Project Zen 2012
November & December 2012
My health continues to degrade and I no longer have the energy to continue my walks. I did not receive and good news nor any bad news from my cat scan. I am waiting to see a team of new specialist and it is un-kown when that will be. The specialist continue to say i need to eat meat. Even though it is causing me all kinds of other problems (i.e.: constipation, I am only have 3-4 movements a month, weight gain, cramps and illness.) They are giving me medication to combat the constipation of meat ingestion as well as iron supplements to give me more energy but it does not have any positive effect. My iron levels appear to stay constant. Although they are low they are still in the except-able range. I am working with my GP to figure a way that we can start making things better. More to fallow in the new year.
September & October 2012
IN september I ended up getting quite ill again and have been carrying a relatively severe cough around with me ever since. I seems like I can not go a day with out having several coughing spasms that are so violent that my thought and chest are left in pain afterward. I continue to get tests and have seen a radiologist and I am currently waiting for a cat scan. More to fallow as the month progresses. On the Positive side I have been forcing my self to go for a walk twice a week with a partner just incase something happens or I am unable to continue for the whole duration. THis leaves me greatly fatigued but I can no longer bear the fact that all I do is wake up go to work then go home and sleep until it is time for work again. I feel as though I have no life at all. When I look at it like that I start to wonder what the point is.
July & August 2012
These last two months have been filled with tests and my health yo-yoing up and down. I was hoping to get back to the project and start in on a regime that I could share with everyone but as fate would have it, it was not my time yet. With my increased work schedule to ensure that I could make bills, I have had very little energy for anything else in life. I would say I am almost as unhealthy as I was when I left work. I continue to practice meditation and Qi Gong but my work load makes it difficult and I have not been to any classes in quite some time. Other than that I dont have any thing else to report. I will check in again soon and keep you posted on what/when to expect PZ to start up again.
May & June 2012
Has it happened I ended up geting quite ill again and suffered another set back with PZ. I did however manager to keep up twitter and the facebook page sparatically during these two months. I have been working part time at my normal job and slowly increasing the work load. It has been leaving me exausted. After several visits with the my doctor he has decided that there aer ather factors affecting my health other than the tumour on my thyroid. So I will be undergoing more tests and likly donating more blood to the reaserch of this health delema that I am facing. Other than that things are moving forward slowly in other areas. I continue my study of QiGong and Tai Chi hoping to find greater health in acient homiopathic arts. I feel like this is making a difference but I am not entirly sure as my weekly visits to my accupunturist is also a great help to the issues I am having. I wish I had the energy to continue my daily blog but at the time I am soo tired after a the day I can not focus enough to place down any coheirent thoughts. I hope to het the ball rooking again in july … lets keep our fingers crossed.
April 2012
Just wanted to give an update that starting in May I will be re-launching Project Zen, although I am not 100% I feel I am well enough to start my daily records and dedicate the time I need to get the site up and running to the capacity I want to make Project Zen the presence that it should be on line. I think with the combination of Facebook and twitter that it will make it much easier to publish articles and find people who are interested in the information.
Up Coming Humiliation
As you all know the results of the Humiliation poll came back with the result of “Humiliation by Paint balling”.
I will be suffering that humiliation and every one is invited to come and watch, cheer and laugh at me as I get assaulted be 50 paintball pellets wearing nothing but a jock strap and face protection. Location and event time will be posted as they are determined.
March 2012
Well unfortunately my health prevented me from exercising the way that I wanted to. I was unable to keep up with even the simplest of routines ie: the one that I had listed on my site. I want to apologize for the false start into PZ 2.0 but I plan to continue as soon as possible and please check back for up dates starting in april. However a friend of mine fallowed my suggestions for eating and exercise and lost over twenty pounds from january 1st to march 31st. So that was nice to hear. I have asked him to do a little write up on how he felt during that time and how difficult he found the exercise. My health is still sub par but I am scheduled to go back to work in April on a trial basis. I will keep you all informed as to how that goes. There is a lot to say but I will most certainly be keeping you up to date on everything as my health returns and keep you posted on the activities that I have been doing.
The first thing that I will be talking on is Tai Chi. I have been using the Touist art of Tai Chi to help with my health recovery as well as a means of physical exercise. I am finding Tai Chi to be very helpful and it has also spurred me to revisit the healing arts of Qi Gong. I will be putting together some information and posting it in this site as soon as possible. I also hope to start doing some video interviews with Health Experts that focus on non Western mentality and maybe shed some insight on how they can both benefit your health but also you general wellness. These to will also be posted on the site as soon as my health allows me to do this sort of thing.
Febuary 2012
Well after working hard to fallow through on all my goals for last year with PZ one of the things I was able to keep up with was getting rid of things that were weighing me down. So this is the results of giving away or selling one item every week for a year with a before and after shot…
After 12 months I was able to get rid of almost half of the things I have had in storage. I think that is pretty good. This year I will keep working on it although not as intensely and I will try and get rid of half of what is left. Remember this year is more about giving back to the community than it is about getting rid of material items.
January 2012
As you can see the website has gone under a massive over haul and with this new look I am happy to announce that Project Zen 2.0 will launch on February 1st 2012. Along with launching the new site I will be launching a Project Zen Facebook presence along with Twitter and an apple iPhone app.
2011 was a very interesting year for me. A few short months after launching Project Zen I fell ill and for several month did not get better, in fact I got worse. Late in the year I found out that there is a tumour on my thyroid gland. After that I have been on different medications and different suggested eating regimes. One of which is eating meat … which I know causes me digestive issues. Not only that put it makes me put on weight. So in October 2010 when I started to work to wards regaining my previous fitness level I went from 251 lb. down to 178 lb. by march 2011. This was great but since I have been mostly bed ridden and forced into eating a diet that does not work with my digestive system and unabel to preform any vigorous exercise I am back up to 215 lb. in January 2012. Not only is this very unhealthy but it is also very frustrating. However this is opens up an excellent opportunity to share all my knowledge of fitness, nutrition, and apply it to a simple affordable process for obtaining a balanced life. While also being able to record my process and share it with all of you.
