Explore the world of Chinese Medicine and unlock the secrets to natural healing at https://nathancrane.com/ 🔗 Join me as I delve deep into the wisdom of Dr. Roger Jahnke, a 45-year veteran of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Qigong, and Tai Chi. Discover how this ancient modality can transform your health and well-being. Learn how to tap into your body’s natural healing abilities and prevent diseases. Don’t miss this opportunity to empower your health naturally! Like this episode? Don’t forget to SUBSCRIBE and ring the notification bell 🔔 to stay updated on our latest podcasts!
Your host, Nathan Crane, is a Certified Holistic Cancer Coach, Best-Selling Author, Inspirational Speaker, Cancer-Health Researcher and Educator, and 20X Award Winning Documentary Filmmaker with Over 15 Years in the Health Field.
Visit The Nathan Crane Podcast on YouTube to watch the full podcast!
What was your biggest takeaway from today’s episode?
Let me know in the comment section below! I hope you enjoyed today’s episode and if you got something useful out of it, make sure to Like, Comment & Subscribe so you never miss a new episode! Â
Check out more of The Nathan Crane Podcast here:
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6IO2h2UhUHMD0jFRs416D6?si=102ea8f5cc754cf9Â
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-nathan-crane-podcast/id1672391751
Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/2722a3b5-96bf-4bd9-a14f-56434ef67896/the-nathan-crane-podcastÂ
Tune In: http://tun.in/ps0uNÂ
iHeartRadio: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/269-the-nathan-crane-podcast-109318006/Â
Deezer: https://deezer.page.link/iyGY9qY5EjcowcE7AÂ
Connect with Nathan Crane!
Rumble: https://rumble.com/c/NaturalHealthNathanCrane
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mr_nathan_crane/Â
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NathanCraneOfficialPage/Â
Websites: https://nathancrane.com/Â Â Â
  www.Becomingcancerfree.com     Â
Check out our guest Dr. Roger Jahnke on Social Media! Â Â
Website: https://www.feeltheqi.com/
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@TaiChiAndQigongWay/featured
#ChineseMedicine #NaturalHealing #AncientWisdom
Audio Transcript
(This transcript was auto-generated so there may be some errors)
00:00:00:00 – 00:00:11:04
Speaker 1
Welcome back to the podcast. I am actually incredibly excited today to have my good friend Dr. Roger Jonker here with us. Roger, thanks so much for joining me.
00:00:12:10 – 00:00:19:21
Speaker 2
Nathan, what a pleasure. Always. Let’s jump in and we can go wide or we can go deep or we can go both.
00:00:21:05 – 00:00:55:14
Speaker 1
Well, for people who don’t know. Dr. Roger is a you’ve you have been a traditional Chinese medicine doctor for over 30 years now, I believe. Right? 45 years I read of qigong and tai chi practice. I know your kung fu practitioner as well. We were just talking offline that actually you may have the very first video ever recorded and put online of a qigong practice, which is really fascinating.
00:00:56:11 – 00:01:21:06
Speaker 1
I mean, you’ve been around, I mean, a pioneer in the field of helping bring this ancient modality, multiple modalities, qigong and tai chi, as well as kung fu here to the west with the main focus on on tai chi and qigong. Working with patients, I mean, you’re a big part of multiple organizations. The you’re on the board chairperson chairperson of the board of the National Qigong Association.
00:01:21:07 – 00:02:01:06
Speaker 1
I know you have studied and trained dozens, if not hundreds of different types of qigong from different masters, many would call you a master teacher at this point. And your book, The Within, has been a big success. I know you have a DVD that accompanies that as well. But anyway, you’re also involved in life, which is a project that is about helping bring these ancient methods to millions of people around the world and make them make this teaching in this practice accessible because it’s so powerful and can change so many people’s lives for the better.
00:02:01:23 – 00:02:19:05
Speaker 1
So you are actually one of the core faculty members of life and very grateful for you to be, you know, in the very early foundations of of this company. So anyway, Roger, thanks so much for for coming on the podcast. I’m excited to have a conversation with you here.
00:02:19:24 – 00:02:38:10
Speaker 2
Yeah, what a pleasure. And I want to just make one correction. I was the chairperson and I’m one of the founders of the National Qigong Association. But there have been a number of chairpersons since me, and I’m not the chairperson now. I am the Treasurer. However.
00:02:39:14 – 00:02:45:24
Speaker 1
That’s what I read. Recent Chairperson I left that. I left that out of the bio. My bad.
00:02:45:24 – 00:03:27:04
Speaker 2
And let me just say that I am thrilled with the advances that have been made in the realm of health maximization information. And I’ll just say this and hope that it doesn’t isn’t a problem that this body of information is not being revealed by the usual people, that people that people seek out as their health care providers. And I wouldn’t even say health care providers, by the way.
00:03:27:04 – 00:04:28:08
Speaker 2
I would say medical intervention providers. Right. And the fact that the Internet is now rich with opportunities for people to to dig in. When I go to my favorite sources of widening my own information base and click here, click there, I’m finding information that’s super accessible and that people can and anybody can understand right away. I’m finding another layer of it that goes into some of the detail on on so from accessible to a little bit more knowledge to the point where the knowledge is almost over our heads, to the point where it’s scientists who are talking to each other in terms that I could never understand.
00:04:28:23 – 00:05:18:07
Speaker 2
And so for the people who are listening, probably on the Internet, I just want to put out right up front how incredibly powerful humans are inherently and how incredible it is that you, Nathan and others are participating in surfacing this information in ways that are accessible to people so that they can learn enough to go deeper and it’s just it’s it’s probably one of the most important things that’s happening in the history of humanity, of the human race, right now, which is kind of liberating ourselves from the I don’t know.
00:05:19:07 – 00:05:39:10
Speaker 2
What is that? When you see a drug ad on television and it’s a party at the beach and there’s cute little puppies running around while they say all the things that might be damaging about this medicine that they’re selling. It’s it’s that’s embarrassing. And what we’re involved in is inspiring.
00:05:39:22 – 00:06:01:08
Speaker 1
Yeah, it’s embarrassing. It’s insane. It is what it is. Yeah, it’s yeah. Happy, loving person and like and you may experience rectal bleeding and your liver may fall out of your eyeball and your brains may explode. And you’re like and you’re like, Oh, yeah, I want this drug. That sounds great, you know? And death. It’s like, what? And you’re trying to.
00:06:01:08 – 00:06:17:23
Speaker 1
And it’s like. It’s like for a little rash or something. You have, like, an allergy or a rash, and they’re like, the result of the drug could be death, you know? And you’re like, Yeah, I’m going to choose death over my rash now. But there are serious chronic conditions that people are experiencing that are very painful and challenging.
00:06:17:23 – 00:06:43:15
Speaker 1
And yeah, the Western medical model, as we know, is not equipped and fit to take care of chronic health conditions. They’re great. As you know, you’ve talked about I’ve talked about many times that our Western medical model is fantastic for acute trauma situations. You get in a car wreck, you have serious brain damage, your arm gets cut off, you need an organ replacement or you’re going to die immediately kind of thing.
00:06:43:22 – 00:07:04:11
Speaker 1
Hey, take me to a Western medical doctor right away. Right? You have cancer, you have liver disease, you have diabetes. You have our immune disease, you have heart disease, you have depression, anxiety. You have any number of mental, emotional and physical health conditions. Our doctors, there’s nothing wrong with them. They’re just not trained in medical school to take care of these conditions.
00:07:04:11 – 00:07:33:14
Speaker 1
They the symptoms with drugs and pharmacology and radiation and surgery. They have no idea how to the root cause. But what you do as a traditional Chinese medicine doctor, as a Qigong teacher and master teacher and Tai Chi teacher and practitioner and and what I do as well through all the work that I, I do on education and coaching, is look at the root cause, what caused this and what can we do to address that cause.
00:07:33:14 – 00:08:01:16
Speaker 1
So the body we can put the body into an acronym is state of Self because the body wants to write this. If we wanna look at the spirit, the spirit is allowing the body. This is how I look at it any way is allowing the body to be animated and the spirit when in harmony with the body and removing the blocks and the toxins and the traumas and the damage into blocked energy.
00:08:01:16 – 00:08:30:18
Speaker 1
And I’d love for you to talk about that from the Qigong perspective, the blocked energy allow it to free flow flow freely so the spirit in the body can communicate. Then the body itself, you get a cut, you don’t have to do anything. The body itself. Right. But if you have a weak immune system and your you’re stressed and your body’s not, you know, in a good repair mode that cut or may get infected and fester and then you get your whole arm cut off.
00:08:31:04 – 00:08:55:22
Speaker 1
The average person is immune, system is even average. You get a cut banded for a couple of days. Your body does itself well. That’s true for chronic diseases as well. If we put it in the right environment and that’s what I love about qigong is it’s focusing at root cause it’s focusing at the energy level, it’s focusing at, hey, how, you know, look at the look at the body as, as as and as an energetic being.
