we find a modern scientific explanation [...]

Runner’s high finally validated by science after 30 years

This NY Time article talks about a study that finally gives some validation of the runner’s high hypothesis. An excerpt:
THE runner’s high: Every athlete has heard of it, most seem to believe in it and many say they have experienced it. But for years scientists have reserved judgment because no rigorous test confirmed its existence.
…
The [...]

Where does the yi live?

All the brain reading makes me wonder - does the yi live in the left or right hemisphere of the brain?
It seems to be in both.

What is “energy”?

People like to blather on and on about what is “qi” and so on. They never really come to a consensus. The right-brained stuff tells me - who cares. Having some left-brained explanation is really irrelevant. Nevertheless, the left-brained stuff says, in more modern terms, what the heck is “energy” anyway? I’m pretty sure I [...]