Author Archives: GracefulRock

Dosha Types

I have been determined to be Pitta-Vata type, according to the old Ayurvedic philosophy. The main qualities of Pitta type is strong-willed, determination, aggressive, angry and jealousy. The main qualities of Vata type is restless, impatient, whimsical and fickle.

http://hubpages.com/hub/The_Best_Diet_For_Pitta_Dosha_Type

Ayurveda makes total sense because it’s a body-mind approach.

I live in the era of saturation, which aggravate my expansive tendency — I’m always trying to exhaust the entire spectrum and ended up being exhausted.

The fear for, and deliberate avoidance of, selection and discrimination, is one type of mental laziness.

Sakitini/Young Thing

Two ways to apply for a Vietnamese visa — one is to line up in front of the Vietnamese consulate the other is much simpler and easier — apply on line and get your visa upon arrival. My indecision is completely hereditary, or more accurately, one clear parental imprint. Mom always prepared six pencils for me before every exam just in case — see the link?

Had a few drinks with a young girl at Soho. She is only 24 and still got a whole life ahead of her. I can’t say I’m not jealous. But I would not want to return to the 20s — young and stupid and easily scared. Now am halfway through. Had my fair share of regrets already.

The Man Who is not There

Winter is finally here in the Kong. Crisp and brisk.

Had a good sleep last night, which means having a number of dreams I don’t now remember of.

But that last sentence I said to myself before bed stays with me and was the first thing popping up in my head this morning — ride that damn wave.

Are You on the Train?

Am off today but spent half of the day msn-ing work-related things. Feel lousy and so trivial.

At Stanley again. A tonic to a HK-based soul. It has recorded, witnessed a lot of personal stories now.

I said before Love is the only answer. And I didn’t only narrowly mean romantic love. Compassionate love for fellow human beings, tolerance, accommodation…is the only way out.

Take an Authentic Stand

The more I get to know how profoundly early childhood experience molds us, the less I come harsh on myself.

Most of behavioral patterns are formed at very early stage in life — at the pre-verbal stage of development — but continue to sustain themselves through out the rest of life. Those behavioral patterns are defensive in nature — they’re acquired as a means of defending the emerging self, which at its most vulnerable and fragile moment, from potentially injurious experiences. But they remain locked in the body even though the original perceived dangers have long since passed. They can’t be accessed through cognitive or intellectual insight. They can only be accessed through the body.

The critical point to remember is, this defensive mechanism happens so early that it is a non-verbal, pre-intellectual event. As such, it can be addressed in no other ways than through the body.

Through greater awareness — both cognitively and bodily — obsolete responses can be abandoned and alternatives created.

The biggest individual tragedy — one continue to present the defensive pattern to the world while the true energetic self recedes from awareness, perhaps for the remainder of one’s life.

My early childhood answer to the perceived dangerous world was to excel to avoid being abandoned. To excel at any cost. Later on I gradually discovered I’d just be fine being my very imperfect self and every existence was uniquely beautiful, but that cognitive insight can’t be translated into embodied awakening. Compulsive competitiveness is still my default response.

To Go or Not to Go

Indecision stems from not knowing what you want. I always feel I greedily want everything, but what I actually want, are only a few. Once that is clear, the only natural thing to follow is go straight for them.

Good yoga session this morning. The weather has been insanely beautiful for more than two weeks!

Was sitting on the roof top of the Fringe Club yesterday having veggie lunch and sipping a glass of Chianti. Feeling content for a few seconds.

I made one friend from Saturday night’s Big Game viewing party, but saw a lot of desperation floating around. Hanging out with people does have a leveling psychological effect, in which sense, can keep one sane.

Had a long phone conversation with F last night. I subconsciously demand absolute openness from close friends and got slightly annoyed when not getting it. Utterly unreasonable I am.

Don’t impose on others what you yourself dislike. That’s the basics.

Silence Must Be Heard

Morning jogging on Bowen Road — one of the most solid sources of joy.

Thoughts are just oozing out of me during the run.

The means will eventually be abused — because it would lose its effectiveness on the long run and because its only existential value is utilitarian — whether it can be used to achieve the ends. So the subject matter would beat the means like a dead horse over the course to achieve what it had been achieved before but not now, since it’s losing its functionality. The means has no intrinsic value. Never turn anything into the means itself. That’d be the starting point of nullifying it.

Personality can be assessed through observation of physical qualities — movement, voice, speech patterns and mannerisms. The general movements are simply outer energetic expressions of inner temperament.

The body literally holds all of its history.

I noticed I always got blood rush to my face and short-breathing when trying to prove myself on something. Queasy in the stomach and almost a stabbing feeling at the heart when unable to make the right choice. It’s well known that liver is the site of anger. It seems to be the site of regrets as well.

Our first experiencing of loving and belonging was formed when we interacted with the bodies of our chief caretaker — usually the mother. Love bloom first and foremost as a physical interaction.

