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May 30, 2024 12:55
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- Gargamel Gibson
- Apr 24, 2014
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Mmm, love that peanut brittle chicken. Finger lickin' good.
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Aug 31, 2017 18:10
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- chinese hair cave
- Aug 23, 2017
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by Cyrano4747
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This poster has a good name.
Where do you think I got it from? Reading the Chinar thread between paywalls was like reading an epic novel.
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Aug 31, 2017 18:26
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- Haier
- Aug 10, 2007
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by Lowtax
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How Haier became a bloated mess and blames it all on Ancient Chinese Wisdom, or, The story of how I became a Mainlander for a while.
Tonight I had an epiphany and a flood of memories that I hadn't thought about since when it first happened.
I was running and pushed myself to go about 1km further than I usually do because my breathing was pretty good and my legs were keeping a steady pace. The last couple hundred meters I increased pace until it was a full sprint. My body was a little upset by the end of it and I was breathing pretty hard. It was that deep chest breathing where your lungs feel like they want to explode.
After the gym or a good run, my stomach is always flat and fine. Later it seems to capture air and stays a little round that way. I don't drink, and contrary to my posts, I don't binge eat daily. If I eat more than a small meal, the air tummy is annoying to me but subsides after a little walk or standing for a while. It's not even gas, though I wouldn't mind blowing huge farts to fit in with the locals.
So the epiphany was tonight I had that girl over that I had been seeing recently. We ate dinner in my room and then she went home. Her stomach is always absurdly flat, and I noticed she doesn't breath into her stomach the way I do. I do it so hard, and have done it for so long, that somehow I didn't put it together that my gulping air directly into my stomach is the difference between my fine stomach after a run and my bloat at other times. Why do I breath directly into my stomach? That's retarded, right?
I blame China.
When I was 19, I got into martial arts because my roommates were always "training." One of them was a guy that competed in Muay Thai for money (in Thailand), another just liked getting into fights, and one guy I worked with was a legit MMA fighter that was making a few thousand USD per fight at the time (mid-2000s). I was too busy to take actual lessons or join a fighting gym, so I just had my friends show me stuff and we'd wrestle around and practice stuff outside on the lawn. It wasn't very useful, but it was fun. Young dudes tend to like that kind of horseplay.
So one day I was at the library looking at books about martial arts and saw stack of taiji books and rented one, along with that Bruce Lee series. I dicked around with the taiji book and practiced the slow moves, but found the weird philosophy about chi/qi interesting at the time.
The old rear end in a top hat that wrote the book had a big section about "bad" habits based on traditional Chinese medicine and qi power thought, and how to correct them since modern society was screwing up our latent superpowers. I had never been to China at that time, didn't know anything about Chinese history, and bought into the mystic ancient Chinese secrets stolen from Shaw Brothers movies, so it was my first exposure to all of these contradictory "hot water good for healthy" ideas that old rednecks on the Mainland jerk themselves dry over. It was the loving jackpot of how to enter the 36 chambers as a full-fledged warrior, just like all dudes in China must be. Romance of the Three Kingdoms was totally real, right?
Since taiji focuses a lot on the breathing and pushing the breath and energy to the lower "dan tian" (下丹田), the writer made a very strong admonition against "Western" breathing, and how "Westerners" can never do proper taiji and gain super qi iron shirts because they breath wrong. What is wrong with "Westerner" breathing? They breath in their chest! This blocks flow of all the good universal energies, and that is a big reason why non-Chinese are so ANGRY all the time. Because we breath in our chests, we develop diabetes and hyper-tension. We are always running around, breathing deeply into our lungs and filling our chests, and that's why we as a society are so unhappy. Chinese are slim and happy and never get health problems ever because they all breath into their stomachs and let the energy flow to the lower dan tian. He said to just look at babies. They breath into their stomach and are happy and sleep so good, and their stomachs are round and full of air until our evil society teaches us to focus our breathing into our lungs because of awful stuff like running and exercise that Westerners do not realize is not healthy for them at all compared to ancient Chinese health systems. We are so busy lifting weights and jogging that we don't realize we are shortening our lives and destroying our qi forever. **
I was shocked. My blood pressure was not so good at the time due poor sleep, eating too much salt, and a ton of stress at my 50+ hours per week job. If my breathing could be the reason why my blood pressure was so poor, and not the other stuff, then I really needed to fix it.
