markern

I had a talk with Santiago on the phone yesterday about getting help with grounding. He apparently scanned my body while we were talking which made me feel a very nice chi buzz then he said I seemed to have a block in my neck. I was a bit surprised as I did not feel any sort of particular knot but I do feel that when energy comes to my neck, especially the top of it, it somehow disappears. My head is totally drained (burnout and memory problems) and at the same time I have a problem with too much crown activity and energy high up which kind of sounds strange but apparently is quite common and is more about the wrong energy being in the wrong places and flowing in wrong directions etc. Anyway I experimented with bringing energy from my spine and into my head and it was near impossible compared to moving it anywhere else in the orbit. There was a huge knot there that was almost impossible to get through. When I did get through the block with at least some energy then my head lit up, I was much clearer and more energised and somehow my awareness which is all out of sync and outside and in front of my body came much more back into alignment. This lasted shortly and then back to my normal depleted head. When I tried to push through some more energy I eventually got some of the same effect whenever I got a reasonable amount through but whenever I don't actually sit and work on it I am totally blocked there. My orbit does run by itself sometimes when I have quite a bit of energy after a practice and I put my toungue up but still then it feels dead in my head and little passes over it and down the front, most of it is in the back and some in the front channel, so definitively Santiago instantly saw a very important block for me while we were talking about something else as this not a healing session but a quick talk about setting up som private lessons. Just thought I would attest to his abilities since they are questioned here.

Daniel Ingram has a free ebook that is really awesome. Most people who do Viapssana progress a lot faster after reading it. It includes a very good detailed map of the Jhanas, of the whole insight cycle up til first level of enlightenment and then throug the stages of enlightement up untill arhat. Superb book in my opinion. He also has a forum, dharmaoverground.org, that has indepth discussions of vipassana that I find very usefull. Many experienced practioners hang there. You should be able to get good advice about how to benefit most from your retreat there. In the Goenka tradition, which is what I am guessing you are going to since it is 10 days, they don't do walking meditation. Witjout moving much you could get chi stagnation over the long term but since you do yoga also you will be fine. Don't worry about the retreat as it is only ten days and so should not create problems in that department. You could also benefit from adding in the secret smile. It will make your other meditations smoother and significantly reduce the chances of you experiencing problems in your meditation. If you use the search function you will find a thread that has instructions for it and discusses it. Here is some advice on retreats from Ingram: http://www.interactivebuddha.com/retreats.shtml

Unwinding the belly is a poppular book for loosening up the stomach and the breath. There are also stomach massages given, usualy by chineese massage therapists I think, at least where I live. CHi Nei Tsang is a subperb version of stomach massage. Very therapeutic. I love the 5 tibetans too by the way. Having the orbit run in the other direction some of the time is not necesarily bad. I belive they do it a bit in KAP to smooth out issues from running it up back down front (is this correct?). my own teacher also does this and says as a general rule that if it wants to flow in a direction then let it because your body is wiser then your intellect. Aparently Chunyi Lins CD about opening the orbit (small heavenly cycle) i srather poppular. There are acupressure point on the inside of the wrist and on the ancle that makes the orbit run, especially the front channel. THey work well for me. There is no way I will be able to describe them exactly and I don't know the names so hopefully someone else does. Or you could go to an acupuncturist and ask or you can look up points online, post the links and I will tell you if you have found the right points. Someone recomende med to run the orbit up front back down the other day because I was a fire person. Not sure if that is good advice but it feels like there is something to it when I try. It might explain why your orbit wants to go that way because if you have excess heat from yoga stuff this might then be a way to balance. Someone else will have to confirm this though as my orbit only runs a bit now and then and I don"t really work on it much or have much knowledge of it. You should search for the secret smile on this forum. There is a thread here with instructions for it. It is very, very, very good at smoothing things out. Partially by feeling you with good emotions and balancing you which makes everything a lot safer, partialy by opening channels really well and partially by acustomating your meridians to receive powerfull energy like kundlaini because strong emotions and bblissfull energy is gushed through the meridians in the secret smile at the end. There is also a Cd of it by Dr Glenn Morris and you can find it in his book Path Notes. It is used as a safety mechanism in several traditions. Michael winn ahs a cd about opening the orbit safely through a 10 min qigong sequence. It starts with up the back though and I belive starting down the front is much safer and more balancing. Trunk argues the case for that on alchemicaltaoism.com and I think he makes a good point. All ways will work though. I think you should really consider longevity breathing by Bruce Kumar Frantzis. Perfecting breathing deep in the belly makes energy go were it is suposed to and grounds you. You might have gotten that down through your yoga, but check if you can breathe REALLY well and deep into your lower belly and if it makes energy settle down there otherwise this could well be a good area to work on a bit.

