4👑☸ Cattāri Ariya-saccaṃ 四聖諦
shake and bake🏃👨🍳🥧
1 - qigong gorilla's overview of optimal health
Basic model of the components of your body and good health
The purpose of this article is not to give an accurate and up to date understanding of science, but to illustrate how the fundamental workings of good health is actually pretty simple and intuitive.
The numbers cited are rough estimates, science is always changing.
There are 37 trillion cells.
There about 100 trillion good bacteria living symbiotiacally, most living within your gut, and they manufacture essential things your cells can't produce on their own. You'd die without these outsider friendly bacteria helping out.
Each cell is like a miniature version of you.
1. it needs to eat food, air, oxygen,
2. it needs to crap, eliminate waste
3. it needs garbage pick up,
4. it needs food delivery,
5. it needs heating and air conditioning.
6. it needs repair service at times from the immune system, infracture, roads and highways for delivery and pickup of cargo.
Blood circulation by the heart reaches less than 30% of the cells.
How do the other 70% of cells get their services met?
Lymph fluid, which does not get circulated by the heart pumping.
Lymph requires muscular contraction and movement from sufficient physical exercise.
And also the workings of the jhana battery, which gets charged by noble silence, celibacy, sufficient food, sleep and rest.
A fully charged jhana battery acts like a powerful network of water towers and pressure tanks, and a high power electrical system that can service all 37 trillion cells.
If you drain your jhana battery by indulging in sensuality, too much thinking, not enough meditation and rest, then your community of cells and good bacteria, many of them are going to get starved, not get enough oxygen, get ill from their garbage not getting picked up and being too cold because their heater is broken from not enough electrial power, and not enough power and working infrastructure for the immune system to send out it's doctors and maintenance workers.
If you lead a sedentary life, 70% of your 37 trillion cells are going to get shortchanged on necessary services.
Each cell is like a mini you.
You need to eat, crap, get garbage picked up, etc. (same list of services stated earlier).
You wouldn't eat one week's worth of food and crap that out in one sitting once per week would you?
You can't, you're not designed to do that.
Every cell is like a mini you, it's not designed to do that either.
You need to eat and get necessary services not only once a day, but throughout the day.
So does each mini you.
So how do they get the goods they need?
Sufficient daily exercise.
Again, remember that blood only circulates to a small percentage of your body, the other 70% of the 37 trillion mini you's need physical exercise pumping that lymph fluid and circulating qi in invisible networks of qi channels to keep the whole system humming and working properly.
What is optimal exercise?
Normally you breathe shallow, using less than 20% of your lung capacity.
If you over exercise, too intensely and/or too long, you incur injuries, you deplete your jhana battery which you need for more important spiritual pursuits.
If you under exercise, the 70% of the 37 trillion mini you's get starved and intoxicated with un-removed garbage, and cumulative damage from that compounds, making it harder to repair and rejuvenate your collective body.
optimal exercise is going to involve a full range of expression (always WASTE F.R.E.E)
(of motion, breathing, relaxation, muscle contraction, stretching, etc.)
Daily quota for optimal health is going to look something like this:
1. minimum of 30-60 minutes of elevated aerobic cardiovascular: such as slow jogging, rope-less jump roping, enough to get full deep breathing, elevated heart rate, full body light mist of sweat, not exhausted sweat pouring, heart pounding.
1b. minimum of another 60 min. of easy walking, taiji, qigong, walking in the garden, hiking, standing and walking meditation.
2. stretching: Always do #1, at least 5 min. or however long needed to get the body warm and soft. This is to prevent injury, but also to make the strecthing effective and make long lasting impact. At least 30-60min a day total, better to have many small sessions throughout the day. Better to do dynamic forms of stretching that naturally keep the body warm, soft, elastic. People with cold body types doing yoga, and holding poses too long, body will get cold making the stretching far less effective and impactful, and risking injury.
