Shiatsu & Girolamo

06/03/2024

The only consumeristic drive that is acceptable when practicing self cultivation through falsità internal arts is the anticipation of buying new clothes and shoes when chest and feet start expanding.

Thank you Joyce for the precious teaching 🙇

29/02/2024

So, as I don’t drink a lot of coffee anymore, basically one or two cups a week at most, I’m sort of more clear about the effects it has on me when I do.

Firstly I’d say that there is a major difference between drinking a shot of espresso (which I only do in Italy) and an americano (which is what I drink when abroad (where no matter how much they pour money and time into buying the beast blends and training and dressing up baristas to make coffee as slowly and overpricedly as possible, they can get it for s**t).

Espresso (or cappuccino which is an espresso with foamy milk on it) gives me a pinch of excitement, almost like when you know something you like is about to happen, like you’re about to meet an old friend you miss. I get a little hyper and restless. And my body wants to move

An americano (which in theory should be something like an espresso with hot water on it, but maybe is made differently I don’t know) has a much stronger effect on me.
Physically I feel my heart beating faster, my guts tensing a bit (toilet here I come) and my arms feel a rush of blood and get restless, my hands shake. Often I sweat a lot, especially on hands and brow.
Most interestingly I get a love feeling that reminds me of doing ecstasy or m**a. I want to contact my friends and know how they’re doing.

Then, with both drinks I get an equally weighted and diametrically opposed down. With the americano it’s the worst because it really reminds me of the downs I would get the last few times I was doing chemicals. Of course the latter were really horrible while this is but a mild imitation, but the nature of the feeling is the same, a sense of hopeless loneliness.

Now, I believe this report was purely subjective, I’m sure different people have completely different effects on them depending on what state of things the stimulant agents of coffee interact with when entering their system.
I think for example I’m feeling it so strongly in my arms at the moment because some energetic pathways in them are currently being widened (I know this from my qigong practice), and the way it messes up my emotional state has to do with my own specific nature, which I always find to be very influenced by my relation to others (everyone’s of course is, but to various degrees)

So this whole lucubration mainly served the purpose of me writing down something while coffee is doing its work on my system this morning.
For you it might just serve as a reminder of the fact that even if you’re used to drinking it every day to the point that you feel an effect only from NOT drinking it, coffee is a powerful stimulant, that impacts your nervous system as well as your circulation, and alters you in some way, getting you a little more distant from who you are. nothing inherently wrong with that, just good to be aware of it and maybe explore how it interacts with you.

(Maybe one day I’ll tell how a cup of strong Lebanese tea a few weeks ago made my blood go so fast I was afraid I was getting a heart attack)

18/01/2024

Just loving this

"Respected Girolamo Marr We hope you’re having a wonderful day ahead. We are extremely pleased to invite you to participate as a Speaker at our 2nd International Forum on Women Healthcare (WHCFORUM2024) during May 09-11, 2024 in Prague, Czech Republic, as we believe that your contribution to this field is unparalleled and a talk on this topic will be of great benefit in this meeting (...)"

😂

20/12/2023

Silver lining of sore throats

05/12/2023

Deliciously bad
Vs
Disgustingly good

The old battle

01/12/2023

So for most of this year I was somewhere doing something and I’ll still be mostly there and doing that for quite some time in the next few years (unless life disagrees).

Why i did not talk much about this on Facebook and even in real life (yeah Facebook is not real, let’s not forget) is that if I was to say that my main concerns this year were stretching and connecting the huang, sinking and mobilising the qi to turn it into jin, building and filling my lower dantian and activating the middle one, beginning to open the channels, stilling the jing, trying (failing consistently) to ignite the fire under the cauldron, stepping back with my mind and trying to get the xing to be dictated by the Yi while practicing rooster step and pi quan… I think I would have legitimately lost most of you.

But f**k it, what I do is just amazing! And I’m starting to form also a relatively articulate idea of what it actually is and what purposes it serves. And, even more importantly I know a lot of people that have much to say about it!

So with this post, aside from celebrating my survival in the first year of all this (which was not a to be taken for granted) I wanted to let you all know that beginning in march, my housemate and friend Dan and I will be hosting a podcast in which, with the help of many fantastic guests, we’ll discuss and try to make sense of the daoist internal arts (a broad term to describe the stuff we set ourselves to learn)

It may sound like a pretty niche and potentially hyper boring subject, but mind you, we have no intention whatsoever of making this any less than AMAZINGLY ENTERTAINING for you all. And when I say this you know I mean it’s going to be good.

So you’ve been alerted, more soon to come, but meanwhile begin to polish your headphones and dust off your podcasts listening machines, cause F**KYEAHPODCAAAASTTT!!!!!

20/10/2023

In arti energetiche come il qigong, il neigong o il taijiquan, il respiro non è particolarmente importante,

A livello di principianti si può sfruttare il respiro per capire un po’ di cose e per educare un po’ il corpo, ma dopo poco basta che questo semplicemente resti il più possibile tranquillo e svolga sue ovvie quanto essenziali funzioni, tipo non farci morire soffocati.

Chiunque ritenga che il respiro sia uno degli elementi principali in queste pratiche non è andato molto lontano. Oppure è andato molto lontano a livello fisico ma non a livello energetico.

Chi poi dice che “qi” può essere tradotto come “respiro” non ha idea di cosa sia il qi in queste arti.

Dico tutto questo perché mi capita spesso di leggere post scritti da persone che dovrebbero in teoria saperlo e invece non lo sanno e fanno grandi discorsi sul respiro. Siccome io non sono titolato nè ho esperienza sufficiente per poterglielo scrivere nei commenti (verrei solo smerdato), lo dico solo qui nel mio spazietto dove non do fastidio a nessuno.