00:08:55:22 – 00:09:17:22
Speaker 1
And then how do we allow and facilitate the body to pull itself through opening these energy channels? So I’d love for you to talk about that. Like, you know, for those who don’t know the deeper underlying essence of what qigong is, how it works, why you’re such a big proponent of it, let’s go deep in that in that topic.
00:09:17:22 – 00:10:03:08
Speaker 2
Sure. So I’ll just give a tiny little bit of history that when I was a kid, for reasons that I won’t take the time to describe, I wanted to become a doctor. I went to pre medical school. I found it distressing for reasons that I won’t take the time to describe. It was around 1965 and it was pretty easy for a lot of people to be distressed war in Vietnam, the medical industrial complex was already a problem, and so I dropped out of medical school and eventually through another set of absolutely fascinating circumstances, I ended up living in Hawaii.
00:10:04:20 – 00:10:07:04
Speaker 2
And I won’t describe the details that got me there.
00:10:07:04 – 00:10:12:23
Speaker 1
But those that when you take an acid back then was the acid that got you to Hawaii. No.
00:10:13:07 – 00:10:18:01
Speaker 2
It was that it turned out that I wasn’t suited to be married to my high school sweetheart.
00:10:18:14 – 00:10:22:07
Speaker 1
Okay. That that’s the other that’s the other thing I was going to ask, of course.
00:10:22:08 – 00:10:53:22
Speaker 2
And that’s that’s you know, that’s a very heavy trip. If, you know, we’re having the realizations that one has when one’s relationship with with with one’s wife who has given you two sons. Anyway, we won’t go there. But in Hawaii I, I wanted to do something meaningful. And so I started looking into Chinese medicine. I had already been doing so before I got to Hawaii.
00:10:53:22 – 00:11:27:19
Speaker 2
And within a very short driving distance, there’s a school of Chinese medicine. And so I enrolled there. And that’s a big, long story and it’s filled with amazing little details. But the point that I’m getting at is that when I studied conventional medicine, the people who I saw, who I was seeking out as a mentor, I was asking, is there anybody here who’s an expert in preventing disease?
00:11:28:02 – 00:12:04:21
Speaker 2
That was why I got into medicine. And the answer was, no, we’re doctors. We don’t do that. We diagnose and diseases. And when I was exposed to Chinese medicine, what I learned right away is that the whole concept of Chinese medicine is based on prevention. So then let’s talk about we can talk about preventing diseases, but we can also talk about preventing the behaviors in our life that cause the diseases.
00:12:05:11 – 00:12:31:00
Speaker 2
And we’ll probably talk about both of those. But for the for the for the beginning part, let’s just go to what is the big concept in Chinese medicine? And the concept is to maximize functional capacity so that when a person and by the way, you know, people are wondering, well, that’s the key thing and what is the key?
00:12:31:00 – 00:12:55:08
Speaker 2
And so forth. And I’ll just say right now, to keep it very simple that in keeping it very simple, we can say that in humans she is function. And so then we can say she is the liver, she is the heart, she of the brain. We can also say she is the emotional self. We can also say she is the intellectual self.
00:12:55:22 – 00:13:26:08
Speaker 2
And so let’s just go with she is function for right now. So then the Chinese medicine which is made up of of herbal medicine, physical therapy type medicine, acupuncture type medicine and, and a few other things. But those are the main ones. Everything in those three things are acupuncture, herbs and manual manipulation or massage or whatever you want to call it.
00:13:27:12 – 00:14:12:23
Speaker 2
Every gesture is not focused on a disease. Everything, nothing in Chinese medicine is focused on a disease. You can find literature in the science that suggests that acupuncture is useful for for heart disease or preventing or changing recovering well-being in diabetes or Parkinson’s disease or depression or whatever you can hear the diagnostic words, but when Chinese medicine is done, as Chinese medicine was invented to do, it’s never about a disease.
00:14:13:20 – 00:14:51:02
Speaker 2
It’s always about harmonizing and activating functional capacity. And harmonizing and activating functional capacity is basically harmonizing and activating the chea. And so now let’s look at and it’s qigong. Qigong is another part of Chinese medicine. It’s not a therapeutic intervention that you get from a a health care provider or a medical provider. Qigong is a practice that you get from a teacher.
00:14:51:02 – 00:15:25:03
Speaker 2
And and then eventually the idea is that you learn enough from a teacher that you can actually put stuff together for yourself so that you have tailored qigong to your own personal circumstances, which are always going to be changing depending on the season or where you are in the progress of any diagnosis that you think you might have, or just preventing disease and enhancing the level of of vitality and and functional capacity.
00:15:26:01 – 00:15:46:23
Speaker 2
And so very briefly, qigong is made up of four parts body practice, breath practice, mind focusing practice and self applied massage practice. So now let’s go back to the the foundational idea of Chinese medicine or Chinese culture, really.
00:15:47:08 – 00:16:00:08
Speaker 1
Which is would you fit would you fit sound in body practice or would you consider that a fifth component? Because I know some qigong I practice includes sound vibration or sure.
00:16:00:18 – 00:16:28:05
Speaker 2
So okay, so let’s just go back to that and focus on it for a moment. When I said that Chinese medicine had three parts, I meant that it had three clinical parts that you get from a a medical provider. When I said when I added qigong or taichi and qigong and meditation, that’s a fourth part. And then there are many other parts.
00:16:28:09 – 00:17:02:15
Speaker 2
There’s a diet and nutrition. There’s the concept of drinking tea. Sometimes it’s medicinal tea, herbal tea, sometimes it’s, you know, Chinese, all the tea in the world, the British tea, Irish tea, Chinese to Indian tea. They’re all from the same tea bush. By the way, let’s do some hydration. And so hydration is another part of it. Cheers our relationships.
00:17:02:24 – 00:17:05:15
Speaker 1
This is my tea, by the way, you’re reminded. Say what kind of tea you get?
00:17:06:18 – 00:17:11:00
Speaker 2
I’m drinking Golden Dragon with.
00:17:12:03 – 00:17:12:22
Speaker 1
So green tea.
00:17:13:01 – 00:17:29:16
Speaker 2
Some some additions. Golden Dragon is a is a black tea and then there’s dandelion root and burdock root in there and then there’s some rooibos in there. So I’m, you know, as I say, I’m a good character. If you are.
00:17:30:13 – 00:17:37:10
Speaker 1
A wizard, a wizard of herbs that good for the liver as a good liver, liver, immune system right there.
00:17:37:11 – 00:18:05:13
Speaker 2
Exactly. And we can call that alchemy, right. Because kitchen alchemy is cooking. And that’s another aspect of Chinese medicine, is modifying your diet and so forth. So when you bring in sound, we want to be sure to I mean, to most people, it doesn’t matter. But for the sake of the conversation today, cheap Chinese medicine has three primary clinical applications.
00:18:05:13 – 00:18:46:05
Speaker 2
There are others. We won’t waste the time talking about them. Acupuncture. Your body therapy like physical therapy and herbal medicine based on diagnostic circumstances. Then there’s another part of Chinese medicine, which is qigong and the four parts of qigong that we just described. And then there are all these other parts hydration, tea, diet, relationships, exposure to nature, things like having a personal philosophy is a foundational in Chinese medicine.
00:18:46:05 – 00:19:12:07
Speaker 2
And one of the things that is the reason why I stopped having a clinical practice is I got so tired of people coming to me and me like a regular doctor because what they weren’t willing to do was investigate having a personal philosophy that they develop on their own. The only philosophy they had was the philosophy that they got from somebody else.
00:19:12:20 – 00:19:37:18
Speaker 2
And it included, for reasons that I can never understand, not paying attention to how to take care of myself. But please don’t tell me how to take care of myself. Just fix my problem. And I got so tired of that. Originally as a doctor of Chinese medicine, I was excited, thrilled. It’s like detective work. It’s profound. People are very thankful.
00:19:38:04 – 00:20:10:08
Speaker 2
But eventually I started realizing that the a large percentage of the people who are my my patients are clients or people who didn’t have any docking sites in their being for being educated. And I just it’s first, it just kind of was distressing and eventually it actually I was getting angry about it. And so I just there’s a longer story there, too, but let’s go back to sound.
00:20:11:04 – 00:20:48:06
Speaker 2
Sound is part of young Sheng Yang Shang is the wellness system of the Chinese system, where world Young Sheng translates as nourish young life, nourishing life. So life is pretty close to nourishing life. And I’m pretty sure that you’re building out a young Shang program. If you were in India, you would call it Iyer Veda, because in Vedic medicine they don’t use needle acupuncture, they use massage some, but there’s a lot of self massage.
