Bioelectric Magic For Chronic Pain, Nervous System Regulation, & Longevity with Less Effort: Tai Chi, Qigong, & Daoism

Nick Urban [00:00:07]:
Are you a high performer, obsessed with growth, and looking for an edge? Welcome to MINDBODY Peak Performance. Together, we’ll discover underground secrets to unlocking the full potential of your mind, body, and spirit. We’ll learn from some of the world’s leading minds, from ancient wisdom to cutting edge tools and everything in between. This is your host, Nick Urban. Enjoy the episode. What if the fundamentals you’ve been taught about strength are wrong? Sifu Bogie challenges the western obsession with force and control, revealing how ancient practices like Qigong and Tai Chi tap into deeper, more sustainable sources of power. In this conversation, we break down how breath, movement, and the Dao, spelled t a o or d a o, and how the Dao itself reshapes your approach to health, resilience, and even success. Together, we explore topics such as the difference between tai chi and qigong, perhaps more importantly, what they can do for you, your health, and your life, the adaptive nature of qigong, how you can speed up your practice to rev up and gain energy or to slow down and experience more of a meditative state and healing, the power of small intentional actions and how they can lead to profound growth following the Taoist principle of wu wei.

Nick Urban [00:01:47]:
And, of course, we bring in some of the perspective of modern science into these practices as well. Our guest this week is Sifu Bogi. He’s a Taoist guide, mentor, self healing practitioner with over 40 of experience in Taoism and Qigong. He was trained by renowned masters and specializes in Qigong, Tai Chi, Sun Dao philosophy, Reiki, reflexology, Tuna, Tithar, acupressure, Taoist shamanism, and I’m sure some other things I can’t even pronounce. His teachings blend Taoist wisdom with practical energy and body work techniques, guiding you to unlock your own healing potential. With a diverse background from law enforcement to baking, he brings humor, storytelling, and deep insight to help others find balance, transformation, and self discovery. You can find everything we discussed in the show notes for this episode, which will be @mindbodypeak.comslash the number 200andthree. If you wanna check out his school, it is called Shundao Mystery School, and a link to that will be in the show notes as well.

Nick Urban [00:03:01]:
As a side note to you, since the interview, I actually implemented some of his movement routines into my day, and I’ve been doing them for about two weeks consecutively now. And at the very least, it’s been a nice way to help accelerate my recovery from training and to de stress after long days. If you’re able, you might wanna check out the YouTube version as he demonstrates the proper actions, how to do the movements that we explore together throughout the episode. That can be a helpful resource, or you can check out his mystery school, which will, again, be linked in the show notes. Alright. With that out of the way, let’s relax, de stress, and unlock our flow state with Sifu. Sifu, welcome to the podcast.

Sifu Boggie [00:03:51]:
Thank you very much.

Nick Urban [00:03:52]:
Today, we’re gonna dive into a world that I’ve only recently began to explore, and that is the world of the Tao, you could say. Perhaps we’ll talk about flow, maybe Qigong, Tai Chi. To get started today, what is something unusual that you’ve done for your health, your performance, and your bio harmony?

Sifu Boggie [00:04:14]:
Probably for me, lots of things I’ve done are wouldn’t say unusual, but probably to lots of people. So, I love to take activated charcoal. That that’s one I I do regularly. And now I’ve been unusual for a lot of people probably doing doing Qigong and and doing the the the stuff I do.

Nick Urban [00:04:35]:
Alright. Well, we’ll get right into it then. What are chi gong and tai chi, and why do you do them?

Sifu Boggie [00:04:42]:
Okay. So, lots of people have heard of tai chi. And, if chi gong was if chi gong was music, tai chi would be a style of music. So tai chi would be a bit like classical music. Another way of saying it is that tai chi is lots of chi gongs put together. So hence why I like to use the term musical, like musical notes, is that Tai chi is lots of different exercises put together to do in a flowing way. And in fact, that symbol you just sort of distantly see in the corner, is, which is, a lot of people call this yin yang. But its actual name is Tai Chi, this symbol.

Sifu Boggie [00:05:30]:
So this this one, a lot of people call yin yang. And even a lot of teachers call it yin yang. It has yin yang there. The yin is the black, the yang is the white. And it’s called Tai Chi because when they come together, they create harmony, and they move and twist. And you can see this as night and day. And in the nighttime, you have stars, and in the daytime, you have shadows. So, Tai Chi is a representation of lots of things coming together as well.

Sifu Boggie [00:06:05]:
Where chi gong, for those who are a little bit into tech, it’s like an app. You’ve got a bad back, there’s a Qigong for that. You’ve got a headache, you’ve got sore knees, there’s a Qigong for that. You want to improve your respiration, your lungs, there’s a Qigong for that. You want to improve or you want to have a psychedelic experience, There’s a qigong for that because we already have those chemicals in our brain. Don’t need outside sources. So there is a qigong for everything. Tai chi is a mixture of those different exercises wrapped into one.

Nick Urban [00:06:46]:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so for people who have no idea what this is still, how would you describe what this practice is, how it’s working, what it what it’s doing?

Sifu Boggie [00:06:56]:
Right. So, shigo means breath work or working with breath. Now, you do exercise, and lots of people do exercise, but in case studies done back in the ’80s and ’90s, they realized what makes Qigong different is when you harmonize your breath with your movements and you actually use focus and meditation as well, you’re creating a trinity. You’re creating this biofeedback of the body harmonizing with the breath. And then the body starts to activate the blood cells in a certain way, the brain works in a certain way, you start to get left and right, right hemisphere balance. And it’s all it becomes this symbol becomes this harmony. So what qigong does is it’s actualizing your breath, harmonizing the body, balancing all the systems. We say energy systems, but we’ll, you know, you use quite use epigenetics or quantum physics.

Sifu Boggie [00:08:05]:
We’re actually talking about bioelectric magnetic field of the body, don’t exist. We know the heart creates one and it harmonizes that far more because we actually have three minds. This one up here, one in your heart, you have brain cells in your heart and you also have brain cells in your gut. And the trinity that the the East talks about, and Taoism they talk about is the balance of heart, mind, and consciousness, the balance of those three.

Nick Urban [00:08:33]:
What’s beautiful too is that this not long ago was a concept. And, of course, there’s the real life applications and results people get. But now we can look at brainwaves through EEG and other things. We can actually see in real time as people perform these, they develop brain heart coherence, and we can actually see the the rhythm of the brain and the heart synchronizing and becoming more smooth as it looks on the EEG.

Sifu Boggie [00:08:59]:
And especially, I find it very I mean, I love science and I love spirituality. I love this stuff. But these grow with the epigenetics, so the understanding that the way you think and feel does actually affect your visible health. And also quantum physics, like 1974 in quantum physics, they they looked at the atom and the 99.999% of the atom that they said was empty space, they they actually realized it was connected to everything else, what they they call the quantum field. But the quantum field, you can call that many things. The DAO calls it the DAO. Everything is connected to everything else. So you start connecting all your cells together, then we can connect ourselves together.

Sifu Boggie [00:09:46]:
Everything balances.

Nick Urban [00:09:47]:
You’re a man of many passions and abilities. Will you please describe what the DAO is now? Because that’s another topic that people might have heard of, but it’s a little mystical if you haven’t actually dived into it.

