The Taoist Approach to Mental Health and Wellbeing: The Barefoot Doctor at TEDxHackney

The Taoist Approach to Mental Health and Wellbeing: The Barefoot Doctor at TEDxHackney

[Applause] I just thinking I bet you’re thinking he’s a fraud he’s wearing shoes and and probably I am a fraud just like we all are I think we all have that fear of being a fraud don’t we am I real because we’re not I think really I mean as far as you’re concerned what I am is a set of uh signals firing off from your neurons creating a description of a man standing in front of you uh actually from my point of view s the same thing I mean my experience of me is just a set of uh signals firing off from my neurons um however in this game of life that we are playing because it is theater really um we construct reality through a filter of perception and um I don’t rehearse these speeches by the way this is just coming right off the top of my head um I uh the the Barefoot doctor is a is a metaphor for a humble healer and they were mostly women in facts in ancient China who were like medicine women they were powerful they had magic they knew how to do acupuncture how to dispense herbs they teach chiung energy exercises they do magic spells for people to become pregnant or to protect them from Evil and all sorts of stuff and uh they were doing it from a a a sense of calling a motivation to be of service to their fellows Humanity uh rather than from a sense of self-aggrandisement it was about serving uh they base their philosophy on or their way on what’s called dosm which is an ancient Chinese um origin origined uh originated system of life it’s not a religion what it actually is is a a cosmology which is very akin to Modern quantum physics is the the sense that there is a a prime cause which they call Da uh spell Tao and um this word is not sacred it’s not something that you have to rever you could insult it if you want nothing would happen to you it wouldn’t punish you it’s not a person that it’s not anthropomorphized it’s just the prime cause and none of us has the mental capacity to explain or or Define it um this Prime cause exists forever it’s never born it never dies it just is and we could say that it’s comprised of uh Consciousness in motion like primordial Consciousness in motion this phenomenon the primordial Consciousness in motion is they call Chi or psychoactive energy um when this as this this you call it a presence I experience it as a presence behind all manifest phenomena um when this presence decides to so to speak kind of morph into form the universe is born and um once that happens you have a polarity you have the prime cause and you have the Manifest universe and whenever you have a polarity they say uh arises yin and yang now the yin is like the contractive tendency in all phenomena and the Yang is the expansive tendency and these two dance around each other in a cyclic motion so that you will and it affects every stratum of of existence so that you’ll have a phase during each hour where you feel well life is good I’m feeling really great I can do it and then when oh maybe I’m mad maybe I can’t maybe you know you you you’re dipping and Rising constantly through through the day through your life and and events do that as well events get really difficult and then they get easy and then they get difficult and then they it’s usually when well it’s always when things reach their Zenith it’s when they’re going to tip into the opposite so if you look at economic cycles for example the one that we’ve just come out of uh probably the biggest at least most spectacular economic boom in at least recorded history um over the last how many decades three four decades uh now uh it reached at Zenith and it’s now we’re we’ve entered into probably what would be the biggest economic uh slump uh in recorded history and all the ramifications of that um it’s cyclical there are big cycles and little cycles and all of this is operated by yin and yang you have your soft side you have your hard side you have your generous side you have your mean side you have your altruistic caring side you have your ruthless side neither is good or bad they just are you can’t have one without the other so you can’t have all brightness because there has to be shade and so if somebody’s glowing with brightness and utterly beautiful to look at and looking absolutely perfect and manicured and presents themselves perfectly you can be sure that behind that is the opposite as well um and uh so for every truth there is the opposite uh nothing is fixed everything is relative once you’re out in the world of manifestation anyway so much for that where that cosmology gave rise to a philosophy a set of principles um basically that you have a true nature uh you have true nature and the art is to come back into your true nature if you do that things will work out beautifully for you you’ll go through the ups and the Downs the yin and the Yang cycle but you won’t be affected by it because you’re not personally involved in it so to speak you’re like the uh the back back ground presence inside observing yourself going through the theater of life and um if you can learn to come into your true nature your life will be magical and powerful and beautiful and they call this WOAY which means the path of least resistance the path of manifesting what you need just by intending it rather than contriving it or struggling or striving or pushing other people out of the way to get it um they uh I mean I could go on this isn’t the