What is the great mystery of the male and female sides of the body? Why do we need to be aware of this? The body is energetically divided into two parts. The right and the left, the sides dominated by men and women. This is not a new concept, it has an origin in Eastern philosophies such as Buddhism, Yoga, and you can even find ancient writings that the Mayan civilization was aware of the power of maintaining the balance between these two opposing energies.

The Buddha taught it very clearly. Every human being has a right and left hemisphere in the brain, which we classify as male and female, with the right being female and the left being male. The left or male side is in charge of the right side of the body and the right brain or female side is in charge of the left side of the body.

The Maya placed themselves and their environment into categories that allowed them to order and manipulate their world. They frequently categorized using the basic complementary pairing of male/female and right/left.

In yoga, the masculine energy (the sun) is known as Shiva and is the form of the universe. Masculine energy is the domain of the right side of the body. While the feminine energy (the moon), is known as Shakti and is the force of the universe. Feminine energy is the domain of the left side of the body.

The significant importance is that, as a single person, we must be in constant balance in order to achieve the best of our world, mentally, physically and emotionally. Both sides, male and female, have to achieve a harmonious whole.

The masculine side is usually connected to our rationality, logic, linear thinking, and understanding. The feminine side is connected to feelings, nurturing, caring, compassion, love, and all emotional qualities. Each of us has sides, the emotional and the mental capacity. Very few people develop both equally, which is why their car often falls over. Emotionalism is as dangerous as thinking without being in touch with one’s own feelings. That too can go a long way.

A person who goes too far from the side of rational thought has to learn to balance with the feelings, the feminine side. Anyone who thinks to the extent that the experience of feelings is barely known has to practice mindfulness of feelings a lot. On the other hand, the feminine side is usually emotional. This means that we get carried away by our emotions and consequently our thinking is affected. The quality of logical thinking, of delving into a thought process and being able to analyze, is not possible when emotions are in the foreground.

During yoga practice, the goal is to observe and understand the dance between Shiva and Shakti. In this dance, Shiva and Shakti flow in balance with each other and bring balance to the physical, emotional and spiritual aspects of the yogi.

When we experience blockages or imbalances within our masculine/feminine essence or energy, the results can be disastrous and damaging to our physical body as well as our mental body.

For example, there is a belief that manic depression is common and occurs when the right and left energies are out of control or out of balance. When a person is stuck on the right side, the male manic side, then the body becomes stringy and thin and heart attacks become frequent. When stuck on the left side, the female depressive side, the person becomes lethargic, fat, and easily depressed. The physical base of these energies is the perineum in the male and the vulva in the female. Your other control point is the left and right nostrils. Blocked nostrils and mucus can show a blockage of these energies.

There may also be outward signs of imbalances, watch for problems with

men or women in your life and your body will begin to manifest these imbalances in the form of diseases. Problems with men can result in simple things like stubbed right toe or bruised right elbow. The same goes for the opposite side of the body. Problems with women manifest on the left side of your body.

The balance of masculine and feminine energy should be seen as a connection between the heart and the mind. Energy and concentration have to balance. In yoga, the practice is about beginning to allow the energy to realign with the body. Meditation is one of the most effective tools that can be used to connect and balance the masculine/feminine energies. Yoga is used to prepare the body for meditation, thus increasing the ability to make these energies find their space and begin to realign, to balance, to find harmony. Chakra balancing is an effective way to align those energies. Other very effective tools to connect and balance are the work of Reiki, Watsu and pranayama.

It is interesting that this knowledge that has been with us for many centuries and was commonplace then to detect bodily, mental and spatial diseases, is so strange and mysterious to us in this so-called “advanced” civilization. I believe that more and more as we enter the age of “inspiration”1, we will begin to learn to listen and connect with our own energy. Only then will we begin to feel the balance and healing that comes from this.

1. Inspirato-Latin for inspiration. We will move from the information age to the age of a new world where compassion and respect for ourselves, the universe and others will prevail.