Sifu Boggie [00:09:58]:
Right. So, in the West, we, we sometimes also call it towel because it’s spelled two different ways, T a O or D a O, because, there’s a silent T in it. But Dow, every Chinese word has about three to five meanings, which means it’s really fun to try to read something. But the Tao means the way, the path, the balance. And it’s, again, a little bit like this symbol, the Dow is not something that’s set. This is actually meant to rotate and it’s meant to flow. It’s been like a wave. And the Dow is always progressing.

Sifu Boggie [00:10:40]:
Your way, you know, like you. You’re not the same as you were a year ago. You’re not the same as you were ten years ago. And you won’t be the same in a year, ten years’ time. Your Tao changes, you change. But the Tao is living in accordance to your nature and your environment, whether we’re talking about your room, your house, your country, your planet. But he’s sort of talking about learning how to adapt to the different natures. And so that’s the main essence of the Tao.

Sifu Boggie [00:11:13]:
But it’s a little bit like Bruce Lee once said, which is a Taoist saying, it’s like a finger pointing towards the moon. So it’s only a guide, this information that’s Sifu, Just a guide. I’m pointing towards the moon. Don’t I’m not a master. Don’t like that word master. I’m a guide. I help you on your journey. I’m on that journey with you, but it’s your journey.

Nick Urban [00:11:35]:
That’s one of the things I love about your work when I was looking into your background that you don’t say, oh, I have all the solutions, the the prescription for you. It’s like, okay. Here is the blueprint. Now do with it what you want and what feels right, what resonates, and adapt because, ultimately we have our innate wisdom. And by becoming more attuned to it, we can find and we do find the right path forward.

Sifu Boggie [00:11:59]:
There is no one solution. The, you know, like, You know, that’s like saying there’s only one food in the world or the best food in the world is strawberry. And it’s like, Well, it depends on Lou, it depends on what you’re into. So, how my teachers so the Shundao, my school, the Shundao is a nod to my my Sifu’s. Shun was their surname, but it also means to flow or fold. And also, it means the way. So it’s the flowing way or folding way. And they very much believed, especially when it comes to healing, so in healing, I know Tui Na, Chinese massage, Tic Taw, which is like Chinese osteopath.

Sifu Boggie [00:12:44]:
Then I also do acupressure, reflexology. I do lots of different techniques. And some people say these are contradictory. And it’s like nothing is contradictory unless you want it to be because you think one thing’s better than the other. So, why I bring this up is that when I do healing, I come from four different angles. I add four different things, or I’ll give you three different four different qigongs and see which one resonates with you the most. Rather than saying you must do this one. This is the one forward.

Sifu Boggie [00:13:18]:
How do I know, Rad? I’m not you. I can hear from your voice, see from your actions, see from what you tell me. Oh, like, well, this might work. This might work. Try these, and let’s go from there.

Nick Urban [00:13:31]:
Yeah. So what is the practical application? I I know this is a very elementary question for you. The practical application of the DAO and of Tai Chi? I mean, not Tai Chi, but Qigong.

Sifu Boggie [00:13:44]:
Practical application of the DAO is to to adapt the best you possibly can to thrive in life, not survive. The Tao is George Lucas actually based Star Wars on the Tao. And the Jedi were a Taoist. Even the word the Force was based on chi. So you have the light and the dark side of the force. Where is that symbol again? It’s the yin and the yang. It’s this, the light and the dark side. And so the whole idea of a Taoist is that everything we do has a practical application, an emotional application, and a concept or a consciousness application.

Sifu Boggie [00:14:29]:
So it’s mind, body and spirit. And so the whole idea is that it all interacts. Now, practical applications of qigong or tai chi, very, very easy. If you’ve ever watched the new one, but if you’ve ever watched the old karate kit, remember, wipe on wipe off, is that everything you do can become a qigong. So, in, I’ll try to do this without making too much of an issue. But, you know, to fold up close, you’re so you get so get them breathing in, breathing out, breathing in and out, breathing in and out. So then placing it without creating tension in the body. So the whole thing of Qigong is learning to relax your body.

Sifu Boggie [00:15:22]:
Our goal is to stretch our tendons because our tendons in the Eastern concept store toxins, store emotion tension. So, we stretch the tendons. That’s why when you stretch, you feel better because you’re stretching, or at least that’s what they say. You’re stretching the body when we relax the muscles, the muscles store physical tension and our fluids store spirit, shame. So they’re storing everything else, all our thoughts and our consciousness. So when we relax the body, we relax the mind. When we relax the mind, we relax the spirit. When we release the tensions, when we move and twist and turn, the body actually starts to improve and enhance.

Sifu Boggie [00:16:08]:
And we know that when we feel better, so chi gong, tai chi basically makes you feel better. And it makes you feel better. Your body will start going into, flight mode. It will start healing. It will start getting stronger. We know through lots of case studies that, when we’re in fear, our body shuts down and and and we get stiff and tense. And in the East, they say that stillness or, you know, tense, anxious stillness leads to dis ease. You know, the, the, the, you know, everything no longer being in balance.

Sifu Boggie [00:16:47]:
So moving and flowing, and I’m always doing it all the time in actual fact, I actually sit on the yoga ball because it’s far more beneficial for your spine. So I’ve

Nick Urban [00:16:58]:
got one right here also.

Sifu Boggie [00:17:00]:
So, and so you often, I mean, I used to do podcasts myself and I’d be doing this all the time, why don’t you sit still? Funny enough, is that we were told by children, well, as children, we were told, sit still, be rigid. That causes that tension, that we start, you know, our muscles start tightening up and our blood flow is reduced to oxygen flow. Oxygen flow is reduced. So being smooth and flowing and relaxing and even twitching if you need to, because twitching, just releasing tension moving your body. All of this helps you flow. So what Taishi does, it gives you that premise or how to do it in a certain way, to how to move in a certain way. And and so it’s not really a hobby. It’s a way of being.

Nick Urban [00:17:48]:
One thing this conversation is making me realize is that the mind and the body are often running perpendicular to each other. They’re inversely correlated. So if you’re staying keeping your body very still, then your mind wanders, which is why kids have such a hard time focusing and staying on track and instead they’re daydream during class. But then if you move your body, then your mind can quiet, which is why a lot of athletes say that when they’re, like, really exerting themselves physically, all of a sudden they slow down and, like, they mentally slow down. They have peace and inner stillness and quiet. And some people call it the flow state, but it also is interesting that you would expect that when you’re just relaxed, you’re sitting still, that you get to there, but it’s actually more difficult for most people. Yeah.

Sifu Boggie [00:18:28]:
Still body, moving mind. Moving body, still mind. So, the whole idea is, is that, you know, if your body’s moving, you can focus, you can start to zero in and you’re releasing all that tension. But when we’re sitting still, it’s all being pushed up into our head. Now, in the East, they call this the forebrain, they call it the monkey mind, the ego. And we know in psychology, we know that the forebrain has 60,000 to 90,000 thoughts every single day. So that’s a lot of freaking thoughts running through your head. So this is why they talk about leaning back.

