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 [...]

Right brain perceives the “energy” - neuroscientist describes her own stroke

This video is quite extraordinary. An expert in neuroscience and advocate for people with mental illness, Jill Bolte Taylor, suffered her own stroke and, amazingly, had enough clarity during it to realize she was having a stroke and she should take advantage of a rare opportunity to try to study the brain from the inside [...]

Good article on best practices in taiji

Here is an interesting article called “Overview of Best Practices in Taji” by Dr. Yang Yang, a scholar and practitioner of taijiquan. His site seems to have much more information and he seems to have done extensive scholarly and practical research. His expertise confirms some of the conclusions I’ve been arriving at via my much [...]

More microcosmic orbit

Well after a few days it’s getting easier to feel (or imagine I feel) this “microcosmic orbit”. Sometimes it feels as if they’re discrete flows (now I need to look up meridian channels and so on) and sometime more vague like an overall wave. It doesn’t feel just like heat but depending where my attention [...]

Yiquan and taijiquan pt 2

I think there are several reasons why I seem to be drawn to yiquan. For one thing, I’ve been around taijiquan all my life, sometimes learning a bit of it, sometimes not. Since I grew up around my dad and others practicing it, I doubt my fascination with it is the same sort of fascination [...]

Great post on whether most fights do indeed go to the ground

Here is a very nice analysis of Youtube videos of street fights by an assistant professor who is also an avid bjj enthusiast. Stats like “57% of the fighters who ended up on the ground were taken down by a throw, a trip or being pulled to the ground.” conclusions like “So learning how to [...]