A friend of mine recently forwarded an article describing a couple of tips on how to reduce the risks of falling. This triggered me to provide some walking tips from Taiji that can reduce our risk of falling and increase our balance. Taiji is a good health exercise, and it is also a good martial art. For most Taiji moves, one can explain that move from the health perspective or from the martial arts perspective. This article will explain three walking tips from both the health perspective and the martial arts perspective.
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Walking Tips and Taiji
December 2013
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Meaning and Significance of the Recent Jimmy Kimmel/ABC Incident
December 2013
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On October 16, 2013, some remarks were made in the Jimmy Kimmel’s Kids Table program that got the attention of essentially all the Chinese in the world. At this program, Jimmy Kimmel asked several kids at a table how should America pay back the large amount of money that America owes China? One of the kids said “You kill everyone in China.” Jimmy Kimmel laughed and said “That is an interesting idea.” He then asked “Should we allow the Chinese to live?” For those who have not seen the program, click on the link https://sites.google.com/site/boycottjimmykimmelandabc/.
This program immediately created an uproar among all the Chinese in the world, especially among the Chinese Americans in the U.S. The issue is not what a six-year-old child said; the issue is what Jimmy Kimmel and ABC said and did, or not said and didn’t do, after the kid’s remark.
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Lajing and Paida Therapy – Reviving Ancient Chinese Self-Healing Exercises
September 2013
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The best road to good health is to stay healthy. But if you get sick, then the traditional paradigm in both Western medicine and Classical Chinese Medicine (CCM), also called Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), is to go see a doctor and have the doctor prescribe some medicine for you (and in the case of Western medicine, may have some surgery done on you). So the traditional paradigm for treating illnesses requires intervention by someone else, usually a trained medical practitioner. Wouldn’t it be nice if there is something you can do yourself to cure your illnesses? Is this only a fantasy or wishful thinking? Perhaps not. In the last decade-plus, Hongchi Xiao, a man with an extremely interesting background, has met and learned from tens of legendary medical masters and doctors all over China and other parts of the world, including many recluses but with rare expertise in the healing arts. He learned not only CCM, acupuncture, and acupressure, but he also learned and mastered a set of auto-therapies (exercises), Lajin and Paida self-healing therapies (拉筋拍打自愈法). Laijin in Chinese means to stretch your tendons and ligaments. Paida in Chinese means to pat and slap your body parts.
He has helped to revive and popularized these ancient self-healing therapies. Since 2010, he has organized more than 100 successful workshops in many places in China, as well as in Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Germany, Switzerland, and the U.S. Thousands of people have attended and greatly benefited from these workshops. Furthermore, these exercises not only can cure diseases, they can also detect diseases including those that have not clearly manifested themselves. Therefore, the same set of exercises can be used to detect and get rid of diseases, i.e., they can keep you in good health, and also cure your illnesses. This article provides an introduction to these exercises.
The U.S.’s Military-Industrial-Academic Complex
The Editorial Board of the New York Times on August 12, 2013 under the title “Chinese Foot-Dragging” wrote “If there is ever going to be an end to tensions over the South China Sea, one of the world’s most strategically important waterways, countries in the region need to find a way to work out their volatile disputes. China, more than any other nation, has fanned those hostilities with sweeping sovereignty claims and confrontations over disputed island and even specks of rock.” Anyone who has impartially studied this part of history will know that this is a completely fallacious accusation and is purposely fabricated to support the U.S. government’s policy to contain and weaken China. Furthermore, this is not just an isolated article, but one of many articles or talks by various media channels, academic professors, think tank researchers, and political leaders over the last many months. Why haven’t those who should know better and who are supposed to be independent thinkers, such as Asian history and political science professors in the hallowed halls of our prestigious universities, spoken out against such lies. Perhaps the military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned us on January 17, 1961, just three days before the end of his presidency, has become the military-industrial-academic complex.
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