00:20:48:06 – 00:21:26:10
Speaker 2
So all Indian medicine is called Vedic medicine. In Chinese medicine, the three parts that you separate out as therapeutic features that you get from a from a professional practitioner. And then the rest is Yang Shang, including vibrations and sound and by the way, including sexuality and all kinds of things. So I’m going to finish up my declaration about what is qigong, but I want to be sure that we get back to it.
00:21:26:10 – 00:21:59:09
Speaker 2
Have for it has four components body breath, mind and self employed massage and you can add in sound there, you can add in drinking tea, you can add in or using like there’s a there’s a thing in Chinese medicine where you boil water and then you put coins in the water. This is a grandma grandma’s remedy thing. You put coins in the water to heat them up.
00:21:59:09 – 00:22:34:07
Speaker 2
Then you take the coins out of the water and you place them on points on the body points that we call acupuncture points. But acupuncture wasn’t developed until 2000 years ago, and the humans in China were using massage probably 300,000 years ago. So acupuncture is really very, very recent. So that’s the the scope of what qigong is. And certainly putting sound in there is very legal and makes all kinds of sense.
00:22:34:07 – 00:22:56:02
Speaker 2
In fact, I would like to make some sound just for a moment for our because, you know, we’re already getting almost giddy with how exciting we are, how exciting it is to have this conversation. And I want to give people an opportunity to calm down for just a moment to excited.
00:22:56:02 – 00:23:01:16
Speaker 1
I’m too excited, Roger. I can’t I can’t comment right now.
00:23:01:16 – 00:23:03:02
Speaker 2
Here we go. So it’s going to be.
00:23:03:02 – 00:23:03:15
Speaker 1
Let’s do it.
00:23:03:15 – 00:23:55:04
Speaker 2
Posture, breath and mind. So adjust your posture, lengthen, adjust your breath, deepen and adjust your mind by presence. And that is coming into the present moment. One deep breath and then back to you, Nathan, wherever you want to go.
00:23:55:04 – 00:24:21:00
Speaker 1
I love it. How something so simple like that can shift your entire energy, your entire feeling, your mind, your body, everything. I have a quick story to tell. I The short story is my phone died a couple of weeks ago, wouldn’t turn on. And so I had insurance called insurance. They said, yeah, your phone will be there in a couple of days.
00:24:21:14 – 00:24:38:19
Speaker 1
A few days go by and I call them in and they say, Oh, actually we forgot to tell you something else. We got to do this. And I said, okay, let’s do that. And then they said, okay, it’ll be there in a couple of days. A few more days go by. Still not their call. And again, it’s Friday and I say, Hey, my phone still not here.
00:24:39:00 – 00:25:00:00
Speaker 1
Where is it? Oh, we forgot to tell you. You got to do one more thing. And I’m like, like, number one, you guys have a really bad training problem with your people. Can I can I let your management know that, please? Because you guys obviously don’t know what the hell you’re doing. But I wasn’t. I was upset at all, actually, and well, at first, the that Friday they said, okay, it’ll be one business day.
00:25:00:00 – 00:25:18:15
Speaker 1
It’ll, it’ll finally get to you in. One business day was Friday and it was labor Day weekend. So the next business day was Tuesday. So I got another Friday, Arizona, another like four days without my phone, which ended up turning out to be amazing. I took advantage of it and I was. That’s why I wasn’t rushing at all.
00:25:18:15 – 00:25:39:12
Speaker 1
I’d wait an extra day or two and then call them, Hey, where’s the phone? I wasn’t mad at all. I was really taking advantage. I had a ten day forced digital detox from my phone. Wow. And it was fantastic. I loved every second of it. And people ask me, how are you? You know, you run multiple businesses, you’re a nonprofit, you do podcast, blah, blah, family, all this stuff.
00:25:39:12 – 00:26:00:09
Speaker 1
It’s like they got my email, you know, if they need to reach me, I’m like, I’m fine. I, you know, because I got so many different apps and things. I got so many people communicating with me all the time from from social media to team apps, you know, and boxer and voice messages and WhatsApp and all these things and like to have a ten day break from that was amazing.
00:26:00:24 – 00:26:27:21
Speaker 1
And I encourage it to everybody take a week or take ten days off from your phone. And and what I did was I started I brought back new I brought back old habits that somehow I lost because of social media. Like when I go to the bathroom in the morning and in the evening, I used to read. And somehow over the last couple of years, I started taking my phone in the bathroom and scrolling on social media like an idiot, you know?
00:26:28:09 – 00:26:48:08
Speaker 1
And so during that ten days I started reading again. But when I would finish reading in the bathroom, I might go outside and read because the book is so interesting. I might go outside and read for another 15 minutes. So I continue that reading or I start taking my phone with me to the sauna. You know, I do two sessions of 15 or 20 minutes back to back in the sauna once or twice a week.
00:26:48:18 – 00:27:11:10
Speaker 1
And, you know, that’s time I would either be watching or listening to something. Well, now, sauna without my phone. So I’m meditating. I’m deep thinking. I’m sitting outside, I’m meditating, I’m deep thinking. I’m, you know, driving and deep thinking. So all this time without my phone, I got a lot more reading in, got my more meditation, time in, more deep thinking.
00:27:11:19 – 00:27:33:06
Speaker 1
I’ll tell you what, having time every day for self-reflection and deep thinking is has been one of the most valuable things in my life over the last almost 20 years. And to lose some of that to the addiction of the phone that I had it, you know, that’s just eating away at your human potential. Eating away at my human potential.
00:27:33:06 – 00:27:52:20
Speaker 1
And so now I’ve got these new habits in place again, good habits. And I’m like, My phone’s over there at night, over there in the morning. Don’t even look at time done with my Qigong practice, my reading everything in the morning and then I’m like, okay, it’s time to, you know, open my phone to go to work, not my phone to look at social media or whatever.
00:27:52:20 – 00:28:04:14
Speaker 1
So right, that has been amazing. But talking about that shift, simple shifts in our lives, habits, shifts that can make a world of difference. That’s that’s one for me recently that’s been amazing.
00:28:04:24 – 00:28:34:02
Speaker 2
So we can say that having a gong and ringing it so that it rings for 90 seconds or so or a minute is one way to do this. We could say that having a qigong practice that lasts for 15 minutes or 20 minutes or 30 minutes is a way to do this. We can also say that when you’re in the bathroom, you know, sometimes we call it the library excuse me, I’m going to the library.
00:28:35:16 – 00:29:10:10
Speaker 2
We can not only can we read there, but doing breath, practice and postural correction. And I’ll just admit this. I do this when I’m on the toilet sometimes, not every time. And it’s just simply and then maybe I hold my breath for a few moments doing that throughout the day when I wake up in the morning before I get out of bed, I do a round of breath practice.
00:29:10:19 – 00:29:40:09
Speaker 2
When I go to bed at night, I actually have some qigong practices, some tapping and some some stroking of the organs and stroking of the channels and rubbing my ears and so forth that I do these things only take a few moments. Yeah, we have in our lives a lot of moments when just simply changing the pace and depth of our breath doesn’t even change what we’re doing.
00:29:40:09 – 00:29:59:04
Speaker 2
We don’t have to change our clothes. We don’t have to go to a gym. We don’t even have to leave the meeting that we’re in. We can actually make some little subtle changes in the presence of other people, but it takes first of all, you’ve got to have a revelation. You’ve got to have an insight that that suggests that it’s worth pursuing.
00:29:59:22 – 00:30:07:04
Speaker 2
And then you have to be able to remember that you had the insight because of the old habits of. Back to you, sir.
00:30:08:01 – 00:30:30:19
Speaker 1
Yeah, back. I mean, to your point, you know, the the first insight for me on meditation before I ever learned about qigong was when I was 18, I’d moved to San Diego and I just had this inclination to start meditating. And so I, I’d sit on the bed and I couldn’t get my legs to cross. You know, I had one leg way up here like this.
00:30:30:19 – 00:30:54:06
Speaker 1
It was so tight. And and I thought I had to, you know, shut all my thoughts off and have my legs crossed like a perfect yogi and all that. But it was just I was just starting to meditate and starting to to learn about it. And put a practice together. And over the years, when I look back, I really think meditation has been one of the most valuable things in my life.
00:30:54:06 – 00:31:31:14
Speaker 1
And you don’t realize it at first. You don’t even realize it for maybe years. For me, anyway, I just I started doing it because I, I felt like it could help me in becoming healthier, smarter, wiser, you know, help me. And at the work I was doing just helped me be a better human being. And so I tried it and started practicing it and tried different forms and listened to all kinds of audios, all kinds of at one point I think it was 19 or 2021, and I had to ride the train down to, say, South San Diego and back to North County.
