Winter Health Tips from Martial Arts

Pancha Tanmantra is an ancient Indonesian healing martial art that Ratu brought to the west. The underlying Dharma of martial arts, and especially Pancha, is it is practice in meditation where instead of purely focusing on one's breath, one's awareness and mindfulness is focused on each punch, kick or block as well. 

Pancha Tanmantra is a powerful method to realise the First Noble Truth, (that all of us are in suffering) by using one's direct experience of pain in one's body; it's very difficult to convince yourself that you are not suffering when standing in horse stance for 45 minutes! In the end you learn to develop a relationship with your pain like an irritating work colleague, no longer trying to avoid pain but embracing it as a fact of life and learning to deal with it.

Since Pancha is a healing art, it is rooted in Traditional Chinese Medicine Theory. We were given notes on how to heal one's body and maintain health. As a First Aider I have used many acupuncture points learned from Pancha to alleviate pain in the absence of drugs until medical help has arrived, so I know it works!

I asked my housemate, Dr Chris Eddy (TCM), if I could post some of his articles on health. Both us were students of Ratu's. I feel privileged to not only have been the recipient of his friendship and care, but to share in his  knowledge from his passion for healing.

Winter in Chinese Medicine is a time for storage, when grains and produce of the previous season’s harvest were conserved for the cold months to come. As the seasons change, so too do our bodies adapt to the cold and conserve its own "grains" and energies.

Winter is a time of rest, reduced activity, introspection and staying indoors. However it is still important to keep our bodies moving to stay limber and maintain a healthy circulation. Otherwise muscles can cramp, joints become stiff and our health will suffer.

Three Tips For Staying Warm & Strong

Susceptibility to illness is increased in winter as your body struggles to generate and maintain heat to compensate for the external cold. In Chinese Medicine our Wei Qi (immunity) fights off colds and flus. Wei Qi, is classified in TCM as a warm energy that circulates on the surface of the body to protect us from the invasion of illness. Wei Qi is especially nourished from the warmth of the stomach, which is why diet is so important in winter.

Tip 1: Keep Warm: This seems obvious but I have many young patients who go out wearing as little as possible and wonder why their health suffers! Externally your back, chest and abdomen should be kept warm and covered to keep the Qi and blood circulating during the winter months. 

Tip 2: Sleep: The ancient classic Chinese Medical text Nei Jing (inner cannon) advises that in winter it is better to go to sleep early and rise late when the sun’s rays have warmed the earth for optimum health.

Tip 3: Eating Well & Winter Foods: Internal warmth is also important in winter. It strengthens the function of our organs to support a healthy immune system. TCM aims to balance disharmonies. Consequently eating certain foods with the appropriate properties, according to the seasons will encourage a balanced body. 

The basic properties of food are: nourishing/tonifying, hot/cold, pungent, sweet, purgative and neutral. 

The cold nature of winter means raw and cold foods should be taken cautiously. It is best to eat warm cooked meals, drink warm drinks rather than cold, and alcohol in moderation can also be beneficial during the winter months. 

Drinking warm water regularly may also aid to moisten the mucosa of the upper respiratory tract, making it easier to expectorate lingering phlegm if you have a cold or flu.

Best Winter Foods

Root vegetables: In winter the energy of the planet has returned to the roots of plants & the earth to regenerate. Turnips, potato, beets, carrots, burdock, daikon, sweet potato, parsnip and other root crops are great nourishing veggies for winter soups like the one below. 

Herbs: Onions, scallion, garlic, and ginger root will all stimulate digestion and prevent colds. Also add mild spices like turmeric, fenugreek, fennel, coriander, cumin, white and black pepper, cinnamon, clove, and nutmeg.

Winter Warmer Recipe

1 can of red kidney beans
½ sweet potato
3 cups of water
1 onion
1-2 cloves of garlic
1 tablespoon of dark miso paste
1 carrot
100g tomato paste
Sesame oil
1 Teaspoon sea salt
1 Teaspoon diced ginger
½ Teaspoon each of cumin, coriander & fennel

General Eating Advice

Chew Your Food: Sounds simple, but don’t forget to chew to a paste. Your stomach doesn’t have teeth!

Food Portions: The Chinese have a saying, "Eat like a king in the morning, like a prince in the afternoon, and like a pauper at night". 

It's also best to eat to only eat until you are 75% full; this gives the qi a chance to keep moving.

