Ido portal in China - interesting

[GrahamB]

http://www.idoportal.com/blog/china1

I've been training and researching in China for over a week now (out of a total month I will spend here at industrial/rural China) and wanted to share with you a few anecdotes:


1. The term 'Over-training' translates to Chinese as... 'training'. 8-10 hours a day of training is nothing here. A common thing is to repeat ONE action for 2 hours. I've spent here 8 hours a day pushing another guy. Another day was spent 8 hours in various footwork drills, etc. No rest days as well, just half a day of training on Sunday.
2. Chinese table manners = ________. No such thing. Smelly burps in your face, spit out bones on the table.
3. Chinese movement culture is perhaps the richest in the world. Its the direct result of OBSESSIVE COMPULSIVE DISORDER TRAINING joined by INHUMAN WORK CAPACITY joined by MUTANT PAIN TOLERANCE joined by THOUSANDS OF YEARS OF MOVEMENT RESEARCH joined by THE BIGGEST POPULATION COUNTRY IN THE WORLD joined by COMMUNISM.
4. It just melts the heart when some guy declares to you: 'You are my good, good friend!' in an act of friendliness, love and connection and just after a week of knowing each other as well as a huge language barrier between us. Like a child and with no complex ways to express himself - I loved it.
Another golden moment: 'Would you like to eat some fruit tomorrow after lunch? I will buy you one!' ... Out of nowhere but so so cute.
5. The Chinese most substantial health promoting medium is not Qi Kong, ancient herbalism or acupuncture, it is the result of a consistent and regular consumption/exposure to the following:
A. Pollution. You can often hear someone say here: 'close the window I cannot breath'.
B. Consumption of shit quality, pesticide laden, heavy metaled, MSG filled basic products. Mind you - its BASIC products i'm talking about here- impossible to avoid! recent reports have shown dangerous levels of metals in potatoes, the beef that most people eat here is already MSG added in the factory, etc.
C. EVERY man smokes. Now the women are also starting to catch up.
So - what you get is very resistant, durable survivors that get to reproduce. If you can take that stuff regularly - you deserve to have children and live, riddled with diseases to a certain age, of course.


Me? I'm trying to survive a month here, while doing my research.

Enjoying every moment. Almost. More to come....

Ido.

[NoSword]

Haha I just got back from ten days in Qingdao and this struck a particular chord.

AK

[bartekb]

Ive spent an hour listenng to Ido Portal on London Real podcast and at the end I still was unsure what he actually does:)

[GrahamB]

Ive spent an hour listenng to Ido Portal on London Real podcast and at the end I still was unsure what he actually does:)

Ha ha! Me too

[Patrick]

His skill is amazing, but his writing or his polemic does little for me.
He can take athletes at olympic or very high amateur level and let them do his stuff. Good for them.

[bartekb]

for me he is a bit similar with his attitude to something one canobserve with martial arts sometimes - by not classifying what he does as anything - he is not training athletes to compete, he is not a physical therapist, he doesnt to caopeira, does not compete etc. so he can critcisise a champion boxer for not moving "properly" and at the same time doesnt have to prove he coud box better or even raise a champion himself- cos thats not what he does:)

[middleway]

He was researching fast movement, now taiji by the looks of things. Interesting!

Stuck or unsure on what he does? That's sort of the point ... he isn't stuck on what he does ... he just moves. How liberating it must be to not think of things in terms of goals, labels and traditions ... just in terms of an overarching idea of 'movement' in all its facets and flavours. To research from the point of view of movement no matter where the movements originate or what their purpose. I envy the guys freedom, my training is full of labels and dogmas.

so he can critcisise a champion boxer for not moving "properly" and at the same time doesnt have to prove he coud box better or even raise a champion himself- cos thats not what he does

I don't think that's a fair assessment. he doesnt say the boxer doesnt move PROPERLY ... but he says he isnt necessarily a good 'mover'. Which is true. A ballet dancer most probably wouldn't consider him a good mover for ballet etc. Its all about perspective, and if your perspective is 'movement' then the view of anyone who is a specialist is that they cannot be a good mover in the larger general sense of the word.

(as you can prob tell .. I'm a fan hahahha )

[wayne hansen]

You don't have to do something to give people drills that will work for them
I have worked with surfers. Rugby players massage therapists. Yoga instructors dancers chiropractors boxers Golfers tennis players and various martial artists
who all gained something from what I taught them

[jonathan.bluestein]

"It just melts the heart when some guy declares to you: 'You are my good, good friend!' in an act of friendliness, love and connection and just after a week of knowing each other as well as a huge language barrier between us. Like a child and with no complex ways to express himself - I loved it....... Another golden moment: 'Would you like to eat some fruit tomorrow after lunch? I will buy you one!' ... Out of nowhere but so so cute."


He is so ridiculously naive about what these things mean. However, as a fellow Israeli, I can totally relate. The concept of 'face' does not exist in our culture, and guanxi is very direct. He actually thinks the Chinese are being honest about their intentions. Well, he's in for some surprises...

Also, unfortunately, Ido Portal's thing is no longer 'movement culture'... It's movement cult. And he's the Guru. His science and skills - I like. His 'community'... well, that's a different story.

