Healing Through Taoism: Ancient Wisdom for Modern Grief with Sifu Boggie | EP 436

You know you need something, you're just not sure what. You've been listening, you're doing the work, but there's still this feeling that you're circling the same place, like you're waiting for the thing that finally moves you. Now maybe you've thought about working with me one-on-one. Maybe something's held you back, the timing, the money, or you're just not sure you're ready yet. I get that. And I want you to know there's still a place for you. I built a resource for exactly this moment, guided meditations for when the waves hit and you just need to breathe. Workbooks to help you get out of your head and onto the page, ebooks on what near-death experiences tell us about the people we've lost, and whether they're really gone, a full course for widows and widowers who are ready to find their way back to living, and a full course for the evidence of the afterlife. And all of it is available for pay what you want. Nobody gets turned away because of money. I think these resources are valuable, but I don't want to hold them back because you don't have the money to pay for them. You don't have to wait until you're ready for coaching. The next step might be a lot smaller than you think. To find out, go to grief2growth.com/store. That's grief, the numeral 2, growth.com/store. And check out the resources I've made for you. Close your eyes and imagine. What are the things in life that cause us the greatest pain? The things that bring us grief are challenges, challenges designed to help us grow, to ultimately become what we were always meant to be. We feel like we've been buried. But what if, like a seed, we've been planted? And having been planted, we grow to become a mighty tree. Now, open your eyes. Open your eyes to this way of viewing life. Come with me as we explore your true, infinite, eternal nature. This is Grief to Growth. And I am your host, Brian D Smith. Hey there, I'm Brian D Smith, and welcome to Grief 2 Growth. And whether you're tuning in for the first time, or you're a longtime listener, I want to thank you for being here. This podcast is a space where we explore life's biggest questions: who we are, why we're here, where we came from, where we're going, all this stuff. We don't shy away from the hard stuff. Instead, we lean into it together. And we seek healing, we seek meaning, and we seek growth through grief and even beyond. Today's episode is going to be a deeply enriching one. I'm joined by Sifu Baggi, also known as Paul Brighton. Sifu is a Taoist guide, a healer, and a mentor with over 40 years experience helping people reconnect with their inner wisdom and their vitality. Trained under Taoist masters, Sifu blends ancient teachings like qigong, tai chi, and Shundao philosophy with practical energy work and body-centered healing techniques like reflexology, tuina, I believe it is, and Taoist shamanic principles. You'll hear how this modern-day barefoot doctor empowers people not by fixing them, but by showing them how, how to unlock their healer within. We'll explore questions like what exactly is Taoism? How can age-old practices like qigong help us not just survive but to thrive in today's chaotic world? And how does understanding the flow of energy in our body support physical and emotional healing, even at the level of our DNA. Sifu will also share how his own eclectic life journey from police work to pastry chef to spiritual guide shaped his outlook and gave him the tools to help others navigate change and embrace, embrace life's messiness and find magic in the moment. So this conversation isn't just about philosophy. It's about practical tools for dealing with grief, with stress, with trauma, and the unpredictability of life with grace and with empowerment. If you've ever felt disconnected from your body, if you've ever felt stuck in emotional pain, or if you're just curious about how ancient wisdom can apply to modern life, this episode's for you. And after you listen, I invite you to continue the conversation over at grieftogrowth.com/community to connect with myself and like-minded listeners. So with that, I want to welcome to Grief to Growth, Sifu Sifu Baggy, nice to meet you. Yeah, it's great to have you here today. Um, before we get started, you know, one thing really basic, I think a lot of people, at least in the US, are not really that familiar with Taoism. So maybe explain to us what, what that is, right?

Well, so Chinese words normally have more than, more than one meaning. They tend to have several meanings, and Taoism means the way, the path, the balance. And, and it's, uh, within like religious circles it has become a religion, but it was more of a philosophy, more of a way of being, uh, when you like go, go back to the original knowledge. Uh, Taoism is all about, is about connecting to oneness, connecting both the inner world and the outer world. Um, and in the actual facts, like little like side note, uh, like if you've ever been a fan of Star Wars, Taoism is actually what Star Wars was based on. So like the whole thing of the Force is what, is what Taoists call chi, and the, the light and the dark side of the Force is actually yin and yang. And even things like Yoda said, like, do not try and try it, do or do not, there is no try. They were actually Taoist quotes and Buddhist quotes. So it is actually like, you will know Taoism more than you realize if you're into Star Wars or if you're into, into certain things. And it's very much— the Taoist path is about balance. Everything's balanced, but not like flat scales, uh, you know, like trying to make a scale still. More like a wave, that there's an equal up to an equal down, there's an equal expansion to a contraction, and things, you know, flow the way they need to. So it It's understanding that there is a flow to things. And like, within Taoism, like, one of the biggest— or one of the things you learn is to actually look back at the past and see everything's happened, and look at the negative stuff and go, well, actually, that led to this, and this led to that, and realize that everything's actually a point of learning and growing from. Um, and also, I mean, With Taoism, it's very much connected to the idea of, uh, a, uh, well, a study called epigenetics, which is a scientific term which basically means that the way we think and feel affects our physical health. Um, and there's a big connection between Taoism and epigenetics, and even Taoism and quantum physics. There's a lot of terminology and a lot of things we've been Taoism, that, you know, they believed everything is all interconnected, that, you know, life is, life is a dream or an illusion, a little bit like now science thinks that life could be a simulation or Matrix. Um, and there's about the interconnectedness of, of everything. Everything is your guide and your muse. So yeah, Taoism has lots of different ways, lots of different types of balance and things that I do, like the qigong, the tai chi, the, the Reiki, the Chinese Reiki, shen chi xian, they're all versions of, or parts of, the Taoist path.