Sifu Boggie [00:19:11]:
So, you know, learning to relax the body and drawing your yi, your intention out of the forebrain and into the back of the head. Or they talk about into the heart, into the heart or into the belly because they talk about heart mind being like the remember like in the cartoons, you had the angel on one shoulder and the devil on the other, Where like the devil is sort of like the ego, the monkey mind, whispering, you know, 10 rounds of force, panic. Intuition is more of the is the angel, but it whispers. And therefore, you need to be quiet to hear it. So when you allow yourself to sing to the heart, when you allow yourself to relax and coming out of this forebrain, you relax more. When we create that tension, we’re pushing ourselves up into the top of the head. We’re pushing ourselves up into monkey mind. But when we allow ourselves to move and twist, our flow is bringing it all back down.

Sifu Boggie [00:20:11]:
But as any KDAO, I should say, Hey, what do I know?

Nick Urban [00:20:15]:
I like that. So one of the themes that I’m hearing you repeat is that a lot of this is about movement. It doesn’t need to be a structured, intense, all out grueling workout, but a lot of times, it’s actually the opposite. As one of my teachers, Paul Cech, mentions, he calls it working in, and you can make any movements, at least in his framework, a qigong style movement. If you reduce the intensity so that your heart rate is not getting elevated, your the saliva on your tongue should remain there. You should your tongue should stay moist, and you wanna coordinate the in breaths and the out breaths with the movement as well. But it seems like you can really turn most things into some kind of Qigong style movement.

Sifu Boggie [00:20:59]:
You you know, we are art. We are so, you know, our body, you know, this this amazing organism that we live in, you know, it is a work of art. It is amazing. And you are all yourself. But, you know, when you see that beauty, when you allow yourself to relax and go and flow with it, we’re our society always has a choice to put things in box. You know, what’s right and wrong, left and right, must be feminine. And the universe just is, very quick example, we have two huskies and the, the mum gave birth to six beautiful pups. And she did everything on her own.

Sifu Boggie [00:21:41]:
You know, I won’t go through gruesome details, but you know all the process that happens when a female gives birth and what has to happen to make sure the baby’s okay. She did that all on her own. She’s she’s a husky. Who taught her? How did she know what exactly what to do? You know, is that, I knew what to do because I’ve studied it, but how did she know what to do? I knew don’t speak doc. I didn’t tell her. So how does she know? Well, yeah, and that’s the thing. How does nature know what to do? And we, and in the same sort of scenarios, we haven’t got a clue because they’re tuned into that innate knowledge. You can say it’s in the Tao, you can say it comes from God, the banana, whatever.

Sifu Boggie [00:22:28]:
But it’s there somewhere, that knowledge exists. And there’s lots of information that we found out in the last twenty years about, you know, about ourselves. The heart is actually more of an electrical magnetic field. And when that expands, all our cells start to thrive. When that contracts, all our cells start to break down. So our illness is actually it’s very scary for a lot of people, but we are causing our own illness. By the way, we’re thinking and feeling. So we change the way we think and feel, we should change our health on on a minimum or or a dramatic scale.

Sifu Boggie [00:23:08]:
I mean, I’ve for you, it’s a bit of a it’s a bit of a thinly subject. Well, I’ve known many people with cancer, leukemia, you know, of cancer and or leukemia. And one in particular, well, my father, he’s never passed away, but he originally, he got diagnosed of throat cancer. And he was doing qigong and people with throat cancer tend to only last five years. He was, he was around 15 years. And he’s to the point where, essentially he passed away in, in, in, in the height of COVID. But his surgeon said, to be honest, Mr. Brighton, because it’s my ceremony, he said, to be honest, Mr.

Sifu Boggie [00:23:51]:
Brighton, I’m surprised she’s still alive. You know, is that it’s not, you know, it’s not what were you doing?’ He said, oh, my dad, my son stuffed qigong or tai chi or something like that. And he goes, and because they know that this has a correlation with the whole body, it can affect the whole body. If you actually look up Tai Chi and Chi Gong and just put Tai Chi four and put name an illness, and you will see most illnesses have, you know, that there are case studies showing that it affects the whole nervous system, it affects the whole body. And anything that affects the whole body will affect that illness, that disease in some way or the other. So the way you think and feel, the way you move, the way you grow, the way you flow is down to you, but it’s also the way what you do is up to you.

Nick Urban [00:24:48]:
Well, anything that impacts the nervous system in general has the potential to impact the whole body. Well, this is awesome. I’m gonna look more into Tai Chi and Qigong for all these different conditions and perhaps also for health and overall performance, and longevity is probably a big one too. If people are trying to wrap their head around this, can you list off some of the things that it can help or improve? Obviously, it’s not gonna be a conclusive list because it can it sounds like help just about everything. But some of the big ones that are it’s, like, especially effective for.

Sifu Boggie [00:25:20]:
As a child, I suffer from, anxiety, big anxiety and stress. And from that, I got mouse malfourses, which were leading into stomach ulcers. I’ve got IBS, utero well said, And those I I have regulated and they’re almost nonexistent for me, since I was a kid. I also, I mean, I was born in 1970, so I didn’t get diagnosed with dyslexia until I was 32 years old. And again, they said, well, what coping mechanisms? You must have very good coping mechanisms, which is very it was very hard to detect. It’s there, but it’s, you know, you seem to be coping with it. Well, I do this, this, this. And the and the whole idea is that, you know, the qigong and the tai chi, it helps the mind.

Sifu Boggie [00:26:15]:
It helps focus. It helps it helps things like fibromyalgia. So anybody with chronic pain, is very good for ME, MS, fibromyalgia. It helps people. My my dad had diabetes and it helped balance the diabetes as well. So again, it’s easy to just put put in those words and put a illness and and see what what comes up with it. It helps. It’s either significantly helps or it can help, and to to a certain degree, pretty much most illnesses.

Nick Urban [00:26:56]:
Yeah. And, again, very highly tied to the state of the nervous system. But if you are reducing stress, that improves just about everything also because disease is often correlated with inflammation and stress. So you fix that, then everything improves.

Sifu Boggie [00:27:12]:
Yeah. We’re we’re massive. And and because it’s a breathing exercise with moving and so I I think the bring the interesting thing for me was I I’ve I’ve had, I know people who do yoga and, and, you know, like you say, when you’re doing yoga, what are you thinking about? And I said, well, I’m still thinking the shopping or still doing this. And he’s like, okay, come and do this. And he’s like, what were you thinking? I didn’t have time to think. You and me doing this and you were doing this and time to think. And it’s like, that is that, you know, the this needs to be distracted And with movement, it trade now, there are still ones of this qingong, it’s called ‘Shang Zhong’, stand like a tree or standing stake. And when people are doing this, like most of the time, like after about a minute, they go, And but eventually, the longer you focus on it and do it, the more, you know, the better you get at it.

Sifu Boggie [00:28:15]:
But the whole idea is even when you’re still, I’m relaxing the body. I’m thinking of, you know, I’m always tensioned there and sink in the shoulders and relax. And it’s all about just feeling rather than thinking.

Nick Urban [00:28:32]:
So we’ve mentioned how this can be de stressing and regulating the nervous system. Do people ever use Qigong to go the opposite direction, say, for energizing, like, before physical performance, maybe athletes?

