Book Review – The Inner Game of Tennis

“Tennis?” you’re muttering. “Tennis?! What does tennis have to do with psionics?”

And, of course, the answer is: “Not much.”

However, The Inner Game of Tennis is more about how you use your mind than about how to perform a perfect serve or how to hit the ball across the net by whapping it with a racket.

It’s about dealing with the chattering in your head, and the self-doubt and self-sabotage, fear of success/failure, and useful forms of concentration.

Aha! Now you see why this would be a good book to read, if you are interested in psionics. There are several other spin-offs such as The Inner Game of Golf and The Inner Game of Music. For our purposes, it doesn’t really matter which one or ones you read, unless you also play golf or the guitar. The original Tennis is easy to get, in just about any format you like.

Title: The Inner Game of Tennis
Author: W. Timothy Gallway
Publisher: Bantam Books paperback, Toronto
Year: 1988
ISBN 0-553-27372-8

The original hard-cover edition was published in 1974 by Random House (presumably in New York), and there’s a Kindle edition, now.

Short version: read this book.

Book Review – The Psions’ Guide

Remember the fluff-sites which claimed to be real-world psionics websites, but used game rules and die scores are part of the instructions? The design of the sites usually involved a weird toxic green colour, normally on a black background. Remember those?

The Psions’ Guide – Applied Parapsychology is the print/hard-copy equivalent. It makes amusing reading, and is reasonably consistent through its length, but do not – repeat do not – follow the instructions or advice in this book, particularly the bit about the salt.

I must presume that this book is meant as some kind of puzzle or misdirection by its authors.

Title: The Psions’ Guide
Authors: John Porter and Rob Williams
Publisher: Hoshin Budo Ryu
Year 2007
ISBN 978-0-6151-8588-0

New Class Series

Hi, all.

Starting next Saturday, we’ll be starting a new Seminar Series in the Annex. It will start at 6:30pm, New York Time.

The topic for this series is Psychokinesis.

How long it will run will depend on interest, but I’m thinking in terms of six weeks.

The usual disclaimers apply.

How to do a Rudimentary Energy Healing

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I think I now have a new favourite method for basic long-distance healing. It has been useful on several occasions this summer, it is pretty simple, and it is vaguely based on an approach from Stephen Co’s book Your Hands Can Heal You. There’ll be a mini-review of the book on this blog sometime.

As for the method, focus by “pretending” the person is right in front of you. The pretend version can be full-size or cat-size…doesn’t really seem to matter, except as far as convenience in some places. It is easier to do cat-size at your desk at work.

Tense the hands a bit and spread the fingers. “Rake” downwards through where the pretend-person’s field would be. Down the front, then turn ‘em around and do the back, and then the sides.

There may be a feeling of pressure/resistance against the hands, or general icky feeling. Repeat. If there’s any pressure or ickiness on the second run, repeat for a third run. Or if you weren’t sure if you “felt” anything the first time, do a third one for good measure.

Then, if it seems like a good idea, gently send some general energy/oomph/stuff into the person’s field. You might notice that this is very similar to rudimentary field cleaning. There really isn’t much difference in approach, but so far it seems to have more “oomph” for dealing with an assortment of symptoms.

The usual warnings apply, of course. If you’re working on a diabetic symptom, for example, check your blood sugar frequently. So far, I haven’t seen any interference with medications, but such interference could still occur.

Book Review — A Librarian’s Guide – Psychic Development Simplified

A couple of months ago, I was reading “Nathaniel’s” blog, “A State of Mind.“ While I was there, I bought a copy of his e-book on a whim. I’m always looking for new ways of approaching the question of how to do psionics.

Title: A Librarian’s Guide: Psychic Development Simplified
Author: Nathaniel
Self-published, available on his website, on lulu.com and at Amazon.
Webpage: http://astateofmind.eu/how-to-develop-psychic-abilities/

It’s a very good book, overall, clearly intended for beginners. Of course, the title hints that the book is aimed at beginners. The approach to energy work that Nathaniel uses in the book is derived from Robert Bruce’s “New Energy Ways”. It is effective, particularly for energy manipulation.

I especially enjoy Nathaniel’s dry sense of humour, which sparkles through almost every page.

His writing has a pretty good flow to it. As he mentions in his introduction, English is not his mother tongue, so there are a few minor translation errors from time to time. Don’t worry, though: they don’t make the book any more difficult to read. I’ve seen worse editing in some North American novels.

Please note: my review is of the first edition. He has recently re-released the book, with some revision. I have the new edition, but have not read it yet.

How to set up a game in the annex

“Anyone wanna practice telepathy in the annex?”

How often have you seen someone ask that question in the chatroom, only to be met with a disappointing silence?