Yeah, I think it's really interesting how some of these ancient philosophies slash religions are starting to come back, or, you know, the West is starting to discover them. And as you said, the connections to epigenetics, which I believe is a fairly modern term, and to even quantum physics, you know, the— it seems like the ancients discovered these things many centuries ago.

Yeah, yeah, 100%. And there's quite, it's quite a bit of that, you know, is, is like, um, uh, the whole idea of the Flower of Life, which is like, I like these 64 circles interconnected. It normally has a circle around it. Well, that represents what they call a torus field or toroidal field, which is a bit like a donut. And Quite recently, in the last 20 years, they discovered that the heart actually creates an electric field, this magnetic— bioelectric magnetic field. And when you're happy and positive, that expands, and all the cells within your body speed up and actually heal. But when you're angry and frustrated and scared, that contracts. And, and then as that field contracts, everything outside that field actually starts to break down. And that field is actually a tangible thing. It's been, you know, it, it can be detected now through, through, uh, uh, certain equipment. But we feel it, you know, you know, when somebody says, oh, that person, and when they walk in the room, the room lights up, is you're feeling that field, that, that energy. And, and this is the thing, is that a lot of what they— not just Taoism, but a lot of the ancient knowledges, what they talked about science is now actually going, well, actually there's this and there's this and there's this. And, and so it's, it's, it's interesting. The essence of is that the things that we were for were woo-woo were actually now through science being proved. And it's— and also, I mean, I worked in the Fortune 500 businesses back in the '90s, like the 100 or 500, so millionaire and billionaire companies, and they will use what works. They don't care if it's, if it's a massage or, or pendulum swinging. If it works, they'll use it. And, and, and that's the interesting thing is that in our society we sort of poo-poo certain things, or, you know, even, you know, about the way we think and feel. Oh, you know, you should ignore that and don't focus on that. But in other places, those things are very much taken seriously and very much, you know, understood. Um, and, and, you know, it's like we're in the Eastern philosophy, is that this idea of epigenetics, the way you think and feel affects your physical health, was very much respected and understood. Very much, you know, is, is that you need times to do certain things. You need time to, you know, be happy. Any time to be sad. You need time, time to appreciate stuff, gratitude, but also need time for grief when needed. You know, these are real things And instead of trying to push them away or hide from them, we need to actually spend a little bit of time embracing them but not dwelling in them, if that makes sense.

Yeah, yeah. Then that's, that's the difference, is, is feeling all the feelings but not, not dwelling in them. But, you know, as you were talking and you mentioned epigenetics and the way we feel affects the way that— or the way that we think affects the way that we feel, our bodies behave, you know, I was thinking, you know, there's this thing in science that we know about called the placebo effect. And whenever they are testing a drug, they have to test against a placebo because the placebo effect is so strong. So we, we know, we know scientifically, and we even include it in our Western medicine, that there is a certain amount of like, if I believe this, it's going to happen.

Yeah. And, and, and, you know, I, I do like bringing that up because it goes up— well, there's a lot, there's a bit more to that and a lot deeper than that, is that so, so by law We, we have— it's not just in the test, but by law we have placebos. So the whole idea of the placebo is that it gives them a— it's supposed to give them a judgment of, well, if that person has nothing to— this person has had something. And rather not give them anything, we'll let them— they'll give them the idea that they're having something. So it's not just placebo medicines, it's actually placebo operations and even placebo chemotherapy machines. You know, every country has to have one placebo chemotherapy machine where it makes the noise but nothing actually happens.

I didn't know that.

The interesting thing in all of that, like, because a lot of people get shocked on that, it's like, yes, but now look at the information from the placebos. And this is where it gets really interesting, is that 80% of people who have the placebo get moderately to completely better. So what— whether it's an aspirin for, for a headache, or an operation, or even like chemotherapy, the placebos, 80% of people actually get better. Now there's another version of that called the nocebo, and the nocebo is you have the guaranteed medicine or operation that 99.999% of the time it, it does what it needs to, but those people still get ill. That it flips, that, you know, they have an operation, they should have survived, and somehow they die. And we're always— it it's the way it is. But that's called nocebo, is where when they actually look back and the people were so negative or focusing on a certain thing that they were— their disbelief in it has an 80% chance of actually coming true. So what I always want to get people to understand is whether you do believe or whether you don't believe, you're 80% of the time you're going to be right. Wow. So what you believe what you focusing on. And again, then what you— what, you know, the way we feel. So happiness literally increases, um, our immune immunity system and the blood flows, as well as the energetic system, that, that bioelectric magnetic field in the heart. It all increases. But when we're sad, and, and, and, you know, and there are times we, we are sad, and for good reason, but that decreases that. And we even know this in in sort of like old wives' tales. She's like, oh, if you work too hard, if you're too tired and too stressed, you'll get— you're more likely to get a cold, or you're more— you're more likely to trip over. So we even know this.

Yes.

But we sort of poo-poo it. We sort of— we sort of, ah, you know, we ignore that information. But it's very much that it doesn't matter, you know. And this is, you know, not to upset anybody, but it doesn't matter what you believe out there, God-wise. You are the creator inside your own body. You create your own reality in here. Somebody else may be doing it out there, but right in your body, it's down to you. And the way you think and feel truly affects your own personal health. And, you know, I've seen, I've seen that more, more several, like, uh, uh, times, um, through my life where I've had people who are super, super positive and, and they were told it's terminal and they've got— and, and they, you know, made through. My, my dad had throat cancer. Um, yeah, had throat cancer. And throat cancer is notoriously known, um, uh, to, to have, uh, um, people that don't go past 5 years, you know. Is— and my dad actually was— lasted, uh, 15 years, uh, cancer-free, and then in 2020 it came back. And, and it came back in a vengeance with everything else was happening. And because, because he, he's been really, really super positive, but with COVID and everything, he suddenly went very negative and he saw things in a very dark, dark light. And very, very quickly, within a, uh, diagnosed in 2020 in the November, uh, in the, in the April, he passed away the following year. Um, from which is like, when, but when you look at for 15 years, he was perfectly fine with with something that normally nobody goes past 5 years, right? And then, but the— every— but change, the attitude change, lifestyle change. We couldn't see him, you know, for long periods of time. He was on his own for long periods of time. Everything, the world changed, and that affects your— the way you think and feel. And it, you know, has an effect on our physicality, our physical self. As well as everything else.