He recommended these exercises where you force every breath into your stomach. I tried it and it hurt. My stomach and the surrounding muscles had no desire to cooperate with this bullshit. I didn't realize I was fighting my esophagus. It was completely unnatural to put so much god drat air into one's stomach when breathing. He said it would take a few weeks for the body to adjust and make the switch to become natural. After about two weeks of trying it daily, especially while doing my nightly jogs, my body gave up and let it become my natural breathing style.
The first thing I noticed when it became natural to me was how loving lazy it is. The slightest inhale would go and get trapped down below. My stomach was always full of air. I was too busy with my lovely lifestyle to try to revert back to not-retarded breathing, and later forgot about it. While eating, my stomach would get round when it had never done it before. I never thought it, since all the old guys I knew would have the same problem and I figured it was normal (I way too young, and those guys were heavy drinkers).
Sometimes when I wanted to die after eating a larger meal, I would Google ways to cure bloating or the causes of it. The lists always mentioned a cause being "inhaling too much air while eating." I would think "What? Who would do that?" LOL, me. For over a decade without realizing it.
Tonight, thanks to holding the stomach of an ultra-slim yoga queen and not feeling her stomach rise to mountainous heights when she breathed, and then later running and feeling the burn in my chest, it all came rushing back to me. I decided to fix it and do the reverse of what that idiot book taught me. My lungs are a little tight with my deep shoulder-rising inhales, but I need to unlearn this TCM horseshit if I want to enjoy eating and taking my shirt off to tan as I get older.
gently caress you, traditional Chinese everything.
** I distinctly remember him writing all of those examples.
P.S. Before my martial arts phase was over I started going to the gym several days per week during my lunch hours. I got really into nutrition and food books, stretching books, and books about how the body works because I was interested in maximizing my health and gainz. Since many of these books were based on actual science and some of them found only in the reference section, it didn't take me long to see how much garbage all those mystical ideas were from all the different martial arts books I got. People that get into martial arts often seem to believe whatever horseshit a good or legendary fighter might say, but MMA these days is taking all of that power away and I am glad for it. RIP to that MMA dude that whooped all those traditional Chinese masters.
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Aug 31, 2017 18:29
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- whip
- Apr 9, 2007
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by Lowtax
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"hot water good for healthy" ideas
My mother-in-law will not leave me alone about this. I'm sick right now and she's constantly telling my wife on the phone that I need to drink hot/warm water. Also they really believe if you drink cold water and get warm food that your teeth will crack apart like porcelain lol
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Aug 31, 2017 19:04
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- JewKiller 3000
- Nov 28, 2006
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by Lowtax
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uhhhhhhhhh
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Aug 31, 2017 19:06
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- Spatial
- Nov 15, 2007
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The lead poisoning has finally reached Haier's cortex
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Aug 31, 2017 19:17
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- Hedenius
- Aug 23, 2007
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I'm a western brain genius who looks down upon stupid mainlanders for their superstitious beliefs. Oh, and I also think I can choose to breathe either with my lungs or my stomach.
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Aug 31, 2017 19:29
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- TTerrible
- Jul 15, 2005
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I'm a western brain genius who looks down upon stupid mainlanders for their superstitious beliefs. Oh, and I also think I can choose to breathe either with my lungs or my stomach.
Haier you've lost your mind. Get out while you still can.
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Aug 31, 2017 19:41
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- vanity slug
- Jul 20, 2010
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breathing with your stomach explains the breath of some mainlanders lol
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Aug 31, 2017 19:58
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- bug chaser chaser
- Dec 11, 2006
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haiers 5 pc suit
I love your posts Haier, but lol
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Aug 31, 2017 20:40
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- vanity slug
- Jul 20, 2010
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They've gone deeper into bowel breathing.
i'm bowel posting
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Aug 31, 2017 20:42
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- oohhboy
- Jun 8, 2013
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by Jeffrey of YOSPOS
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My god he has gone native.
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Aug 31, 2017 20:44
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- boar guy
- Jan 25, 2007
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source your quotes LoB Haier
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Aug 31, 2017 20:45
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- chinese hair cave
- Aug 23, 2017
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by Cyrano4747
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My god he has gone native.
it's like heart of darkness but retarded
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Aug 31, 2017 20:49
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- Captain Yossarian
- Feb 24, 2011
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All new" Rings of Fire"
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Lmao @ haiers lead poisoned mind
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Aug 31, 2017 20:57
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- Lazer Monkey
- Jan 15, 2005
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I'm a western brain genius who looks down upon stupid mainlanders for their superstitious beliefs. Oh, and I also think I can choose to breathe either with my lungs or my stomach.