Sifu Boggie [00:28:47]:
So, in the Tao, going back to the Tao, because Qigong, Chi Gong, Tai Chi, Negon, there’s lots of different versions, all parts of the Tao. So, when in the East, they could talk about the arts. Like, we hear the word martial arts and we think, oh, fighting. Martial is practice, something you’re doing over and over again. It’s about conformity. Art is about flow, you know, the beauty. So martial art is a practice, it’s something you’re practicing over and over again that creates a beautiful flow, a beautiful thing. But most martial artists, it’s not, and most teachers, it’s not about fighting, it’s about personal development.

Sifu Boggie [00:29:38]:
And Bruce Lee, again, I use Bruce Lee a lot, Bruce Lee would say that himself. It’s about personal development. Now, within the Taoist concept, they actually talk about the three Ms. You have martial art, medical art, and medical art and meditational art. So, the same exercise that could help.

Nick Urban [00:29:59]:
Can you explain this for people who are listening to the audio version?

Sifu Boggie [00:30:02]:
So what I’m doing, I’m now if you’re in a seat with no arms, you can do this. Or if you gently stay in, bend your knees, pull in your bum, but turn your waist, your belly button upwards from the left to the right and totally allow your arms to block. Don’t control your arms. Totally allow them to block. Now, I’ve taught this to people in in wheelchairs or who are, have struggle standing. And so it’s the idea of, yeah, as long as you can sort of move your arms so to so without hitting the arms of the chair, well, it’s all good. Or if you’re on a stool or a yoga ball, you can definitely do this. So twist the waist.

Sifu Boggie [00:30:42]:
It is it is said to be, rumoured to be, at least 10,000 years old. This exercise, all these peaches of it, then going back to that thought. And the hearing side, it massages the internal organs. It also works the central nervous system that runs through the spine. It helps the neck, shoulders, back, head. It improves blood circulation. It helps balance the body. It has a lot of different benefits on the healing side.

Sifu Boggie [00:31:11]:
Meditation side, what, put the TV on or turn the music on, stand outside, do this for five minutes, and you’ll zone out. You’ll just, you know, just twist the waist and just put it on. Don’t try to think how are you doing or you could do, but if you put a alarm clock on and just do it for five minutes, at first, your brain may struggle, where actually you’re just sowing out. And that’s meditation. Doing one thing, forget everything else is a meditation. This same movement, if somebody was to push me here, just a bit like, you know, Karate Kid, they push me here, this arm comes up and whacks along the back of the head. So by relaxing the body, the body mechanics is actually you’re using your body mechanics. And that’s why as a fighting style, Tai Chi is about using your opponent’s energy against them.

Sifu Boggie [00:32:06]:
So, it’s all about body mechanics. So, if they’re coming for a strike and I deflect, I can gently pull them and they’ll keep going. So, it’s about using the principles of Tai Chi, which is everything’s all all interconnected. So when someone tries to use force, you can use that force against them.

Nick Urban [00:32:26]:
Okay. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. And for those tuning into the audio version, this is one you might wanna watch the YouTube version because these exercises are pretty simple. They’re hard to describe over audio. I’m sure I’ll also link in the show notes some resources you can check out for other simple movements. I was actually about to ask you that if there were any beginner movements, qigong movements that are almost universally beneficial. It sounds like that might be one of them.

Sifu Boggie [00:32:53]:
That would definitely be one of them. And one that I I’ve I’ve described one. So I’m actually I’ve actually taught qigong to many people, people with wheelchairs to it, people with with limbs missing. Also taught it to the blind. So this is for the blind. So if you’re seated, it might help if you can stand. Breathe not seated, we can work around this. So rub your hands together, breathe in, let your belly expand, breathe out, pull your belly in.

Sifu Boggie [00:33:26]:
So, breathe in, let your belly expand, opening up your diaphragm fully. Breathe out, pull your belly in, so you’re pushing all the air out and still rubbing your hands for another three, two, one. Breathing out, so put the rubbed hands onto the smalls of your back, on the back, just above your bum cheeks. Breathe in, feel that warmth going to your back. Breathe out, rub the hands two more times. Rub the hands as your breath rests. Bend the hands back on the back, breathe in. One more time, rub the hands, bring your mouth.

Sifu Boggie [00:34:07]:
Hands back on the back, breathe in. Now, again, this will be easier if you’re standing up. But if you’re in a chair, if you can, draw a big circle of your hips. So you’ll bum your hips, so draw, so push slightly forward, to the side and back. Push slightly forward, to the side and back. Now, we’re going to make it qigong. So breathe into your left, get to the front, then breathe out to your right and go to the back. So when you’re ready, breathe in to the left, go to the front, breathe out the right, then go to the back.

Sifu Boggie [00:34:42]:
So circling around to the front to the left, breathe in, circling around to the back, breathe out for another three. Two. And one. Breathing in to the front, breathing out to the back. When you get to the back, go the other way. So now circle the other way, breathing in to your right, breathing out to your left, circling around the best you can. Now again, if you’re standing, you can really bending the knees slightly, keep the feet flat on the floor. You can really circle those hips around.

Sifu Boggie [00:35:25]:
Now, what this is doing, you’re opening and closing your hips. So you’re stretching all the muscles in your legs. You’re also stretching the bottom of the spine. So especially the lower lumbar, so back problems, this is very good for, even sore knees, poor circulation, knees or feet. This is very good good for if you’re if you’re, if you’re allergic, if you’re female, this is very good for the menstrual cycle as well. So it helps actually, it helps the menstrual cycles. It helps the ovaries, increase the, well, balance of the blood flow. This also can be good for blood circulation and also good to it’s helping massage the internal organs.

Sifu Boggie [00:36:11]:
So get to the back, and we’ll do one more time. The other way is so free breathing, breathing.

Nick Urban [00:36:20]:
So with with these, do you want to make your movement especially slow, or do you want to make your breath a little shorter? Shorter? Because you can have a ten second inhale, ten second exhale, or you can have a three second inhale, three second exhale.

Sifu Boggie [00:36:35]:
So, superficially, you move, you match your movements to your breath. So, you match your movements to your breath. But the slower you go, the more meditative it becomes. The quicker you go, the more physical it becomes or the more fitness it becomes. Because you mentioned that again earlier about, Oh, I like fitness stuff. Well, if you do with Qigong Tai Chi, the slower you do it, it becomes more of a meditation. And it will start to activate the melatonin, which your pineal gland, which helps you sleep. It will actually start to activate that and you’ll become more in a meditative or restful state.

Sifu Boggie [00:37:17]:
The quicker you go, still using the breath and the movement, the quicker you go, it increases your adrenaline and increases your adrenaline. So so increase it increases, the the your build up of energy and it’d be actually makes you, you know, more ready to go. So far fast is is fighting or fitness, Slow is healing or sleeping.

Nick Urban [00:37:39]:
Uh-huh. Is it a practice that people use to start off at a certain speed and then to slow down as they get more into their body?

Sifu Boggie [00:37:47]:
Yes. The rhythm so remember, the Tao is your way. So, the whole idea is that, you know, I teach it at, for me, a fast pace. Because I say, Oh, you know, it’s like you haven’t seen my speed. You know, it’s like, when I do my speed, I’m slowing it down as and because the slower you move, the more it’s actually increasing the muscle power and it’s increasing tendon power. So because there’s like a simple like we we talked about this standing zoo exercises, there’s an exercise again, trying to describe it for those on audio. So it’s more than shoulder width stance. And then I binged my knees, measured my knees down, go past my toes and my knee my feet are pointing 45 degrees outwards where my knees are facing that same direction.

