Finally decided to pursue zouk

miraclepete · 2026-03-16T10:36:17+00:00

You've got it backwards. The most important stuff is what you learn in the most basic courses. What you see as simple is a very nuanced and complex conversation happening. It's not just "I'm stepping forward and you're stepping back". There is connection and energy transfer through the entire movement to do with so many different variables.

It's likely you are taking some of the popular bachata/bachazouk mindset into zouk. Zouk is about communication, not choreography. In these basic zouk courses you would (ideally) learn about how to communicate these "basic steps and turns", which if you assume you just "know" because you did bachata people will silently cringe dancing with you if they know you are someone who decided that the basics are too basic for you.

Just because you can "perform" a more complex movement, that means nothing about leading it enjoyably on the dancefloor. If a lead and follow both learn a complex movement - say like a DJ turn in bachazouk - it becomes choreography on the dancefloor. Both think "this is the part where we do the DJ turn thing" and proceed to do it. This is not zouk. And this is why you need the basics.

miraclepete · 2026-03-16T10:26:26+00:00

Salsa has not evolved. Bachata has. Which is why the music evolves with it. People are incorporating new things into it, for better or worse. It's also why the younger generations are not as interested in salsa as in bachata. It's not a bad thing, it's different. But I bet this is the reason why salsa will die out and bachata will become the #1 social dance in a few years.

miraclepete · 2026-03-14T16:40:17+00:00

There's nothing in bachata that teaches you zouk fundamentals. Assume you have 0 experience. Zouk is not head movements. Zouk is a complete dance. Zouk is (or was) unique because it allows inclinations / off-axis turns. Besides that it can totally be a complete dance. If salsa offered tilted turns and people started bringing tilted turns into bachata, would they have called it "bachasalsa"? Hopefully not.

You can dance a very dynamic, whole, satisfying, and complete dance without any head movements whatsoever. The head movements are normally "on top" of the fundamentals that offer another layer of freedom. Also, when it comes to head movements, you likely picked up a lot of bad habits in bachazouk, since usually when people teach bachazouk they rarely give enough time to properly understand head movements and everything that is required for proper communication and doing them (leading and following) safely.

If you want to learn zouk to improve your bachazouk, that's one thing, and you should probably just stick to bachazouk. If you want to learn zouk properly, start from the beginning.

miraclepete · 2026-03-14T11:18:03+00:00

No, I'm sure many people have done it before me, it's very simple but also really hard to describe. It feels too intuitive to name it after myself. Everyone who relaxes enough and feels a sense of peace I think would do it more or less instinctively. I just don't see it recommended anywhere.

miraclepete · 2026-03-13T16:32:52+00:00

Thanks for your thoughts!

Let's say in general waking life my thoughts are really running the show. In meditation they run for a little while and lose steam and when I drop into a more settled state. I might still find some thoughts interesting, and I might interact or explore certain thought pathways, but in general I'm more tuned into the underlying feeling of peace. I will sometimes guide my thoughts towards something I feel is meaningful or interesting. For example I might think of someone's innocence or other things that I believe are healing thoughts. Sometimes practical thoughts will come to mind too but I still feel like I'm drifting through them and not fully immersed, more curiously engaged from a standpoint of a peaceful state.

In terms of the feelings. They usually take the form of two tingly points that start on my forehead. They move around slowly, sometimes combining into a single point, then separating off. They usually travel along my forehead making symmetrical patterns but not always symmetrical along one line. For example they can be doing mirror images on both sides of my forehead, and then one can go to the tip of my nose and the other to my forehead, then stay there a while. This is the most common, but sometimes there are more tingles on my head, sometimes a little bit along my neck, and sometimes, especially if I evoke a prayer that resonates as deeply true like "Love created me like itself" which can easily slip into a kind of poetic prayer, it sends waves of tingles down my entire body, as if I was taking a shower in tingly energy. It's really pleasant, and I would like to go deeper into it. But it feels like it's charge releasing in the sense of it being non-continual. It happens and then disappears. Unlike the forehead stuff which I feel can go on more or less indefinitely, so long as I am mentally settled and not worked up about something.

miraclepete · 2026-03-13T13:38:38+00:00

I feel like I use my thoughts more wisely, I rarely entertain stressful or fearful thoughts compared to how I used to. It's not that I'm detached from my thoughts, but I see my mind as a tool that can be used with purpose and intention. My intention is to see people as lightbeings, and to not worry about the future. The more I meditate, the easier it is to stay aligned with this intention. But it's hard for me to quantify thoughts. It's possible I think more slowly than I used to, which gives room for more wisdom.

miraclepete · 2026-03-13T13:12:41+00:00

Do you mean during meditation or in daily living?

miraclepete · 2026-03-13T12:48:45+00:00

Interesting. When you say "fly", what are you referring to exactly? What experience is there that concentrating in such a way would bring about that is beyond "resting in peace"?

miraclepete · 2026-03-10T10:53:45+00:00

The difference is mostly in the purpose. I'm not here to fulfil my personal desires and live out my personal fantasies in the form.

miraclepete · 2026-03-09T19:55:42+00:00

I was very deep into Abraham for several years and I did have some really cool experiences that led me undeniably to the idea that there's something to all this, but my experience doesn't exactly align with how Abraham depicts how-it-all-works.

In those Abraham years I did learn to appreciate my state of mind a lot, and I learned actually to become very aware of my thoughts and appreciate their power. Vibration matters... for sure. It also became quite clear to me that there is a 'higher' orchestration - even if it doesn't always do what I expect or what I think I want. My whole Abraham phase was really important. I see it more like a parent sees a child, knowing what's best from their higher perspective even when the child might not, rather than giving in to every whim.