Nah, this is actually a thing, he doesn't mean he really breathes with his stomach..
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Aug 31, 2017 21:02
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- BONGHITZ
- Jan 1, 1970
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Air goes into lungs, maybe.
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Aug 31, 2017 21:04
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- P-Mack
- Nov 10, 2007
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I guess this is supposed to be something sort of valid about exactly how you use your diaphragm, but he's describing it like he's straight up inflating his duodenum or whatever.
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Aug 31, 2017 21:08
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- randomcommoner
- Sep 6, 2006
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it's a-me
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Can I learn to smoke with my stomach? Would that be worse for you than regular smoking?
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Aug 31, 2017 21:22
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- vanity slug
- Jul 20, 2010
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haier doesn't exhale, he just burps
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Aug 31, 2017 21:23
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- oohhboy
- Jun 8, 2013
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by Jeffrey of YOSPOS
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Can I learn to smoke with my stomach? Would that be worse for you than regular smoking?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bktd_Pi4YJw
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Aug 31, 2017 21:25
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- Coolguye
- Jul 6, 2011
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Required by his programming!
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i don't
what????
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Aug 31, 2017 22:02
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- Fleta Mcgurn
- Oct 5, 2003
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Porpoise noise continues.
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This took a fun turn. How did you not fart yourself to death, swallowing air like that?
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Aug 31, 2017 22:06
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- The Great Autismo!
- Mar 3, 2007
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by Fluffdaddy
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If it's like most Chinese offices I've been in, screaming at the billboard falling over across the street was the most productive thing most of those people accomplished this afternoon.
lmao
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Aug 31, 2017 23:06
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- The Great Autismo!
- Mar 3, 2007
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by Fluffdaddy
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How Haier became a bloated mess and blames it all on Ancient Chinese Wisdom, or, The story of how I became a Mainlander for a while.
Tonight I had an epiphany and a flood of memories that I hadn't thought about since when it first happened.
I was running and pushed myself to go about 1km further than I usually do because my breathing was pretty good and my legs were keeping a steady pace. The last couple hundred meters I increased pace until it was a full sprint. My body was a little upset by the end of it and I was breathing pretty hard. It was that deep chest breathing where your lungs feel like they want to explode.
After the gym or a good run, my stomach is always flat and fine. Later it seems to capture air and stays a little round that way. I don't drink, and contrary to my posts, I don't binge eat daily. If I eat more than a small meal, the air tummy is annoying to me but subsides after a little walk or standing for a while. It's not even gas, though I wouldn't mind blowing huge farts to fit in with the locals.
So the epiphany was tonight I had that girl over that I had been seeing recently. We ate dinner in my room and then she went home. Her stomach is always absurdly flat, and I noticed she doesn't breath into her stomach the way I do. I do it so hard, and have done it for so long, that somehow I didn't put it together that my gulping air directly into my stomach is the difference between my fine stomach after a run and my bloat at other times. Why do I breath directly into my stomach? That's retarded, right?
I blame China.
When I was 19, I got into martial arts because my roommates were always "training." One of them was a guy that competed in Muay Thai for money (in Thailand), another just liked getting into fights, and one guy I worked with was a legit MMA fighter that was making a few thousand USD per fight at the time (mid-2000s). I was too busy to take actual lessons or join a fighting gym, so I just had my friends show me stuff and we'd wrestle around and practice stuff outside on the lawn. It wasn't very useful, but it was fun. Young dudes tend to like that kind of horseplay.
So one day I was at the library looking at books about martial arts and saw stack of taiji books and rented one, along with that Bruce Lee series. I dicked around with the taiji book and practiced the slow moves, but found the weird philosophy about chi/qi interesting at the time.
The old rear end in a top hat that wrote the book had a big section about "bad" habits based on traditional Chinese medicine and qi power thought, and how to correct them since modern society was screwing up our latent superpowers. I had never been to China at that time, didn't know anything about Chinese history, and bought into the mystic ancient Chinese secrets stolen from Shaw Brothers movies, so it was my first exposure to all of these contradictory "hot water good for healthy" ideas that old rednecks on the Mainland jerk themselves dry over. It was the loving jackpot of how to enter the 36 chambers as a full-fledged warrior, just like all dudes in China must be. Romance of the Three Kingdoms was totally real, right?