3. getting full range of muscular movement: again, start with #1, get warm and soft. You don't need a gym membership. At least 30min a day of some combination of pushups, pull ups, light dumbell work (one dumbell between 5 to 10% of your body weight is good).
4. self accupressure, self massage, tapping and slapping, probing to sense what's going on in your body. Parts where blood, qi don't circulate well, that part will feel tender, painful, weird. Parts that are in excellent health, massaging won't feel good, it will feel neutral like you could take it or leave it and you wouldn't care. If you massage or work on a spot of the body and it feels really good, it's your body trying to tell you to keep going. Foam rollers are good.
How do you know you're doing each of the 4 categories correctly?
For optimal health, if you're doing it right, you should feel endorphins, pleasure chemicals of the brain that feels the same as a mild or moderate form of first jhana. That comes from the 70% of those 37 trillion cells giving you positive feedback thanking you for meeting their service needs.
What's the secret to success?
1. You need at least a low quality first jhana level of samadhi. This is not hard. 99% of people can do this.
This gives you the sensitivity you need to do step 3 of 16aps breath meditation correctly, able to use the breath energy and tactile sensation of all 37 trillion cells of your body to probe what's going on, where it's healthy and where it has stagnant energy or blockages.
2. modulation: doing an efficient and necessary quantity of intensity of daily exercise that you need that day. Without #1, you won't know what's too little, too much, too intense, too lax, or just right.
3. if you're doing the whole daily routine right, it feels good, you look forward to it like a hungry person about to eat (that's the 70% of the 37 trillion cells talking to you, most people don't listen), you don't get tired physically or mentally while doing it. Over time you get stronger and your endurance increases, it becomes a habit as natural as breathing, eating, sleeping. And once it's ingrained as a good habit you'll have it for life. If after many months, it feels like a dreadful chore, then you're doing something wrong.
2 - What is 'Shake and Bake'?
'Shake and Bake' is the name of an exercise.
It's the most energetically efficient cardivascular exercise.
It requires no equipment.
It requires no space. You can shake standing in place or move around like slow jogging.
If there is any single exercise that is a cure all, or the main part of a cure all, this would be it.
It fixes common ailments, and really exotic meditation problems from force getting too strong hitting against blockages and tightness in qi merdian network.
3 - How to do Shake and Bake?
Normal jogging, jump roping, are good exercises if you do the form properly, totally relaxed, elastic, bouncy, and springy.
Most people don't have good form, otherwise you wouldn't see so many low back, knee, joint chronic pain from doing this exercises as people get older.
I experimented a number of years with slow jogging, and got some good ideas from that.
I also experimented some with jumping rope.
Being a taiji/qigong enthusiast, and jhana meditator, my natural instincts kicked in and discovered a way to do aerobic/cardio exercise in the absolute most efficient way.
That means using the least amount of input energy and getting the most output benefit, the most bang for the buck.
3.1 - level 1
It looks like doing jump rope without a rope
So the pace and rhythm is somewhat like this, or picture a jogger waiting at an intersection jogging in place to stay warm and loose.
Doing jump rope without a rope means you can relax way more, because there's no tension from the stress of needing to jump high enough to clear the rope, and coordinating hand, wrist, whole body movement to clear the rope on each jump.
If you're doing it right, the input energy should feel like just a little more, 10-20% more energy than walking at a moderate pace.
That relaxed.
You feel like you could do this for hours effortlessly, just like you could walk for hours.
Yet, your breathing is deep, using far more range than shallow sedentary breathing,
your heart rate is somewhat elevated,
your body is getting warm and soft and a light mist of sweat is building.
That's the baking part of 'shake and bake'.
Heat melts the 'ice' (cumulative pain, tight spots, energy blockages).
3.2 - 2nd level of refinement
Getting 5 exercises for the price of one. Instead of moving your arms in slow jogging form or coordinating jump rope form, completely let your arms and shoulders go, so they're just hanging freely getting yanked around by your lower body locomotion. If you're doing it right, you should be getting many kinds of micro stretches similar to old people doing those arm swinging exercises in a China town public park.
