A friend of mine has been taking "Tibetan/Buddhist" yoga for a number of years.

Her instructor right now is pretty hardcore. Anyway, aparantly he has been withholding higher level instruction from her because she refuses to follow a strictly vegetarian diet. Not only that but this guy goes to great lengths to follow a very traditional diet. He lived in india for years and aparantly tries to keep his body alkaline through a huge regiment of herbs that he grows himself.

My question and hers also I guess is: "Is it neccessary to follow such a strict diet in order to practice these higher level yoga stuff?"

I can understand his peroggative for withholding it. He is the teacher and its probably how he learned it. But theres also aparantly a bunch of oaths and whatnot he makes his students swear before he will show them high level practices so that they won't show anyone else and whatnot.

I dunno. What do you all think?

Thanks,
Charles

I think most such "secrets" are a way of controlling the people foolish enough to want to study with the supposed holder of the "secrets".

A few people are desperate to wield power; unfortunately, even more people are searching just as desperately to be led. They usually end up being exploited in some way.

What is the name of this Tibetan Yoga and who is the main teacher of that system?

Michael, I definately agree. These "secret" practices ect ect have me worried and all. I definately see it as a type of control. But then again this guy IS hardcore. Moreso than I have heard of many individuals.

It seems like she has recieved a majority of the training he can offer but that there are just a few practices he refuses to show her because of her diet. He says it would be dangerous. I can see how from a traditional view it could be "dangerous" but I also think its possible these traditional views ARE ways that teachers controlled students back in the day.

Stan, I won't be naming names yet as I don't know the entire story yet. I am interested in the class though and told her I would attend this wednesday so I will try and update you all on anything new I learn.

Yoga has typically not interested me, but when she started talking about how he is really big into taoism and whatnot It perked my interest (Especially after all the B. K. Frantzis readings I have been doing on his Water Method of Meditaion).

Anyways I am going to give it a whirl this week.

Hi Charles,

The teacher is probably just passing on the art as he learned it in India. Real yoga, not the stretching yoga or power yoga popular in America, has a whole lot of spiritual and ethical components. I would not be suprised at all to find that a traditional teacher requires anyone wanting to become an advanced student/disciple to swear oaths of behavior and loyalty, as well as maintain a strict diet. It is just one of those things. If your friend wants to go all the way with the Yoga she has to do what is necessary. If not tell her to take up Baguazhang instead

"If not tell her to take up Baguazhang instead"

And start eating meat.

She eats lots of meat. thats her problem

Girls who love meat are never a problem!

Girls who love meat will often complain if you try to feed them sausage that is under-sized or past its "sell-by date".

I've watched her suck down 2 footlongs in a 45 second span. Shes a pro.

Well I'm glad you've not named names. That would be advertising.

"I've watched her suck down 2 footlongs in a 45 second span. Shes a pro."

Marry her now! Wait, on second thought, don't. After marriage that all stops. :-(

Greetings all! I would like to know if anyone is familiar with a gentleman by the name of master Wei Zhong Tang of Damo kung fu academy in Pasadena, California. He teaches Xingyi, Bagua etc...
Any information that you are able to provide, will be very much appreciated. Thank you very much.

Sheesh, talk about being "off-topic", Mr. Mike E. ...

The rest of us were having a deep conversation on women and various cooked meats!

Hi everyone! That was funny Michael Andre.
My apologies for being "off topic" Here I am
talking about a martial arts related subject, instead women and meats. Take care everybody!

No problem, Mike E. Just remember to keep your priorities straight in the future.

Quick Update (I actually have gotten into a similar discussion at another board about this also):

The yoga class I just attended was extremely similar to the warmup streching we do in my XY class everyday.

In fact I would go so far as to say that in my XY class we work out far more "points" of the body than we did in the yoga class. Now the Yoga class is much more concerned with being completely relaxes, doing everything 3x, and holding it for much longer.

I was very satisfied with holding the stretches and doing "sets" of them. In XY class we really blast through all the points of the body. Pat the head, rotate the neck, shoulders, swing the arms, 3 different waist movements, spinal turn, knees, angles, elbows, wrists,. Then our pushups have incorporated the same exact stretch we did in Yoga. Basically you just roll yourself up and hold that position in yoga, but in my XY class we roll up and then swing back to complete the pushup. We also do about 40-50 pushups per class while in the yoga you only did 3 reps of this stetch and held it for say 10-15 seconds each. And then we end with lower body leg stretching, and all the leg stretches we did in yoga were the exact same ones we do in xy class.

Now I guess there are different kinds of yoga (especially from what I have picked up from reading over frantzis' books, and he definately poo poos most of them as being external, tense, and delving in the fire method of toaist meditation or whatever). This is offered as "tibetan/buddhist" yoga (The teacher wasn't there so one of the senior students had to lead class, I will attend next week to get a chance to train with the actual teacher)? Either way it was very similar to what we do in XY every day. The class also ends with about 10-15 mintues of just seated meditation.

I am not to into the whole yoga culture but I respect the stretching and opening of the body you get out of it. And I definately didn't feel like it made my XY workout worse. In fact it was quite the opposite....It really juiced me up for class.

you call that a "quick" update?

Quick update using "Yoga" method. :-)

RE: Tang Wei Zhong.
I am currently taking classes with him and helping with translation. If you are still looking for information, email me at taiwandan at yahoo.com
(I don't like too much spam so I speel out the @ in the email so bots don't pick me up).
Cheers,
Dan.