Tall kids are not supposed to handle the ball well. I mean, tall kids aren’t supposed to be good at haggling. I’m not sure if we think this because they’re so much taller than shorter people or what, but it’s silly.

I’m a tall person, so I know what I’m talking about.

But there is nothing fundamentally that says a tall kid CANNOT dribble the ball well. There are no laws of physics that prevent a tall child from dribbling. In fact, most NBA point guards are tall compared to high school kids. Michael Jordan, for example, is six feet six inches tall. That would have made it one of my high school’s tallest centers in school history!

But we don’t think of Jordan that high because NBA centers are so much taller than that.

So if you are a tall kid and want to pick up some crazy skills as a ball handler and dribbler, then listen carefully to the rest of this article.

There is nothing stopping you from becoming a good dribbler. The only thing you need to focus on is practice. And when it comes to dribbling, there’s only one way to practice. Do you know what that is? Yes, you guessed it; he is dribbling

Get in the habit of carrying a basketball with you EVERYWHERE you go, and dribble as you walk. Always. Try not to look at the ball when you dribble. Get used to not looking while you dribble, make it just a part of you. Turn it into muscle memory.

And here is another exercise you can do. Jogging and dribbling at the same time. Aim to jog at least a mile a day, and as you jog, bounce the basketball. Running more than a mile is better, like three or four miles, but a mile a day is a good start.

But always haggle while jogging. Yes, it will seem funny to those who see you, but do you mind? You should not! And yes, it will be difficult to do! You will dribble with your foot and lose the ball all the time when you start doing it. But keep it up, and in time haggling will become second nature to you, like breathing.

And a tall kid who can dribble is unstoppable at the high school level!

Here is another good exercise. You can turn it into a game which is actually quite fun. The only problem is that you need two or three people, the more the better. Find yourself an open space, like a gym floor or a parking lot. Then have one person dribble and the other two or three join the dribbler and try to steal the ball.

The one who steals the ball becomes the dribbler, and the others try again to steal it.

It is an exhausting exercise but enormously beneficial and useful for learning to dribble well. If you can easily dribble past two or three or four people stealing the ball, think about how much easier it will be when you are actually in a game situation and only find one person to protect you.

Dribbling is fundamental to the game of basketball. How well you can dribble, no matter what position you play, will determine whether or not you make the team, whether or not you start, and whether or not you win.

So practice your dribbling as often as you can.

There is no such award officially in the sport of baseball, but if there were, the plaque should be presented in honor of Pat Meares. He spent his nine-year career as the regular shortstop for the Minnesota Twins and later the Pittsburgh Pirates, a mediocre but fairly adequate infielder who was just average.

At no time was this more true than in 1997, when Meares’ top offensive stats exactly matched the stats of the average player in baseball. He hit .276, which was the exact overall batting average in both leagues combined, as were the ten home runs Meares racked up that season.

Those numbers would be far from average for the player who would win the Pat Meares Award at this point in the season, as his .276 mark is more than twenty points higher than the current overall batting average. On the other hand, his ten home runs would be significantly less than the league average, which is on track to hit nearly twenty.

So far in 2018, players have a collective .247 batting average in the American League and just .244 on the Senior Circuit, alarmingly low numbers compared to the decade Meares played. In fact, no team has a batting average as high as Meares’s in 1997, and the league-leading Boston Red Sox (.265) trail him by more than ten points. Surprisingly, four clubs have team averages below .230, surpassed by the Arizona Diamondbacks’ .220 overall average.

Although no one exactly matches the Mr. Average Meares was three decades ago, one guy in the American League comes pretty close. Oh, and it turns out that he’s not only a perennial All-Star, but also a future member of Cooperstown’s first Hall of Fame ballot.

With a .247 batting average, Albert Pujols is hitting the exact percentage of the typical player. The eight hits Pujols has amassed this year are just half a percentage point more than the average American League player.