Sifu Boggie [00:38:45]:
And that’s tall horse stance. And then I place my hands up above my eyelids and and my arm my arms are in the same direction as me as my legs. So my left arm is 45 degrees to the lift. My right arm is 45 degrees to the right with the hands up to my eyelids, dropping the elbows so they’re lower than the shoulders to take away tension, pulling in the bum, making sure my back is straight so it’s like I’m sitting on a chair. Try to try to see how long you can hold that for. Because it’s known that five minutes of doing that stance is is like doing fifteen minutes of running because it actually increases the blood circulation. Your blood circulation starts to pump because you’re standing still, gravity pushes the blood down, but the heart has to then push it back up. So you start to feel your heart start beating and you start to go, oh, I’m starting to sweat.

Sifu Boggie [00:39:48]:
I used to it was a little bit of Sifu style bullying. I used to teach a weight lifters this one. And, you know, they’ll be in that position and they’ll be in it five minutes. They’re sweating. So it’s a more than 100 ks. Why why is it hurting so much? You know, it’s not what you’re doing to me. What does that mean? Just their brain explodes. And it’s like, you know, it’s body mechanics, body mechanics.

Sifu Boggie [00:40:18]:
But, you know, the whole idea of that actually using your own body as your weightlifting equipment, then using it in a way that you can increase your adrenaline and increase you know, if you’ve heard of the Iceman, Wim Hof, he’s using techniques that were taught in in Qigong and taught is about increasing blood circulation. So what we call the fire away is increasing the circulation so you build up that energy or you build up your body temp. So if you’re somewhere very cold and you don’t have much on, there are techniques that you can increase your blood circulation. The other way is you can also reduce your circulation or reduce, you know, reduce the temperature and and and lower the heart heartbeat if if necessary. You know, we can do this. It’s just we we forgot how. It’s fun to remember.

Nick Urban [00:41:13]:
Yeah. That’s cool too because that’s another pose. Are they called pose? No. They’re not called poses. That was It’s another okay. Yeah. What’s the actual term for it?

Sifu Boggie [00:41:24]:
It it would be a stance. It would be, you know, like it. But but, you know, like, yes. Well, I was I’ve done many things. One of the things I’ve done is I figure skating. So, yes, there very much you would be in a pose when you oppose or a stance. But, yes, I’m not sure. Mostly we prefer the word stance.

Sifu Boggie [00:41:42]:
I think, you know, it’s a stance rather than a post.

Nick Urban [00:41:44]:
Okay. Yeah. That’s a stance you can do when you’re, say, watching TV or you’re in a confined space where you don’t have enough room to exercise in the traditional sense, but you can hold a horse stance or something like that and also get the benefits of a fifteen minute run-in just five minutes.

Sifu Boggie [00:42:01]:
I’m notoriously known. I’ve had students pick me up before. And I mean, doing certain moves and starches, and it’s like, I I can’t take you from anywhere, Sifu, without you doing some weird stuff. But but, you know, just a bit like the Jedi or or a bit like, like the Matrix, you know. I’m doing all this stuff and nobody’s paying any attention because nobody really you know, we our ego, our monkey mind makes you think, oh, you look silly. Nobody cares, really. You just look a bit weird and then you may move on. You know, it’s it’s about you.

Sifu Boggie [00:42:35]:
It’s how you feel. And if you’re thinking silly, you’ll make it silly. But if you just think it’s my exercise, it’s what I do. But you can hide it as well. There’s definitely part of you standing in the position where they call hunting the tree, but it looks like you can read a book in this position. And, you know, there are definitely that’s again, going back to Tai Chi Chi Gong is a bit like a ninja. You can do these movements while I, I was a baker, in, in, in, in, it, for twenty years ago. And as I was baking that horse start she was talking about, I would make the dough while in horse starts and doing certain things while, you know, like mister Miyagi in in Karate Kid.

Sifu Boggie [00:43:20]:
You know, I’d be using those stances and doing certain things at the same time.

Nick Urban [00:43:24]:
Cool. Can you get into trouble using Qigong? Like, doing the wrong stances and poses?

Sifu Boggie [00:43:32]:
Trouble as in

Nick Urban [00:43:34]:
Take yourself more out of balance, further out of balance, or to, yeah, I guess, create issues that weren’t there before if you’re doing it properly.

Sifu Boggie [00:43:43]:
Yes. But the but is is that if you’re true a true practitioner listens to your own body, and there’s very much a Taoist saying, never go past the point of pain. Go past the point of ache, but not pain. So something aches, aching is good. It means you stretch your tendons, you know, you’ve allowed your body to stretch slightly. But pain is more. Now, there is a contradiction in Shaolin arts, the monks that wear the orange robes, the Shaolin arts, they always say, The other thing’s falling off. This understanding that, you know, is that you can achieve anything if you put your mind to it.

Sifu Boggie [00:44:48]:
You know, is that what is right and wrong? You know, we say, oh, this is bad for you. Well, it’s only bad if if you don’t know how to adapt to it or how you can change. But Taoistically, we believe don’t push yourself into pain. We don’t believe in hurting yourself, so listen to your body. So, if you’re doing something and it feels wrong, what look at it, just check it, what you’re doing wrong, worse, you know, what was it for? Ask your seafood, you know. And the whole idea is, is that we’re meant to listen to our bodies. Very much the Tao is about listening to the universe being in accordance to nature, your nature, to be in accordance to your own body. So, you know, obviously, there are certain things I can do that you can’t do, and certain things you can do I can’t do.

Sifu Boggie [00:45:39]:
So, you listen to your body and you listen to but saying that, you know, look, for some people that word horse stance, you know, getting down to your thighs are flat level, probably be very painful at first. But if you do it slowly and gently and progressively, which is the Tao, the waterway in Taoism is drip, drip, drip. A little bit every single day, you know, you want to do 500 press ups, don’t do it in one day. Start off with a couple, and every day or every week, add another one, add another one. And event and, you know, within a period of time, you’ll be doing 500 press ups easily, you know. So so it’s the whole idea of taking things at a flowing gradual rate rather than trying to push yourself so hard.

Nick Urban [00:46:28]:
It’s interesting the parallels, the modern science parallels to the Taoist wisdom, like in weight training, the concept of progressive overload, where in order to get stronger, you have to increase resistance or repetitions, more time under tension for the muscles. So it’s kinda like the same thing that you were just saying about, like, you wouldn’t do 500 press ups on your first day, but you work your way up to it.

Sifu Boggie [00:46:48]:
And then from that, honestly, from that understanding is is like nothing is impossible. We is that, you know, like, you can build up to any anything. You know, they’re good. There’s a big. It’s both in Daoist and also, in Japan, the ninja, which is a real thing. The ninjas were very much, you know, you want to jump like from standing 15 foot. You start off with a little hole and you jump 500 times in and out of that hole. And every day, you take out a cup full of dirt until eventually you’ve reached your 15 foot.