I think Juggler method is better than for example cocky funny stuff at attracting balanced and helathywomen. If you want a quicker learning curve Troy of Troy Dizzon dating has an outstanding reputation of bringing peoplevery quick reslts. Timmy D from Juggler method aslo get very, very quick results with people. Can you elaborate on the power strenght thing. I just don't get it but find it interesting. Tai chi is great, I am learning myself now, but it takes a lot of time to learn. What you could do each morning is the five tibetans for 15 minutes. Meditate on the breath or with a mantra or do longevity breathing for 15-20 minutes and then do the secret smile for about 10. The tibetans work absolute wonders for me in terms of emotional and energetic balance and do the same for a lot of people whereas it just does not click with others. It is well worth checking out if it works for you and you don't need much time with it. It also gives you very good physcial exercise. The meditation or breath work will provide deep relaxation, concentration, and lots of pleasureable feelings. The secret smile will make you relaxed, confident, happy, loving, and blissfull and cleanse out your channels. A bunch of people here practice it and you can find instructions in an old thread if you put secret smile in the search function. That is solid routine that will should resutls on a bunch of levels. How about yoga class?

Yes that can be difficult. I think you just need to listen to a few different versions (should be some on youtube) and pick the ones you feel works for you. I use ssssssssssssssss as lung sound and think it works great.

THanks

Drew, I love your posts and find them deeply fascinating and I am very gratefull for the information that you bring and for your theories which I will look closely at one day I have the time and concentration to look into it properly. However, it is not unlikely that you are seriously ungrounded or ubercharged on sexual energy in a way that might be very unbalanced. Or you might just be the Hunter S. Thompson of the Tao, I don't really know. But as an experiment it would be interesting to see what happened if you took a period of quite intese grounding and rooting work. Lots of standing meditation and such, maybe some root chakra meditation and whatnot. Maybe even ejaculate a couple of times just to clean the pipes, prefereably into a girl. Either you will find that there aren't much benefit for you in doing such rooting practices because the full lotus provides all that or you might find that you finally have your feet on the ground. I honestly don't have a clear opinion on the matter, but the chance is rather large that you are not properly rooted so check that option out. It just makes logicly sense in a n almost amthematical manner. You could even put it in a game theory diagram of some sort and it would come out as superbly rational to do as the cost of checking this out through say two months of serious grounding work is very, very low while the cost of continuing being totaly ungrounded is huge. On a similar note, why not go see Santiago or someone like that whom probably have a lot to teach you about the next levels and other ways of practicing that can be extreemly beneficial. Ya Mu says he practiced a technique almost identical to what you did but found it not worht it in the end and now practices differently and benefits more from that. What have you got to loose in checking out if he is actually right? Not much other then a bit of wasted time that could have been spent in full lotus but then again you could set up a similar cost benefit diagram and it would tell you to go see Ya Mu. You could also think of this as a sort of scientific way to test your theories. You need to put your hypothesis up for potential falsification. If you do your theories would have a lot more weight on this forum and with other people as well. So, please offer yourself to science and try out soemthing different I am sure Santiago knows which burger kings have the girsl with the best Jing in Miami