Best time: Between 7am & 11am is the best time to eat & gain maximum energy from your food. On the Chinese body clock, this is the time the spleen and stomach are most active. Eat like a king during this time! 

Don’t eat too late or just before bed.

Emotion: Don’t eat while emotional. Relax and breathe when you eat. Don’t watch TV, read or talk too much whilst eating. Simply relax and enjoy your meal.

Part I: What is Buddhism and Enlightenment?

A friend of mine once asked, "Do Buddhist's believe in God?" I replied, "Well, yes & no", and smiled when I recognised the same confusion on his face that I had once worn when I first began to study Buddhism. I began to tell him what my personal views were on the subject. 

Buddhism is what are known as the teachings of Lord Buddha based on the Four Noble Truths. The goal of Buddhism is to "awaken" and become free from suffering. Meditation is the vehicle. The teachings are the path, and compassion and loving kindness is the practice.  Buddhism is not about becoming a "good" in a religious sense, but a compassionate person truthful to one's heart. It is not based on beliefs or religious dogma, but on direct experience since beliefs may not be rooted in reality; I have a friend who has met "Jesus" and "Elvis" at the Seven-Eleven. 

Beliefs are fabricated by the thinking mind influenced by what you are taught and what you have experienced. If your experiences are clouded by your beliefs and your beliefs are distorted, then what you experience is not necessarily true. 

Children in many ways are more "enlightened" than we are. They experience their lives directly and are more honest to their hearts. If they are sad, they cry. If they are angry, they throw a tantrum. We teach them to hide their feelings and judge some emotions as being "bad". But is how you feel the truth? 

Only your heart knows. The Buddhist path could be seen as the journey towards one heart, the heart of the Buddha. To make the journey means means peeling back the layers of one's beliefs, the sum parts of your "ego" like an onion. It's a continuous process. Each new layer reveals a deeper truth. This is the journey towards Enlightenment. The map the practitioner must traverse is to see the limitations of the thinking mind, understand the nature of one's emotions and to reveal the feeling that resides beneath it. 

Enlightenment happens in sudden flashes of insight into yourself, and the true nature of reality. It's not a solid experience. (At least that's where I am at at the moment). Like in meditation, it can't be forced. These flashes of insight only happen when the "ego" let's go of ideas of accomplishing something but simply being.

The "ego" is a fabrication of the thinking mind. It doesn't exist. If you ask yourself, "who am I?", you can recite a list of your personal details, your life experiences and your likes and dislikes. But if you were involved in a car accident, lost your memory and couldn't remember your name or your life history for example, does that mean you cease to exist!? Have you ever had dreams whilst you slept where you have seen yourself interacting with others in situations in your dream world? Who is this "person" watching you?! 

That watcher is you; the real you, your intuitive awareness - your own heart. The practice of meditation is bring your (thinking) mind back home to the blissful radiance of your own heart, the heart that resides in all of us unstained by suffering.

The mind in Western thought resides in the head. In the East the mind resides in the heart. Enlightenment is the process of awakening one's heart. 

To me this is God; to become one with one's heart, the heart of the Buddha. Perhaps this is what Christ meant when he said the "Temple of God is within you". God cannot be experienced through indoctrination or force. Our hearts can sense whether it is truth or not.

One of the reasons Buddhists are often accused of agnosticism is this misunderstanding that they do not believe in God. From a Buddhist perspective, one could argue that God exists, or one could argue that He is a fabrication of the mind based on the fear of death and the unknown. Everything is a fabrication of the mind; but which mind - the heart or the head? The truth is no one can prove His/Her existence.

So the journey begins with what can I be sure does exist? Let's start with "me" and this physical body that experiences sensations through "my" senses. Then we learn to meditate. As we practice more and more and receive the guidance of our precious masters, we begin to sense something other than who we think we are. We begin to "awaken" to the fact that this "I", "me", "mine" and "other (person)" is an illusion fabricated by our thinking mind.  We come to identify with the watcher within us and question our beliefs by observing our thoughts, emotions and feelings. We may think "I am a "bad" person" - but "who" is this person you are talking about? Is it the truth?

A personal aphorism that I use to gauge the "truth" from Ratu is: 

"If one person says something about you, whether positive or negative, you can dismiss it; if two say the same thing about you, take note; if three people say the same thing about you, it's the truth!"