MBA

My MBA finally arrived…no sooner no later. Now, I have no excuses not to update my blog more frequently.

I feel I have neither time nor energy to digest every piece of my experiences. Some of them just got gobbled down without being properly digested and ended up lumping together into a gigantic cognitive mystery. Or confusion.

But why do I crave for lucid explanation for everything? Low threshold for uncertainty/ambiguity is a defining OCD symptom. Why not just a simple noticing of what is — not an attempt to justify or explain, but simply “being with” current experience.

Blur

All things will become a blur one day.

Spent a lazy afternoon with the visiting S at Stanley yesterday. Better than I expected. Downed 2 fruity beers and one glass of Pinot Grigio. S was in a good mood with his newly-gained freedom. Am more than convinced that he needs a woman with a whip to be happy. That’s the essential force that stimulates his personal growth. And he’d always need that.

The weather has been insanely beautiful recently. So divine that you’d think the only way to savour it is to get lost with a loved one.

Got Z’s text message. I had been wallowing in the fatalistic thoughts that one day, there’ll be one day, all things become a blur, and nobody, and nothing will even matter. But a simple message from thousands of miles away pulled him closer, and pushed that dreadful but inevitable prospect away, at least for the time being.

In the Mood

Office jerks. Shouldn’t allow that to spoil my mood.

Mood is prior to perception. Mood is basic and paramount. Literal expression tends less capable to capture the mood than non-literal channels — like music and painting. Nietzsche says, many times I can’t tell the difference between tears and music.

Wagner around the ears.

Any ideas you don’t take action on within ten minutes turned sour. The three feelings that cause the most trouble when left to fester rather than being communicated simply and straightforwardly — anger, fear and sadness

You’ll Meet a Tall, Dark Stranger

Watched Woody’s new flick. Very mediocre. Worse than his last one Whatever Works (2009), which I actually quite enjoyed. You should pace yourself to one movie every two years, perhaps.

Is there any good body-centered therapist out there in HK? Or Gestalt therapist? That’s why I still don’t see it as a cosmopolitan city.

Reich views orgasm as an important function because it discharges excess energy and leads to a breakdown of neurotic character structures. He says, full orgasm is absent in neurosis and that only a free mind in a free body can experience and express a total body orgasm, not just a genital one.

Body and mind are functionally identical and that unfinished, blocked energy must be released from muscles of the body and expressed through movement as well as be psychologically finished.

Orgiastic potency! The ability to express all emotions fully!

Work is a Comfort

Finally got a day off. Actually a couple. I don’t even know how to deal with this sudden rush of luxury of time.

Work is a comfort, or can be a blessing, from time to time. It is a nice distraction from mulling over mid-night life questions.

What do people think when they wake up in the middle of the night? Now it’s becoming a routine for me, like an old friend. 3:40 am, or 4:15. Waking up 5am is normal.

I like to keep it dark…so that sleeping can crawl back in easily. Reading Kindle against this dim backlight is now a new favorite. But this morning was watching the new season of “In Treatment”. “My life was broken,” Paul said. Gabriel Byrne does age very well, doesn’t he.

“That after a while all these stars are going to burn out and everything is going to be gone,” that’s Woody’s mid-night musing.

It must be difficult. Difficult for everybody, or at least those who have a tender heart. “It’s always difficult and always hard to find someone that you can relate to in the world, in a lasting and a fulfilling relationship. It’s very hard to have a relationship for one’s entire adult life with one person that’s good for them and good for you. It’s a difficult problem.”

Went to a boring media luncheon yesterday. Hated the vibe. I came for the fish, I’d have to say.

Reader of His Own Self

Proust says, in reality, every reader is, while he is reading , the reader of his own self. The writer’s work is merely  kind of optical instrument which he offers to the reader to enable him to discern what, without this book, he would perhaps never have experienced in himself. And the recognition by the reader in his own self of what the book says is the proof its veracity.

The experiences of fictional characters afford us a hugely expanded picture of human behavior, and thereby a confirmation of the essential normality of thoughts or feelings unmentioned in our immediate environment. Yeah. Reading fictions makes us feel less lonely.

Alain de Botton: “An effect of reading a book which has devoted attention to noticing such faint yet vital tremors is that once we’ve put the volume down and resumed our own life, we may attend to precisely the things the author would have responded to had he or she been in our company. Our mind will be like a radar newly attuned to pick up certain objects floating through continuousness; the effect will be like bringing a radio into a room that we had thought silent, and realizing that the silence only existed at a particular frequency and that all along we in fact shared the room with waves of sound coming in from a Ukrainian station or the nighttime chatter of a minicab firm. Our attention will be drawn to the shades of the sky, to the changebility of a face, to the hypocrisy of a friend, or to a submerged sadness about a situation which we had previously not even known as we could feel sad about. The book will have sensitized us, stimulated our dormant antennae by evidence of its own developed sensitivity.”