Right now tai chi is working better for me than the yoga I normally do because I need to ground and center myself in the dan tien which tai chi does more efficiently and it also helps me realx more because I am tense in a way that is better helped by the very, very, very slow movments of tai chi than the more strainious yoga. However, that is rihgt now. Long term I will focus primarily on yoga because I feel it does more for stuff like stretching building muscle and it is excellent for relaxation if done right. The problem is a lot of yoga is done quite fast and with too much effort and is too difficult for a beginner to do in a relaxed enough manner. Something like yin yang yoga which I will try when I resume practice addresses this well with combining very long held effortless stretching postures with quicker more dynamic sequences. Iyengars restorative yoga also give profound levels of relaxation. If you choose yoga I think doing longevity breathing or any other exercise that teaches you to breathe properly and slowly is very important in order to get the most benefit as the progression of breath improvement is not fast enough just doing yoga for alot of people. Adding such a practice on the side for a fair amount of time in the begining will multiply the benefits. Long term my plan is to do yoga mostly but have a short form of tai chi to do a little bit on the side for grounding, centering and for the particular type of relaxation and smoothing out of chi flow that it brings. I find that to be a great and efficient addition to yoga.

Hi Mikaelz! You lean to the Xabir/Thusness side of the discussions of No Selv vs Self don't you? How do you think the guy you mention fits into that scism? I also find it interesting that he likens or connect kundalini and the Dark Night of the Soul since the Arising and Passing Away in Vipassana is acompanied by a lot of kundalini like experiences and is immediately foloowed by the Dark Night. To me it seems that this is quite a strong argument for the Arising and passing away and Kundalini awakening to be the same thing and thus bring you to the same place, in effect the dark night and then also close to high equanimity or what the name og the next stage in vipassana is. This is also very interesting because once the arising and passing away is crossed the basic level of enlightenment in the vipassana tradition, first path, is not that far away. Similar with Kundalini. Once awakened life is transformed but one does not get enlightened unless one after some time of struggle and purification manages to surrender ones ego which basicly would be what happens to get to first path but aquired through insight. If these things are in fact the same then it offers some interesting perpsecitves. One is that there are many energetic techniques that help manage what comes after Kundalini a lot better. Grounding, the ability to circulate the energy, the ability to run cool energy, emotional purification up front (the secret smile etc.). THis would then mean that Vipassana people could derive a lot of benefit from incorporating some of those safety factors in order to manage the dark night fase. Another interesting aspect of this concerns the debate over emptiness meditation vs energy meditations. If the Arising and Passing away is a Kundalini awakening then emptiness meditation does lead to the most, or a lot of the most, central energetic transformations sought. If you read Glenn Morris' acount of what happened after Kundalini, it seems to offer a shitload of energybenefits taht surpass what most people would be able to cultivate with acitve energywork unless their Kundalini was awakened. I thought I would chip in another thing as well. Dirk Al, a former Buddhist monk and also universal Tao instructor told me how he reached first path through budhist practices in a cave outside a monastary in THailand, then lost it again, which is quite common in the start, but got back to exactly the same place doing Mantak Chias Universal Tao system. His attainment was recognise by his teachers by the way and they should have numerous ways of checking like sensing his energy, seing his aura, asking him questions about exactly how things happened and how he sees things now etc. so I see little reason to doubt him especially since he seemed like an extreemly honest and straight forward guy. His expereince offers a very strong case for budhist and Taoist enlightenment experiences being essentially the same, at least at lower levels of enlightenment. Interestingly enough he also connects the Jhanas from budhism to the stages he went through in Mantak Chias, fusion and various Kan and Li stages which again says a lot about the similarities between the systems.

Well, then the tantra gurus should learn Lins technique or just do it karezza style with breathing instead.