Then you either need to accept their compliment, or you may need to do some work on yourself to change!

Click on these sites I found on YouTube on the subject of Enlightenment.

Congee & Compassion

- Comfort Food For Colds

Like most practitioners who have ever completed a rice retreat, I've vowed I would never ever touch another grain of rice again. However, if I've been sick with a cold, flu or digestive problems, I've always come back to cooking this Asian favourite.

Congee is basically a rice porridge served throughout Asia. In the Philippines it is often served to the sick and elderly. It's our version of chicken soup. Congee can either be sweet or savoury, and in China it's eaten sometimes three times a day. In fact in TCM diet therapy, congee is highly recommended as a great way to start the day as it is easily digested and gives you warmth and energy.

Maintaining one's health is important in the spiritual path and practitioners are encouraged to wish for a long life for themselves in order to help others and give one a greater opportunity to attain Enlightenment in a single lifetime.

This recipe is especially good in spring, and autumn in particular, when one's body is more prone to illness as it tries to balance itself from the changeable weather conditions during these seasons. This particular version of "congee" is a variation my mother's Lugao recipe that I used to cook for Ratu when he was ill. (But I could never quite get it to taste as good as my Mum's. Must be a parent's love that I'm missing!)

Lúgao (Filipino Style Congee)

Ingredients

Rice (Medium grain, about 1/2 - 1 cup - you don't need a lot!)
Chicken pieces* (wings, thighs, shredded cooked chicken meat)
Chicken / Vegetable Stock
Water
Ginger (sliced into matchstick slivers - ginger is a great appetite stimulant)
Salt and Pepper

* Traditionally mum used a chicken carcass, chicken necks, gizzards, liver, etc - basically anything that was in the fridge.

Sauce & Garnish

Spring onions / Coriander (diced)
Dried shallots
Fish sauce / patis (Squid Brand)
Lemon / calamansi


Method

Here's a great preparation tip before you start: Place the chicken pieces in a colander and pour some boiling water through it. This washes away the fat and scum that you would normally have to skim when making a broth.

Place the chicken pieces in a full pot of water and bring to a boil.

Add the rice, a few teaspoons of stock and the ginger matchstick slivers.

Lower the heat and briskly simmer till the rice is soft and chicken almost falls off the bone, which is when the Lugao is ready. It should be almost soupy in consistency, and not thick and glutinous like a Chinese congee.

When it's ready, ladle into a bowl and flavour with a few drops of fish sauce, a squeeze of lemon juice, and salt and pepper to taste.

Garnish with dried shallots and diced spring onions and serve. Easy!

Serves: 6


 To Make a Basic Chinese Style Congee

Put the rice and water into a saucepan, but wash the rice first to remove any excess starch and prevent glugginess before putting on the stove. For that translucent finish to the rice, the Chinese massage salt into the rice during this process and allow it to sit for a while before rinsing and cooking it.

Bring the rice and water quickly to the boil.

Add stock, and salt and pepper.

Stir, then reduce heat but allow the rice to remain at a brisk simmer. Place a lid on the saucepan, slightly open so the congee doesn't bubble up and spill over. The slower you simmer the rice, the softer and more glutinous it becomes.

In 45 - 50 minutes the congee should be ready.

Note: A quick way to make congee is to use leftover cooked white rice, add water or stock, the ginger strips and cover and simmer about 15 minutes or until it is a gruel.


The Flavour

In a separate pan cook some chicken/pork mince in a little oil and garlic.

When the conjee is ready, add the the meat and stir.

Serve and garnish as above, with lemon and fish sauce, or the old standard, soy sauce.

Receiving As An Act of Compassion

Ratu once shared his experience of looking after his own root Lama, Banthe Giri, and what a great privilege it was for him to be able to serve him. In allowing me to look after him in my own small way through cooking, I now understand what he meant. The experience taught me the joy of being able to receive love and care through his own dignified example.

No one likes being sick and feeling like a burden to others. At least that was how I always felt when I was ill. Consequently I was a terrible patient, refusing help when I most needed it, and angry that I was weak and helpless. I never fully appreciated the joy that comes when someone you love allows you to look after them. In a sense it's an act of complete trust and surrender. How many people can you truly say are completely vulnerable with you with the innocence of a child?