So we talked a little bit about Taoism and what that is. I appreciate the explanation. How is it similar to or different from Buddhism? Stay with us.

We'll be right back.

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Right, so big smile on my face. Um, okay, so Buddhism and Taoism are very, very similar. Um, and yet, so when, when we hear the word religion, religion comes from the Latin word religio, which means born with the creator. Buddhism and Taoism actually are technically not religions because they believe in omnipresence. And omnipresence as in everything's oneness, everything's the creator, everything's collective consciousness. So they're not technically religions, uh, but Buddhism, Taoism, because they don't have— though a lot of people say, ah, but there's Buddha. But Buddha is a state of being rather than a person sitting in, in a cloud. And the, the, the difference— so with, with Buddhism, there is more— there is this characteristic more of, of Buddha nature, and there is a belief that life, um, that through life there is suffering. And when you learn to understand that suffering, you can learn to then thrive in it, excel, and, and go beyond that and eventually go, go into their version of higher enlightenment or nirvana. Um, with Taoism, Taoism is that everything is energy, everything is conscious energy, and this reality is just one of many that happens again and again. But it's all— it's almost, or at least in the version of Taoism I follow, it's very much that This is sort of— this is like a living matrix, if you want to call it a matrix. It's like a living matrix in the essence of we created this reality, we create our dreams, and we created this reality. That if this is just another version of a dream, we created this ourselves, the, the collective we, the big, the big we, and we're just interconnected with this and flow. And the point is, is that within Taoism a lot. You'll see, uh, the— I'm showing a symbol for those listening to the audio, a white and black symbol, um, with two little dots in, one white dot, one white black dot in the opposite way. And a lot of people call this yin yang, but its actual name is tai chi, because yin yang are the energies within. And I sort of mentioned it earlier about Star Wars and the light and the dark side of the Force. Well, yin yang flow, and when they flow, they rotate. And they rotate. They can rotate one way, or they can turn in on themselves and rotate the other way. And it's— they are a representation of night and day, or breathing in and breathing out, or expanding and contracting, or two people interacting. There, there are a relationship. This relationship, the supreme ultimate, is Tai Chi. So yin yang are sort of the qualities, but this symbol itself is actually known as Tai Chi. And, and Tai Chi is about the interactive, about finding that balance, finding that flow. And the Tao is all about this finding your path through this reality, finding, you know, find— but finding every Tao. So there's a Tao for the— there's a— there's a Tao for the way you walk, there's a Tao for the way you eat, there's a Tao for the way you, you interact. And it's finding every one of those, every balance, every path, every way of— everything has a way of doing it to make it more harmonious. Does that make sense?

Yeah, it does. So in terms of your background, I'm curious, uh, you don't look like you're Chinese, and I don't think you're, you know, you're, uh— how did you, how did you get into understanding or the path of Tao?

Right, so no, I'm actually— so I'm, I'm British-born, half English, uh, well, sorry, half Irish actually. Half Irish, half Chinese. No, no, I'm not Chinese, that was you. Half Russian, half, half English, half Irish, half Russian, born in England. But I studied— so what happened was, um, I— not until much later I was diagnosed with, uh, dyslexia. And so always been a little bit different, and then got bullied at school. And from being bullied, uh, I ended up going to, uh, I ended up learning martial arts. And from the martial arts, I started off in one martial arts and, uh, was going up their, their belt system. So the belt, they have gradings of belts, and they had an adjudicator came in, and the adjudicator sort of assessed me. And, and this adjudicator was a little bit like a traveling sort of nomad where he would go to, to like, you know, look for certain students or, or, you know, find things. And he, he came across in, in this school, in this martial arts school of, uh, of, uh, Katida. He found me and he said, you know, he said to my parents, your son is, uh, has, uh, very interesting qualities. I would love to teach him. Will you allow me to teach him? And he ended up teaching me. And then he introduced me to his brother who who's, uh, he was very much the stratagem and the martial side, and then his brother did more of the healing side. But being the Taoist arts, martial arts, healing arts, and spiritual arts are all interconnected. It's called the 3 Ms. So it's like, we saw, see martial arts as fighting, but even when you listen to the word, doing things in a certain format, and the art is flowing. So it's, it's actually about doing things in a certain way to find the art, to find your personal development. So that's what true martial arts is actually about. It's not about fighting, it's actually about learning more about oneself. Um, so I started off, yeah, started off doing this about 12 years old. And by 17, uh, I started to teach my— a little bit myself. But they— the Shin and Po, my, my two teachers, they also were part of an organization that did— they were part of, um, uh, oh, when I forget words, it's a wonderful thing. Uh, they, they're diplomatic, they're part of diplomatic circles, so they looked after diplomats. They also did, uh, the FT, uh, 500, 100 index businesses. So they trained up people to either do close protection, to actually do massage, or other things. They, they were even within the FT 100, 500 index businesses. They actually use psychics, they use remote viewers, they use telepaths and empaths. And my teachers would teach the people that— the, the psychics, they, they would teach them qigong to enhance their psychic ability, because that's one of the key principles of Tai Chi and Qigong is that it affects your physical health, it affects your emotional health, and it affects your psychic health and your psychic abilities. So it's, it's the— hence, you know, like why in essence George Lucas based Star Wars on Taoism, because it has all of those paths. There's a mystical side to it, there's, there's a fighting side to it, and then, you know, and that understanding, um So yeah, so yeah, I started off, yeah, but by 17 I was started going into the close protection side and I was, uh, still, still like teaching and, and doing that as well. And at the same time I also had a, a career, so I didn't just do— I only did that say 3 to 4 months every year, uh, and the rest of the time I actually was becoming a baker. I was just trying to be a baker, then from baker I eventually became a pastry chef Uh, and, and so yeah, my path was going two ways but slightly differently. So I did the, the Eastern stuff with, with my, my sifus, my student, my teachers, but at the same time I was also doing something, um, a life here. But they, for me, they were very much interconnected, as my sifu would say, uh, Po would like— when I learned to bake, he said, ah, bakers are awesome. Bakers make great masseuses, great at massage, because kneading bread is like, is like, um, um, doing a back. And that's the thing in Taoism, that everything's connected to everything else. You might not necessarily see it at first, but everything has a connection.