the the the arena to do that in I got go into the great depths of the DST uh philosophy because it is fascinating and I I highly recommend a little bit of research into it um but the uh from these principles from this this philosophy um came a set of psychophysical methods or techniques by which to embody the principles of the philosophy so that you actually move with it in in your daily life physically so to speak psychophysically you you actually embody the principles so um the yin and the Yang for example I’m aware that if I’ve got my weight on the right side my left side is empty so I’ve got my yang full strong side and my left empty soft side and I’m constantly aware of the switch um I have my soft side in the front my half side in the back I have the the Yang heat rising kind of noisy bit of me at the top where my mouth is uh you know mostly is that’s the noisy bit and uh and then the lower part is is the Cho uh Yin soft side um well anyway these methods um are uh known most famously as Tai Chi that’s a very famous Dost method it’s a slow moving martial art well it’s not really slow moving you you practice it solo slow moving to appreciate the the movement of energy within it’s actually a boxing form when you use it it’s boxing so it’s not done slow motion unless the other guy is going slow motion too in fact even then you’d probably want to go fast um acupuncture is a is a a famous modality of dosm uh this doesn’t mean that everybody that practices acupuncture knows about dosm most of them don’t but it it came from the doist system uh Fen the art of of um moving your furniture around and placing your buildings and so on and so forth uh that is a do start um I could go on and I could go on uh IT addresses itself to all kinds of areas of life and um this is what I’ve been I’m 58 and 3/4s I’ve been doing this stuff since I the the dowst thing since I was 19 prior to that at the age of 11 I was I started doing iido which is the Japanese version of Tai Chi I is taii Kei is chi and do is Da so it’s the same it’s just a more simplified version of of the Tai Chi and I was very fortunate to study with an elderly Japanese uh master who had come to London as a Healer uh had a practice in Harley Street and um I was obliged to learn how to heal people and I’d always been uh fascinated riveted by The Human Condition that even as a tiny kid I was so much more interested in what was going on inside and and inside everybody and how we all interacted than I was by football or television or or any of the distractions the actual human condition is what I found riveting and still do and always have done um not to the exclusion of enjoying the entertainment of course but just the at the nub of it all surely it’s The Human Condition that’s the most interesting aspect um and I was fascinated by the disparity between the words that were being spoken by people and the actuality in other words the the differential of um you know the lies and what was so what I could see was so and what was being said was so um okay I’m going to just jump a bit uh I’m 14 years old it was 1968 uh swinging London I I grew up in London uh and uh a party uh in a in a penthouse uh everyone’s taking LSD and a guy is standing on the the roof about to fly so if somebody gets hold of me he come on the roof he’s going to jump this guy this cuz in those days LSD there was a fashion to fly if you were on LSD things go in Fashions they really do these days if people take LSD I don’t think anyone would think of flying off a off a roof cuz we learn you know I suppose well I hope we do and uh it was really interesting well interesting it was really quite horrible actually but he was standing it was night time it was quite cloudy uh November night the orange street light glowing in the sky bit windy like and he’s standing there swaying on the edge of the roof and um people are sort of a bit around but no one’s going too close somebody’s trying to talk to him he’s not listening he’s completely off his trolley and I go up about 3 feet behind him and I do this thing I’ve been taught where you you magnetize someone with your hand you you connect with the energy and you just pull him if I don’t if do too strong You’ all be on top of me so I’ll stop but he did actually come back and uh got off the the ledge and came down I kept pulling him towards me benignly not in a in a weird way just but because it was the only thing to do I was amazed that it worked it was like phew wow I and I have to be honest I was tripping as well so it was very very powerful and um uh he he he came um towards me and I knew from my kind of altered state which had opened up my filters of perception so I could see the energy really really clearly and I was going in my mind going wow wow it’s really true there is this energy it’s not just some sort of Oriental myth you know I could actually really really see it as light I could see there was a big black hole around his kidneys uh you could see that he was like deficit of energy of life and I just I I came up to him and I put my hand on his back now in 1968 people didn’t touch each other that much unless it was you know shaking hands kissing or it was a sexual thing but guys especially would not put their hands on other they still don’t that easily these days but so it was an OD thing to do but in the alterstate environment was totally cool I put my hand on put my hands on his kidneys and it was like a furnace coming out of my palm I’m it’s not I’m not saying I’m clever to have done that