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I have when I used to do Kriya Yoga during yoni mudra (and never mastered Kechari). I never quite got the 5 pointed star all that vivid but I have seen the gold halo surrounding the blue disk with white/silvery point in the middle. I've met people that see the star clearly. perhaps it's clearer during a moment of kumbhaka (breathlessness)? Usually for me it was more blurry. On a few occasions I saw it exactly like this image vortex posted only with near blinding intensity, sometimes it was at precisely the moon's brightness. What it means I haven't a clue, beyond traditional kriya descriptions of an astral doorway. I still get subtle phenomenon now during standing qigong and then of yellow/blue/silver or flashing but i don't focus on it, though Yogananda recommended to put all one's attention there.

Yes I would definitely say it has. Being able to assess the pros and cons of various systems by reading opinions over the last couple years has helped me make an informed decision on how to spend 2 to 3 hours of my day on qi gong or meditation practice that woud otherwise be left to whatever cards i was dealt. All the Buddhism discussions and emphasis on DO has helped me critically examine my own perceptions and caused me to research further in order to actually understand this POV and not gloss over an important piece of human wisdom/heritage. It also helps me with (hypnotism) clients who might be of this persuasion.

well said

Wow! I would definitely hire a good lawyer and go after that hospital. And on top of munchausen by proxy / child abuse.

yeah we have the client beat the crap out of a pillow if necessary to bleed off some of the anger before we can even begin to apply reason to the situation. I then go after the hallucinated offender on behalf of the client. The client then defends themselves in the role of the offender, which ultimately brings more understanding to the situation and increases probability that forgiveness will be accomplished. But yeah the idea often has to be conveyed and accepted that forgiving this offender will get them this part of their life back. @Sloppy Zhang I would say most of the anger people carry around well beyond it's usefulness as internal stress has to do with situations in the past. The offender might have moved away, be in another state/country, or even dead but the pain is still there internalized and hurting us in the present. So yeah in that case we are basically powerless to do anything but forgive. If the situation is current, then the anger, as I was trained, is there to motivate us to make the situation more fair. Without the motivational force of anger this would be difficult. I view anger as not necessarily bad in itself but perhaps an evolutionary motivational force to increase fairness and therefore safety. Its what we do with it that is either good, bad, or ineffective. People tend to store it and i think modern society reinforces this.

You left out fear, guilt, anger at self, sadness and loneliness. These plus regular anger are probably the main internal stressors for most people. frustration and depression being dependent upon one or more of these. Hatred is really a cognition associated with anger and possibly fear rather than an emotion unto itself ... If love is a problem there is probably more about a fear attached.

I do forgiveness work with clients in the deepest levels of hypnosis, where they hallucinate being the offender. Basically a Fritz Pearlz style chair therapy in trance. This unlocks some knowledge about the situation they didn't realize they had. Some keys that make it doable: A wise person once said holding onto anger is like drinking poison and hoping the other person gets sick. An adult kind of forgiveness is forgiving but not forgetting. Forgetting = ignorance. The person who forgives after scrutinizing the worst of the offense is the 100% benefactor of the forgiveness, they get their energy back: The energy of the anger is theirs, plus the equal or greater amount of energy it took to hold it below the conscious level. The offender doesn't have to know or in some cases shouldn't know they have been forgiven. The offender may have experienced pain, regret, or the intent was not to harm. Or the harm was beyond the actual intent. In some cases the intent of harm was to protect, e.g., Johnny Cash - Boy Named Sue.

I would probably recommend training if it were something she really liked. "Set Your Voice Free" is great book/CD that quite a few people I know have one from sounding like a frog to really opening up their voice and being able to perform just by following a few of the exercises for a while (preferably done in the car when no one is around). It helps to explain "middle voice" which what separates average singers from great singers/speakers.

I would suggest that this has more to do with the power of suggestibility at the placebo level than the actual efficacy of acupuncture. The placebo in that study is sort of riding the coat tails of acupuncture in the minds of the subjects. I mean those results probably wouldn't be effective without the reputation and perceived credibility of acupuncture. Every form of health intervention can have a placebo effect as an additive to what it actually does. There's several studies that show psychiatric placebo performs nearly as well as certain forms of psychotherapy. Placebo surgery has been shown to be effective with people raised in western "medical culture". In a classic study published in the Journal of Psychosomatic Medicine in 1969 referenced here, placebo suggestibility was empirically isolated from hypnotic suggestibility in the treatment of pain.