3.3 - 3rd level of refinement
Let your neck, shoulders, upper back go. The neck you have to have momentary restabilizing moments to keep your head level enough to maintain your balance, but let the tension go in the neck the rest of the time. So it kind of looks like a funky chicken dance with the head bobbing. You're not aiming to look a certain way (that would just create tension), it's just how your lower body locomotion of the legs is going to affect your upper body in a completely relaxed state.
3.4 - 4th level of refinement
Maintain passadhi/pacification relaxation of jhana the whole time you're doing the exercise. The only tension you should feel is one of your feet pushing off the ground. The rest of the body is doing taiji, doing at least first jhana.
I could make a video of myself doing this exercise, but no matter what anyone's skill level is, it's going to look silly. You can't tell from looking at external appearance what someone's skill level and level of relaxation is. The only test would be you doing it for many hours effortlessly without getting tired.
This is similar to 80, 90 year old taoist masters (with highly developed 4th jhana and beyond level of samadhi) being able to hike for hours in the mountains in China, at a brisk pace, up mountains, looking spry like a goat and putting 20 and 30 year olds to shame and leaving them in the dust. It's a real thing. The higher the jhana, the lighter you feel, the more energy and degree of effortlessness is possible.
3.10 - RDA: How much 'shake and bake' should I do everyday?
RDA: recommended daily amount
1 session, perhaps first thing in the morning.
20min in one session at moderate pace with slow deep breathing, light sweat, feeling really warm, soft, pliable, relaxed, not tired.
another 30-60min total, in 5-10min sessions, as needed throughout the day.
anytime parts of your body start feeling cold, or tight, uncomfortable, tired, and before doing other exercises like stretching and resistive weight training.
'shake and bake' is my way of getting RDA of optimal aerobic.
You might customize or find something better, more fun (swimming?), or more suitable for you.
But if you do the proper amount of daily cardio, you'll prevent so many problems, and gradually fix existing ones.
This can be done at any age.
By doing this exercise religiously, I was able to fix some weird exotic qi problems that famous monks and chinese doctors couldn't help me with.
If I live to be 80, 90, I'll be like one of those taoist immortals blazing along on hiking trails up the mountain effortlessly.
Don't ask me in old age why I didn's share these wondrous simple secrets with you!
I've already told many of you about this, but you look at me with disbelief and skepticism.
So now it is in writing.
Don't regret things later, take care of your health now.
4 - Why do Shake and Bake?
4.l - W.A.S. (warm and soft), raise core body temperature
4.1.1 - example fixing my carpal tunnel syndrome
Didn't know about 'shake and bake' when I had carpal tunnel
I was a programmer, and my chronic pain issues (the actual pain part) were mostly wrist pain, carpal tunnel, cold numb hands. Western medicine's solution was wear a wrist brace and give that condition a name, "renaud's syndrome". Worthless. That's when I got into yoga and qigong seriously. Neck and shoulder tension of course is a leading cause of the problems. The whole body is connected.
The exercise that I found the most helpful was the turtle neck/spine, doing that as much as every hour. I was in my early 30's when I started taking all this seriously, seeing the downward trend in health and deciding to reverse it. It took 10 years to make the renaud's syndrome, cold hands and weak nerves in the extremities get mostly fixed, but all along the way it was obvious the exercises were slowly fixing the body.
With what I know now, I probably could cut that recovery time to less than half, and that would involve a lot more cardio/aerobic exercises. Because of diet being vegetarian, more veganish, for more than half of my life, that contributed to having a body type getting cold easily.
The main exercise that would have accomplished this, cutting my recovery time by more than half, is what I call the "shake and bake". It's an easy aerobic cardio vascular exercise, takes only about 10 to 20% more energy than walking at a moderate to brisk pace.