Wow, wow. So, um, interesting, interesting path to get where you are. I always, I love hearing people's stories because I think life is just really interesting. We, we think it's going to go one way and it's totally unpredictable. So you mentioned Sifu, so Sifu I assume means teacher, is that correct?

Yeah, yeah, so Sifu Boggi, so Sifu, so in Google, like not all words translate easily, and in Google you put in the word Sifu and it will say master or master of martial arts. But Sifu has two sides. You've got the Si and the Fu, or Shi and Fu. And Shi sort of means family, it sort of means parenting, you know, guidance, um, well, pointing, guiding in a certain way. And Fu is— sorry, Fu is family, and Shi is sort of like the guidance. So it's sort of like a guiding parent, or a guidance. Sometimes Fu can be father, but Shifus or Sifus can be male or female, but it's more like a parent energy. So that guiding energy, and in essence, you know, it's a loving energy, a loving guiding energy. Um, Bruce Lee once said, which was a Taoist saying, he said, um, it's like a finger pointing towards the moon. Do not look at the finger because you'll miss all that heavenly glory. So I'm the finger that helps point, and you know, so I help guide, but don't— I'm not the be-all and end-all, you know. Is, is that's why I sort of say, no, I'm a Sifu. I'm not a master. I'm a Sifu, or a guide, a muse. I'm not a master because that energy has a sort of dictation to it of, you know, you must do what I say, and I, I know everything, and what I say is right. And it's like, that's not what's right for me. Is right for me, but doesn't mean it's right for you. But on the journey, you find what's right and what's wrong for you. So yes, Sifu means guide, muse.

Yeah, thank you. So, uh, what is qigong?

Okay, so every, every word means more than one thing. So qigong means breath work or energy access, energy exercise. Now the interesting thing for most people in the West, you've heard of qigong, you just don't know you've heard of qigong, right? Um, if you've heard of tai chi you know Qigong, because Tai Chi is actually a style of Qigong. So Qigong means energy exercise or breath work, any exercise that builds energy in the body, the mind, and the spirit. So like going running, well, that's just an exercise, but you learn to run with relaxing the body and breathing, using particular breathing techniques and landing the feet in a certain way, you've turned your running into a Qigong running. So it becomes an energy exercise. It works in a certain way. And sometimes you get people say, oh, which is better, tai chi or qigong? But that's a little bit like saying, which is better, um, music or R&B? Well, R&B is music. Or blues, you know, it's like, which is better, musical blues? Right. It's like, but that one is the other, you know. And, and that's the thing is that It's just a misunderstanding. Tai Chi would be— if, if Qigong was music, Tai Chi would be a bit like classical music because it's lots of exercises all put together to make a flowing form. Where like Qigong itself, like, there were lots of different Qigongs for different energy, for, for different situations, for different ailments and injuries, you know. There are lots of different ways to, to, uh, to, uh, help you. So there are different Qigongs for bad back, for for headaches, for, for anxiety, stress. There's a qigong— I always say there's a qigong pretty much for everything.

Interesting. So that kind of leads to my next question I was going to ask you. How do these practices help with people that are going through emotional distress or going through grief?

So is it— so, so, yes, qigongs are energy exercises. They're also a form of meditation. And meditation is, is sort of like a one people get also get sort of confused on. Meditation simply means focus on one thing and forget everything else. Um, and so fishing can be a meditation, knitting can be a meditation, um, doing a crossword puzzle could be a meditation. It's all about rewiring your focus onto a certain thing and allow your, your unconscious mind to then, uh, release tension, stress, and everything else. So how it works with— and over the last 40 years, I've, I've helped many people with PTSD, anxiety, bereavement, stress, um, and it's, it's about giving you exercises that will start to help you focus on something else. Because the biggest thing in Taoism is that what you focus on grows. So the more you focus on something, the more it will grow inside you. So the biggest issue is like, um, when, when we're, we're suffering with something, uh, like bereavement or whatnot, we, we spend a lot of time focusing on that. That will build those memories of that situation, of sadness that grows and builds within. And you need to sort of just redirect that. It's not saying about forgetting that person, it's just about redirecting, taking, taking your energy out of that grief and putting it back into love and fond memories and into focusing it on, a more expansive outcome. So what Qigong does is that it will give you things to focus on, it will give you ways of relaxing the body. And in essence, what Qigong does, it makes you feel better. And because it makes you feel better, uh, it then affects your physical health. The, the whole idea of epigenetics, uh, hence why in epigenetics, Bruce, uh, two of big founders of it, uh, Bruce— Dr. Bruce Lipton and Dr. Joe Dispenza. They're both Tai Chi, Qigong practitioners. They both practice because they, they actually know, and they encourage, you know, a version, their style of Qigong or whatnot. They focus on because of the way it affects the body. And very, very similar with yoga, Pilates, meditation, these, but especially a whole body exercise, something that's not just a focusing on one thing, but focusing on everything. And the biggest thing with, with emotions— so, so, disease, disease is imbalance, imbalance in the body. So an illness is imbalance in the body here. And we focus on the physical diseases, but, uh, we can get emotional disease, we get emotional unbalance. And when we're focused with too much in a certain— like in grief or in suffering, we, you know, the energy— the body starts going to survival mode and it starts to shut down. So we need to get everything flowing again. And, you know, the Tao, the move, the balance is all about movement. And so what Qigong does is moving the body and gets the body moving, and it gets the body to start relaxing the muscles and stretching the tendons, because tendons tend to actually store toxins within our body. That's why if you ever stretch, or you do— people do yoga, they say, oh, I feel better. And it's because you're releasing stagnation within your body, or the medical term would be toxins. That toxins from emotions and, and also lack of movement, the body starts to actually store toxins within the body, and that's stored within the tendons and then the muscles. And so the movement of Tai Chi and Qigong, or movement, balanced movement where you breathe and expand that starts to release those toxins. And the other thing about especially qigong is we talk about harmonizing. So we balance, uh, the left and right hemispheres of the brain through movement. So when you breathe, like expanding one way, and when you breathe out, contracting another, and you're doing it with an alignment to the spine and the body while relaxing the muscles and stretching the tendons. And this creates a whole body homeostasis. The whole body balance. So we balance the left and right hemispheres of the mind, which therefore then the pituitary, um, start working, um, and pineal start all working together, and the body can start to reset itself and bring itself back to a harmony.