22/04/2023

Finalmente e con mia grande sorpresa è uscito in italiano uno dei libri, forse il più importante, del mio maestro
Non sto a fare troppe descrizioni, ma per chiunque voglia capire qualcosa di come funziona il processo di creazione e utilizzo dell’energia interna del neigong, è un testo spaziale.

Sono contentissimo sia uscito perché permetterà a molte persone di avvicinarsi a questi soggetti abbastanza sconosciuti e attraverso una fonte autorevolissima.

Spero solo che la traduzione non sia br**ta quanto la copertina.

06/04/2023

The teaching of the day for me was

“don’t rest Girolamo, resting is bad for the soul”

Now, taken out of context it may sound like a bit of a di***sh thing to say, especially in times where people are so overworked and so stressed.

But in the context of spiritual cultivation, it can make a lot of sense.

When we set ourselves to a difficult task, one that will push us to our limit, it is only by throwing ourselves in it at full force that we can go beyond that limit.

Rest has to be the last resource, only considered when all our energy and will has been exhausted in our effort.

The “need to rest” must not become an excuse not to do what we set ourselves to do in our best capacity.

And the mention of “soul” is very literal I think. The sacred within us doesn’t resonate with us unnecessarily giving up.

I’ve always been a master at finding excuses, “the need to rest” has been one.

When I was told not to rest today I found the energy to go on with my training. Which means, very plainly, that I didn’t really need to rest that much (though I was a disgusting pool of sweat and panting)
I definitely had a little more in me.

🙏

01/04/2023

I mean, if Tom Waits was secretly a Vietnamese traditional herbal doctor …right?

20/03/2023

Che meraviglia

🌼🌼 Il prossimo weekend scoprite lo shiatsu con noi al GREEN MARKET festival!🌼🌼🌼

Vi aspettiamo il 18 e 19 marzo alla Città dell'altra economia a testaccio con dimostrazioni di shiatsu da operatori certificati.

20/03/2023

“The sun is always waiting behind the clouds”

…ok, but also somewhere behind the sun there is a black hole

Behind the black hole… well there is actually no behind the black hole; the concept of “behind” stops existing.

Behind “behind” there is “is not” and “is” at the same time

“I” is not there to see what is and what is not….

….I mean, it’s a mindf**k, let’s just not obsess too much about things, feelings and ideas and this and that which are “behind”, let’s not dwell too long in the realm of the potential, of the wishful.

We have no control and no real knowledge of that.

We only have the very limited, utterly insufficient tool of mental projection to deal with that.

We can only… we can only really mentally project what “we would be doing” if “that would be happening”… Which is prettyyy prettyy useless.

We are instead very well equipped to deal with what is in front of us in the present time.

We can and we should just be content with that and appreciative of how we can transform and improve ourselves in relation to it.

Even when what’s there is pretty s**tty and painful (or especially when it is so) it has transformative potential for us.

We can see ourselves in it, we can interact with it , we can learn from it and we can grow stronger and more robust.

Bottom line:
Stick with the clouds and f**k the sun sometimes

(says the albino)

17/03/2023

URGENTE - cerco una stanza comoda o un appartamento in affitto a un prezzo civile a Roma per una coppia di amici dal 29 marzo mattina al 2 aprile.
Il più possibile vicino al municipio XII (Gregorio settimo - trionfale)
Scrivetemi in privato e grazie mille!

12/03/2023

Because not everyone likes the Mediterranean and it’s ok.

This is a story of Samuil. For the past 20 years, Samuil has chosen to live far away from civilization, together with bears and wolves, in one of the harshes...

10/03/2023

If you are unhappy, stressed, depressed, don’t forget how important the ‘basic’ things are like; regulating your breathing, moving your physical body and eat...

10/03/2023

Splendid and simple practice.

If you are unhappy, stressed, depressed, don’t forget how important the ‘basic’ things are like; regulating your breathing, moving your physical body and eat...

08/03/2023

Martial arts should not be the study of how to win a physical conflict, but the study of ourselves in relation to any kind of conflict.

By placing us over and over in a situation of controlled and yet extreme conflict, they should aim at making us capable of not losing ourselves in it.

This is what makes these “arts”. The fact that they are a tool of self-cultivation.

Winning the opponent is irrelevant in real martial arts, the opponent serves only as a stress against which one is confronted, learning to keep the mind stable in the body, to release the tension, to act in the most suitable way

Thanks to such training, when one in daily life faces any given conflict (which is probably going to be less stressful than someone trying to kick your mouth) that will not disempower them. One will never react in “fight or flight” mode, one will not neglect their duties because of laziness, or anger or sadness, because one will always be able to separate themselves from that conflict and act the right way.

Martial arts are not a good way to learn to beat people up, there are techniques for doing exactly that.
People that spend their whole time learning how to beat someone else up in a cage will be much better at doing that than someone who trains to reinforce their self (in order to be able to detach from it in later stages of spiritual practice). So the bloodthirsty manchildren who want that kind of teaching, should stay away from traditional martial arts (or maybe they should learn them and figure out that bearing people up in cages is…not clever let’s say)

Of course this I only begin to understand thanks to infusions of knowledge offered by that excellent guy to whom I’m extremely thankful.

01/03/2023

These are from something called “Girolamo Marri plays his favourite record” back in 2014 or ‘15.
The taiji moves I did were SO wrong that they make my taiji now look pretty decent by comparison.

Anyway, sometimes I’m a funny motherf**ker, though it’s really surprising no one ever punched me in the face.

Also I never actually played that record. Or maybe I played it and it was empty…mah