Sifu Boggie [00:47:24]:
And I will promise you, because not 15 foot, it was eight foot. But I I there was one time that I I wanted a testis theory. So I did start digging this hole until I got to eight foot, and I I could jump up from standing. Well, now I’ll be lucky if I do eight inches because I haven’t done it for thirty years. But I proved anything is possible. You can do these things, and it’s all about I mean, just just think of any skill that you do now, remember right at the very beginning where you thought, oh, blimey, I’m not sure I can do that. You know, you proved yourself right then. You can prove yourself right again, you know.

Sifu Boggie [00:48:04]:
Anything’s possible, but it’s little and often, as a Taoist would say, the waterway.

Nick Urban [00:48:10]:
Yeah. Okay. What are some other practical Taoist tips or like life philosophies?

Sifu Boggie [00:48:16]:
One of my favorites is, why stress or why get angry or why worry? So worry leads to anxiety. Anxiety leads to tension in your body. Tension over a period of time will lead to illness. Illness over a period of time will lead to death. So, why worry? Why get angry? It’ll kill you. You know, so, you know, that whole idea, you know, is like the way we think and feel goes back to epigenetics. The way we think and feel literally affects our health. And another one that rolls on from that is, why worry about the past? It’s already happened.

Sifu Boggie [00:48:57]:
Why worry about the future? It hasn’t happened yet. And I always like to add, you know, unless you’ve got a time machine, or your name’s the Doctor, or you’ve got a DeLorean, you know, you can’t do anything about those two. But what you can do is about the now, you know, live in the now and focus on the now because that’s where everything’s happening. Everything’s always happening in the now. We saw and we mentioned it already, but the way the tension in the body leads to tension in the mind, leads to tension. So if you want a free mind, have a free body. Relax your body, twist the body. Relax the body, relaxes the emotions, relaxes the mind.

Sifu Boggie [00:49:41]:
Again, another one, fidget. So in Taoism again, you have the divine masculine, the divine feminine, the sacred child. And I’m not talking about what gender you are, I’m talking about qualities or energies. The divine masculine energy is the asserting, is the actions, getting things done. And it’s also like the protecting, but not necessarily in a fighting way, just standing up for yourself or standing up for others. That’s very masculine, the divine masculine. The feminine is about feeling, the nurturing. So, you start suffering with the masculine, you keep it going with the feminine, the nurturing energy of you.

Sifu Boggie [00:50:25]:
And then the sacred child, well, the sacred child is all about inspiration, you know, like the child, oh, what? Oh, I’ll put it in a box. What can you look at?

Nick Urban [00:50:35]:
Childlike curiosity.

Sifu Boggie [00:50:36]:
Exactly. And that’s where inspiration I mean, I don’t know about you. I’ve had I’ve had children come up to me with ingenious ideas. It’s like, where did you get that from? And also, you know, very much think outside the box. So allow yourself to have that childlike quality. Allow yourself to have that nurturing quality, allowing yourself to get things done and have the action. So it’s the Trinity. Those three are really important, but balance is really important.

Sifu Boggie [00:51:09]:
If you’re all action, you’ll have no feeling about it and you might, you know, if you’re doing, doing, doing, you don’t give yourself time to go, oh, oh, I need to train that or need to adapt. So it’s all about

Nick Urban [00:51:23]:
the flow. Yeah. And I think these days, the balance is tipped much more in favor of doing and going and charging forward rather than introspection and relaxation and attuning to the subtleties with things like Qigong.

Sifu Boggie [00:51:42]:
There’s a very famous philosophy called runway, and it’s often mistranslated, but it’s it’s woo way is often translated as do nothing and everything will be done. And people go, how does that work? It’s not actually the better translation is do little and everything is done. Think of a domino. You know, one point, you move one point and that domino effect will, you know, like all the butterfly effect. The butterfly flaps its wings and somewhere else in the world there’s a hurricane. You know, we form little actions. And it goes back to the Tai Chi about using the opponent’s energy against them. Is that if you think about the way things are, when I’m massaging somebody, I’m scanning the whole body feeling where their tension is and I’m looking for that point where I can go onto one thing and then trigger everything else.

Sifu Boggie [00:52:41]:
So you want to learn something. What’s the basics of that? What’s the key principles of that? You know, for example, is like, Oh, I want to run 100 miles. Well, the first thing would be learn how to breathe when running. Because if you can breathe and run-in a way that you would tire yourself out less and less, you will achieve that goal better rather than we think, no, brute force. Keep running until my legs fall off. You know, it’s that buoyancy, you’re learning, well, what’s the technique in a war? What’s the overall principle? What do I need to learn? And it’s like taking that step back. Look at the bigger picture in the Tao all the time. Look at the bigger picture the wrong way.

Sifu Boggie [00:53:30]:
Do little and everything is done. You know, find what you need to do and minimize it. So you only need to do a few steps to build up. So this is where the waterway comes from. Do a little bit every single day, and over one hundred days, you’ll be 100 times better than you were even five minutes. And And a lot of people will say, I haven’t got I I don’t have any time to do qigong. I can guarantee I can find five minutes in your day. I can actually guarantee I can find fifteen minutes.

Sifu Boggie [00:54:00]:
They might all be together, but I can definitely find them. And if I really look tall enough, I can probably find a whole hour, you know, because how many times do we sit there waiting for stand there waiting for the kettle, or scratching your head, or sitting there watching mind numbing TV that you don’t even remember what you watched. You know, so, and there’s always time to learn something. And you want to learn a language, learn three words a day, learn three words a day. In a hundred days, however you’ve got, you know, in a whole year, however you’ve got. So the whole idea is that you want to learn something, learn it gradually. Golden pill, people want to do everything in one go. It doesn’t work.

Sifu Boggie [00:54:44]:
Not really one or two people, it does. But for most people, build it up. Do it the flowing way.

Nick Urban [00:54:50]:
I really like your example of the runner. And instead of just going out and pounding the pavement and trying to get more and more miles, taking a step back, returning to first principles, deciding, okay. What are the most important components to work on to optimize before I start putting on the miles? Because if you look at a lot like the best runners, they’re they’re not necessarily putting in insane amounts of mileage. Like, my buddy, Anthony Kunkle, is an ultra marathon runner, and, of course, he runs a lot, but, like, a lot of it is the stuff around the running. And first, he got his breathing down. After his breathing, then he had to get his gait down. If you have a faulty gait pattern, you’re not heel striking or whatever the latest optimized approach is, then each time you take a step on your 10 miles or whatever it is, you’re gonna be taking yourself further out of balance. You’re gonna be adding resistance and drag.

Nick Urban [00:55:42]:
And if you just take a little bit of time to learn the basics, the fundamentals first, then everything you stack on top of that is much more effective.

Sifu Boggie [00:55:49]:
A %. Andre, Fred, funny enough, I’m being very I used I have taught in the past Tai Chi sports and using the Tai Chi principles in in sports. And and there is actually a thing called the Taoist run where, you know, the whole idea is like a lot of people when running tend to like they go off from their hands and their hands are uphill, they’re doing this. And that sounds like creating a lot of tension in their body. The more you can relax that the body, the more energy yep. The more energy you have. And the same with the the the running technique is that you actually almost you’re falling onto the next foot rather than pounding your feet. Because when you pound your feet, you’re pounding your knees, you’re going to wear your knee joints, your hip joints away.

