Barefoot Doctor Foundation

Here’s another text from our archives:

Transmute stress into excitement now

I was working (doing some coaching) with a man a couple of days ago, a very successful showbiz character complaining of stress and a sensation of discomfort in the liver. Turned out he helped a friend who was dying of liver cancer a few years ago, sat with him while he died and so on and ever since then has been experiencing the liver discomfort whenever stressed.

I pointed out and got him to see how he was generating the sensation himself in a vaguely copycat way, because it was precisely this feeling that made him feel most alive. Once he acknowledged this and owned it, the sensation dispersed.

Check what you’re feeling in your belly right now. That underlying tension there is not being visited upon you by aliens – it’s you generating that because that’s what makes you feel alive right now.

Once you acknowledge and own it, you’ll notice it disperses and transforms into excitement instead.

The more frequently you engage in this alchemical procedure the healthier you’ll become.

I wish you glowing health and a sense of everything being possible today.

Love, D

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Here’s another text from our archives:

Accepting where you are

What happens if we all get enlightened – what happens if we all achieve the state of peace and abundance we all seek – what will we occupy our minds with then? Could we live without dissatisfaction biting at the heels of our minds at all times? Would we actually be happy being happy?

These are obviously merely rhetorical questions.

Levels of peace and abundance are relative and constantly in flux, and require ongoing attention and adjustment: there is no perfect state other than the one you’re already in, which includes the imperfection of dissatisfaction.

At least start or cut into the process by loving where, what and how it is and you are at this precise moment.

Stop holding your breath and let yourself flow with what is today – see where the adventure takes you. It’s all subjective and internal anyway.

And while it’s all going on, while you drag yourself variously smoothly or kicking and screaming through the next 24 hour period, what’s actually happening is a high-speed journey through space, which based on the actual speed of the earth’s orbit of the sun, let alone the speed the sun is orbiting the galaxy and the speed the galaxy is moving through space, will amount to approximately 1,386,000 miles, compared to which the details of daily life, along with all the fluctuating states of mind, are merely trivial.

I wish you steadiness, confidence, perspective and enjoyment today.

Love, Doc

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How out of control are you willing to let it go before it finds its level and resolution?

How much are you willing to let the Great Flow determine how things work out even if that means – and it usually does – you surrendering all sense of rational control and allowing yourself to be bumped about like a pinball bouncing off the rubber stays in order to find your way to where you’re meant to be?

How much are you willing to trust reality to sort itself?

Because once you’ve set your intention to manifest any particular state of being, have seen it, felt, it, heard it and smelt it as if it’s already a fact, hence instituting the appropriate magnetic resonance, the rest – all the details – do actually fall into place of themselves. Harmony reigns supreme.

However getting there – from the moment of setting the intention and letting go, till the moment the result manifests, there’s inevitably a phase wherein everything goes absolutely topsy turvy and you wonder if you’re not just being irresponsible not grabbing control and forcing things back into shape.

As a seasoned Tao-follower, I can only say learning to fear less and love more these phases of intense disorientation and dishevelment, learning to let yourself be bounced around more without trying to intervene and of course learning to reduce the shock factor for others involved as the apparent chaos erupts before the new picture settles into shape – that bit’s not always so easy but we learn to get smoother with it over time – it's the only way.

But that’s if you like the notion of wu wei. If you’re a control lover, this isn’t the way at all of course.

I’d never try and influence you. Your approach is your business entirely.

However I can report, that if it’s intensity of experience you want, if it’s a face-to-face relationship with the Tao as your dancing partner that grabs your fancy, then this letting go to the bounce is the only way and the results are nothing short of astounding.

It’s like transforming your whole life into an extreme sport.

Best antidote to boredom and treadmill-trance I’ve ever found at least.

I wish you a proper let go and bounce today that arrives you at the most unexpected and delightful destination ere you lay your head to rest tonight.

Love, B

Negotiating the daily challenge of human life

I was mentioning the use of the phrase ‘holding it all together’, and explaining how this belies a spurious sub-template to the description of what’s happening to a person, which begs the question, then how do you gather yourself into a workable enough unit to be able to negotiate the daily challenge of human life to come out of it ahead?

This of course is central to Taoist practice – the art of gathering oneself unto oneself, of rallying around the central core of the being, because once organized internally around your true core, you’re like a wobbly doll with a rounded, weighted but not saggy bottom, so no matter how hard life pushes you, no matter how far you appear to fall over, you inevitably instantly swing round and right yourself again.

