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Body workings

Blue Eyes Not Innocent

23:29 / 30.08.08

So, I've been wondering, how many of you have tried to use magic, in conjunction with other methods, to improve yourselves physically?

What kicked this off was reading Zachary Walters's "Experiments in Dynamic Body Magick", in Taylor Ellwood's anthology "Magick on the Edge". I've been slacking at the gym lately, and the fitness goal that I laid down for myself last year, when I joined the gym I go to, is nowhere nearby. So I figure that adding magick to my routines, done properly, ought to be interesting and potentially beneficial.

I'm going to be attempting to use chaos magick to supplement my workout and nutrition routines, and record my results somewhere. Has anybody had any experience with this? Success, failure, catastrophic failures, amazing results?

01:19 / 31.08.08

I don't know exactly what you mean by using 'chaos magick', since it's not a specific technique, but I've had some success with physically changing myself through shapeshifting my astral body. I will attempt to make this as clear as possible...

As far as results go: I can slim down pretty easily by shapeshifting myself thinner, along with eating carefully and getting some moderate exercise (usually a lot of walking). I can bulk up by shifting myself bulkier and more muscular, which tends to keep weight on and define muscle more quickly than exercise and diet alone would. It's a bit out of the scope of your post, but I can also seem to affect others' perception of my gender to some degree by shifting to a more masculine body or a more feminine one.

I find that one's physical body wants to follow the form of one's astral body, and it's a lot easier to shift one's astral body to the correct shape or 'template' rather than attempt to personally instruct one's body. It's like using a friendly interface versus trying to affect the raw code. Of course, this causes problems when your astral body is a shape that your meat body cannot physically assume (the problems increase the longer you hold the shape).

As far as techniques go... well. Give it a shot and see how far you get. Shapeshifting's always come naturally to me and I'm not sure how I'd teach it. Shift your astral body however you need to -- some people seem to use their hands, as though they are molding clay; I tend to somehow instinctually embody it like a suit that stops being seperate -- and hold it as long and as often as you can, especially while exercising.

02:46 / 31.08.08

Excellent thread. I will do anything other than restrict calories to lose weight...have not considered astral shifting...must try.

Have used similar process to improve financial situtation. Have had great results in acting astrally while acting physically. How this works, for me, is to visualize a potential self acting as the same time the "actual" self is acting. For example, if in financial straights, you visualize a well off self which is superimposed over the less well off self. I hypothesize that at least on the astral plan you appear to have money and therefore attract money. It works for me, much better than any type of sigil work. Lust of results you know.

03:03 / 31.08.08

I've found that I've lost a fair amount of weight -- about 10 pounds over the last month or so -- by a magical technique I call "eating less and exercising regularly."

No shapeshifting required.

Oddly, I'm not kidding when I say I consider the technique to be magical.

03:12 / 31.08.08

Ev....where's the magic in acting reasonably?

Blue Eyes Not Innocent

05:51 / 31.08.08

Err, sorry. As I commented in another thread, I'm having a hell of a communication's block between head and mouth(or fingertips) the past couple days, and I keep muddling what I mean.

As far as "using chaos magick" goes, I just have a tendency to refer to things like sigils, servitors, and the like as chaos magick. It was the first system I picked up and I still think of myself in those terms, so, y'know, that's where it goes. The shapeshifting sounds interesting, I'll have to give it a go; reimagining yourself, in a way, I think that's where you're going with that?

darth, I'm with you; I get kind of sluggish and irritable if I don't get enough to eat, and that's definitely something I want to avoid. Part of my solution, aside from getting back into the gym 5 days a week minimum, like I had been, is to clean up my diet(more protein, less junk), but this is a supplement to that.

Ev, I think that's just good common sense.

Like telling someone who complains that they never have money to save more. I'm not looking to make myself a magic bullet with this, more just techniques to supplement the better eating and exercise I'm doing.

15:08 / 31.08.08

Ev....where's the magic in acting reasonably?

As anyone who has tried to change a self-destructive (or less-than-healthy) habit knows, acting reasonably can be damned difficult.

It sometimes takes a bit of effort. Will, even.

And, as a clever guy once said, "MAGICK is the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will."

A bit more from that same guy:

What is a Magical Operation? It may be defined as any event in nature which is brought to pass by Will. We must not exclude potato-growing or banking from our definition.