Okay, so that, that also leads to the next question I was going to ask you, but you say you don't, you don't fix people, you guide them. So what does that mean?

Well, again, for me it goes back to the, the, the Sifu thing, is that, um, you know, is that we all— one thing I learned a long, long time ago, and, and it always, even now, is it still amazes me, is that when you actually study the human body, there are— human bodies actually meant to be self-healing. And, and you actually go back the stories in the past where humans were living 250, 500 years, and it's like, well, if that's the case, why aren't we doing that now? And there's actually information on is that our, our society's high levels of stress, um, is actually deteriorating our bodies a lot quicker than it should be. Um, and so my philosophy, you know. So I know that we are self-healing systems, that we can actually self-heal and regenerate ourselves, but it's about knowing how to do that. And I mean, you know, like, so I do back massage, I do many types of healing, so I can help you, and that's cool. But in Christianity— and that's, that's the saying I'm about to say— it actually goes even beyond that. But there's an saying that says, give a person a fish and you feed them for a day, teach them how to fish and you feed them for a lifetime. And I want to teach you how to fish, you know. I want to teach you— my goal is to help people help themselves, because you should actually be able to do that. We, we are meant to be far more independent than we become. It doesn't mean that you don't need help from others, we don't need a doctor, but in the, the Eastern, uh, philosophy, like the Barefoot Doctor, they would go around and they would help people and teach them qigong and teach them, uh, Chinese medicine and, and do massage, but also teach the massage as well. So by making them independent, they, they would last longer and be stronger. But then you, when you do need somebody, you'd go to them. It's a bit like in the old days, for a lot of people, they knew how to maintain their car, but when something really went wrong, then they would go and see a mechanic. And it's that, that sort of thing, is that we're supposed to be a lot more independent than we've become. We, we sort of think we have to rely a lot on other people when, at least to a certain degree, we should be able to, you know, find things out for ourselves and help ourselves. But that doesn't mean you can't ask for help. Help. And, and you should, you know, always ask for help, but you can always help yourself. Helping— asking for help is a way of helping yourself.

Yeah, yeah. Well, there's again, there's that balance, right? The balance between being somewhat independent but also the interdependence that we are all— we're all one and we're all meant to rely and have that energy, you know, exchange even.

100%. Yeah, and that's— I, I just think, you know, like especially you hear it with some people, like they talk about, oh, you know, when my grandparents would say, oh, you know, community is a lot stronger now, and a lot of people are more independent. And I think, well, they just like cut themselves off. But it's this idea of it, it's going out there and, you know, finding those connections, finding the people that you want to be with. And, and, but it— that's the strength, and that, you know, that requires you to Go out there and be, you know, look and, and, you know, know that you, you know, you can do things for yourself. And but you also, you need each other. We need each other as well. It's, it's finding that balance, that harmony.

Yeah. So what type of energy imbalances, what kind of common energy imbalances are you finding in people nowadays?

Um, so there's a lot. There's, well, there's a number of different ones. So like, uh, of— for the UK at least, there's a lot of people with, uh, fibromyalgia, uh, which is chronic pain, uh, MEMS, getting a lot of back problems, uh, a lot of shoulder neck problems. Well, in Eastern philosophy, the shoulders and neck— the neck is the connection between what, what you believe and what you can physically achieve. So when you think you've got too much on, you, you, you you can— you could get tension within your neck. And tension within the shoulders is like the world is on your shoulders, Atlas is on your shoulders. So what people don't understand, or at least in Eastern philosophy, that the parts of your body actually represent are metaphysical. So they'll represent— so back problems is the world is on your shoulders, or you've got too much, you know, on you different organs mean different things. So, so at least in the Eastern philosophy, there is metaphors for this. But you get a lot of chronic pain issues, getting, uh, we're getting a lot of people with, uh, general back problems or, or neck and shoulder problems, um, and lots of— but lots of stiffness. Lots of people that are starting to stiffen up. And it goes back a little bit on the metaphor. In the old days of cars, you know, if you, you had a car, you maintained your car. If you didn't put enough oil and water water in your car, your car would seize up. Well, it's a little bit happening to people now. They seem to not be putting enough oil and water in their, in, in their vehicles, in themselves. But that oil and water could actually be movement. It could actually be allowing yourself to move and expand. Because when we close off, we close off physically or emotionally. We close off physically. So being, you know, like closed, you don't want to listen to the world, or, you know, hunching up, tensing up. When we tense the muscles, we stop the blood circulation. We stop the blood circulation, it starts to affect the whole body. So again, with the epigenetics, the way you think and feel literally affects your health. So if you're shutting down emotionally or becoming closed off and angry or repressing emotions, you start to repress toxins into your body. You start actually stiffening up, stiffening up into your body.