The trick in it is to find that rounded, weighted bottom within.

It’s actually a complex mechanism involving the entire spinal column.

Obviously the pelvic floor, pelvic bones, sacrum form the rounded bottom bit but rounded bottoms do not just float in space – they require structure and a reason to be, viz the spine and all that hangs off it (i.e. you).

The spine (as you now, forgive me stating the obvious), is the physical core of your being – you can’t go any deeper without starting to come out the other side.

Rather than let this input be just theoretical, take a moment while sitting/standing/crouching/walking/whatevering here, to feel your spine from the inside as it were.

Push yourself back into your kidneys a bit and push the back of your head back a bit and you’ll feel it easily enough.

We’re now about to do something rather powerful, so brace and ready yourself.

Picture a cylinder with a diameter about the same as a watermelon (but not spherical: cylindrical) on the vertical (not horizontal) axis, wrapped around your entire spinal column (not just a bit of it) – see it like some rare amorphous substance a bit like the surface of one of the outer planets, turning slowly round (and round) your spine in a counterclockwise direction.

Do nothing else but this for a bit now.

And presently you’ll start feeling an actual visceral sensation of something rotating round your spine.

Stay with it and mentally imbue the process with the power to clear your inner sphere-of-being of all dross and impurity.

Now let that continue rotating on its own, while you next focus on exactly the same sort of cylinder rotating in exactly the same place as the first one but in a clockwise direction. That’s why they have to be made of something amorphous – anything harder would present a nightmare of engineering design.

Imbue the clockwise cylinder with the power to draw all healthy, helpful elements and qualities to be gathered more and more powerfully unto you as the cylinder continues to rotate.

Now let that cylinder continue doing that on its own and focus on dropping the weight of the head and torso into the pelvic floor.

Extend the spine upwards towards the top of the sky while you do that so you don’t slump over.

Penultimately, draw yourself further into your back with your mind retracted into the very back of your head and gaze out from there instead (of from from the front).

Finally, concentrate on a point one plumb’s distance down from the belly button and a one medium sized orange’s distance from the belly button rearwards – one medium sized orange’s distance more inside towards your spine.

Post-finally, open your heart – lift the breastbone and allow the chest to expand and your love to flow more freely, and your breath to flow more freely – and Bob’s your uncle and Fanny’s your a’firkin.

May this serve you full well, dear reader, and your weekend be a thing of bliss,

love, Barefoot

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A reframe game

Here’s a game for bold people.

Suppose you could choose your moment of death – I’m not talking about su***de – I mean choosing at the deepest level the exact moment you’d die of whatever cause. I’m not saying you can. I’m not saying you can’t. I’m suggesting it as an experimental existential stance, something to play with for the day and see what happens in terms of perspective shifts and internal power level changes one way or the other. I’m suggesting playing the role of crazy alchemist, the sorcerer of your own life.

Though probably for the sake of being responsible, I must warn that if you’ve a history of mental instability, it might be best to skip this whole notion. If in doubt, of course, consult your trusty doctor or medical practitioner, who’ll probably think you’re totally insane for asking and have you sectioned or put on anti-depressants or antibiotics anyway.

But assuming you’re a bold, relatively mentally stable person, here’s what to do. Assume you have the power to choose your own moment of death. Decide when it will be. Give yourself the option of changing your mind if you want afterwards.

Then once you’ve determined when it will be, again reminding yourself this is just a game and in itself has no intrinsic truth or otherwise, thereby eschewing superstitious tendencies, picture yourself going, preferably free of pain, leaving your body graciously and easily with a smile on your original face as you cross through into whatever awaits on the other side, your consciousness fully intact and your spirit radiant with joy no matter what: joy for having tasted the greatest miracle we know (life on earth as a human) and joy for being about to taste whatever comes after, even though you have no clue what it might be.

Then spend a moment or two doing the impossible: imagining a world without you in it, and as you catch the odd glimpse or two, bless that world and everyone in it with the same peace and joy you’re feeling yourself, by way of your bequest and ultimate contribution.

Coming back to the present again afterwards, give thanks for being alive and for all the wonderful people, experiences, things and possibilities your world has to offer and adjust the projected moment of death if needs be.

However, to preclude an attack of deluded, existential megalomania and possible consequent psychospiritual dishevelment, remind yourself vehemently that, as far as we can validly say, only the Tao knows when you’ll die and then surrender in grace to not knowing when that will be, surrender in grace to being alive.

May you live long and prosper.