The #psc_annex chatroom (aka “the annex”) has mostly been used for psionics seminars. However, it is set up for games and practice sessions, too.

There are many safe and friendly things to do. These range from “Guess the Fruit” and similar telepathy games to rudimentary RV-type practice sessions. Scanning practice is also fairly popular, along with checking of Shields.

If you are planning ahead, write a post in the forum. Say that you’re planning a game (or practice session) to do such-and-such. Indicate that it will take place in the annex at “this” time on “that” date. Remember to give the time zone! New York time (i.e., Eastern) is often used because it is easy to find on online conversion sites.

For example: “Hi, this is Bob. I’m putting together a Shapes and Colours game in the annex. It’ll be on July 7, at 4pm New York time, and it’ll probably run about two hours. Everyone is welcome.”

You could also ask a mod to put a note in the chatroom topic line. That way, people can see that something is or will be going on, when they come into the main chat.

Of course, shortly before you start, mention the session in the main chatroom. Something like, “Hey guys. If anyone is interested, we’ve got a game of Shapes and Colours starting in the annex in five minutes.”

With these bits of forewarning to people, you have a much better chance of a successful, well-attended session. It might even become a regular event.

Musings on the nature of…reality? Dude! Philosophy!

As some of you know from the PsiPog days, I’ve had a few strange experiences over the years. Recently, I’d been discussing one of these with a friend. She’s a novelist, and she wanted a good description for something one of her characters was doing in a particular scene. (When the book is published, I’ll let you know.)

The experience in question was mentioned in one of my Phasing articles on Pog. I seemed to fade away, and while “faded” I saw a bunch of apparently-parallel realities all at the same time. There are speculative descriptions of parallel universes that seem to be similar in concept.

Anyway, in case you’re wondering, the friend and I are fully aware that what I experienced could be nothing more than a vivid hallucination. Yes, sure, there were witnesses, but I’m a telepath: it wouldn’t be the first time that other people had seen my hallucinations.

Now, to the musing part…

Let’s pretend for the moment that what happened to me was real. Let’s pretend it was real, and I was actually physically in subspace looking “out” at the nearest versions of reality. If that is real, which –if any- of the “nearest versions of reality” were real? Are they all equally real? Are some more real than others? What would have happened if I’d come “back” into the wrong one? None of them particularly pulled me. Instead, I had some help from a friend at the time.

So, is this what philosophers do with their time?

Typical Psionics Stuff – 3 Ways to Practice Psychokinesis

Psychokinesis is the most popular topic among new folks at any psionics website. With the game Star Wars: The Old Republic coming out later this year, I expect we’ll be getting a new influx of visitors hoping to learn to “use the Force.” There are not many Jedi or Sith here at the social club, but if you would like to play with some Psychokinesis, give these ideas a try:

1 – Sloshing and Pushing Stuff. Psions tend to make a hobby of spinning, rolling, pushing, and stopping small objects. The “psi-wheel”, or pinwheel, is the most popular such object in this part of the “online energy community.” Uncle Chuckie advocates a similar device that balances a piece of a drinking straw on a sewing needle in his book “Psychic Power (Formerly ‘Psionics 101’).” In “Psychic Paradigm,” the late Bevy Jaegers suggests using a radiometer. A radiometer is sort of like a psi-wheel in reverse: you want to move a psi-wheel, and you want to stop a radiometer from moving. Ping-pong balls, glass marbles, and crumpled balls of kitchen foil can be pushed along a flat surface.

How do you push the thing? You have a few options here. You could use Wolf’s approach and send a nice dense stream of psi-stuff from your gut; or push stuff through the ends of your fingers to bop the wheel. Or you can simply stare at the wheel while willing it to move. My current favourite is to swing psi-stuff back and forth from the heel of the palm to the base of the fingers and back, until it feels like it is water sloshing in a bucket. Once the sloshing sensation is there, send puffs of psi-stuff out from those two points, alternating between them, to strike one corner of the wheel. The idea is based on something G. Harry Stine suggests in his book “Amazing Mind Machines You Can Build.” Perhaps I’ll also expand this into a whole post of its own sometime…

2 – Quiet intention. Calm your mind and body, ignore whatever the object is doing at the moment, and lightly concentrate on picturing the object doing what you want it to do. Ideally, concentrate on the desired end result, rather than the process. Of course, there is oomph involved, but this time, don’t force anything. Just relax and focus. For example, this is a good approach for mucking with the butterfly game at the Garden of Dreams psi-arcade: calm your mind and imagine the butterfly already on the target bush before clicking on the start-button. Focus on the butterfly being on the bush and ignore everything else, until the end of the game. (If you’ve never heard of the butterfly game, it is one of several fun little online games at the Institute of Noetic Sciences. The IONS folks were using it for a psi experiment.)