it wasn’t that I was really just purely a vessel because I wasn’t even really there and and you could feel him heating up in the kidneys and as that was happening he and me starts coming into this state of real Clarity I mean absolute Clarity and focus and then we we started talking and uh I actually realized that aside from all the the hysteria of flying off roofs on LSD and all that because you know as a fashion uh there was must be pain there because otherwise why is he jumping off a roof it wasn’t just cuz he thought he was an angel he could fly there’s something underneath there’s pain there and uh we started talking and he started telling me his story and there was a lot of pain there and then big you know like big surprise I still get surprised in fact everybody body’s got a lot of pain going on inside that’s what you learn it’s like I did this conference for um boots it was actually their head office I used to sell I created this perfume this kind of healing sexy perfume smell and I created a range out of it it wasn’t from a consumerist materialistic kind of uh thing I just like having a laugh really and it was a laugh it was a bit of conceptual art I could get messages out in a place like Boo how funny would that be and um and it was funny and then they invited me to a conference and I address 400 people who are sort of your age uh you know young happening goodlooking uh bright vibrant people all looking very smart and really cool and really successful and I’m thinking wow what a successful looking you know happening bunch of people really nice to see that I give them the talk there big Rah chat everyone’s laughing I get off the stage and this spontaneous line forms at the side of the stage and one by one people start coming up and telling me their stories asking for a bit of advice and I was actually almost crying by the end of it because some of these stories you think wow I don’t know how you walk around with that suffering going on and yet there you are looking so brave you know slowly but surely it’s Dawning on me that everyone’s got a lot of pain going on inside and uh so my my um motivation is to alleviate that pain wherever I can but I think that first before alleviation has to come acknowledgement like people have to feel okay about acknowledging that they had pain at all in the ‘ 50s when I was a kid um people were so removed from their inner worlds they didn’t even have one anymore it was all front it was all hello 958 7253 answer everyone had their telephone voice everybody were acting we you know they they had no inner world so people used to have nervous breakdowns that was the fashion then um nobody really knew what they were they were just called nervous breakdowns you get rushed off to a hospital in an ambulance come back a few weeks later looking a bit busy and then life would carry on the um this urge to somehow alleviate human suffering and to get people to expose their pain uh it’s almost like being rude it’s like saying hey you got pain you no I haven’t who you to say I’ve got pain but what’s happened is as a result of partly my work in lots of other people over the last 30 years or so is people feel more free about talking about what’s going on with them so they’re not pretending they don’t have pain that’s the first step um my feeling is is that if we could kind of discern these principles that I that I’m uh dedicate my life to studying and we could somehow educate everybody to have these principles um embodied within them the levels of suffering and pain globally collectively would reduce a little bit and as that happens then we have a chance to carry on this incredible magnificent experiment of of humanity uh if we don’t and we allow the pain to stay buried and to drive us and to cause us to act out destructively and psychotically as is uh quite often the case these days and increasingly so um geez I’ve only got one minute and four oh gosh I need three goes of this anyway look I’m going to do it really quickly and lay it on you because this is it you um uh you have your front which is involved in the drama of everything all the the the thoughts that uh uh uh that’s you who you think you are but who you really are your true nature is in the back if you sit back inside now and you lean up against your shoulder blades your hipbones the front of your spine and you are then in command of what’s going on in the front can you feel that you let your mind go into the back of your head we got 31 30 seconds left your mind going into the back of your head so that the front is really quiet you’re sitting in your back so you can feel the tension in your belly you can breathe and Let It Go and now you’re in command that’s the trick if you can do that mental health will be yours forever bless you and thank you

The Barefoot Doctor, Stephen Russell is an acclaimed and controversial interpreter of the philosophy and the methods of the ancient Taoist warrior-sages. Working across all platforms he teaches how these may be best deployed to ameliorate the human condition from the inside out. He’s dedicated nearly 50 years to his specialty, has authored 17 books, including HANDBOOK FOR THE URBAN WARRIOR, produces ‘psychoactive’ electronic dance music, and founded the ‘conscious clubbing’ movement. He is an avid bridge-builder between the worlds of esoteric study and contemporary culture and has a following of millions around the world.

www.barefootdoctorglobal.com
@BarefootDoctor

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