Since taiji focuses a lot on the breathing and pushing the breath and energy to the lower "dan tian" (下丹田), the writer made a very strong admonition against "Western" breathing, and how "Westerners" can never do proper taiji and gain super qi iron shirts because they breath wrong. What is wrong with "Westerner" breathing? They breath in their chest! This blocks flow of all the good universal energies, and that is a big reason why non-Chinese are so ANGRY all the time. Because we breath in our chests, we develop diabetes and hyper-tension. We are always running around, breathing deeply into our lungs and filling our chests, and that's why we as a society are so unhappy. Chinese are slim and happy and never get health problems ever because they all breath into their stomachs and let the energy flow to the lower dan tian. He said to just look at babies. They breath into their stomach and are happy and sleep so good, and their stomachs are round and full of air until our evil society teaches us to focus our breathing into our lungs because of awful stuff like running and exercise that Westerners do not realize is not healthy for them at all compared to ancient Chinese health systems. We are so busy lifting weights and jogging that we don't realize we are shortening our lives and destroying our qi forever. **
I was shocked. My blood pressure was not so good at the time due poor sleep, eating too much salt, and a ton of stress at my 50+ hours per week job. If my breathing could be the reason why my blood pressure was so poor, and not the other stuff, then I really needed to fix it.
He recommended these exercises where you force every breath into your stomach. I tried it and it hurt. My stomach and the surrounding muscles had no desire to cooperate with this bullshit. I didn't realize I was fighting my esophagus. It was completely unnatural to put so much god drat air into one's stomach when breathing. He said it would take a few weeks for the body to adjust and make the switch to become natural. After about two weeks of trying it daily, especially while doing my nightly jogs, my body gave up and let it become my natural breathing style.
The first thing I noticed when it became natural to me was how loving lazy it is. The slightest inhale would go and get trapped down below. My stomach was always full of air. I was too busy with my lovely lifestyle to try to revert back to not-retarded breathing, and later forgot about it. While eating, my stomach would get round when it had never done it before. I never thought it, since all the old guys I knew would have the same problem and I figured it was normal (I way too young, and those guys were heavy drinkers).
Sometimes when I wanted to die after eating a larger meal, I would Google ways to cure bloating or the causes of it. The lists always mentioned a cause being "inhaling too much air while eating." I would think "What? Who would do that?" LOL, me. For over a decade without realizing it.
Tonight, thanks to holding the stomach of an ultra-slim yoga queen and not feeling her stomach rise to mountainous heights when she breathed, and then later running and feeling the burn in my chest, it all came rushing back to me. I decided to fix it and do the reverse of what that idiot book taught me. My lungs are a little tight with my deep shoulder-rising inhales, but I need to unlearn this TCM horseshit if I want to enjoy eating and taking my shirt off to tan as I get older.
gently caress you, traditional Chinese everything.
** I distinctly remember him writing all of those examples.
P.S. Before my martial arts phase was over I started going to the gym several days per week during my lunch hours. I got really into nutrition and food books, stretching books, and books about how the body works because I was interested in maximizing my health and gainz. Since many of these books were based on actual science and some of them found only in the reference section, it didn't take me long to see how much garbage all those mystical ideas were from all the different martial arts books I got. People that get into martial arts often seem to believe whatever horseshit a good or legendary fighter might say, but MMA these days is taking all of that power away and I am glad for it. RIP to that MMA dude that whooped all those traditional Chinese masters.
I've been saying it for a while that Haier was flying too close to the sun. I said a few months ago he was starting to lose it.
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Aug 31, 2017 23:08
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- angel opportunity
- Sep 7, 2004
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Total Eclipse of the Heart
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I also breathe through my stomach because our Taekwondo teacher (korean guy) told us to and I also forced myself to do it back then and I still do it. I can't actually imagine it makes a difference one way or another. I don't think air literally goes into your stomach.
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Aug 31, 2017 23:26
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- TTerrible
- Jul 15, 2005
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You don't understand, westerners are different.