You will find a good guide to navigating amongst Lins stuff (his own page is a mess aparently and by the way he is a quack but his technique is good, he also apparently has some very good sexual techniques for pleasing women) on alchemicaltaoism.com and an article that goes through the basic technique. Check the Male deer exercise on Umaatantra to be sure it is the same thing because I have seen some deer exercise stuff that was just about contracting the perinium and this is much more. I have done it a bit myself and although I have not yet had the same effect as the guy mentioned I can see how this exercise moves your orgasms in that direction.

I have been doing some bobyscanning lately. Normally when I do this I just feel whatever is there which means a combo of physical sensation and chi. Recently I have been playing with focusing only on hte physical sensation of the muscle and or the skin. So far this removes the sensation of chi. It just goes away for some time. When that happens my grounding problem seems to get a lot better because although I am still in my head, without so much energy, that ain"t so bad. Kinda like the difference between having a bit to much chi in the head and having too much kundalini in the head. So I am thinking to keep focusing on this to see where it takes me. Does anyone have any experience with this or opinions?

Shinzen young teaches vipassana at a distance through phone and other stuff. Now he REALLY knows his stuff. Read the articels on his webpage. SOme of the best and clearest stuff I have ever read about meditation.

THere is quite a few free teachings on the umaatantra website and Tao and Santiagos blogs put together. If yop do all of them you have a nice little sadhana. I think that is absolutely fair. THe webiste does look very suspicious. But I do think the experience of most bums attending KAP speaks for itself. Read the practice blogs that some KAPers write and read otehr posts by people who do it. I think it is absolutely fair to say the system works unusually well both for people who are complete beginners and for those who have had a long time in other systems and much to compare with. If you are looking for a style that gives you a lot with little effort I think KAP is exactly what you should. 40 minutes a day is enough to get really powerfull results with it. Another option if you want quick results is Kunlun. Also just 20 min of AYP (aypsite.org a good system and free) meditation and 10 min of spinal breathing a day will give you very substantial results.

JA MU (michael Lomax) describes a form of taoist dual cultivation in his book which he claims is very good and I also think quite different from the most common techniques. Both partners have to be cultivators to make it work. there has been some interesting threads about sexual practices in the last six months. Karezza has been menationed in almost all of them so if you search for Karezza you will find several good threads with, IMO, very valuable perspectives. KAP also includes a bunch of dual cultivation stuff in KAP 2but it is a mixed system not a strictly taoist one. It is common wisdom on this board that for most people dr. Lins technique is better and safer then Chais technique. So many people damage themselves trying to follow the multiorgasmic man book. A lot of people have success also, but many experience trouble. In my opinion there should be very little force involved in bringing the energy up and there need be little or no muscular force aplied in the perineum. If one uses it it is more about the amount of relaxed control and intention one can bring to the area then the force aplied. Breathing and midnfulness really is the key IMO. If you search for the Karezza thread you will posts by me where I explain what I think about this in mcuh greater detail. It is worth mentioning that a fellow taobum wrote that after doing the male deer exercise you can find on the Umaatantra page his tantric orgasms changed character and more or less floated up towards the head by themselves. It could be worth a shot to practice this while you work on multiples to see if this aplies to you to. The deer exercise inlcudes some toning of the PC muscle as well. Generally a lot of people also have more and safer success with the Key sound and with the aneros then the pc muscle aproach. Here is a couple but you can find several others that are good reads: http://www.thetaobums.com/index.php?showtopic=9421&st=0 http://www.thetaobums.com/index.php?showtopic=12466