That's really interesting. As you're saying that, I was thinking, uh, I've been going to a place here locally called the Stretch Lab lately, um, because I have neck and shoulder stuff, right? And they're like, so they say it's from sitting too much, and I do sit a lot. Um, but there, I think there, that's, we, we tend to look at it from just a physical point of view as opposed to looking at the metaphysical point of view also, which could contribute to that.

Yeah, you know, within modern, let's say, you know, modern science or modern medicine, we, we did, we had for a long time seen things separately, and this is not connected to this, right? But we're actually, it's a lot more connected. And like, say you've got quantum physics, got, you know, quantum physics like saying, well, actually the quantum field, which is the 99.999% of an atom, is not actually empty space. Space, but it's that energy that connects everything to everything else. So quantum physics is saying all is one, you know. The epigenetics is saying the way you fit, you know, that your physical body is— your environment, which is your physical body, is actually affected by, by your emotional state, right? So you're mostly— your emotions affect your, your— so your health, the, the, your emotional health, your physical health. It's the same thing. It's part of the same thing. So all this old stuff is now coming back because it's all actually interconnected, and we've just separated it, and it's now time to actually merge it back, maybe in a different way, but definitely merge all this information back.

Yeah, well, I think in the West we've not only just separated, I think we've kind of dismissed all the, all the metaphysical, even, even a lot of the emotional stuff. We're just, we're always looking for physical causes for things. And, you know, as you pointed out with, with, uh, we, we talked about the placebo effect, we talked about the situation with your father and stuff. We, we do know, we know that our thoughts can affect our bodies, but we've kind of gotten away from that and just said, oh, it doesn't matter what you think, just take this pill.

Yeah, yeah. And, and, and, and, you know, it's, well, I mean, I mean, the point of, if anything, so, so the point of the placebo or, or the knowledge of the placebo is 80% of the time if you really think and think and feel it, you'll make it work. So use that power, use that. But you know, that is the— you know, like, at first I think a lot of people sound very shocked when they hear that. It's like, no, but you're missing the point. You're missing the point. If a placebo can actually fit— if, if a placebo can actually fix your headache, or, or, you know, you have an operation and, and nothing happened but you're fixed That's the powerful thing. You're a powerful thing. You are so much more powerful than you, you've been led to believe, that you've led yourself to believe. And, and that's the thing, is taking the power back. It's, it's, it's— and, and that's— I think it's— there's a lot— there's a big thing in medical, um, science that a frown takes less energy than a smile to, to, to to do that, that it's easier to frown than it is to, to smile, which leads to an uncomfortable, um, philosophy of it's— it, it— for a lot of people, it takes less energy to be in a negative state than it does a positive state, because a positive state, you've got to keep working on that, keep doing that. And, and it's this thing of, is that, well, we, we take control, and it's a great power there, but we've got to work on it. And you can't, you can't just do it for one— we've like been taking these pills thinking, 'Oh yeah, it will solve it for me,' which in, in, in China that's known as the, uh, the golden pill. The golden— you, you do this one thing, you do one Tai Chi class, you take this pill, and everything's going to be solved. And it's like, no, life is not like that. But the, the continuation, the flow, you know, to, to, to, uh, if you— there's another Taoist saying of if you are rowing upstream, if you stop rowing, you'll stop. You won't stop, but you'll go backwards. So the whole idea is, is that we keep on working on ourselves, we keep on doing stuff, because if we don't, our body will use that energy up and will deteriorate. So it's about like, yeah, you know, we can, we can achieve so much and we have the potential to do so much, but it's just about doing effort. But effort can be effortless, effortless, if you have the right attitude, if you focus in the right way, if you make it fun. You know, my being seen, how I teach, I try to make it as fun as possible for me, let alone anybody else. Um, because then you're not, you know, when things are fun, you know, time flies by. You know, you don't realize you've been doing it for 15 minutes, an hour, 2 hours. And that's the point, you know, that's the, that's the point. When you make things and what I call childlike, you know, so you A lot of people in sort of in certain communities or spiritual communities call— talk about the divine feminine, the divine masculine. There's also the divine child, the divine within us. We actually have the divine feminine and divine masculine and the divine child. Not just, you know, not whether you're woman, man, banana, or goat, you— their qualities, their energies. So the masculine is about your action, it's about your doing, asserting yourself. The feminine is your feeling, your understanding, your nurturing. And the child is the playful side, but it's also the opening up to the consciousness, opening up to the possibilities of what if, because that's what, in essence, that's what children do. So you've got to have that feminine side to nurture, to keep things going. You've got to have that physical, that masculine side, do, do something physical and get it done. But you also got to have that play. You've got to have the sacred child and allow yourself to play and and nurture and, and expand into that. They daydream and expand into consciousness. And what if I do this? What if? What if? Allow yourself to see the possibilities, because what you focus on grows.

Yeah, I love what you said about— and it kind of reminds me what you said earlier about like meditation, because I know so many people when I bring up the word meditation, they just, they just get turned off. They're like, I just, just can't sit and not do anything. But you talked about fishing, you talked about knitting, you talked about doing crossword puzzles. Anything that you lose yourself in, any activity that, that can allow you to really focus and get into that flow. It doesn't have to be sitting cross-legged on the floor.

No. And, and, and that's, again, it's just, it's something that we've thought of, oh, it means this, and it's like, but it doesn't. It, it, you know, it, uh, I often say to, uh, I got friends who love fishing and like carp fishing, and oh, you're going, oh, you go meditating, have up.

Yeah.

And it's like, Boggy, I'm not meditating. You are. Do you forget everything? Yes. Do you enjoy it? Yes. It's meditating. Go, shoo.