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Aug 31, 2017 23:30
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- Cantorsdust
- Aug 10, 2008
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Infinitely many points, but zero length.
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How Haier became a bloated mess and blames it all on Ancient Chinese Wisdom, or, The story of how I became a Mainlander for a while.
Tonight I had an epiphany and a flood of memories that I hadn't thought about since when it first happened.
I was running and pushed myself to go about 1km further than I usually do because my breathing was pretty good and my legs were keeping a steady pace. The last couple hundred meters I increased pace until it was a full sprint. My body was a little upset by the end of it and I was breathing pretty hard. It was that deep chest breathing where your lungs feel like they want to explode.
After the gym or a good run, my stomach is always flat and fine. Later it seems to capture air and stays a little round that way. I don't drink, and contrary to my posts, I don't binge eat daily. If I eat more than a small meal, the air tummy is annoying to me but subsides after a little walk or standing for a while. It's not even gas, though I wouldn't mind blowing huge farts to fit in with the locals.
So the epiphany was tonight I had that girl over that I had been seeing recently. We ate dinner in my room and then she went home. Her stomach is always absurdly flat, and I noticed she doesn't breath into her stomach the way I do. I do it so hard, and have done it for so long, that somehow I didn't put it together that my gulping air directly into my stomach is the difference between my fine stomach after a run and my bloat at other times. Why do I breath directly into my stomach? That's retarded, right?
I blame China.
When I was 19, I got into martial arts because my roommates were always "training." One of them was a guy that competed in Muay Thai for money (in Thailand), another just liked getting into fights, and one guy I worked with was a legit MMA fighter that was making a few thousand USD per fight at the time (mid-2000s). I was too busy to take actual lessons or join a fighting gym, so I just had my friends show me stuff and we'd wrestle around and practice stuff outside on the lawn. It wasn't very useful, but it was fun. Young dudes tend to like that kind of horseplay.
So one day I was at the library looking at books about martial arts and saw stack of taiji books and rented one, along with that Bruce Lee series. I dicked around with the taiji book and practiced the slow moves, but found the weird philosophy about chi/qi interesting at the time.
The old rear end in a top hat that wrote the book had a big section about "bad" habits based on traditional Chinese medicine and qi power thought, and how to correct them since modern society was screwing up our latent superpowers. I had never been to China at that time, didn't know anything about Chinese history, and bought into the mystic ancient Chinese secrets stolen from Shaw Brothers movies, so it was my first exposure to all of these contradictory "hot water good for healthy" ideas that old rednecks on the Mainland jerk themselves dry over. It was the loving jackpot of how to enter the 36 chambers as a full-fledged warrior, just like all dudes in China must be. Romance of the Three Kingdoms was totally real, right?
Since taiji focuses a lot on the breathing and pushing the breath and energy to the lower "dan tian" (下丹田), the writer made a very strong admonition against "Western" breathing, and how "Westerners" can never do proper taiji and gain super qi iron shirts because they breath wrong. What is wrong with "Westerner" breathing? They breath in their chest! This blocks flow of all the good universal energies, and that is a big reason why non-Chinese are so ANGRY all the time. Because we breath in our chests, we develop diabetes and hyper-tension. We are always running around, breathing deeply into our lungs and filling our chests, and that's why we as a society are so unhappy. Chinese are slim and happy and never get health problems ever because they all breath into their stomachs and let the energy flow to the lower dan tian. He said to just look at babies. They breath into their stomach and are happy and sleep so good, and their stomachs are round and full of air until our evil society teaches us to focus our breathing into our lungs because of awful stuff like running and exercise that Westerners do not realize is not healthy for them at all compared to ancient Chinese health systems. We are so busy lifting weights and jogging that we don't realize we are shortening our lives and destroying our qi forever. **
I was shocked. My blood pressure was not so good at the time due poor sleep, eating too much salt, and a ton of stress at my 50+ hours per week job. If my breathing could be the reason why my blood pressure was so poor, and not the other stuff, then I really needed to fix it.
He recommended these exercises where you force every breath into your stomach. I tried it and it hurt. My stomach and the surrounding muscles had no desire to cooperate with this bullshit. I didn't realize I was fighting my esophagus. It was completely unnatural to put so much god drat air into one's stomach when breathing. He said it would take a few weeks for the body to adjust and make the switch to become natural. After about two weeks of trying it daily, especially while doing my nightly jogs, my body gave up and let it become my natural breathing style.