00:31:31:20 – 00:31:55:05
Speaker 1
And that was a long ride every day. It was like 40 minutes each way. And I had a little iPod and I download a bunch of guided meditations. I sit there and meditate, you know, 40 hours down, 40 minutes down, 40 minutes back with guided meditations. I go sit on the beach and find myself in a four or five hour meditation and then come out of it and have a journal and just write dozens of pages of downloads.
00:31:55:14 – 00:32:25:06
Speaker 1
When the more I practice it, the more I realize how valuable it had become in my life for these emotional traumas that I had as a child, for self-reflection and understanding who I am and what I’m here to do, for managing and controlling and directing my own thoughts and my own emotions helped me to become a better leader as I became a father and husband, helped me become a better father and husband, as I have been an entrepreneur, helped me be a better leader and, you know, visionary and business owner.
00:32:25:16 – 00:32:49:11
Speaker 1
And it’s just been a tool that’s been a massive part of my life, that’s been incredibly valuable. And so if anyone has questions about meditation, number one, I always say, you know, just start doing it and experience the different for yourself because you’ll start to feel better. But then when I learned about Qigong, it was like taking meditation to a whole new level.
00:32:49:11 – 00:33:20:07
Speaker 1
It was like, Oh, this is like meditation on steroids, you know? Like right away it’s like we’re going into another level of, you know, visualization and sound and movement. And, you know, I love the aspect of, you know, visualizing and bringing in the energy and connecting with the chief field and connecting with other realizing you can connect with other practitioners around the world and be in that key field and send this, you know, radiant energy out to people all over the world.
00:33:20:07 – 00:33:39:02
Speaker 1
And it just takes I think it gives a form and a purpose, a bigger purpose, too, because it is a meditation, right? Qigong is meditation. But I think it it gives a deeper purpose and meaning to that meditation. I don’t know how else to say.
00:33:39:03 – 00:34:10:11
Speaker 2
Yeah, well it’s leveraging a lot of the first thing to say is that it’s hard for people to sit quiet and it’s easier to stand and move and be quiet. Mhm. So actually while Qigong is meditation on steroids, it also becomes and can become a portal into meditation that is easier than sitting down and trying to not think.
00:34:11:00 – 00:34:37:19
Speaker 2
And then the next thing to say to, to, to leverage meditation and make it a little easier for people is do not try to, not think. Instead, let the meditation support you in observing what you’re thinking, not with the idea of like what I want. When I get to the point in meditation, I think, Oh, I should call Bill, you know, and arrange like something.
00:34:38:18 – 00:35:00:07
Speaker 2
So I just notice I was calling Bill, you know, I can do that. But right now I’m not going to call Bill. I’m not going to let calling Bill is an idea inter intervene in the fact that I’m just being present. And so then I move on to oh, well, I didn’t pay my mortgage yet. Okay, well, now you’re noticing that you didn’t pay your mortgage yet.
00:35:00:12 – 00:35:32:06
Speaker 2
If you want to, you can make a list. You can say, okay, stop meditation for a moment, call Bill or come back in. Pay the mortgage. Okay. So those are things that interrupt what we call meditation, but then they also become a fairly reasonable do list. And if it’s not illegal to be having those thoughts, but it’s actually very legal and a part of how we can I mean, eventually no, of course, we’ll never finish our entire do list.
00:35:32:06 – 00:35:59:13
Speaker 2
That never happens. But it becomes a way to surface different levels of thinking. And you talked about deep thinking. So eventually over time, instead of being distracted by the things that we think we should be doing when we’re trying to meditate, which is fine, you just be distracted, notice the thoughts, maybe write things down, maybe pay the mortgage.
00:35:59:24 – 00:36:31:16
Speaker 2
But eventually what happens is that we start to have and this goes to the whole idea of being allowed to have a personal philosophy which most people think is illegal for some reason. Eventually we realize that there’s a layer of thinking deeper then, or if you want to say higher, then the concerns and considerations of our everyday. And then there’s a layer that’s even higher than that, which is kind of like pure light, pure bliss, whatever you want to call it.
00:36:32:02 – 00:36:52:24
Speaker 2
But those three levels are present for all people. And the people who get to the bliss level have worked through the whole idea of, okay, you know, yeah, now we’re thinking about the practical and then what about some deep thinking? Can I spontaneously get to the deep thinking? Or do I have to force myself to get to deep thinking?
00:36:52:24 – 00:37:22:18
Speaker 2
It doesn’t matter. Just go ahead and go to deep thinking. Stay relaxed, deep in your breath, stay with the process. And eventually there’s a potential for a breakthrough to sort of transcendental moments of openness where the content becomes almost nonexistent and the present thing becomes more existent. But it has to be you have to find a way in.
00:37:23:12 – 00:37:50:04
Speaker 2
And usually people find a way in because they’re desperate, or on the other hand, because they have aspiration. I’m going to meditate because I want to have a higher level of function, a higher level of creativity and a higher level of productivity. Or on the other side, the pain side is I’m going to meditate because I want to reduce my pain, whether it’s emotional or physical or due to some kind of diagnosis.
00:37:50:22 – 00:38:16:23
Speaker 2
And so that’s why qigong has four parts, because it also becomes absolutely fascinating. What is the body part? What is the breath part? What is the meditation part, and what is the massage part? And if you want to add in the sound, you know, what are the sounds and how do we use sound and what organs do the sounds associate with?
00:38:16:23 – 00:38:51:08
Speaker 2
And and then the, the the sixth part that you mentioned, which is entering into a field with the practitioners of all over the world and being present in the presence of thousands and sometimes even millions of people, all around the world who are practicing qigong right now becomes an it’s almost like a medicine that I can take to increase the extent to which I can focus, because I’m now with all these people around the world who are also focusing.
00:38:53:01 – 00:39:24:14
Speaker 1
Now, there’s a lot of or let’s say there’s multiple stories of how far back qigong goes, where it stems from, what it was originally founded, I don’t want to say created necessarily, maybe discovered for and I’ve heard multiple versions of it that, you know, qigong goes back 5000 years. I’ve heard that it goes it goes back 100,000 years.
00:39:24:14 – 00:40:03:19
Speaker 1
I’ve heard that it is primarily stems from Daoism and Buddhism, which would be, you know, just 2500 years ago, roughly. I’ve heard that it was originally kind of founded or discovered and taught disseminated for immortality, for longevity. I’ve heard stories of there is a man many people may have heard of him from China, I believe, who was a I think a qigong practitioner and basically lived off the land, just herbs and things like that, who was believed to live like 230 years old or something like that.
00:40:03:19 – 00:40:09:07
Speaker 1
And they have his birth certificate. I don’t know if you’ve seen that man and his story and I.
00:40:09:07 – 00:40:10:13
Speaker 2
Know all these stories.
00:40:10:13 – 00:40:34:14
Speaker 1
Yeah. And you know, a lot of the history I’ve read some of this on your own blogs, on your own websites and from many others. You know, Lee Holden I’ve sat with know with meantime serving time for four years and listening to him tell the history and stories. And so a lot of it is really similar how it’s shared, but some of it’s different and I don’t think it really matters, but it’s it’s interesting to me.
00:40:34:14 – 00:40:37:07
Speaker 1
It’s fascinating to me. You know, like allow.
00:40:37:07 – 00:40:38:04
Speaker 2
Me to just remind.
00:40:38:04 – 00:40:41:01
Speaker 1
You. Yeah. What you think, what you think about it.
00:40:41:13 – 00:41:22:04
Speaker 2
What I won’t do is, shall we say, put the things that you just said onto a timeline, because that would take a part of the time that requires to tell the version of the story that I think is probably the most likely. Instead, I will I will focus on anthropology and archeology, because what we can’t do is say anything about what humans were doing from evidence unless there is evidence.
00:41:22:20 – 00:41:55:13
Speaker 2
And so the only evidence that we have in the archeological record is the placement of stones locations where fire was built, piles of shell stones, like, for instance, if you if you kill an animal, you know, let’s say you kill a tiger and then you eat the meat of that tiger, and then the bones of that tiger are thrown into a, you know, a compost pile.
00:41:55:13 – 00:42:50:13
Speaker 2
Let’s say those bones will have composted and that are no longer available evidence. And so we have buildings, fires. And when people live near bodies of water, we have shells, not a lobster shell, a shell shell. And so and then we have all the anthropology on. When people began farming and when people began Hunter gathering. And so let’s now think, when did people communicate with each other just that when did people communicate with each other?
00:42:50:21 – 00:42:51:00
Speaker 2
Well.
00:42:51:11 – 00:42:54:12
Speaker 1
I mean, that would have been from the beginning of humankind. You know.
00:42:55:05 – 00:43:22:00
Speaker 2
Well, the human gene is 3 million. So it’s unlikely that the earliest humans had the the ability to formulate thoughts that are a whole lot different than higher animal thoughts at the very beginning. Which way you.