I am not sure what you refer to but you should remember that the teachings that were "free" in monasteries were "free" because someone GAVE food and to some extent money to the monks. There are some instances of monks that supported themselves solely on their own farming etc and so had less time to cultivate and to teach but at least to a very large extent these teachings have been free because someone else paid for it to be free. Now if I run into some serious cash later in my life my plan is to pay people that I think are excellent teachers to teach free in order to reach more people who can not afford a course or who would otherwise not bother. Mostly I think I would support just introductory level classes in meditation to get people hooked but to the extent I find some system or teachers to be especially good I would either support them fully or subsidize their teachings to make it very cheap. I just have to find the money first But anyway this is what I would do IF I had the money. I think it is to most meaningful thing I could do. At least on some smaller scale some of us should be able to do something like that. If you can pay for 20 hours of a good meditation teachers time you could pay one to give a free meditation course to psychology and medical students which would make it likely several of them would get seriously into meditation and throughout their lives recommend it to hundreds of patients. That I am going to be able to manage to support to some extent and will do for sure once I graduate and get in a more solid financial situation. If we are serious about these things WE need to step up and give the support for these teachings to be free. Skip two holidays to the canary islands and you have got yourself the cash for an excellent introductory course to meditation that could change the lives of many people. Putting all the responsibility for providing the teachings for free on the teachers neglects our own responsibility completely. As people trying to grow spiritually taking such a responsibility should certainly be an area of focus. Currently in the west not enough people are supporting the free teaching of such teachings. In the future that may change as more and more people get into these kinds of teachings but at present most teachers have to charge. By the way isn't the price for KAP, 333 dollars, also the number representing the devils son Maybe just in popular culture like in the Omen movies or something but still kind of weird

Glenn Morris wrote something about aura huding where you shrink your aura or something to not be noticed. Ninja stuff. Maybe thats what you need to do around your sons friends and your therapists:) By the way if one reaches Drews O at D level I am sure we could all just blast the ones we desire with orgasms and that would make take care of attraction

But what do you think of the actual practices Creation? What did they bring you and do you still practice them? I know you have also taken a stillness movement workshop, has that worked better for you then KAP and how do they differ? AS for myself I plan on doing KAP eventually but want to ground first, do some more moderate and basic practices and sort some stuff out before I do anything that is potentially very powerful although clearly Kundalini per se does not happen as early with KAP as advertised. For me it is essential to combine KAP with Vipassana because I believe no energetic system has a good chance of getting you enlightened unless you combine it with an insight practice. And when I say insight practice I do not just mean sitting in "emptiness" somehow which can often be a concentric practice but an open investigation of reality type meditation like Vipassana, Zen Dzogchen and I believe certain Taoist stillness practices and certain christian practices and stuff from other traditions has similar but it has to be something else than a shamata practice. The tibetans have done such a combination now for an endless amount of time and if energy practices alone could do it they would have figured that out now and just skipped the insight practices. I believe energy practices can get you to the doorstep of enlightenment but then it is only insight and or surrender that will get you further which is why such a meditation and training is important. It can happen without this if you hang out in the landscape close to enlightenment where energy practices can take you because you eventually somehow get it or surrender enough but IMO it must be much easier if you actually know how to do insight practice. An interesting analogy to this is that a lot of people accidentally through meditation or even without any practice just in a dream or something cross what they in VIpassana call the arising and passing away which is very similar to a kundalini awakening. After that you invariably enter the Dark Night territory (which can be very mild for some and horrible for others). Acording to the Vipassana tradition you can then skip all the long hard work others have put in to get to the arising and passing away and just finish the last phases up till enlightenment which CAN be quite quick. I think raising the kundalini gets you into some of the same territory (can be exactly the same but also quite different but similar) and if you have an intelligent energy system it can also get you quite a bit further just by energy practices but then you will be stuck at the door of enlightenment for a looooooooong time unless you have an insight practice.

Yes it is in one of the threads here. I don't remember which thread or the name of the guy who got the chi ball but I am sure someone else does. An import part of this is that the guy wrote about it in a thread before Satiago mentioned he did so or had mentioned that he would do so.