Yeah.

But it's, it's that thing of we, you know, and, and it's sort of one thing I liked about the Chinese state of mind is that they— one word tends— nearly every word in, in Chinese means more than one meaning. There's very few that only have one meaning, very, very few. Um, you know, like in English, you know, like to, you know, one, two, or go to, or too many. It's got more than one meaning. Chinese, a lot. And but that whole idea of you, you hear the word meditating and people, oh, sit there cross-legged going om. No. Yeah, no, it can mean so many things. Because it's actually— it's not the— it's— you're thinking of one outcome rather than what the actual meaning is itself. You're, you're thinking of the effect, not the cause. The cause, the meditating, is focusing there, focusing in some way, focusing on one thing, forgetting everything else. That's what meditation is about. So therefore, meditation can be so many different things.

Yeah, and I also like what you said because we don't talk a lot about the divine child. We do sometimes, we talk here about the inner child, you know, a little bit, that's starting to become a thing. Um, but that if, if it's not fun, if it's not enjoyable, if it's, it's drudgery, we're not going to do it. Um, and but it is, it is a practice. I mean, for me, I've, I've realized there's certain things that I do every day and it's become a practice because It doesn't have to be drudgery, but it has to be— you have to be dedicated to it.

Or let's, you know, if fun is, is a word that makes you uneasy, interesting. It has to be interesting to keep the forebrain— our forebrain in Chinese is known as the monkey mind. Our forebrains are known to have 60,000 to 90,000 thoughts every single day. And, and so we get easily distracted because that's a lot of thoughts flying around in our heads. Meditation is about putting yourself out of monkey mind and pulling yourself back in, in, into the— for— into the, the rear of the brain rather than being in, in the forebrain. So it's the, you know, it's the understanding that, you know, you need— you know, if you're— if it's too samey, for a lot of people becomes boring very quickly. So you need to flip it up. And also it's that child mind as well. You keep— you want to make it pretty and you want to keep it interesting. But there's another thing about the Divine Child, um, is that it's actually medically known now is that children naturally fidget, you know, like, like children can't sit still, they fidget. And parents, you know, sit still, be, you know, stop moving still. And that goes into your adulthood. We actually now know that a lot of our illnesses are caused by the lack of movement within our body. And fidgeting is actually helping the body release toxins and, and stop muscles from going to sleep. So when children fidget and move, it's because certain muscles are starting to seize up or, or becoming a bit too stagnant, and the body gets them to twitch, to move, and, and to fidget to release those toxins. And it also helps process their organs. The organs move better when your body's moving. So like, for those in, in, in audio land, I sit on a yoga ball, on a balance ball, um, I— and I'm always like— I used to have my own podcast, and people say, you're always moving about, you know. It's like, yes, because that's about flow. It's about— and in actual fact, rather than sitting on the chair, which keeps you very stationary, but your muscles start to stagnate, and then you get lower back pain or leg pain because you're always still. On a yoga block, a big one of those big cushions, you're sitting there and you're moving, you allow yourself to actually move and twitch. Your body's circulating energy, it keeps flowing, so you stay a lot healthier for longer.

Yeah, that's— wow, that's really interesting. And yes, for people who are, who are listening, Sifu has— is sitting on a ball, and, and, you know, that, that movement is, uh, is very apparent. It's cool. So, um, yeah, we talked earlier about, you know, Taoism and Buddhism aren't necessarily religions in the way that we think of religions. I guess, um, they're— I think, I think of them more as philosophies. But what do they teach us about death and the afterlife?

So yes, so within, so within both, um, Taoism and Buddhism, it's very much the belief of, um, reincarnation, that, that things live and die over and over again. Um, and, um, the one main difference between Buddhism and Taoism is that in Buddhism there's more of like a, like a ladder or tier that we— to get to, uh, to get to nirvana, to get to heaven of sorts, you go up these different ladders, these different tiers. Now human life is about actually somewhere in the middle, and above us are trees and, and different, uh, other animals and other plants. And you evolve. And, and both Buddhism, Taoism say that trees themselves are beings in a constant state of consciousness and of meditation. Um, and so the, so the difference is, is like that they see it more like, let's say, a tier structure. And if you're— if you didn't have a great life, next life you, you might be in a lesser creature. I mean, Taoism is that all creatures are sacred, or everything's sacred, even— pardon my, my rudeness— even poo, you know, everything is sacred. You know, so, so therefore you, you could actually, you know, within the idea of reincarnation, they'll actually flow in between. Now the interesting thing with that, it was actually Nikola Tesla who, who said a saying which later was said by Einstein. He just changed it slightly. Through his studies, Nikola Tesla said that all energy appears to be conscious. And, and as, as conscious— as energy is conscious, energy cannot be just destroyed. It can only be transferred or transformed. So he was hinting at the idea that there's reincarnation, that every— that, that energy is conscious, we are conscious. So therefore, once we leave here, we must go somewhere else. And then you have— I mentioned it earlier— the— so in 1974 physicists discovered the quantum field. And the quantum field is that any— that the atom is not 99.999% empty space, but that empty space is actually a field that connects every atom with every other atom. And when they started doing split experiments with atoms, and they had one part here, one part 14 miles away, and they they, they agitated or tickled one part of the atom, the other responded. It was basically saying that everything is connected to everything else. So, you know, whatever you have, whatever you believe is that there is something where— I'm not saying it's heaven, I'm not saying it's the banana, I'm not— I don't know what it is, but I know that there is something beyond this one. And, and we will keep going because we are energy, we are conscious energy. Now, one of the things also within Taoism is that— so the word soul is Latin and it means a body of breath. The body, us, we are a body of breath. So it would state that without a body, our soul, our consciousness, our soul cannot survive, that it needs a body. Within Taoism, there's more that everything is the Tao, the Tao. And within the, the, the sort of words of the Tao, the Tao Te Ching, um, the, the, the true— that the, the Tao that can be named is not the true Tao, and the Tao is shapeless and formless. So what it's all sort of saying is, is that one of the Tao is us, consciousness. And consciousness is not just this body. We're not just— we're not just Sifu Boggy, we're not just Bob, we're not Frank, we're not— we're not a fish, we're not a dog. We're everything. We can be everything. And we flow through lots of different states. And within Taoism, there are many, uh, Taoist poets that said, I've dreamed, uh, I had a dream where I was a butterfly in a field of corn, and when I woke up, I couldn't tell the difference between which was the dream. You know, is the dream of, am I this philosopher writing this down, or was I that butterfly in that corn? Which one's dreaming and which one's real? Real. And I think that happens a lot, is that you think of your past and, and, and you think, well, you know, it's almost like a distant memory, is almost, you know, what's that, it could almost be a dream, you know. And you think of the future and you, well, you know, you dream of the future. The only real thing is right now. Yeah, right here, right now is the only real thing. And, and that's the thing that we need to focus on more when we distracted by the past, the present— oh, sorry, the future, the past. And we— there's lots of distractions, but the real— the reality is right now is the present moment. And we focus on that present moment, and we can expand and grow. But also, within Taoism, this concept of— because your consciousness and your actually formless— and there's even evidence in, in medical studies, MRI scans, where they're saying that they've had somebody in the MRI scan thinking and, you know, asking them questions, and their responses were coming from outside the body, which confused them. And, and he was saying that, well, actually, it appears our soul, if you like, if you prefer that word, our soul is not in here, it's actually out.