00:43:22:00 – 00:44:06:21
Speaker 1
Think. So I my my perspective on that is different. And obviously this is all perspective. We have no evidence, but I almost feel like early humans were potentially brilliant and maybe weren’t as dumb cavemen, hunter gatherer type of people that they’re depicted to be. And the reason I have that theory is because if you look at humankind and as far as we can date back with archeology and with anthropology and etc., etc., most of what humans have done, even going back tens of thousands of years, is that we can document back to 30,000 years plus with different civilizations where they found no weapons, but all farm equipment and things like that mean, hey, these people
00:44:06:21 – 00:44:26:14
Speaker 1
weren’t even hunting, they weren’t killing, they weren’t. They were taking care of their tribe and their family and growing food and large farms. This is a civilization that was found. It’s in Greg Brennan’s book, Deep Truths. I can’t remember where it was. I think it was in Europe where they found this 30,000 year old civilization where they used to think, oh, yeah, people 3000 years ago were basically dumb idiots.
00:44:26:14 – 00:44:53:16
Speaker 1
You know, they didn’t know what they were doing. And these people had advanced tools and things. And the more we find out of these kinds of lies, the more we find how intelligent people actually were tens of thousands of years ago. I mean, look at the Egyptians and the pyramids and all of that, you know, and how they were able to to create these incredibly intelligent designs that are perfect frequency of frequency harmonies at the center of these pyramids.
00:44:54:04 – 00:44:58:11
Speaker 1
I think we’ve gotten dumber as a civilization, as time has actually gone on.
00:44:58:11 – 00:44:58:20
Speaker 2
Yes.
00:44:58:20 – 00:45:18:24
Speaker 1
Well, look at us now. We’re killing ourselves and destroying each other and destroying the planet and, you know, living the, you know, social me addicts, creating addiction and things that don’t matter in people’s lives and pornography and all. I mean, I can name a million things and addiction and drugs and where it’s actually I think we have been for quite a while.
00:45:19:07 – 00:45:41:15
Speaker 1
D evolving versus, you know, evolving. And so I almost feel like and I don’t know if this is true 3 million years ago, those human beings were brilliant or intelligent or geniuses. But I feel like if you go back quite a ways, people seem to be actually very, very intelligent, maybe even more so in a simple way than many people are today.
00:45:42:15 – 00:46:09:21
Speaker 2
Yeah, well, everything you said is probably either true or close to true, including all the way back to the beginning of the human race, because after all, if we fashion ourselves after monkeys, monkeys have all kinds of social behaviors that are communicated through different kinds of sounds and so forth. And so they did have language. And we know about that.
00:46:10:13 – 00:46:42:10
Speaker 2
We we don’t see monkeys massaging each other. We do see monkeys massaging themselves. And we we even see monkeys and gorillas who put themselves into interesting postures and so forth. And we know that all animals have a habit of shaking off stressful experiences rather storing those experiences in their cells. And so no debate here on most of what you said.
00:46:43:00 – 00:47:09:24
Speaker 2
So let’s go back to the question of when did qigong happen? And I guess that we could say it if we take them as the four parts of qigong body practiced, breath, practice, mind, practice and massage practice. There are pieces of that that maybe even go back 3 million years. But let’s, let’s go to maybe where we have a something formulated.
00:47:11:01 – 00:47:47:18
Speaker 2
And I think that the discussion really doesn’t need to go on much longer because if we’d say that it’s either it comes with the beginning of, of language meaningful language, which linguists have placed at somewhere around a million in a fire is close to a million. And so let’s just go to people sitting around the fire a million years ago, they’re probably talking about or or acting out what they did during the day, doing storytelling.
00:47:47:18 – 00:48:20:04
Speaker 2
I mean, they didn’t have TV, so they they entertained each other with stories and so the original kind of qigong, which I think was probably breath practice for helping to deliver babies and breath practice to calm down and movements to to be able to calm down and power up movements that we would use to build our power so that we can do move stones around and and designate where a farming area is and so forth.
00:48:20:13 – 00:48:48:01
Speaker 2
I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s really naive to think that farming happened 10,000 years ago. That’s just that’s all ridiculous. Right? So the point is that all the stories you told or reflected on, they’re all true in the minds of the people who tell them. And they have the reasons that they have for telling them. Some some people tell those stories because somebody told them the story and said, you can’t change the story.
00:48:49:02 – 00:49:20:00
Speaker 2
Others tell the story differently as time passes because they’re learning more. And the point I think we’re trying to get out here is the the sometimes people say qigong is 5000 years. Well, that’s the beginning of writing. But what did they write? Well, they wrote down what they knew for 300,000 years. So it’s really hard to tell. But the point is that Qigong is so ancient that we don’t know when it started.
00:49:20:04 – 00:50:17:01
Speaker 2
And it’s been developed and evolved in many different directions by many different people. And there are many different stories that we can tell about it. But I think the most important story is that it is inherent to human beings and that organizing ourselves into something around yoga or something around qigong or something around any of the Celtic or Druidic methodologies, the Siberian Siberian shamanism, South American shamanism, North American shamanism, all of those cultures developed a relationship between movement, breath, mindful focus, which can be imagining self-employed, massage, singing and dancing, you know.
00:50:17:01 – 00:51:09:09
Speaker 2
So the here comes the sound gathering in a group and having shared purpose, there is in China in Chittagong, a group practice is called Chee Chong Cheech Chong where we were we create what is called a a group generated field. Cheech Chong. Cheech Chong. It’s a it’s a part of how Cheech Chong works and so forth. And, you know, you can imagine that humans were in families at least 2 million years ago or 3 million years ago, and that they formed themselves into clans and expanding villages long before 5000 years ago.
00:51:09:09 – 00:51:39:12
Speaker 1
So in the teachings of qigong, in the older teachings, is there a is there an evolutionary belief? Do you know that humans came from, you know, monkeys or whatever? Or is there a belief that there was a more of a higher power of being God kind of figure that designed all of this and all of us? Do you have context on that at all?
00:51:39:24 – 00:52:22:23
Speaker 2
Yeah, I do. So in all the shamanic cultures, there is a a belief in the fact that some part of the human being is eternal and some part of the human being is kind of personal, and some part of the human being is just dust. And so the part of the question that we’re talking about now doesn’t have anything to do with the dust because the body goes down and within the person exits the body.
00:52:23:07 – 00:53:08:23
Speaker 2
There are two features that are common to most shamanic cultures, which is the person a logical feature and the transcendental feature. Then from there it gets confusing because different cultures have an appreciation of karma or reincarnation or whatever you want to call that. And the whole idea of going to heaven and remaining in heaven as an ancestor and one of the most, shall we say, pleasing or comforting versions of this, is that a human being is made up of three treasures.
00:53:09:20 – 00:53:21:18
Speaker 2
The of the body, treasure, the mind or the person, a logical treasure, and the transcendental eternal treasure, the spirit.
00:53:22:02 – 00:53:23:07
Speaker 1
If you will, or soul.
00:53:23:15 – 00:54:05:23
Speaker 2
Call it that. Yeah. And so will pass on the body because we know that that goes to dust. And then the, this view that I tend to take refuge in myself is that there is a field of energy, there’s an energetic field of personas which can linger in the atmosphere of the world, you know, in the quantum field, whatever it is that is literally limited to chunks of memory.
00:54:05:23 – 00:54:37:10
Speaker 2
And there’s an aspect of a being which is, well, the Chinese is immortal. They you know, the whole idea of immortals in the Chinese tradition is super rich and really fun and interesting. And so people, certain people who live in certain ways, they are easily become immortals. Some people who are still alive because of the nature of how they live.
00:54:38:18 – 00:55:15:19
Speaker 2
They tend to be, you know, kind of kind hearted and and lighthearted and nonjudgmental and just never disconcerted, but always sort of in concert with, the nature of the world. And so this concept that you’re driving into is, you know, is there is there a sense of evolution? And the thing that I just described for the body, of course, there’s, I guess, the potential of evolution.
00:55:15:19 – 00:55:49:02
Speaker 2
The skulls got larger and so forth for the mind or the or the personal logical aspect of the body of memories and knowledge was with a particular person. There’s some we don’t know. It’s just all speculation. There’s some speculation that that lingers in a field. That’s not the time space field that we’re in. But then beyond that, there a transcendental aspect of that which the Chinese called immortal.
00:55:49:20 – 00:56:32:13
Speaker 2
And the immortal aspect of the self is present in the in the body and mind the whole time we’re alive. And then it escapes and does it separate from the person a logical aspect and just go free as a universal distribution? You know, we don’t know. But what the those the the the the tradition in China is largely not associated with a god that gives people assignments in their life and then either torments them or gives them a good look.
00:56:34:02 – 00:57:07:18
Speaker 2
That is all left to something larger than we can understand of. Idealists are really good with this body of information and they basically call it DAO and that means everything that ever was or every will be. Everything that is an expression of how nature operates naturally and everything that keeps a human being in a state of quiescence, even in the presence of complexity.