Sifu Boggie [00:56:32]:
And the very and there’s a couple of like breathing mechanisms. But one of my favorite is as you’re running, you breathe in and you let the motion of you running knock your air out. So rather than just breathe, which is you’re actually creating more tension in your heart and you’re absolutely building up the tension in the lungs. But breathe in, and then as you run, and you lose two thirds, half to two thirds of the air, and then you breathe back in again. So it’s called the Taoist breath runner. And so you breathe in, run, run, run, two thirds of gone, breathe back in again. Two thirds of gone, breathe back in again. So this way, your lungs are not actually being forced to push in and out all the time.

Sifu Boggie [00:57:21]:
You’re only inhaling in. You’re actually using less energy, and you will actually run run a lot longer.

Nick Urban [00:57:27]:
So if you wanna pull on a thread that you mentioned earlier, and that is worrying and tension in the body because it’s one thing to hear, oh, yeah, just don’t worry because no one wants to worry. It feels like it’s a involuntary response that happens. You mentioned that oftentimes there’s tension in the body correlated with that. I learned a long time ago that the feelings, the mental label actually results after the tension builds. So it’s the tension, and then we go to label and figure out what it is. Like, okay, this is the worry. This is the fear. This is the depression, whatever it is.

Nick Urban [00:58:04]:
Is Qigong, like, inserting a wedge there by, like, doing some of these movements and poses and stances? Are you able to, like, quell the tension and thus change the feeling associated with it?

Sifu Boggie [00:58:17]:
Sure answer. Yes. I I so I’ve been doing this for for many years, and I was now, I think most people would say, Of course, if you’re so laid back, you know, if he was any more laid back, we think we we need to bury her. You know, is that sound super chilled? But as a kid, I would worry a lot. And these exercises and the metaphors and everything definitely helps to it’s it’s NLP, neuro linguistic programming. It’s helping you reset the way you do things. But there was a great one that you were saying about, oh, you know, if you do worry and stress, try this technique, is that so that belly breathing, if you remember belly breathing, which is simply all, if you can, you don’t have to, but if you can put your hands on your belly, breathe in, let your belly expand, breathe out, pull your belly in. So breathing in, let the belly expand, breathing out, gently pull the belly in.

Sifu Boggie [00:59:16]:
Now, when we do this, like pulling the bullying, we’re actually tightening up the muscles. So we’re actually making sure we’re actually tightening, the diaphragm and tighten the body up. And as it were Bree breathing in and let the body, but expand, we’re actually filling the lungs. A lot of people are like, Oh, you’re making a fat belly. No. Do the opposite. Pull the muscles in as well and you’re still tight in that body. But while you’re doing that belly breathing, breathing in and belly expands, breathing out, pull the belly in, look up.

Sifu Boggie [00:59:44]:
Not towards the sky. And carry on breathing in, belly expand, breathing out, pull the belly in. Now, we know through actual medical case studies that when we look up, we’re actually we’re tipping the head back and the fluids, everything’s building up, especially because of the full brain, 60 to 90,000 folds. When we look up, we start to drain the fluids out of the brain. It goes down the spinal column, burned out. That is down, you know, down the spine, down into the body. So looking up, breathing in, let the belly expand, breathing out, pull the belly in for another five, four, three, two, one. And then gently just bring the head back down.

Sifu Boggie [01:00:32]:
And I twist the neck or move the neck and just see how you feel. And the whole idea of whenever you’re getting too much whenever you’re getting too tense, also check your breath. Are you breathing? Because we tend, when we’re tense and worried and anxious, we tend to go, Oh. And stop breathing or holding that tension in. Like, so that twist the waist, which is that one, Wenotri qigong, that helps loosen the body. The hula hoops help bring loosening the hips or hips. Whether you’re male, female, banana, or goat, your hips are your birthing center, your creativity. So when we’re blocked, we’re blocked in the hips.

Sifu Boggie [01:01:13]:
Well well, because also in the hips goes up the spinal column, all the fluids go up the spine. So there’s tension in your hips. It’s blocking the spinal fluids. It’s blocking all that. That that needs to go up and then go back down again. So this moving and twisting and turning and allow things to soften up, that’s how you you release physical tension. You start to release the emotional and the spiritual tension.

Nick Urban [01:01:39]:
That’s cool. I also studied the older medical system of Ayurveda. It’s at least 5,000 years old, and they were talking about how a lot of emotion is stored in the hips also. So it’s cool to see that across cultures, across the world, throughout history, humans have recognized these as, like, fundamental truths.

Sifu Boggie [01:01:57]:
Oh, and a %. I mean, there’s definitely so another one of my jobs was, I used to be a close protection officer back in the nineties, like bodyguard. And as part of my training, and that was for my Sifu’s because that was one of the worlds they were into, close protection and looking after diplomats or whatnot. And as part of my training, I had to study religions because in other cultures, religions are very, very important, to most people. So their religion will show the way they act. So, understanding the religion will you understand how they’ll act, or at least that’s how it was taught to me. But what I also learned through religion is that when you actually look at the religions, they’re all actually the the fundamental truths all the same. And there’s a lot of hints when I went to Tibet, when I went to India, and and, you know, studied with these people.

Sifu Boggie [01:03:01]:
They were actually saying the chakras, which is, more of a yoga tradition, the meridians, which seems to be more in the East, the Owa, we seem to think about in the West, the Merkaba, star of David, the torah field or flower of life, they and the dantians or the trinity, they originally were all one system. And when they say, a bit like in Taoism, in Taoism, we say, where did Taoism come from? They point up. And there’s a debate whether they mean from space or higher dimensions. But the when, like, why and you start seeing all these interconnections and all these different energy systems exist. They’re all part not the same system, but just like in the physical body, we have blood and we have muscles and tendons and we have all this stuff going on in the energy system. They have the same there. The meridians, the chakras, the auras, the merkaba, the torrefil, the dantietes, and they’re all interlocked. And what they say is it’s all one.

Sifu Boggie [01:04:07]:
It’s a work. It’s all part, you know, weave. It’s different translations of the same thing.

Nick Urban [01:04:14]:
Yeah. I like that. And now there’s the whole concept of there’s a rebranding in the west of the energy centers, which is also the same as all these, just more scientific, if you will, as people call it. But it’s really just the old ancient concepts rebranded.

Sifu Boggie [01:04:29]:
Yeah. Yeah. %. Well, my my fun one I remember, there’s, about twenty years ago now that, there was these physicists, from Russia that found what they called the bioelectric energy channels of the body. And using these cameras, they found these channels, and it’s all really cool, and they’re really excited. And these Chinese doctors were there, and they were smiling away. And they go, what do you mean like this? And they showed a map of the meridian system, and they’re exactly like where where they are. And it’s like, well, thank you for finding them for us.

Sifu Boggie [01:05:05]:
You know, it’s like and this is what I say about epigenetics and quantum physics. It’s, I love it because it’s proving the old science. It’s literally showing that actually here’s the evidence. And it was Einstein, and Nikola Tesla and Einstein that both said magic is science not yet understood. Because like this thing we’re on now, whether you’re on a TV screen, whether you’re watching this on TV screen or you’re listening in audio, if it come a hundred years ago, you’ve been a little more like a magician. You know, this box with pictures and sound coming from somewhere else, you know, you’d probably be burned at the stake. It’s just science. It’s just all science.