The first thing I noticed when it became natural to me was how loving lazy it is. The slightest inhale would go and get trapped down below. My stomach was always full of air. I was too busy with my lovely lifestyle to try to revert back to not-retarded breathing, and later forgot about it. While eating, my stomach would get round when it had never done it before. I never thought it, since all the old guys I knew would have the same problem and I figured it was normal (I way too young, and those guys were heavy drinkers).
Sometimes when I wanted to die after eating a larger meal, I would Google ways to cure bloating or the causes of it. The lists always mentioned a cause being "inhaling too much air while eating." I would think "What? Who would do that?" LOL, me. For over a decade without realizing it.
Tonight, thanks to holding the stomach of an ultra-slim yoga queen and not feeling her stomach rise to mountainous heights when she breathed, and then later running and feeling the burn in my chest, it all came rushing back to me. I decided to fix it and do the reverse of what that idiot book taught me. My lungs are a little tight with my deep shoulder-rising inhales, but I need to unlearn this TCM horseshit if I want to enjoy eating and taking my shirt off to tan as I get older.
gently caress you, traditional Chinese everything.
** I distinctly remember him writing all of those examples.
P.S. Before my martial arts phase was over I started going to the gym several days per week during my lunch hours. I got really into nutrition and food books, stretching books, and books about how the body works because I was interested in maximizing my health and gainz. Since many of these books were based on actual science and some of them found only in the reference section, it didn't take me long to see how much garbage all those mystical ideas were from all the different martial arts books I got. People that get into martial arts often seem to believe whatever horseshit a good or legendary fighter might say, but MMA these days is taking all of that power away and I am glad for it. RIP to that MMA dude that whooped all those traditional Chinese masters.
I mean it's theoretically possible that you have a hiatal hernia and are in fact gulping down air with each breath. Please for the love of god see a GI doctor and get scoped.
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#
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Aug 31, 2017 23:32
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- I would blow Dane Cook
- Dec 26, 2008
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How Haier became a bloated mess and blames it all on Ancient Chinese Wisdom, or, The story of how I became a Mainlander for a while.
Tonight I had an epiphany and a flood of memories that I hadn't thought about since when it first happened.
I was running and pushed myself to go about 1km further than I usually do because my breathing was pretty good and my legs were keeping a steady pace. The last couple hundred meters I increased pace until it was a full sprint. My body was a little upset by the end of it and I was breathing pretty hard. It was that deep chest breathing where your lungs feel like they want to explode.
After the gym or a good run, my stomach is always flat and fine. Later it seems to capture air and stays a little round that way. I don't drink, and contrary to my posts, I don't binge eat daily. If I eat more than a small meal, the air tummy is annoying to me but subsides after a little walk or standing for a while. It's not even gas, though I wouldn't mind blowing huge farts to fit in with the locals.
So the epiphany was tonight I had that girl over that I had been seeing recently. We ate dinner in my room and then she went home. Her stomach is always absurdly flat, and I noticed she doesn't breath into her stomach the way I do. I do it so hard, and have done it for so long, that somehow I didn't put it together that my gulping air directly into my stomach is the difference between my fine stomach after a run and my bloat at other times. Why do I breath directly into my stomach? That's retarded, right?
I blame China.
When I was 19, I got into martial arts because my roommates were always "training." One of them was a guy that competed in Muay Thai for money (in Thailand), another just liked getting into fights, and one guy I worked with was a legit MMA fighter that was making a few thousand USD per fight at the time (mid-2000s). I was too busy to take actual lessons or join a fighting gym, so I just had my friends show me stuff and we'd wrestle around and practice stuff outside on the lawn. It wasn't very useful, but it was fun. Young dudes tend to like that kind of horseplay.
So one day I was at the library looking at books about martial arts and saw stack of taiji books and rented one, along with that Bruce Lee series. I dicked around with the taiji book and practiced the slow moves, but found the weird philosophy about chi/qi interesting at the time.
The old rear end in a top hat that wrote the book had a big section about "bad" habits based on traditional Chinese medicine and qi power thought, and how to correct them since modern society was screwing up our latent superpowers. I had never been to China at that time, didn't know anything about Chinese history, and bought into the mystic ancient Chinese secrets stolen from Shaw Brothers movies, so it was my first exposure to all of these contradictory "hot water good for healthy" ideas that old rednecks on the Mainland jerk themselves dry over. It was the loving jackpot of how to enter the 36 chambers as a full-fledged warrior, just like all dudes in China must be. Romance of the Three Kingdoms was totally real, right?