00:57:08:01 – 00:57:08:10
Speaker 2
Mm hmm.
00:57:09:13 – 00:57:48:09
Speaker 1
And even in the down to the famous daodejing anybody’s ever read it by loud zu is the the phrase where he says the moment can name the Dow or point to the Dow or give it a label or description. It is no longer the Dow, so it’s like the whole teaching is like trying to help understand the Dow, the everything, the the, you know, nothingness and everything all at the same time, God, the universe, you know, everything and nothing all at the same time.
00:57:48:21 – 00:57:57:04
Speaker 1
And the moment that we try to describe it and explain and say, Oh, yeah, that’s what it is, it’s like you kind of missed the mark a little bit.
00:57:57:12 – 00:58:25:02
Speaker 2
And then it goes on, not write it at that particular place in the daodejing, but it goes on to say that once you describe something, it takes on quality. And once all this gets described, then we start to see the differentiation and the duality kicking in because you have right and wrong and up and down and, you know, beautiful and ugly and and all those things.
00:58:25:02 – 00:59:06:04
Speaker 2
And then it even goes on. And you can see already with some of those things like, you know, beauty and ugliness. So we’ll just take that one for right now as part of the duo, the dualistic framework is now you’re categorizing people. You’d have to make judgment sense and so forth. So then it goes on in another place in the daodejing to talk about how once you have named it, and then you create contrast, and then you ascribe goodness to something and badness to something, then you need laws.
00:59:06:21 – 00:59:37:03
Speaker 2
And as soon as you need laws, you need people to enforce the laws. And now you’ve got a circumstance where you’ve got people who are enforcing the laws and the people who are breaking the laws. And all of that is a basically the depreciation and interruptive ness, disruptive ness of doing the first thing wrong, which is actually ascribing a name or a value.
00:59:37:20 – 01:00:00:23
Speaker 1
Well, that’s basically you described religion and governments, right? Religion is organized rules and guidelines and laws, if you will. This is the way it is. This is what you must do. This is what you have to do to be good, to be seen good in God’s eyes. You have to follow these rules, these laws, and if you don’t, you get punished.
01:00:00:23 – 01:00:30:18
Speaker 1
You go to hell, etc.. We know the whole story. And that is I mean, even what the what I’ve studied about, you know, Jesus’s life, for example, and written in the Bible is, well, who knows? I mean, this the you know, the texts that were put into the Bible were not even written until like 40 years later. Can you imagine being told something and then 40 years later writing it down and it was not even organized until 80 plus years later.
01:00:30:18 – 01:00:53:18
Speaker 1
And it and many texts were left out for political and control reasons and governmental reasons. They wanted one unified. This is all pretty well documented, right, by the constant, constant, constant scene in Constantinople who said, hey, we’re going to basically create one world religion and get rid of all these smaller kind of religions that they didn’t like because it kind of went against their ability to control people.
01:00:53:18 – 01:01:20:23
Speaker 1
At least that’s my perspective of what I’ve studied about it, and so I share it. So to read. So there’s a lot of gold in the Bible and in those religious traditions. And at the same time, there’s also a lot of control and fear and human, in my opinion, very clear human control concepts put into the Bible to basically keep people in fear and control.
01:01:20:23 – 01:01:48:24
Speaker 1
And now you’ve created all these laws and rules and regulations, and I think there’s beauty in some religion. And I also think there’s there’s a lot of pain and and suffering in it, because exactly what Lao Xu described is, hey, you have named it, you’ve created rules, you’ve created laws, you create all this stuff. And the more you do that, like, the further you get away from what you’re trying to do, which is connect with God right?
01:01:48:24 – 01:02:11:22
Speaker 1
It’s every Christian, every religious person wants to do is be good in the eyes of God, connect with God, connect with that higher power, that higher source, and I feel like so many people are missing out on their potential because of all of these rules and regulations. You can’t you know I see it all the time. So I don’t know.
01:02:11:22 – 01:02:13:11
Speaker 1
It’s fascinating to me.
01:02:13:18 – 01:02:37:00
Speaker 2
It’s incredibly fascinating. And but what’s beautiful about it is that we start with I don’t feel good and I don’t trust these people who are trying to sell me drugs. So I’m going to see if I can make medicine in my own being. And so then you do that and then you realize, wow, I can make medicine within my own being.
01:02:37:09 – 01:03:01:08
Speaker 2
And nobody said that. And so what else don’t I know? And then we go on to this whole idea of developing a healthy lifestyle. And pretty soon now from Qigong, we’re into a healthy lifestyle and we get to ask the question, Well, what is it that bothers me? And how much am I bothered? And how can I manage the extent to which I’m bothered?
01:03:01:15 – 01:03:39:21
Speaker 2
And so now I’m investigating methodologies for sure. We say putting things in their proper order and then I can realize, Oh my gosh, I’m actually climbing a ladder here towards higher levels of personal responsibility, personal sovereignty. And then I then I get to the point where I ask the question, am I allowed to formulate a personal philosophy? Well, every fearless philosopher that’s ever existed has only just presented a an opinion.
01:03:40:10 – 01:04:09:10
Speaker 2
And so we now know that whether it’s a philosophy of governance or a philosophy of spirituality, that these are all opinions. The president doesn’t have the truth and the pope doesn’t have the truth. And, you know, the Maharishi doesn’t have the truth. They’re all telling stories. So now what I get to do is say if there’s this many stories, why can’t I have a story?
01:04:09:21 – 01:04:16:00
Speaker 2
And so then I build a story for myself. And as the disruptors come in.
01:04:16:12 – 01:04:44:11
Speaker 1
Because you be heretic, that’s why you can’t have your own story, because you’ll be you’ll be considered a heretic in the eyes of a religious organization. So, you know, people don’t want to think for themselves and ask these deep questions and question the pastors and the leaders and the pope and so forth because of the fear of shame, the fear of being shunned, the fear of loss of community, the fear of of being, you know, an unequal.
01:04:44:19 – 01:05:13:04
Speaker 1
And that’s that’s what happens, right? So many people don’t ask these questions and try to go deep into these different philosophies. And even like what I’ve done is research many different traditions and philosophies and spiritual traditions from Christianity to Mormonism to chanting with the Hari Krishna to Native American tribes, to Buddhism, Daoism. And and I love to find the beauty and the continuity and the wisdom in all of it.
01:05:13:14 – 01:05:19:16
Speaker 1
And I find some things in parts of it. It’s like I don’t solely resonate with that very much. You know.
01:05:19:16 – 01:05:55:21
Speaker 2
What I’m doing right now is you’re basically describing what we’re all working on. So, okay, you could be shamed by that person or that person, whether it’s religion or government, you can be shamed by them. But once you’ve found that refuge of self assurance, shall we call it that? And then start seeking for others to build out your self, your sense of self assurance by being with people not who share every idea that you have, but who share the idea that you have a right to have the idea that have.
01:05:56:19 – 01:06:20:00
Speaker 1
My love, that totally contrary to what our government and social media are doing right now, which is censoring our ability to access information that we want to access. And that’s exactly the reason we need to have that freedom of thought and freedom of choice and freedom of expression for exactly that, exactly what you’re talking about.
01:06:20:05 – 01:06:59:12
Speaker 2
So there’s a classic value in the Chinese that’s basically a value across all traditional, all of the original indigenous type cultures is that there’s three treasures. The three treasures are the body, the mind and the spirit. And so when we formulate as a family or as a small tribe, clan or even a small community, once we have generated a set of shared values, then we tend to live by those values.
01:06:59:12 – 01:07:22:15
Speaker 2
So the positive of that is that the three treasures are the classic idea of and I think that this is so beautiful, I hope that everybody in the world will stumble on it and digest it and use it, and that is that the first value is the model in Buddhism. It’s called the Three Jewels, and the model is the Buddha.
01:07:23:14 – 01:08:11:05
Speaker 2
The second value is the set of shared values. Call that the knowledge base in Buddhism it’s called the Dharma in, in, in, in Daoism. Basically, it’s just called the, the Daoist text, the texts and so forth. And then the third part is the community of people. And so we go to qigong and we talk about having a practice and then practicing with others, whether those others are with us in the same room or whether they’re with us on the Internet or whether they’re we just know that they’re with us because they’re somewhere in the world practicing to as we are practicing now, that’s called, you know, call that tribe, call it the sangha.
01:08:11:19 – 01:08:34:06
Speaker 2
So the the the the solution for shame for shame is autonomous sovereignty. And then assembling one’s personal sangha or community of shared values. Hmm.
01:08:34:20 – 01:08:39:09
Speaker 1
Yeah, I love that. I mean, that’s basically what we’re doing in life, right? And what you just.