Sifu Boggie [01:05:50]:
It’s just science not yet understood. But hey, what do I know?

Nick Urban [01:05:56]:
Well, the the idea of cause and effect in the Hermetic principles in this book called The Kybalion, which I read, which is really fascinating, they basically say that in cause and effect, if something looks random, it’s because we don’t understand all the factors that caused the outcome. And that’s one of the old principles from that line of of thinking as well. And it’s it’s interesting because there’s so many things in our world that we just attribute to randomness. But it’s like, well, not really. If you really understood all the factors, you it would make perfect sense that that was the outcome.

Sifu Boggie [01:06:25]:
Yeah. Well, what the Taoists call the lean back is that we, you know, like if you are here, you know, everything’s all you are only seeing a certain perspective. But the more you can lean back, the more you see the bigger picture. And this is, you know, like people say, oh, you know, you know so much stuff. And it’s like, oh, no, there’s more to learn. There’s always more to know. But the more I learn, the more my consciousness expands, the more my awareness expands, the bigger picture I see. And I was taught from a very young age is that your consciousness is unlimitless.

Sifu Boggie [01:07:05]:
In the Tao Te Ching, it’s sort of like sort of like the Taoist Book of Wisdom or the Taoist Bible, but Taoism is not really religious because it’s an omnipresence. Everything is the one. But he talks about that, you know, the Tao that could be named is not true Tao. And it means that there’s so many different principles, there’s so many different ways of doing stuff. There’s so much information. If you if you only, you know, you you only got that much and your cup’s that big, that’s all you’re going to get. But if your cup’s that big, you’re going to get a lot more. And you are the cup.

Sifu Boggie [01:07:40]:
So the more you expand your cup, the more you allow yourself to see yourself as formless, shapeless, you know, and this is Bruce Lee again, used Darius as saying, be like water. When water goes into a cup, it becomes a cup. When water goes into a teapot, becomes a teapot. You can go for the smallest of gaps, and enough of it can break a whole dam. Will it be anything be water, my friend? Be like water. Beautiful.

Nick Urban [01:08:09]:
Yeah. Well, Sifu, that’s a great way to wrap this one. I wanna do a part two with you at some point because we barely tapped into all of the things we can discuss here. If people want to connect with you to check out your work, tell me where they can find you.

Sifu Boggie [01:08:24]:
Okay. So it’s fine if you, b o double g I e, seafood bogey. I’m on Instagram, on TikTok, on YouTube, on Facebook. But I’m also, my, which will be in the links down below. But I you can also find my mystery school, my website, which is shun, s h u n d a o, shundao, shundao.uscreen, so the letter uandthenscreen.io, that’s where my website is. And it’s sort of like Netflix meets Discord where it’s both a video, lots of different videos, and there’s a community there. But a bit like me, I’m very interactive. So there’s both recorded episodes.

Sifu Boggie [01:09:14]:
There’s hundreds of recorded episodes already, but there are live every week. There is a noon live classes. And if you, you know, join you join and go, Sifu, have you got a qigong for earache? And then the next play if you can’t make the live by the next class, you will have a qigong for earache and qigong for this. Because everything has a Qigou, everything has a Tao, so therefore everything has a Qigou. So it’s very interactive.

Nick Urban [01:09:45]:
Cool. I did not realize it’s that large of a library, and I love the interactive nature of it. I’m going to have to check that out.

Sifu Boggie [01:09:52]:
Brilliant. Yes. I’m I’m really interactive. I like fun. I like to play. I’m very much into my sacred child. So the idea of I learn better when it’s fun, and I learn better when it’s interactive. And and and as a lot of people said to me, Sifu treats you like a wall and he throws a hundred things at you and see what sticks.

Sifu Boggie [01:10:17]:
So I don’t just teach you one technique. I’ll teach you a few because it’s up to you. You’re the Sifu. You know, you’re your own Sifu. So what works best for you? It’s not my job to tell you what works best for you. That’s yours.

Nick Urban [01:10:30]:
If people have been resonating with all this so far, they want to dive down the rabbit hole themselves and explore your world. Are there any resources that you find particularly helpful, whether it’s books or obviously your video library, any other educational resources?

Sifu Boggie [01:10:47]:
On my approach to it? You look me up on YouTube, look me up on Tik TOK, Instagram or Facebook. But you could also just look up the, you can look up the words t a o or d a o, the Tao, the Tao. With a lot of the books, I will say, a lot of people write it in a very theoretical way. So, it’s all about the theory. I very much will form a physical theoretical and, you know, and the scientific approach. But there is somebody called the barefoot, so barefoot doctor, Stephen Russell. He passed away sadly a few years ago, but he was a friend of mine. And he has a similar, he comes from a similar thing about the Taoism and the Taoist approach.

Sifu Boggie [01:11:39]:
And it’s like, for me, if anybody’s taking themselves too seriously, find somebody else.

Nick Urban [01:11:47]:
Yeah. And then for the Tao Te Ching, that’s a book that’s been translated a bunch of different times. I have one of them. I think it’s a good translation, but it’s are there any translations of it that you think are best, most accurate? Because with these types of things, if you mistranslate even just a little bit, you’ll lose a lot of the value.

Sifu Boggie [01:12:06]:
So one of my favorite translations, of the Dou de Chi, is RL Wing. So RL Wing, this now is you’ll have to get a secondhand copy or you might be able to do Lycea on the Internet. But they do it in a really brilliant way is that they have it in in actually in Chinese. So you actually speak Chinese, you can actually have it there. But then they do a translation here, so it does your translation. But then but then, they have a little note bit where you can write notes. So you can act because everything’s meant to you’re meant to understand it. If you can’t understand it yourself, then you don’t know it.

Sifu Boggie [01:12:51]:
So it gives you a little scribbling pad in the book where you can actually write your own translations and write through. And as you said, there’s over 30 translations of the Tao Te Ching because each word means three to five things. So, you’re going to find lots of translations. And I would suggest look at a couple. Look at a couple and you are your best seafood. So, if it resonates with you, then awesome. If it doesn’t, keep looking. Because there is no right or wrong, it just is.

Sifu Boggie [01:13:25]:
So you can always find the right path for you, the right down.

Nick Urban [01:13:30]:
Beautiful. And finally, any parting words of wisdom? If you want to leave people with one final thought to ponder, what would that be?

Sifu Boggie [01:13:38]:
Breathe in the chi, the light, everything you do want. Breathe out the chi, the stress, the wiring, everything you no longer need. Breathe in the chi, breathe out the chi, smile, relax, and you’ll go far.

Nick Urban [01:13:52]:
Beautiful. Well, Sifu, thank you so much for joining me in the podcast today.

Sifu Boggie [01:13:57]:
Oh, thank you. It’s been awesome.

Nick Urban [01:13:59]:
Thank you for tuning in to this episode. Head over to Apple Music, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts and leave a rating. Every review helps me bring you thought provoking guests. As always, you can find the show notes for this one at mindbodypeak.comslash, and then the number of the episode. There, you can also chat with other peak performers or connect with me directly. The information depicted in this podcast is for information purposes only. Please consult your primary health care professional before making any lifestyle changes.