Since taiji focuses a lot on the breathing and pushing the breath and energy to the lower "dan tian" (下丹田), the writer made a very strong admonition against "Western" breathing, and how "Westerners" can never do proper taiji and gain super qi iron shirts because they breath wrong. What is wrong with "Westerner" breathing? They breath in their chest! This blocks flow of all the good universal energies, and that is a big reason why non-Chinese are so ANGRY all the time. Because we breath in our chests, we develop diabetes and hyper-tension. We are always running around, breathing deeply into our lungs and filling our chests, and that's why we as a society are so unhappy. Chinese are slim and happy and never get health problems ever because they all breath into their stomachs and let the energy flow to the lower dan tian. He said to just look at babies. They breath into their stomach and are happy and sleep so good, and their stomachs are round and full of air until our evil society teaches us to focus our breathing into our lungs because of awful stuff like running and exercise that Westerners do not realize is not healthy for them at all compared to ancient Chinese health systems. We are so busy lifting weights and jogging that we don't realize we are shortening our lives and destroying our qi forever. **
I was shocked. My blood pressure was not so good at the time due poor sleep, eating too much salt, and a ton of stress at my 50+ hours per week job. If my breathing could be the reason why my blood pressure was so poor, and not the other stuff, then I really needed to fix it.
He recommended these exercises where you force every breath into your stomach. I tried it and it hurt. My stomach and the surrounding muscles had no desire to cooperate with this bullshit. I didn't realize I was fighting my esophagus. It was completely unnatural to put so much god drat air into one's stomach when breathing. He said it would take a few weeks for the body to adjust and make the switch to become natural. After about two weeks of trying it daily, especially while doing my nightly jogs, my body gave up and let it become my natural breathing style.
The first thing I noticed when it became natural to me was how loving lazy it is. The slightest inhale would go and get trapped down below. My stomach was always full of air. I was too busy with my lovely lifestyle to try to revert back to not-retarded breathing, and later forgot about it. While eating, my stomach would get round when it had never done it before. I never thought it, since all the old guys I knew would have the same problem and I figured it was normal (I way too young, and those guys were heavy drinkers).
Sometimes when I wanted to die after eating a larger meal, I would Google ways to cure bloating or the causes of it. The lists always mentioned a cause being "inhaling too much air while eating." I would think "What? Who would do that?" LOL, me. For over a decade without realizing it.
Tonight, thanks to holding the stomach of an ultra-slim yoga queen and not feeling her stomach rise to mountainous heights when she breathed, and then later running and feeling the burn in my chest, it all came rushing back to me. I decided to fix it and do the reverse of what that idiot book taught me. My lungs are a little tight with my deep shoulder-rising inhales, but I need to unlearn this TCM horseshit if I want to enjoy eating and taking my shirt off to tan as I get older.
gently caress you, traditional Chinese everything.
** I distinctly remember him writing all of those examples.
P.S. Before my martial arts phase was over I started going to the gym several days per week during my lunch hours. I got really into nutrition and food books, stretching books, and books about how the body works because I was interested in maximizing my health and gainz. Since many of these books were based on actual science and some of them found only in the reference section, it didn't take me long to see how much garbage all those mystical ideas were from all the different martial arts books I got. People that get into martial arts often seem to believe whatever horseshit a good or legendary fighter might say, but MMA these days is taking all of that power away and I am glad for it. RIP to that MMA dude that whooped all those traditional Chinese masters.
im permabanned poster haierstomper58. i first started reading about martial arts when i was about 19. by 21 i got really obsessed with the concept of "qi" and tried to channel it constantly, until my thought process got really bizarre and i would repeat things like "taiji" and "i should breath into my stomach" in my head for hours, and my stomach would get really round, start getting really bad bloating etc, basically hiatal hernia. im now on proton pump inhibitors. i always wondered what the kind of "Chinese" style of breathing was all about; i think it's the esophagus leaking in to the stomach, what TCM theory considered to be the cause of diabetes and hypertension. i would advise all people who "get" qi to be careful because that likely means you have a predisposition to acid reflux. HALLOU.
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