Yeah.

Of here. That things come in. Like, if anything, we normally tend to see in a negative way. You see like a person, you see like a puppet on a string, and we see there's a negative connotation. But I actually think we are puppets on the string, but we're the puppet, and we're, we're the controller and the puppet, you know. We're, we're both, because I think we control this body from a different state, from a different side. And then we come back in, and that's why I think you can have different dreams, so they feel so real of different realities, because I think, I think you're in more than one place at once.

Yeah, I completely agree with that. You know, the, uh, you were talking about the, the Star Wars movies earlier. I think there's a lot of good analogies. I love, um, the Avatar movie because I think that's what we are. This body is an avatar, so we are, we are controlling it from a different, from a different, uh, reality, and we are, we are controlling it.

And sometimes we get confused and we think we're actually, we're the Yeah, and there's lots, not just in Taoism, but there's, there's lots of sort of poems and lots of philosophers that talks of that nature. It is that, you know, he is that there's the, you know, there's always, there's always that feeling inside of most people that there's something more. There's always something more, right? And for a lot of people, you know, like, um, you know, alcoholism, you know, um, getting addictions is that emptiness. They're seeking that thing that feels like it's missing. Yeah. And it's missing because you're in this tiny little thing where you're so much more than that. It's not actually missing, it's that all of you can't fit in this. Yeah. You know, he's like— another thing, Taoism, like Taoism would say, and in Buddhism as well, it's like the body's like a glove and you're just— it's just on your hand.

Yeah.

You're, you're fitting that glove, this body, it can only fit so much of you. The rest of you is outside of that body. So there's so much more, and we think there's an emptiness, and that emptiness is that actually it's an expansion of that.

Yeah, you—

you're— there's so much more of you, and this is just part of you.

Yeah, I think that's— I think it's absolutely true, and I think it's really fascinating because as we've got— for certain, when we first started talking, I think you used the word woo-woo, and, you know, for people like I guess people in our— in this society will say, well, you're, you're woo-woo, you know, you're thinking about these things that, that aren't real. And I'm like, but I think that everybody has that feeling. Everybody has that feeling that there's something more. And that's why those movies like The Matrix and Star Wars and Avatar, why they resonate so much with us, because I think they touch us in a deeper place. We know there's something that, as you said, not missing, but we're being told that doesn't exist.

There's an interesting CIA document that I once saw, um, that stated that, um, it said in a very like scientifically, scientific and slightly confused way, but it stated that according to information they've studied over 40, 50 years that all information is channeled, uh, not created. And what— so what they were indicating, indicating is that, like, say Star Wars, that somebody didn't make that up, they channeled that from another reality, that that idea, that concept is actually existing somewhere else. And, and so, you know, like Lord of the Rings, all these stories are written, you know, the writers may say we thought, we made them up, but are actually being channeled. That we actually channel information. And what it was indicating was that, racing into that information I said about the thoughts seem to be coming inwards, is that what they were saying is that we channel everything. Everything is channeled into— we don't create things, it's channeled. So ideas, concepts, concepts, everything is channeled into our minds.

Yeah, well, you hear a lot of artists who are honest will say that, you know, musicians, uh, book writers or authors, uh, movie writers, they'll tell you this, this— it came to me, you know, I woke up or I had a dream, you know. Einstein talked about sometimes if he was struggling with something, he'd go to sleep, um, and the answer would come to him while he was asleep. So yeah, there's, there's lots of indications of We're coming, coming to the end of our time. I really enjoy talking with you. For anybody that's listening who is interested in these concepts, where do they go next?

Well, you can— if you're interested in learning from me, you can find me on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, uh, um, under Sifu Boggy. Uh, also Linktree. I have my own website, my own mystery school, where I teach what I've talked about and more. Or, and, you know, people ask the right question, ask the question, oh, what about this? I'll happily teach it. It's, it's my— it's sort of how I am. And that school is known as Shundao, so shundao.uscreen.io. So we'll have the link in the thing as well. But yeah, so you can find my mystery school on shundao.uscreen.io.

All right, sounds great. Well, I really appreciate your time today. Uh, it's great to get to know you and have you share your wisdom with us.

It's been awesome. Thank you so much.

All right, enjoy your afternoon.

I will do. Take care.

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