Why don't someone show me PROOF of the awakened kundalini and enlightenment of any indian, tibetan or chineese master? It has to be one that shows something no western Derren Brown type can do though. Everything the Mo PAy guy does could well be magick tricks. Who has ever seen proof of kundalini in anyone? Of abilities with chi sure, but proof of kundalini???? Of enlightenment????????????? We really do need a remake of the parting of the red sea. Egypt could pay santi to make a sort of biblical remake tour doing all the miracles of Moses where they were actaully performed

It should also be note that the KAP people has done an amazing job of smoothing out problems for people that come from other systems and are seriously ungrounded. One guy came from long struggles with unbalances from AYP (which otherwise has a very good trackrecord of keeping people safe and balanced and also smoothing out problems people come with from otehr practices) and another had had about ten years of misery and had sought help everywhere and was smoothed out, by I think Santiago but might have been Tao, in no time. There are a bunch of others like this.

Hi KAPreview. Interesting that you had thios experience. I disagree with your general assesment though although I have not done KAP myself. I have never seen any system get so consistently awesome feeback from so many people. THat is in temrs of power and effectiveness, safety and groundedness, effect on psychological development, integration into daily life in terms of the effects of the practices suporting their daily life rather then pulling them out of it which can often happen and the ability to use the practices almost all day while doing other stuff. Many of those who practice it have spent many, years practicing other systems like universal Tao, Zen, Kriya yoga, Bardo, Indian kundalini systems, other taosit systems etc. etc., A lot of the practioners really know what good other and more "classical and native" systems can do and still find KAP to be both more effective safer and better for their daily life. I know some people who do or did genuine Kriya yoga systems and I have seen what people who do such systems and some kundalini yoga systems write online and there is no doubt in my mind that for most people KAP is more powerfull and much much safer and certainly better for daily life. THere is no scriptural study in KAP and there is virtually no scriptural study in most Zen schools. Both work fine. People get strem entry with vipassana all the time. Some of these do a lof scriptural study and some even certain morality trainings, many of them have hardly picked up a book and it still works fine. I have received energy from Santiago through his thursday shaktipaths and I have received energy from Chunyi Lin during a personal healing session. The shaktipath was not far from as strong from when Lin focused only on me during the healing. Furthermore I belive Santiago sent me some energy yesterday after I sent him a PM and if he did that was the most usefull transmission of energy I have ever had because it really changed som stuff for the better. Either that or I had some sort of breakthrough by myself that felt like foregin energy doing good stuff to me. THe techniques are probably not that uncommen but it is how they are combined that seem to do the trick. THe amount of practices seems overwhelming but I have been carefully reading peoples practice blogs and it seems like they actually feet very well. Many of the practices fit together so once mastered indivudally you can do two or more practices at the same time and do them while ding tai chi etc. Several also eventually more or less become another more advanced technique when put togheter. Many of the techniques are also not meant to be necesarry but so that people can pick and choose what fits them and also a lot of it such as aura viewing and healing and otehr psychic techniques are jus there for you to put to good use or have fun with not to actually practice that much. Anyway I belive all energy systems are dependent on having an insight meditation coupled with it to have a good chance of going from awakened kundalini to enlightenment. THat is what the tibetans do for veryu good reason. You need something like Zen, Vipassana, Dzogchen or an open awareness taoist style in order for the chance of getting enlightenment to be large. You can still make it if you are lucky but it would take a shitload of time lurking in high energy states untill you just get lukcy if you don't have some sort of insight meditation system mixed in. It does happen but is rare. KAP teaches Dzogchen eventually I belive and Dr MOrris recomended Zen on the side in path notes I belive. There is also a post here somewhere where an answer from som eguy, I think Dan ferrera, to Drew Hempel gives some good insight into KAP compared to a bunch of really powerfull classical taoist systems. THe guy trined intensly with many different teachers and got a lot out of it and also learned from Santiago and Tao and says that it is one of the quickest and safest way to raise kundalini and that of all the techniques he learned over the years the secret smile was one of the two or three most usefull.

Maybe if you advertise this practice in LA you can get them all to do qigong

Cool! It makes sense too me.