I have put together a simple exercise routine that you can do in twenty minutes, as well as an vegetarian eating system that gives you all the nutrients you require, and by fallowing me through out the year you will learn everything that you need to know to be able to do this your self. Not only that but at the end of the 12 month period I will put a video together of a time lapse of a daily picture that will show exactly what you are to expect to achieve in that time period.
Also with this years PZ I will be posting in my Food for Thought at least bi-monthly recipe of a delicious vegetation (either vegan, vegetarian or pescitarian) meal. Complete with pictures and when possible a video. In this section of the website I will also post important information you need to have to make sure you are eating properly as well as what foods to avoid. I will post other authors articles and link them as it is appropriate.
I will also post a new exercise every ??? in Simply Fitness section of the website.
As far as meditation goes I am expert in the Karate style of meditation and novice in the Zazen style of Zen Monks. But I will post several interesting facts, ideas and suggestions for your meditation as the year progresses in the Meditation made Easy section of the site.
Last but not least is the relieving myself of worldly burdens. This year I am not going to give something away every weak, I am instead going to give back to the community once a month in an evert to free my self of unwanted stresses and unnecessary possessions. You can fallow my Facebook page ProjectZen – Community to keep track of all the events that will take place over the year.
Project Zen 2011
Project Zen is the hub site for a personal quest to find my way closer to understanding Zen. Project Zen is sometimes referred to as “12 months to ZEN“ for two reasons. The first being that the you tube ID “project zen” was already taken, and also because the project is going to take place over the entire 12 months of 2011.
From my findings, one has to have a clean mind, body and spirit to truly attempt walking the path to zen. i understand this to mean:
MIND
To feed my mind I will being studying a different book each month. I will offer my self uf to discuss the book with whom ever would like to talk about it or if challenged by one of my viewers i will do a review of it in a video. There are certin criteria that these books must fall under. They should be philosophical in nature or topic (prefrebily Zen but not nessisary as I have been told that sometimes it can take a very long time to comprehend even the similist Zen concept and to clutter my mind with Zen insight before I have understoad the firs teaching would be a waste of time) and/or should be helping me to improve some aspect of my mind, body or spirit. For example I could read Essential Zen first and then a book on nutrition so on and so forth. I will keep a detailed list of all the books I read for the entire year on the books page. I will also keep a log of any and all other reading I do there as well. As I will be reading more than 12 books this year.
Also to fuel my mind I will be putting together different project s this year to keep my creativity up and force my self to have out put. For example I will be writing a guide to Wa Ki Ryu for the ranks white belt to Black belt. This is something that is long over due at out school. What it will be is a training tool that has all the things that you are expected to know as well as other things revolving around training. This will also be an excellent opportunity to get some photography and provide a great opportunity for some of the students to participate in something that will be a benefit to every one who trains in the dojo. Of course this will have to be finished by the end of the year.
BODY
My biggest weakness for unhealthy food/drink is sweets and pop (I also have a healthy love for Rockstar type beverages). So I wont be allowed any pops or energy drink and if I do I will earn a suck counter. But as I also consider complete denial of all things to be damaging. So with this in mind I will allow my self to have two days a month that I can eat sweets (but still no pops). I think we call all agree that sweets like high quality chocolate is food for the soul. It does not just taste good, it actually makes life better! As far as proper food goes I am a pescitarian so I will continue on that path with a few exceptions. The first being if I am a guest in someones house I will not be a douche bag about making them prepare something just for me. If there is nothing vegetarian on the table I will politely eat what I am served. As for supplementation I will be using vitamins, minerals, greens+, and vega proteins as needed/daily. My primary goal with food intake is to keep it healthy and not sure sugars. (I will keep you filled in on what I eat every day on my blog that way any one interested in how I lost all the extra weight they can see exactly how I ate.)
Training will consist of two days of physical fitness weather that is at the gym or out of doors does no mater as long as I am working either weights, cardio and/or endurance. Then I will all so be training Kendo as well as Karate minimum two days a week. There will be some daily callisthenics that I will be doing to specially target martial arts integral muscles groups.
SPIRIT
The first thing I will be doing for my spirit is meditation. Specifically Zazen style meditation. I have spend some time in a Zen Buddhist church here in town and have learned some interesting techniques regarding meditation. So I will be implementing them on a daily basis.
Facing my fears. Well my biggest fear is of heights so the first thing to do is challenge my self to face this fear. I will be doing this by facing my fear four times this year in progressively more intense ways. The first of which will be to go bungie jumping, The other fear challenges will be determined as the year goes on. (please feel free to comment on the site with suggestions)
Last but not least emotional attachment. I would not go as far as to say I am a hoarder or anything but I constantly find myself having way to much stuff. When I go to get rid of it I always find some reason to keep it, “so and so gave that to me .. oh this reminds me of…” type of things. So much in fact that for the last 6 years I have had to rent storage space just to keep all my stuff in my possession. So I will be getting rid of at least 52 different Item or lots if you will of my belongings. There will be a list of the things I give away (or sell if given the opportunity) under the possessions page.
FINDING BALANCE
These steps enable the free flow of energy between the mind, body and spirit. Once this path is clear for the energy to flow through smoothly, the next step is to strengthen and harmonize the flow of energy improving the force of balance of the three aspects that make us who we are (similar to centrifugal force); thus allowing one to begin on the path to Zen.
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