Several guys in the National League are hitting .244, the exact overall average so far in 2018. Third baseman Evan Longoria of the San Francisco Giants is one of them, but his ten home runs have put him three above average. The other .244 hitter is Atlanta Braves outfielder Ender Inciarte, who is however three home runs shy of the NL average.

Orioles outfielder Trey Mancini is hitting the exact average, not for the league he plays in, but for the team he belongs to. His .228 batting average is the same mark he is hitting in Baltimore overall, tied with the Texas Rangers for the lowest in the American League.

There’s a Mancini equivalent in the other league, a player whose batting average is exactly equal to his team’s overall mark. Pittsburgh shortstop Jordy Mercer started the day at .255, which is also the collective average for the Pirates as a club.

Meares patrolled Pittsburgh’s middle infield fifteen years before Mercer, but the game they’re a part of has changed dramatically. A guy who scored twenty points above the current league average never made an All Star team or made the playoffs, and that season Meares earned $225.00 for being “Mr. Average.”

Somewhere, in a deep box-shaped canyon, a small stream flows. Therein lies the Lost Adams excavations, as rich as any of the lost treasures of the west, and perhaps the most legitimate in terms of factual evidence. It is a story corroborated by more than one individual.

The man named Adams was a truck driver heading to Los Angeles with 12 horses. Adams (his first name was variously given as William, Edward, Henry, and John) was an overland freighter that transported goods for a fee between Los Angeles and Tucson, Arizona. He was married with a wife and three children in Los Angeles.

After his last trip, Adams camped in nearby Florence, Arizona. The Apaches, fleeing with their horses, woke him up. Adams chased after them and retrieved the animals.

When he returned to his camp, he found his wagon on fire and all his other assets, including the $2,000 received from his cargo delivery, were gone. The Apaches had simply used the horse-stealing ploy to enable them to plunder the camp of its true valuables.

Without his valuables except for the 12 horses, Adams, penniless, left for a friendly Pima Indian village in what is now Gila Bend, Arizona. There he listened to the miners exchange prospecting stories. A mestizo Mexican Apache nicknamed “Gotch Ear” listened as the miners expressed their desire to find gold. The boy was named Gotch Ear because of a misshapen and wrinkled earlobe.

The Apaches captured Gotch Ear and his brother when they were young children living in Mexico. Gotch Ear was now on the run from the tribe because he killed the Apache that killed his brother in a fight.

Gotch Ear finally approached the group of miners. If you’re interested in gold, he told them, he knew of a canyon ten days’ ride away, where a stream literally flowed with gold nuggets. All he asked for in return was a horse that would take him back to Mexico.

It was in 1864 that Gotch Ear led the group of 22 men to the site. Gotch Ear led the group searching for gold up the Gila River in a northeasterly direction for several days. On or about August 25, the party camped in the low-lying area between two lofty peaks, believed to be Mount Ord and Mount Baldy.

However, this has led to confusion for treasure hunters, as Mount Ord lies north of Phoenix and is not suitable for the journey Gotch Ear and his followers undertake.

Since Adams had all the horses, the gold-hungry miners chose him as their leader.

After four days of traveling through heavy timber, the young Mexican led the miners around a high mountain that Adams and John Brewer, another of the miners, say was the White Mountains of eastern Arizona.

The group finally reached what appeared to be a box canyon. Here they camped for the night. In the morning, they rode through the canyon toward a cliff that was reddish in color, but was actually a wall of solid rock twenty or twenty meters high.

Gotch Ear led the men around a huge boulder at the base of the wall. There, through a hidden portal, they entered a switchback canyon, so tight, Adams later said, that a bicyclist stretching out his arms could touch both sides.

Along the floor of the canyon was a stream, which they followed to a meadow the size of an acre. Here they camped for the night.

Hardly had the miners settled down and begun to collect the yellow metal when a group of Apaches, led by Chief Nana, appeared in the meadow near a waterfall.

Nana told the miners to take what they wanted from the stream, but to make no effort to locate the gold deposits further up the canyon above the waterfall. He also ordered them to leave soon and never come back.