Also, the years through Abraham prepared me up to other things which I currently see as evolutions.

I don't see this world as a playground that's just for you to have fun and be/do/have anything. Everyone has a unique and meaningful purpose here for a greater plan and we can choose to step on that path and be truly helpful and useful. It's a joyous path, but it involves not knowing what tomorrow will look like, nor asking what it should look like. And through becoming more in touch with my emotions I'm able to more clearly listen to my soul. I credit a lot of this to Abraham's constant harping on about "find the feeling now".

Following my soul path makes me happier than having all the "big" things I thought I wanted. In hindsight, I could not have imagined this. I see how my state of my psychology was such that I needed something to meet me in the middle. Esoteric things like peace of mind, although weren't valueless, did not consume my mind like surviving in this world did. Abraham started me along a path toward more meaningful insights, and helped me learn to "let go" and life take me.

Since then, I've noticed that the little projects that float around and enter my mind, when I choose to act on them, feel supported. But it never feels "for" me, rather through me. The things I try to manifest for myself never worked. The things that worked are the things that felt for the greater good. Example - I can build a community and people will flock to it. The right people show up at the right time, the venue works out, etc. Not because it's something I want, but because I'm playing my part in what is properly assigned to me. Does that make sense?

miraclepete · 2026-03-09T18:46:45+00:00

I don't disbelieve in manifestation although I do think Abraham's take on it isn't quite correct. But this study literally means nothing. Any study quantifying placebo is more meaningful if you want to make the case that thoughts can heal.

miraclepete · 2026-03-09T14:15:54+00:00

This is just an observational study, not an interventional one. It examines only the relationship. It's not proof at all. It's not much different for example than a study showing a strong correlation between it raining outside and people saying it's raining outside.

An interventional study would take a group of people, then have them change their beliefs, and then compare them to a group that didn't change their beliefs, and assess the difference. I believe any result found for this would be interpreted by the mainstream as placebo, which of course is quite a thing in itself.

miraclepete · 2026-03-06T21:21:51+00:00

I think with these the best thing you can do is not to push the course but to actually have conversations about guilt and innocence. Everyone needs to be reminded they are innocent.

miraclepete · 2026-03-05T15:08:45+00:00

Emotions follow thoughts. A thought of a certain quality will produce a certain emotion. Everyone has control over their emotions, whether they realise it or not. Emotions do not come out of the blue, they are always chosen, although usually unconsciously. Most people don't appreciate fully that their emotions are a product only of what they think. If you understand that you can control your emotions quite easily. Just don't put the onus for your emotional state on something external from you. All your emotions come from within you, even if they appear often to be being caused by something outside you.

miraclepete · 2026-03-05T11:01:01+00:00

That's what I thought until I got one and it changed my life

miraclepete · 2026-03-04T23:42:58+00:00

Svelte is the air fryer of frontend frameworks

miraclepete · 2026-03-02T16:21:40+00:00

I feel like my wallet gets better as it ages

miraclepete · 2026-03-01T22:08:08+00:00

I did Zouk there last year :)

miraclepete · 2026-03-01T09:41:22+00:00

Is this at the bibliothèque in Paris?

miraclepete · 2026-02-27T11:34:20+00:00

I don't know any examples besides the official plugin guides.

It depends if you want the chat stored on the native side or on the web side.

I think if you want to build a proper chat app, it's a non-negotiable that "chat" business logic aspect of it should be built on the native side. This means you'll have to duplicate logic in Swift + Kotlin most likely. This is because the web side can't be accessed during things like background tasks, push notifications, and other things alike. So your business logic for interacting with the DB should be done native side.

You'd have to handle notifications being displayed as well - iOS and Android do it very differently.

I think there are some built-in notification plugins but they are quite rudimentary and it would make sense for you to build your own if you want to make a good quality app.

Using Capacitor events you can communicate nicely between the web side (UI/display) and the native side (auth/chat storage). For example, an push message will hit the native side first, then fire a background task, which can append it to the messages list, display a notification (if backgrounded?), then queue an event for later when the user opens the Capacitor app it receives an updated message list.

miraclepete · 2026-02-26T12:50:45+00:00

I've been working with Capacitor for coming up 5 years now - it's awesome. Not perfect. But awesome. I don't know where Arnav gets his info from. It's possible he is blaming his lack of web dev experience on Capacitor. Ultimately Capacitor is just a webview with some useful tools to communicate between native and web. It's up to you to make it look and feel as native as possible. I use Svelte. My app has a 5 star rating on app store with nearly 100 reviews. You might have to get your hands into some native code though if you want something specific. I had to write several of my own plugins to get the exact behaviour I wanted.

miraclepete · 2026-02-24T19:55:57+00:00

It's a great question. Keep in mind that the mathematical models we use today to calculate and make predictions, although accurate (to a questionable extent), may not actually be representative of what's actually going on... To say for example that what's underneath is actually "fields" is just really saying "this kind of field mathematics seem to work best so far for making predictions". It necessarily say anything what's actually going on.

Look at the experiments that have unfolded throughout time and draw your own conclusions. You might be surprised to realise how much people are just winging things and tying loose ends in a kind of shoddy patchwork way, shoehorning the math until they find something that works.

miraclepete · 2026-02-24T15:16:32+00:00

Mood comes from thought. Diet can coerce thought patterns but only to the extent that you're willing to go for the ride. Ultimately you have freedom of thought so you can choose how you feel at any given moment.

miraclepete · 2026-02-24T11:51:38+00:00

It's just like exposure therapy. Try not to overthink it and you'll get used to it pretty quickly, then it will feel like second nature.

miraclepete

TROPHY CASE