Let us take a very simple example of a Magical Act: that of a man blowing his nose. What are the conditions of the success of the Operation? Firstly, that the man's Will should be to blow his nose; secondly, that he should have a nose capable of being blown; thirdly, that he should have at command an apparatus capable of expressing his spiritual Will in terms of material force, and applying that force to the object which he desires to affect. His Will may be as strong and concentrated as that of Jupiter, and his nose may be totally incapable of resistance; but unless the link is made by the use of his nerves and muscles in accordance with psychological, physiological, and physical law, the nose will remain unblown through all eternity.

It's funny, but I don't think Crowley was joking.

16:48 / 31.08.08

reimagining yourself, in a way, I think that's where you're going with that?

Basically -- it's along the same lines as 'fake it until you make it'.

And absolutely you've got to eat well and exercise, I wasn't trying to suggest anything different. I just find that shapeshifting helps speed up/amplify results. If you're sitting on your ass eating McDonald's every day, I doubt there's any magic in the world that's going to help you.

22:20 / 31.08.08

I just find that shapeshifting helps speed up/amplify results.

Amazingly enough, this article and this chart might provide some support for that hypothesis.

Simply by telling 44 hotel maids that what they did each day involved some serious exercise, the Harvard psychologist Ellen Langer and Alia J. Crum, a student, were apparently able to lower the women's blood pressure, shave pounds off their bodies and improve their body-fat and "waist to hip" ratios. Self-awareness, it seems, was the women's elliptical trainer.

Blue Eyes Not Innocent

16:38 / 20.09.08

Well, I've been working on reimagining myself as I work out; blanking my mind while I lift, visualizations, in addition to the obvious step of eating better, and I have to say that I'm noticing a change; I've dropped about 10 pounds, but beyond that is the actual physical change. My face and body are noticeably thinner, beyond what I think a ten pound difference could manage; even with my occasional smoking, my cardio has gotten markedly easier, and I'm stepping up my weight lifting on a more regular basis. I think I'm going to continue this experiment, because it seems like I should have more info before I make a final call on whether or not it's actually a success.

Blue Eyes Not Innocent

22:31 / 20.09.08

Actually, that 10 pounds I've dropped? Apparently it's closer to 20, if the scale at the gym is to be believed today. I know that losing 20 pounds in 20 days is within the realm of normal possibility, but I was stunned when I saw that.

00:18 / 23.09.08

I'd much rather use magic (or anything, really) to reinforce having the health improvements stick, than to make those improvements quick. Losing weight faster isn't necessarily better. Losing weight tends to release fat-stored toxins. In this context, releasing more faster is a bad thing. Dealing with the toxins well is a good thing. It seems to me that Reiki and other, similar "Energy Healing" techniques are good for this particular kind of thing if you focus on purification.

--Ember--

18:15 / 19.10.08

Heres a neat trick to try. Dedicate yourself to a Celtic War Goddess for a year and a day. Let her work you like a dog day and night... I got buff, lemme tell you. Good times.

13:09 / 22.06.09

Since I've been keen to get seriously back into climbing, I've needed to shift some body fat to help maintain a good strength/weight ratio.

I got a good result from a sigil to get to a low body fat percentage AND a lesson in 'be careful what you wish for' - about a week after firing off a sigil I got a stomach virus and lost at least half a stone, maybe more. Looks like it worked, but it was not really the way I'd choose to lose weight.

18:44 / 23.06.09

Oh, zedoctar! Helluva story! I can imagine

It also suggests to me a bog-standard chaos magic technique that our enquirer might wish to try. Invocation of the red power, or war magic. Here, though, instead of actually going to magical combat, put yourself through basic training.

It helps if, as others have suggested in so many words, you creat a compelling vision of how you want to appear at the end of the training and allow the work in between to take you there.

And an inspirational quote from, I believe, the bodybuilder Ronnie Coleman: "Ev'body wanna be strong, but don' nobody wan' lift no big-ass weights." Erm, word.

nyarlathotep's shoe horn

11:13 / 24.07.09

evoking the powers of war with caution - it may get you the results you want, and more besides (which I suppose is a given)...

having followed Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) for years, it really seems as if these athletes are some of the strongest/fittest. Pitting oneself against another person is one of the most challenging and exhausting exercises.

as for Body workings, I recently had an episode where I fell into my body. I felt my tissues and organs (mostly lungs) and vessels - without any real sense of the world beyond my skin. I happened on this state while I was preparing an altar for Kali.

At any rate, the process was like a diagnosis. I found there was some hitch/pain near my heart. I focused my attention on it, felt the blood flowing through, and eventually, the hitch/pain dissipated.

Don't really know how it all came together, but I've been working towards finding a more consistent means of achieving this state - (tried yoga/meditation and such in the past, but with very little success - maybe all I needed was the appropriate Goddess to scare the bejesus out of me).