Squarepusher (Tom Jenkinson) may have transcended musical form but he is a jazz bassist by training who discovered electronic music later. One of my favorites for jungle/experimental DNB. I remember in the 90s there were some people who believed he was the incarnation of Miles Davis. I've had the pleasure of seeing him live. Among other things, he hooks up his bass with midi pickup going to sampler/synths that allow him to connect any sound to what he is playing on the fretboard.. sickness ensues. Im pretty sure all of the jazz greats had to have some music theory. Most of the classic Jazz tunes that they get together and play are old Broadway tunes believe it or not. Gershwin, Rogers and Hammerstein. (Cherokee, All The Things You are etc) Most of the "improv" soloing is done off of either the melody line, of which note reading would be required or four voice arpeggios (four note chords, notes played individually) . So at the very least to hang with a band you would need to understand major, minor, and dominant, never mind modes. The bare minimum, lowest common denominator when learning jazz is learning to improv the blues pattern played with 7th chords which are four voice. Improv in jazz is kind of a misnomer when you consider the training involved plus the complex chord patterns and melody already exist, usually played out of "The Real Book" an illegally distributed collection of jazz standards sheet music. You really wouldn't get together to play jazz with anyone without a copy. I've heard of one jazz guitarist whose name eludes me, who for some odd or autistic reason did not really understand the concept of chords, and so he played each note of the chord separately, insane.

reminds me of holding the ball. definitely seems to have universal appeal for anyone's sense of opposition, polarity, unity, and balance.

Same here

thanks for the quick response, I am interested in understanding. If I am hearing correctly, in such a case right view/DO/E would have to do primary with thought process & spontaneous insight? I mean, in itself you wouldn't expect such a view to transform anything that is already understood to be impermanent, right?

So why is DO/E important (and/or how is it relevant) to someone practicing chi gong, standing meditation or MCO, who does not so much concern themselves about an ontological essence underlying reality or crunching into smithereens at the end of the pralaya, or worry about a first cause of everything, but is content to feel the mystery of reality/ the universe and develop competency in moving the energy around for wellness and healing themselves and others?

sounds like it could be related to the Ultradian Rhythms, they are worth respecting, meditators know this intuitively I think. this is a really good interview that gets Rossi's research across in a really accessible way: http://www.ernestrossi.com/interviews/ultradia.htm "In the typical 8 hour workday most people can expect to experience 4 or 5 peak periods when they are at their best in making decisions, planning and doing whatever they have to do. It therefore makes no sense for employers to try to get people to be busy every minute of the work day. The idea is to work smarter, not harder. Taking a 20 minute break every couple of hours or so allowing the mindbody to catch up with itself and create the ideas and energy that is needed to optimize the next work period. Meetings should not last more than 90 min at most. After that everyone is tired and more prone to making errors and getting irritated with each other. Everyone needs to learn to recognize and respect their own personal rhythms of peak performance and need for healing rest and recovery" (Rossi, 2002).

Not really sure what you have in mind by the term Shamanism, whether you're referring to indigenous Siberian or something else, but considering all disorder and disease can rationally be thought of in terms of the diathesis stress hypothesis which suggests that genetic factors predispose an individual to a certain condition, pathogenic or otherwise, but that environmental and internal stress factors ( trauma, events, certain relationships, emotions, etc) must impinge in order for the potential risk to manifest itself. All forms of healing can rationally be thought of in terms of removal of stressors and letting the body naturally heal itself. I was recently speaking with a chiropractor friend the other day who was explaining how pretty much everything that can go wrong in the body can be accounted for by a mechanism disturbed by a stressor, and that the body is fully capable of healing itself of anything as long as the various stress factors are reduced or removed, and as long as the chromosomes have not been damaged and the whole system is not under attack. This may take the invasive form of surgery or medication but the end goal is still removing a stressor. So even if the disorder is thought of as having been caused by invading spirits, a curse (suggestion?), loss of soul (trauma?), the goal is simply to remove a stressor and let the body do it's thing, which is to heal itself. You could probably make the case that "shamanic" type medicine treats most if not all disease as psychogenic. And thats not even getting into that fact that most western medicine was derived from studying and synthesizing plant medicines of the "new world", or that many indigenous cultures are traditionally have caretakers of a vast pharmacopeia and knowledge of its use, something thats not really foreign to a western perspective at all. Or the bias that the western mind has any sort of monopoly on rationality or reason.

I was going to tweak about this but didn't really have time earlier. Negative hallucinations, i.e., not seeing something that is there, can occur in hypnosis at stage 6 (profound somnambulism) on the Harry Arons depth scale as well as in similarly profound levels as measured by the Stanford (SHSS) and Harvard Group (HGSHS) scales. It's very common in demonstrational hypnosis and is has more to do with the subject's trance capacity than anything, as well as suggestion or expectation. A stage or demonstrational hypnotist might make a volunteer unable to find their water or other object and may even think the hypnotist hid it somewhere even though it should be in plain view. It would be entirely feasible by definition for that hypnotist to make themselves or another person invisible for a time to that person. Im sure it's been done many times on stage, considering negative hallucinations are used frequently. Obviously a video or photographic evidence would rule this out. I remain agnostic since I read Kan healed himself holding the ball. I believe Chunyi Lin once said holding the ball for 2 hours straight per day for 2 years will put someone "into the paranormal" whatever that means so who knows.