[Bao]

". He actually thinks the Chinese are being honest about their intentions. Well, he's in for some surprises...

It seems like it's politically correct to mock chinese people and speak about them using racial generalizations.
But in fact, there are many honest and kind chinese, just like there are honest and kind people in any other place on earth.

[jonathan.bluestein]

". He actually thinks the Chinese are being honest about their intentions. Well, he's in for some surprises...

It seems like it's politically correct to mock chinese people and speak about them using racial generalizations.
But in fact, there are many honest and kind chinese, just like there are honest and kind people in any other place on earth.

Of course. I meant the Chinese he was describing. The kind that tells clueless laowai that "they are now their best friend", or that "the new experiences with them were extremely meaningful and changed their lives". I have heard that bullshit so many times... It is unbelievable, so cliche. In Tianjin, basically half the young ladies dating foreigners would tell them stuff like "I love you" and "lets get married" within 1-2 weeks. Other times you got this man on man talk with "we are now best friends". I had Chinese people pulling me on the street giving me business cards and pretending they really and honestly want to start a business relationship with me (nothing like that ever happened, of course). They just wanted to be seen conversing and having a relationship with a foreigner.

I ain't talking some low-class street hustlers. All of the people who I had described had at least a (Chinese) college education. But that's the thing - lying, exaggeration, falsehood, social pretense, face... It's all a part of that culture. Sure, not everyone are like that. But it is very, very prominent. This week my Pigua class was joined by two ladies who earned a degree in East-Asian studies and spent a few months living in China. First thing they had to say of that experience? I will quote: "Well, when it comes to the Chinese people I met and that I work with, nothing surprises me anymore. It is just the norm for them to lie and pretend". I'll be damned if I wasn't told just that 2 days ago!!

You know that thing with Jews being disliked because everywhere they settle they tend to make lots of money at the expense of other groups of people? (writing this as a Jew). So the Chinese have their own bullshit. It ain't about race, it's about culture. Every ethnicity has its own bullshit. I don't see why for the sake of political correctness I ought to pretend that these Chinese folks Ido was describing were not attempting to emotionally con him. That is exactly what they were doing, and like most other foreigners, he is not going to be pleased when he discovers that there is a huge gap between what such people are willing to tell you, and what they really mean. Then this cultural norm of their is going to backfire. 'Made in China' is a concept invented by Chinese greed. They rightfully earned the privilege of being tagged as doing/making nasty things by their own faulty sets of behavioural patterns, just as the Jews did many cultural mistakes which brought the (greater) wrath of other nations upon them. It does not make it justified to dislike either Chinese or Jews on the whole or generalize for every single members of such ethnicities, but these truths cannot be ignored.

[MaartenSFS]

I totally agree with everything Johnathan says. It's not racism, but fact. Chinese that don't act like this are a rare minority. I've lived here over 7.5 years and speak Chinese. I could write a multi-volume encyclopedia on the topic.

[chenyaolong]

I have lived in China for 7 years... it's nothing about political incorrectness, its just a fact that that is what China is like. BUT... once you really DO become close with Chinese people, they would go to the end of the earth to help you.

[bartekb]

He was researching fast movement, now taiji by the looks of things. Interesting!

Stuck or unsure on what he does? That's sort of the point ... he isn't stuck on what he does ... he just moves.

http://www.reddit.com/r/bodyweightfitne ... th/c9ug177
heres a link to what I found a perfect descrition of Ido work

Greetings. I myself was a failed gymnast, unable to compete successfully at a national level. Then one day I took peyote and traveled through the Astral Portal, which is far beyond the inferior Ido Portal, and there I met my spirit animal, the desert lizard. You know, those reptiles you see in videos lifting opposite feet off the hot sand. So funny! By the way, people with "Ph.D.s" might call that alternate hand-foot lifting move a "birddog" and babble about core stability and what have you, because they have NO CLUE about the deeper connections. These same idiots would cringe to see someone with their spine curved into a big C, babbling about uneven pressure distributions and herniations and all kinds of nonsense. As long as you are imitating your spirit animal, no harm can come to you! I learned many, many other secrets and moves from my lizard spirit guide in my travels through the Portal. Then just before I returned to my own body, in a strange, fading voice he said something in lizard language which I instinctively knew translated in human-speak to "A fool and his money are soon parted." I did not understand this at the time. But now, I do. And I am willing to share it with you. To fully realize its meaning, you will have to become an apprentice and answer phones and emails for me...but that path is only for a selected few.

For now, for the unwashed, unenlightened masses, I offer the following: for only $899, I will observe a video of you doing an interpretive dance. Since I am a master of movement, I will be able to determine your personal spirit animal and design a program that will maximize your ability to tune in to the natural flow of your body. I have taught people to move like orangutans, sloths (harder than it looks!), pygmy marmosets, centipedes, manatees (that one comes up a lot, for some reason), eels, pufferfish, and too many others to name.

Please visit my website at http://www.lizardshaman.com/ and click on the 800-by-600-pixel PayPal button with lizards on it which I designed myself in a trance, and let's begin our journey together my friends!

[GrahamB]

I'm genuinely disappointed that that Lizard link doesn't go anywhere Bartek... I'm ready to hand over my cash!