To completely surrender takes immense courage and faith in the Buddha Nature in all of us. I realised from looking after Ratu that an aspect of my mind when I was ill is that I lacked genuine appreciation for the care someone showed towards me. I would tell myself, "Well, if the roles were reversed, I would do it for them too!" Although that was true, to truly surrender is to accept wholeheartedly that you need someone, that all of us need each other from a direct experience of the First Noble Truth. Sickness, old age and death is the only future any of us can look forward to, and to be able to share our pain with each other during our lives - to loose gracefully by dropping our wrong views, is the whole purpose of life.

Ratu, who was also a Grandmaster in the ancient healing martial art of Pancha Tanmantra, often said, what are we trying to gain by accruing more wealth, more love, more sex and more security? The truth is we've already won by being born in this precious human body that experiences both pain and joy simply because it is impermanent. Even the gods in the god realm are envious of these experiences because they are made of light. They can't touch each other, feel pain or embrace their suffering in the knowledge that they will one day die.

This is the sacred outlook of the spiritual warrior. If we look death in the face, and are already grateful for winning life, we live our lives more beautifully in treasuring each precious moment. Even our pain becomes beautiful since when we are dead, we would never be able to experience this aspect of life.

"Life is precious. Love is its diamond.
With the strength of a tiger to embody this jewel is to be free from one's selfishness"

- H.E. Prince Ratu Pandji Pandita

The Lunar Effect

Astrologists believe that the alignment of the planets can govern our destinies. If that were completely true, enlightenment would not be possible in one lifetime. However, I do believe the dance of the cosmos can influence our character and affect our emotions. Our beautiful planet is made up of approximately 70% water. Our bodies contain approximately the same percentage in fluids. If the moon has the power to affect the planet’s tides then it seems completely plausible that it can influence a person’s “water”, which in many traditions is a symbol of emotions.

Balinese New Moon Ceremony on the Beach

Yesterday was the beginning of a New Moon, an auspicious time for Buddhists and Hindus alike. It is said the Buddha was born, attained enlightenment and died on the Full Moon. Interestingly, every time I have felt agitated for no apparent reason, I ask myself where the moon is situated in the heavens and inevitably it's either a few days before or after a New or Full Moon. Then I simply relax to how I'm feeling to check if I'm really avoiding something within myself, or the moon's pull is affecting my emotions.

The moon's phases can greatly effect our emotions. Therefore it's important to be aware of her movements as she passes through the heavens.

In practicing meditation external forces can affect your internal balance if you are unaware. The same can be said about how you are feeling can affect the way you perceive the world. This is an example of the essence of the Second Noble Truth - that all suffering arises from one's mind. On a basic level, if it's too hot, we can become irritable. Conversely, if we are too cold we can feel depressed. The lunar phases can also affect the way we feel.

In the Balinese tradition, we celebrate the Full and Dark of the Moon by performing a puja, a ceremony where we come together as a community to meditate and make offerings to the Buddha, or divinity within us. It's a time to calm the mind, let go of problems and reflect on the kindness of others. It's also a time to celebrate the joy of being alive.

The puja offerings take the form of prostrations, chanting and physical objects like incense, candles, flowers, food and money. Each of these things have a symbolic meaning, which I hope to cover in future posts.

How To Use The Moon's Phases In Your Daily Life.

New Moon

Make a habit of asking for what you want with the birth of a new moon. Anything initiated on the new moon will grow rapidly, whether in business, relationships, and creative ventures. Therefore it is an opportune time for making wishes and new beginnings. Start that diet, quit smoking,  or begin that new project the day after the new moon.

First Quarter

This is a time of fertility & growth. Conception is easier during this period. Medically people bleed less. Gardeners use this period to sow seeds and plant new seedlings.

Full Moon

This is a period when emotions are highest and psychic energy reaches its peak. People are more agitated, aggressive and tend to drink more during this time. Insomnia is also more prevalent.

In Balinese culture, the people are encouraged to abstain from sexual intercourse during this period.

It’s a good time to plan the launching of creative, social or dramatic endeavours, which play on the emotions.

If you want to be successful in completing a diet, start the day after the full moon.

Last Quarter

The last quarter is a great time for letting go of emotions, old hurt and bad habits, and a good time to get your life in order in preparation for the new moon.

It is also period for looking after ourselves.

Gardeners use this time to weed and cull, as it is a perfect time to retard the growth of something. In South East Asia hardwood trees are never cut down during this lunar phase because sap rises attracting wood boring Deathwatch beetles.