Thats awesome, some classic rock would would have definitely taken the edge off! Yeah that was exactly it with the "organic or technological, alive or automatic" question.. it makes sense that she would take people with different backgrounds different places. I've kind of just put that experience on the back burner and hadn't really thought about it again until seeing this thread, thanks for listening.

For abduction, I put "via technology or methods whose origins are unknown to you" A three day ayahuasca retreat led me into an experience that closely paralleled a typical abduction scenario. The first two ceremonies were manageable but difficult yet had a feel much more along the lines of typical psychedelic experience, but basically cleaning out a lot of stuff. On the third night I had a rather ominous feeling going into it, like I was being prepped for some very serious surgery. as the medicine kicked in like never before ( I almost suspect I may have gotten the residue or sediment of the brew and received a megadose). Long story short, this impossibly efficient mechanical "alien" force pinned my arms and legs down and held me in place with an iron grip and very mechanically drained the air out off my body. The feeling was of being stuck at the bottom of an exhale indefinitely. It was a terror that allowed no time for panic. Some kind of extension entered through my mouth and quickly worked on me (for what purpose I haven't a clue). I don't know if it put something in there or removed something. I still don't know if I was in any way the beneficiary of what was happening, I can only assume so because I trust the medicine and the fact that whatever it was knew how to do surgery via the breath from the "inside out" which was very impressive to me. The presence felt rather cold and the experience a bit rapey, through I probably shouldn't expect anything less in an alien psychic surgery scenario, whatever it was it was impossibly beyond my understanding. The experience was very definite, solid and did not seem in the least bit etheric or subtle. I believe it was of a different dimension as "solid" as anything, or I was in perfect resonance with its vibration so it was "solid" to me. It reminds me of Carl Jung's speculation that "UFOs are something psychic with physical properties". When the Shaman and his assistant came around to do healing work it was obvious how well they could see my energy because the assistant put her hands exactly where I had some problems and physical discomfort which I had not told them about until later. Afterwards while researching and trying to understand, I discovered Graham Hancock's book Supernatural which explores the parallels between Ayahuasca, Shamanism (as in classic dismemberment recorded by ethnographers, Eliade etc), UFO (abduction type) experiences and the (somewhat disturbing) the "fire in the sky" like experiences that Rick Straussman's DMT experiments led to with some of his subjects.

I was wondering if anyone could explain the significance of differences in abdominal breathing patterns between practices. It's probably been asked before but I tried a search and it looks like a needle in a haystack. For example with Spring Forest Qi Gong in the level 1 DVD suggests breathing in and pulling the abdomen slightly inward, and letting it go forward with the exhale. In other traditions such as forms of Yogic pranayama, or lower belly breathing in general means the abdomen expands with the inhale and the navel returns towards the spine with the exhale. is it a matter of bringing energy in from without vs moving already internal energies around? I would intuitively think that an abdominal contraction concentrates the energy to a point but am curious as to what the bums know.

thanks for the clarifications Zhang and Jvaran. Interesting about energy moving to different parts of the body. I have noticed different sets tones going on with each style that revolve around the spine, only to different points.

Thanks dmattwads that makes sense with what I was guessing

Looks like typical pick up artist & LOA trash (Law of Attraction). Not so much an expose of hypnosis/hypnotherapy but more people incorporating hypnosis into other exploits for personal gain. Kind of a separate world from the actual hypnosis profession, i.e., people working within the ethics constraints of the national guild, union members, or fields of psychology and medicine. Never heard of the American Academy of Hypnosis or Dennis Lowry. Is he the "leader in the field'?

agreed, harmful only to the other people in the room later on.

For clarity's sake why not define what you mean by both meditation and hypnosis? I think it would keep the thread from going in circles. I'm curious because there are as many of definitions of meditation as there are techniques and even the majority of people who are trained in hypnosis typically carry misconceptions about hypnosis and/or haven't really looked into the literature as that really isn't a prerequisite to working with it. To say hypnosis = unreal is not based in reality or scientific research. Perhaps you mean visualization induced hallucinations? or are you talking about using imagery vs not using imagery and the resulting after effects? Hypnosis is a naturally occuring phenomenon, therapeutic hypnosis is actually the entrainment of complex adaptive systems of mind body communication and healing. the classical phenomenon of hypnosis may be conceptualized as extreme manifestations and or perseverations of the nearly periodic psychobiological processes that are responsive to psychosocial cues. Just having a human body means these processes of naturally occuring "hypnosis" are going to be going on whether you are meditating or not. Basically what the hypnotist might call hypnotic suggestion is most likely what the chronobiologist might call the entrainment of biological processes by psychosocial cues. to anyone: what is an example of a meditation without a trance process?