While the gold held no appeal to the Indians, the canyon in which it was found did. The canyon, named “Sno-Tah-Hay” by Nana, was a very special religious site for the Indians.

The Apaches also believed that gold was the “tears of the sun.” No one touched the tears of the sun because it was the source of all life.

The gold diggers remained in the canyon against Nana’s orders. They not only stayed, but soon began construction of a cabin. In three weeks they had accumulated about sixty thousand dollars in gold, which they placed in a container and hid in the fireplace of the unfinished cabin.

The intention was later to distribute the gold evenly among the men in the prospecting party, with the exception of a German named Snively. Snively took his share each day and kept his gold apart from the others.

Supplies soon ran out. A party of five miners, led by John Brewer, was assigned to go to Fort Wingate to resupply the camp. The miners brought nuggets, some as big as turkey eggs, to use as payment.

In the fort, when the miners paid for their supplies with the huge gold nuggets, the shopkeeper carefully noted this fact.

Meanwhile, Apache Chief Nana, unseen, continued to watch the activity in the creek and also noted the surreptitious night trips through the canyon to search for the source of the gold.

He was not pleased. He ordered his Apache warriors to kill the five-man supply party as he returned from Fort Wingate. This was done with the exception of one man, Brewer, who escaped.

The Apaches then killed all the miners in the canyon except for two men who were some distance from the Anglo camp. Snively, the German, who had already taken his gold and returned to Germany. Years later, Snively verified in detail the existence of gold.

One of the two men who escaped the Apache massacre was Adams, and the other was Jack Davidson. The only reason the two men escaped the wrath of the Apache is that they had gone in search of the Fort Wingate supply crew that had been long overdue.

Adams and Davidson decided for safety that it was best to head to Los Angeles to avoid further contact with the Apaches. Traveling at night, they got lost.

They were seen by US soldiers and taken to Fort Apache, according to one story. However, this casts some doubt on this version, as Fort Apache was not established until 1872.

Jack Davidson later claimed that they were taken to Fort Whipple, just east of Prescott.

Adams and Davidson were unaware that John Brewer, who was leading the supply party, had also escaped the Apache massacre. Brewer scaled the canyon wall and reached the friendly Pueblo Indians. Brewer eventually went to Colorado, married an Indian woman, and started a family.

Adams returned to his family in California and remained there for ten years. He was afraid to go back to New Mexico to search for the excavations.

Adams returned in 1874. He searched and searched for the lost “Adams Digs” until his death in 1876, but was never able to relocate the gold mine.

There are many stories of attempts to retrace the path taken by Gotch Ear and his Anglo-Saxon followers.

A man named Edward Doheny, who was traveling through New Mexico toward Phoenix in search of work, reported that he had traveled down a box canyon before realizing he could not cross it. He noted the ruins of a burned-out cabin before returning, but, at the time, he knew nothing of Adams’s history.

When he later crawled away, Doheny was unable to find the location again.

A cowboy named Jack Townsend claimed to have found the Lost Adams Diggings site in New Mexico in 1894, while working in Magdalena, New Mexico. This was never confirmed.

Once, during the period when he was trying to relocate the “golden river”, Adams put Bob Lewis in a room. Lewis had also been looking for the “Excavations”.

“Go and find the bones of those men who were loading supplies into the canyon. Show me the bones and I’ll show you the gold.”

According to an account by Lee Paul, on a website called “The Outlaws”, Lewis found the bones. He found them thirty years later. Piled in a crevice were the skeletons of several men covered with pieces of packsaddles and stones.

Lewis was in the Datil Mountains of New Mexico. Although he found the bones, he was unable to find the secret door. An earthquake, which struck southern Arizona and New Mexico in 1887, is believed to have rearranged the landscape of the Datil Mountains.

Many, many efforts have been made to follow the path laid out by Gotch Ear. None have been successful. It looks like The Lost Adams Diggings will remain just that: lost.