u/Diamondbacking

When is he at his most erudite, in his intellectual pomp? Looking for YouTube video recommendations please.

Seen a lot of conflicting reports and wondered if there is a consensus

Got asked this and found it hard to answer!

There are a lot of programmes and I'd be interested to hear if there is some consensus around which are the better courses, and which are to be avoided. Thanks!

Was an HRV tracker for a long while and found resonant breathing really helped, but interested to hear what other things people have found with nervous system regulation

I eat well, clean, exercise regularly, all the usual stuff of a 'healthy person'. But I'm wondering what it's like to try and do everything possible to become as fit and healthy as its possible to be. I'm talking supplements, anabolic priming, all of the stuff that is perhaps at the fringes of human optimisation, and everything in between.

This thread has inspired me to consider more deeply the direction I am taking on my path. I am a Vipassana meditator, 3 courses and two service periods. Lately I have been reading Seeing that Frees by Rob Burbea and it is really opening me up to the wide expanse of possibilities for insight meditation.

On retreat I practice the vipassana technique, but when at home, despite meditating morning and night, it doesn't really stick for me. I am much more inclined to stay with anapana, and indeed on the last retreat I experienced full body bliss on day 2, having only practiced anapana.

What I'm noticing is that, perhaps as a function of being a loyal person, it feels slightly forbidden to offer any criticisms of the practice, but as I continue to explore I realise that I do have some, and that they are valid.

I find with Goenka Vipassana that the attitudes I hear from some are very dogmatic, that there is no space for other practices or self direction - I hear this to be a common reflection. Personally, I find the chanting to be excessive, and Goenka's justification - that he needs to create a spiritual 'vibe' for everyone - didn't really satisfy me.

Also, whilst I love Goenka and feel very warm to him, I find him incredibly verbose in a way that is perhaps not entirely compassionate. By which I mean, as an example, during the last discourse on day 5 I looked at the faces of the males in the hall, and they looked broken, tired and truly exhausted. I felt that way, and must have looked the same! But Goenka does his full hour, no matter what. A 10 day course can be gruelling, and I don't think everything is done to alleviate that. Asking new students to sit adithan on day 4 is another example of this, in my opinion.

Anyhow, I would welcome any perspectives you may have about where I am currently on this path and how I might go about exploring other traditions, and traditions that might resonate with me in particula. I sense that Seeing that Frees will be something of a manual for me, and would like to orient my practice in a way that I fully connect with, as I suspect that Vipassana from Goenka may not be exactly that. Perhaps, upon exploration, I'll discover that it is, and so I am seeking advice on that exploration to discover whether this is so. Much metta to you all.

Cooked a burger patty in a skillet so I could build the fond with the meat, then de-glazed with stock, added the onions let them cook and then added the tinned tomatoes, Mutti of course. Then added in copious amounts of the pasta water at intervals for extra flavour.

Wondering if anyone else has done something similar? Worked pretty well, but would love to hear any tips on how to improve.

The onions could maybe be cooked separately, as they absorbed a lot of the stock. And I added garlic but just kind of threw it in after the tomato - does this also need to be fried? And I was very light on herbs, when might these go in? Cheers!

Was informed by a nutritionist that serum is the way to go- any truth in that?

Somehow I missed that it was 35 days after opening the account to spend 200...I'm a dork. Any hope or point trying to argue it, or am I toast?

Regularly hear people say this is one ingredient where the price to quality ratio makes it worth spending a bit more on. Interested to hear what people go for!

Lifting in the evening can create disturbed sleep so I am serious about dialling in what happens post-workout.

Currently typing this doing a 4-7-8 breathwork session, 10 minutes. Will take some Theanine, as I want to do some creative work this evening, and find that PS is a useful supplement not only for focus on this, but also for blunting that cortisol spike I sometimes get at 3am after lifting.

What's your protocol?

I really enjoyed it, found the story compelling, and his approach of using 'glimpses' of Isthvan's life to tell the story managed temporality in an original way.

My reservations would be that I don't think the character work is particularly deep, especially when I think about Helen. I don't come away with a great sense of her, no real notion of what she might do in situations outside of the plot, and for that I think it falls down a little in my estimation. Perhaps this is in part due to the spare dialogue, where very little is revealed. Sometimes this is the novel's strength, but the over-reliance on 'okays' and the limited sharing of intimacy creates other issues i.e. we come away not really knowing the characters.

I have seen the writing referred to as 'spare' and I think that's accurate, and I see that as a positive. As the adage says, easy reading is hard writing, and I think the economy here is indicative of excellent craft.

It won the Booker, and that's fair enough, but looking back over the winners that doesn't put it in the best company. (Prophet Song, really?). That said, outside of its prize win, I don't think it will endure, given how insubstantial it feels thematically. This is personal preference, but I prefer rich, textured work, and this is certainly not that.

Still, there was much to enjoy here and I'd recommend it to any readers of this sub.

When I'm reading I don't want my phone anywhere near me. But I'm lying down reading and from that positions writing isn't comfortable, and takes me out of the flow of reading.

I've come to think that having a dictaphone that I can then plug into my computer and it spits out a .txt file that I can then put into Obsidian would be ideal

Anyone have any experience of this?

Fascinating! An attempt to answer the Socratic questions of how to live, and live a good life.

Currently on the section where he is covering the Greek foundations of various schools of thought, and it's great to cover Stoicism again in more detail.

Feel like this topic has not really been discussed on this sub, as it's perhaps a slightly more scholarly topic.

I'm a big advocate for use of the second brain, particularly through Obsidian where I have a note for each book I've read, which includes favoured passages and links to other books and authors. I want to do more with taking notes as I read, especially with non-fiction, rather than just blasting through and thinking 'wow, interesting'.

The discussion in here about Suttree compelled me back for another read. He is floating under the bridge, baiting his line, and it is described in such detailed beauty it made me gasp.

We know he was a prodigious reader with an eidetic memory, apparently, but how else do they get so good?

This is kind of a sleeper thread to ask - how did you improve your writing? What made a noticeable difference? For me: copy work.

I'm re-reading Love in the time of Cholera and making notes on the page - first time doing this, feels wild - and it's so rich that I'm learning a lot about theme and managing story lines, and then just the beautiful prose is giving me lots of ideas

The ones with the most jaw on the floor moments please.

The opening to Tyson's autobiography stays with me.