Anyway, the same concept works pretty well for mucking around with the rolling of dice. This one is of special interest to gamers, particularly if your house rules encourage PK practice. Once again, it’s the end result you want to picture while willing it into reality. We’ll use a tabletop game such as Warhammer 40K for an example. You’re about to launch your attack. Just before you roll, clear your mind and imagine all your dice coming up as sixes. Hold that thought while you roll the dice. Do the same thing when your opponent rolls, but concentrate on your opponent’s dice all coming up as ones.

3 – “Healing” for inanimate objects. If you practice any kind of energy-healing that involves running the “energy” into or through the injured part or person, you’re in luck. Use the same approach for your PK practice. For example, run energy into a battery to re-charge it. Don’t be alarmed if it takes ten minutes or so, the first few times you try it. It gets easier with practice, and is a handy trick when your camera battery runs down.

There you have it: three quick-and-dirty practice ideas.

I have two questions for you, for the comments:

  • What is your favourite way to practice, play, or otherwise muck with PK; or is PK not your thing?
  • Do you like the conventional “blog post format” I used above, or would you prefer I go back to my usual approach here?

ARV and/or Pendling Lottery Experiment?

I’m on a number of email lists of various states of inactivity. A week or two back, an email came in on one of these, from Paul Smith, PhD. Yes, that Paul Smith.

He’s cool.

Anyway, he and some other folks down in Texas were going to try a little experiment in ARV (Associate Remote Viewing). The idea was that all the participants were going to try to predict the winning numbers for a specific lottery in the Lone Star State, and then everybody would buy tickets based on the numbers that came up most often in everybody’s results.

The basic concept has been done before with various degrees of success ranging from “none” to “pretty good.” It is likely to be done again.

…which brings me to the topic of today’s post.

Summer is the slow season here at the social club (or Winter, if you’re down South). But for those who are around this coming month or so, is anyone interested in a similar project here?

If so, leave a comment below.

I can set up the targets, and provide feedback for the ARV folks. Pendling is another option, either the long way or with a chart.

Because of how scattered we are, geographically, there would need to be several sub-projects. We have a couple of national lottery-type games here in Canada, but those are restricted to people who live in this country. If you’re interested but live outside Canada, please suggest a suitable lottery for your area, along with the days on which it runs.

Welcome to our new blog, here at the Psionic Social Club

In case you didn’t come here via the website or chatroom, please allow me to introduce ourselves. We’re an online social club, consisting of various hobbyist-parapsychology types.

Curious folks trying to figure out what “psionics” means, and even gamers looking for a campaign are welcome. You’ll find that many of us are gamers, too. That said, this is a real-world psionics site, rather than a gaming site. Sometimes it’s a bit difficult to tell the difference at first glance, I find.

Sceptics are welcome, too. In fact, discussions about scepticism are encouraged, both in terms of philosophy and practical “non-proven” issues.

The social club has been around for several years, and we’ve acquired a bit of a reputation for not being fluff-friendly. Let me reassure you that “newbie” does not mean “fluffy.” Generally, a fluff-bunny is someone who clearly has no clue, but pretends to be an expert, to the point of being stupid about it.

Newbies are welcome. Fluffs are not.

There’s usually a chat going on in our IRC chatroom (#psionic_social_club) on the Otherworlders server on Saturday nights. Times are stated using New York City as the location, because that is an easy time-zone conversion to find online. Sometimes, there are chats at other times during the week. The general chat topics include but are not limited to psionics and parapsychology, politics, world events, video games, Ren Faires, cooking, books, cats, and the lolcat website. Hence “social club”, not “research centre.” We also have an annex chatroom (#psc_annex) for classes, seminars, and psionics practice/games.

Our main website is here. We have an assortment of articles, logs, book reviews, links, and so on, as would be expected of a psionics website.

The idea here, for our blog, is to have little check-ins, notes, short how-tos, and reviews of sites and books, in addition to the occasional rant or commentary. In other words, it’s a blog. If it is something that could be an article or seminar, its shorter form might end up here. As a result, some of the folks who do not like the length or complexity of our essays might prefer the blog.

I was joking with Raven and Jael about intending to keep this up more regularly than my class-log postings. That’s a pretty low bar, of course. The class-logs are something like two years behind at this point.

Who’ll be posting? Not just me. This is the “Psionic Social Club” blog, not the “Rainsong” blog. Various of the site moderators will toss in blog posts as the mood strikes them.

Comments are welcome, of course, but please keep it PG-13. There are minors who frequent this site.