01:08:39:09 – 01:08:40:14
Speaker 2
Exactly what you’re doing it.
01:08:41:05 – 01:08:45:07
Speaker 1
Yeah. And that’s what you just describe the three what you call them, the three, three.
01:08:45:20 – 01:08:52:20
Speaker 2
The three. Well, in all cultures, they’re basically wild determined is the treasures.
01:08:52:23 – 01:08:53:15
Speaker 1
The treasures how?
01:08:53:15 – 01:08:54:10
Speaker 2
Three measures.
01:08:55:03 – 01:09:22:18
Speaker 1
But such a simple calls the jewels, the jewels, the three jewels. I mean, it’s such a simple model and and yeah, I guess simple model to understand, which is the teacher, the teaching and the community, right? The leader, the, the information and the values and the people who are part of that together and that together. I mean, that can create an entire religion as.
01:09:22:18 – 01:09:50:08
Speaker 1
We’ve seen all the religions. It can create a philosophical group, it can create an army, you know, out to destroy. It can create loving, wise people that want to change their own lives and impact the world in a positive way. But it is so simple and yet so profound. But I wanted to ask you a couple of things.
01:09:50:08 – 01:10:22:20
Speaker 1
One, so basically, as I look at it, correct me if I’m wrong, but qigong, tai chi, a lot of these Eastern philosophies, aside from, let’s say, Buddhism, for example, which has turned into somewhat of a religion, qigong by itself, and the communities and the philosophy of qigong and the people who are a part of qigong communities. It’s not really an organized religion in any way, is it?
01:10:24:04 – 01:10:25:08
Speaker 1
What’s your perspective on that?
01:10:25:17 – 01:11:01:12
Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah. I love the question because there’s an illusion, a myth, a legend that you must adhere to the teachings of a particular teacher to be able to derive the benefits. And I just don’t believe this. And like you, I’ve mystical Christianity very interested in that. Christianity as a child, you know, went through that, married someone who was a Catholic at some point.
01:11:01:12 – 01:11:32:01
Speaker 2
You know, that was very interesting. Super interested in the Rosicrucian and the Masons and the, you know, the all the the Silk Road, everything along the Silk Road, the Templars and all of that stuff, the shamanic traditions and all of those have had two beautiful Native American teachers, Black Raven and and Rolling Thunder. I’ve had dozens and dozens of Chinese teachers.
01:11:32:12 – 01:12:16:10
Speaker 2
I was I was I was personally introduced to transgender meditation by the Maharishi in 1963. I’ve studied with Yogi, Bhajan and Swami such. Nanda and I were a big fan of yoga of Paramahansa, Yogananda, etc. just like on and on and on and on. And so there’s this idea which I believe is a false idea, that if you don’t adhere to the, shall we say, the the minutia of a particular way of being, that you’re going to be shamed and cast out.
01:12:17:01 – 01:12:44:24
Speaker 2
And I believe that each person is sovereign in their right to be able to develop by searching and having conversations and tuning in here and there and so forth, to develop a personal philosophy with a personal practice which has a personal life rhythm, which is nonjudgmental of other people who have developed their own personal way. So enhanced love your question.
01:12:45:16 – 01:13:24:11
Speaker 2
The the concept of people adhering to somebody teaching for very much longer than a maybe a couple of months. I mean, you want to get in, get the gold and get out, because if you get out, if you go in and then you get stuck, you will be shamed when you get out and I actually when I was in Chinese medicine school, I had a very interesting character who I won’t go into the details, but a very lineage oriented individual.
01:13:24:21 – 01:13:52:05
Speaker 2
She, a powerful woman, asked me and told me that I should become a disciple of her version of Daoism. And I said, you know, I just got here from Ohio. I’m not inclined to become a disciple of anyone. In fact, the story that I know is that if you were a disciple of a certain person, you had to, like, disappear or act like you didn’t know anything.
01:13:52:15 – 01:14:19:14
Speaker 2
And I’m not interested in that. Plus, I’ve had lots of teachers and I’m really interested in my own philosophy, etc. She got mad at and and and but we had a very nice relationship. We rehabilitated it over time. And I was I set myself up so that I could remain free, a free agent to be able to discover the wide, wide world of possibilities.
01:14:19:14 – 01:14:23:09
Speaker 1
A free agent of spirituality. I love it. I’m free.
01:14:23:09 – 01:14:49:14
Speaker 2
Agent. I, I see you in the same way. And I think that I think that the life community is a community of mutually shared values, but not a community wherein you get judged if you’re not as hip as everybody else or taking the same supplements as everybody else, or doing the same meditation that everybody else are following, the same teacher of everybody else.
01:14:49:23 – 01:15:07:14
Speaker 2
But what we are all doing is becoming more comfortable in our own individuality, which is promised in the Declaration of Independence, as the thing that like democratizing of government is supposed to be doing. Yeah.
01:15:08:01 – 01:15:27:24
Speaker 1
Yeah. And our own freedom to pursue happiness and what that looks like for each of us, I love the Buddha is one of the teachings of the Buddha where he said, Do whatever you want in this life. Do anything you want, go out and do anything you want. As long as it doesn’t hurt yourself and doesn’t hurt anybody else.
01:15:29:06 – 01:15:52:17
Speaker 1
If you think about it like that, it’s like, you know what a wise thing to say. Like what or what, right? If developing your own personal philosophy of life, what do I want for my life? Well, I want to be happy. I want to be joyful, want to enjoy life. I want to feel good. Everybody wants that. Everyone wants health and happiness and joy and laughter and good experiences and and and then so the question is how do you do that?
01:15:52:17 – 01:16:14:17
Speaker 1
Well, you can feel senses of happiness or fleeting happiness or fake happiness by doing things that maybe harm others or harm yourself. Right. So that little piece of wisdom don’t harm yourself. Don’t harm others. There are a million things you can do that lead to happy, true happiness and joy and lasting fulfillment that don’t harm yourself and don’t harm others.
01:16:15:01 – 01:17:07:09
Speaker 1
And and we can learn that from different philosophies and traditions and spiritual practices and religions, for sure. And some them have things that that maybe harm yourself or harm others. And so those ones is like, Nope, I’m not going to do that, you know, no, thank you. But yeah, about I wanted to just mention about life. The vision came to me a few years ago because I started learning, you know, like you, I mean, you have way more experience than me in this, but but like you, I’ve been very interested in different traditions, have loved experiencing, you know, sweat lodges with Native American elders and Sundance experiences and, you know, and chanting, I mean, going
01:17:07:09 – 01:17:25:20
Speaker 1
in San Diego and going, you know, being invited invited to a Hindu temple and chanting. And I’m like, What is this? Yeah, you want to come out? Sure. Why not? Because I didn’t have an attachment to a specific religion or set of beliefs. I was able to go and sit in a temple that I knew nothing about with people.
01:17:26:01 – 01:17:48:15
Speaker 1
I never how they were addressed. And every they’re totally different than me chanting a language that I didn’t understand and yet had profound spiritual experiences, feelings of bliss. As you were talking about these feelings of bliss and where does that come from? That doesn’t come from the devil, you know. It’s like the devil making feel bliss. But that’s what some religious traditions would have you believe.
01:17:48:15 – 01:18:16:22
Speaker 1
Oh, you’re in a temple praying to another God, doing these evil things. And, you know, the devil’s leading you from temptation to to to temptation. And you’re off track from God. It’s like, no, actually, if you learn what they’re saying they’re saying, praise God, praise God, praise God, praise God. It’s not about me. The chanting Hardik or as the hotheaded Krishna, Chris, Snickers and Tara and all means praise God, praise God, praise God.
01:18:17:06 – 01:18:43:03
Speaker 1
Right? Just because that particular God in your mind doesn’t look like your particular God doesn’t mean they’re not praying to the same God, whatever that God is. Right, right, right. But you have these experiences, Native American experiences, Hindu experiences, chanting with the Hari Christian is Buddhist experiences and have feelings of bliss, you know, true, true bliss. Deep meditation experiences, true, true bliss.
01:18:43:03 – 01:19:05:12
Speaker 1
Feeling the energy. God, however we may want to call God and knowing that that is the experience I’m having. Nobody can take that away from you and nobody can come with a book and a set of rules and say that experience wasn’t real. You you can’t have that experience unless you’re, you know, baptized and believe in our religion.
01:19:05:18 – 01:19:40:20
Speaker 1
That’s that’s you got to watch out. That’s demons and devil’s leading you astray. I’m like, Dude, are you serious? Like, I am literally experiencing love and bliss right now by praying to God, like, being in this experience and how can you not recognize that, you know? And so that’s what I like. That’s where I think the vision came to life was like, Hey, there’s so many of these ancient teachings in practices and deities that most of the world, certainly most of the Western world, but I say most people around the world don’t know exist and don’t have access to.
01:19:41:08 – 01:20:18:21
Speaker 1
And so with, you know, teachers like yourself being a part of this life community, we can literally help people who want it. Not a religion, not a organized thing, nothing. Just learned from teachers like yourself and others from different traditions. So people can get a taste of, Hey, what is this experience you’re talking about? This experience of bliss and health and happiness and experience for themselves from all different kinds of traditions and experiences, and choose what you like and who you like to learn from and and get to experience differently, like you said, instead of just being as one teacher forever, which is fine if someone wants that.
01:20:19:05 – 01:20:44:21
Speaker 1
But for me, I’m the same way. That’s why I fell in love with CrossFit. It’s like, I like running I. I’ve learned to start enjoying swimming a little bit now that I don’t drown. I like cycling, but I learned that, hey, I like doing all kinds of sports and activities. I’ve learned to love weightlifting. I learned to love, you know, lifting with barbells and and rock climbing and gymnastics and walking on my hands and all these different things.
01:20:45:03 – 01:20:55:17
Speaker 1
It’s like, Oh, we can do all of these things and create a holistic experience with our bodies. Well, why can’t we do the same thing with our minds and our emotions and our spiritual experience?
01:20:56:05 – 01:21:10:23
Speaker 2
Yeah, and so that’s so well stated and I just don’t even want to try to say anything else about that because I think that if you didn’t say it, then I would say it and I would have said it pretty much like you said it.
01:21:11:16 – 01:21:33:15
Speaker 1
So I have one more question for you. And I know we’re have we’re kind of out of time, maybe save it for next time or maybe we touch on it a little bit because it’s really big question. But the question I have for you is, what do you believe happens when we die?
01:21:33:15 – 01:22:17:22
Speaker 2
Yeah, well, I have some experience with questioning this. Most children don’t ask this question because they are either being traumatized by other things or their parents stay alive. My dad died when I was nine years old. And and so since I was nine years old, I have had the question, you know, that that question everything from where do we come from to why are we here to what happens when we are not here and so forth.
01:22:17:22 – 01:23:12:06
Speaker 2
And we’ve talked a little bit about some of these things about even though I love Jesus Alive and even though I am a real fan of, of of the all of the religions that are associated with Mohammad and including the Sufis and everything that I’ve learned from being in relationships with the Hindus and the Buddhists and the Daoist and watching as people enter life and live this life, including my own children, and noticing that there’s too there’s too parts to all of this.
01:23:12:11 – 01:23:45:09
Speaker 2
That’s just my personal view, my personal philosophy. One part is that there’s something about how we get in here and how we are here and how we get out. That has do with forces that are impossible to describe. We can go all the way as deep as we get into quantum physics can’t use that. We can go all the way into any kind of religious or spiritual philosophy.
01:23:45:13 – 01:23:58:11
Speaker 2
I can’t really use that because of the multitude of different views which are all true to the people who believe that those views are true but are not really view.
01:23:59:10 – 01:24:19:14
Speaker 1
Well, the question, I guess that’s what I think you’re referencing there is like the question that I’ve had is, okay, there’s a God that created us all, but who created God or what created God? So the answer that most people receive is, Well, God, God was always there. But see, that’s never like that’s to me as a copout answer.
01:24:19:15 – 01:24:27:04
Speaker 1
It’s like, now you just don’t want to question that deeply because you’re afraid of where it might take you. But that’s just my perception.
01:24:27:04 – 01:25:02:07
Speaker 2
I don’t know. Yeah. So if it’s okay, let me just stay on this one track of two two ideas. One is that some already of factors and forces got me here and in that same array is in play as I go from these spacetime dimensions. The other one is that there’s a biological foundation to who we are. There’s an X chromosome and a Y chromosome.
01:25:02:07 – 01:25:44:13
Speaker 2
There’s, there’s the the familial factors called genetics, there’s the behaviors and all of that. And then that takes us out. And so these two parts of who I am, I believe, are in play. And so when you ask what is my view on how this all works, I like to, having been in all these relationships, defer to my favorite phrase from the Chinese kind of qigong Daoist point of view, which is, here’s the quote I don’t know that I’ve ever read this anywhere.
01:25:44:13 – 01:26:12:00
Speaker 2
I think I kind of cobbled together from my experiences and it goes like this. There is an aspect of myself which is irrevocably well and not get sick and does not die and so I’m into that. I’m into the fact that there’s a part of myself that no matter how sick I ever get and no matter whatever kills me, that there’s a part of myself.
01:26:12:00 – 01:26:49:13
Speaker 2
Never got sick was always well and cannot die. And so in that context, how I believe personally is that my personal behaviors have something to do with how I how I’m here and my and something about what I can’t do are about how I got here and how I will depart. And that whole thing goes the, the, the, the one that I can do something about.
01:26:49:17 – 01:27:20:15
Speaker 2
I am doing what I can and the part that I can’t do something about. I’m doing what I can to arrange for the fact that I get the best of it. However, that might work. So in both cases, I’m fine tuning, cultivating, studying, learning to pay attention to myself because I learn a lot from the experience that I have and then change my course correcting and so forth.
01:27:20:15 – 01:27:49:05
Speaker 2
And and so with that in mind, I’ll go to your second question, which is, do I believe there’s a God and it’s you already said it earlier, if you name it, that’s not it. So the thing that you and I are now asking a question about, as soon as it has an answer, that’s not it. So we can’t even have this question.
01:27:49:14 – 01:28:16:10
Speaker 2
You can’t even ask me this question. I don’t even respond to this question. I don’t have a place in the world that I live in or in the philosophical framework that I’ve developed for myself, where that question can have an answer. But you could say that the part of me that says there’s something uncontrollable all about where I came from, who I am, and who I will become and where I’m headed.
01:28:17:14 – 01:28:42:06
Speaker 2
That part that part of the to not my behavioral self, not my habits, not my dreams, not my loves and dislikes, but that other thing. That’s a part of who I am is in some way associated with this thing or non thing that we cannot describe. But the part that I can control is a part of that too.
01:28:42:06 – 01:29:00:09
Speaker 2
So it’s just a, it’s a conversation that is really fun to have and we can really do lots of speculating on it. But I have no sense that you should reach the same conclusion that I have about answer to that question.
01:29:00:11 – 01:29:24:15
Speaker 1
I’m I think that’s such a great mindset, perspective, level of wisdom and humility to have when it comes to topics like this. I certainly have not had that all the time over the years, and it’s certainly something I’m trying practice more and more. It’s like comes.
01:29:24:15 – 01:29:26:04
Speaker 2
And goes, I can promise you.
01:29:26:04 – 01:29:42:09
Speaker 1
Yeah, this is what I believe. Why don’t you believe what I believe? You know, it’s like now is what I believe, and it’s totally fine. Whatever you believe is whatever you believe, that’s okay. I’ll still be your friend. Like, you know, it’s okay. No problem. I think that’s. That’s the wisdom and humility we need in our world today.
01:29:42:22 – 01:29:51:14
Speaker 1
I love that question. And I, I mean, I could ask you 20 more based on it and have a great conversation around it. Maybe we’ll save that for for next time.
01:29:51:14 – 01:29:54:05
Speaker 2
But Yeah. Let’s do this again sometime.
01:29:54:05 – 01:30:17:08
Speaker 1
We can just I’d love to share like. Yeah, let’s just open with that question. That’d be great. Roger, what’s the best? I know you’re on YouTube. I know people can find you on on on social media everywhere. But and I know you got multiple websites, but if people want to just dove deeper into you and the great work you do, what would be, you know, one good website for them to for them to go to.
01:30:17:18 – 01:31:04:05
Speaker 2
Yeah. I’ll give the website that’s associated with the Institute of Qigong and Taichi, of which I am the founder and lead faculty, although we have a, a broadening faculty and those people are training people to be teachers. And those teachers that they train are in relationships with thousands and thousands of people. And that it’s very easy to write this down is i i cu tcd0rgitcorg cool.
01:31:04:11 – 01:31:12:22
Speaker 1
That’s awesome. We’ll put it in the description below for people too. Yeah. Roger, thanks so much. It’s been a great conversation. I always appreciate our time together.
01:31:13:18 – 01:31:49:03
Speaker 2
And wish you well. I’m thrilled to be collaborating with you too. I did a lecture once called Can Qigong Save the World? So I’m really thrilled to be in this relationship with you as we do everything that we can to save the world by inspiring individuals to disassociate from assumptions, guidelines, and turn their attention to personal experience and learning how to communicate with others without becoming reactive.
01:31:50:04 – 01:31:55:23
Speaker 1
Well, we’ll find out soon enough if we can save the world, we’re going to try anyway.
01:31:55:23 – 01:31:59:08
Speaker 2
Let’s do it. Thank you so much, sir. I wish you well.
01:31:59:14 – 01:32:00:02
Speaker 1
Thanks.