Maddie

Here is the reason I beleive this is more than just the result of an injury. Granted some of the upper back pain could be the result of a past injury. But what an injury does not explain is the resulting fatigue, and other symptoms he has after semen loss. Furthermore even if his back pain were totally explainable from injury alone, treating the LV/GB qi stagnation equation would greatly help him to recover from that as well.

Hmmm well I suppose its hard to say conclusively or not if that incident as a child is related to your difficulties now, but the reason the solar plexus is call the solar plexus is because there is a large "plexus" of nerves there right in your diaphram area. Now its possible that one of those nerves might have been damaged when you got stompped on. Since nerve damage does not repair like other tissue damage, its possible that an injury here as a child could still be causing difficulties to you now. My recommendation would be to see an acupuncturist as acupuncture has a postive effect on nerve damage, which is why its so sucessful in treating stroke victims. Being that this is likely a chronic case involving nerve damage, I'm pretty sure you will require several treatments, Hope that helps.

I've noticed that after doing the Kleem mantra for a while my saliva gets very thin and watery. After doing it longer my mind becomes very still. :-)

Keep in mind that I'm not talking about Kidney in the Western medical point of view, for if that were the case then yes I'd agree that he does not have a Kidney problem. What I speak of is the Kidney meridian system from a TCM point of view... its different. :-)

As I said in the first post, hard to say with out an actual diagnosis.

I think enjoying food is important for two reasons. First of all why not enjoy life's small pleasures? Second to enjoy food means that your mindful of it, and what ever increases our mindfulness of whats going on is a pretty good thing. :-)

I've begun to notice that with mindfulness insight meditation that as I watch thoughts, especially some thoughts (as in the less pleasant ones) that at first its as thought (or at least it feels this way) that the thoughts don't like being watched. Then after watching them for a bit, I usually sort of break out in a clammy hot/cold sweat. 1. Do those thoughts that are part of our conditioning have a consciousness of their own? Is that why they don't like being observed. Might that also explain why people sometimes do things that they'd rather not? Because these aspects of our mental conditioning have a consciousness of their own? 2. Why might I break out in a hot/cold clammy sweat after observing some of these unpleasant thoughts after a while?

Cool I'm glad to hear that :-)

As far as finding a good acupuncturist in your area I suppose you could google it. Here is something I found that you might check out http://www.yinyanghouse.com/practitioner_members/acupuncturists. Ok your response about retention clarifies a few things. If you feel that weak, tired, and fearful after ejaculation then this would point to a Kidney deficiency, as the Kidney is the foundation of our original qi and its emotion is fear. TCM can further help in this regard as well. Some good Kidney herbs would help you to not feel all the ways you listed after ejaculation. Then with in reason you could release now and then as needed and avoid all the anxiety and stress you mentioned comes with extended retention.

So its Kling as in to kling or hold tightly to something (as far as pronunciation) is concerned at least?

Thanks :-)

Hey I am currently a TCM student and intern. My first recommendation would be to go and see an acupuncturist as a thorough TCM diagnosis can't really be made online like this. But just based on the things you said here is my hunch from a TCM point of view. You mentioned two main concerns, upper back pain and nocturnal emission. Now I believe you mentioned that you have your upper back pain around your shoulder area and that you have been under stress. This sounds like Liver/Gallbladder qi stagnation. Stress will cause your Liver qi to stagnate. Its the Liver's job to promote the smooth flow of qi. When you get stressed this does not happen and you feel more stressed and can have pain along the course of the meridian. The Gallbladder is the paired organ of the Liver and it runs right through your shoulders. This is a common problem. Acupuncture and herbs can be very helpful in this. Also anything that will help de-sress you will help as well. As far as nocturnal emissions go this is considered a Kidney issue in TCM. Now ordinarily this is caused by Kidney deficiency, usually of Kidney yin. In your case however since you have been practicing retention for an extended period of time, I'd say this is not the result of a Kidney deficiency but simply pressure from a lot of semen build up, which is not unusual. My question for you would be why are you practicing semen retention in the first place? I ask because as I've noted you seem to have Liver qi stagnation. The Liver meridian circles the groin area, so if things don't move there after a while they tend to stagnate, thus producing stress which can manifest in other places such as your back and shoulders. I don't know your entire practice schedule, but the problem with semen retention, especially as is commonly taught is that retention without a serious practice of meditation to cultivate emptiness is asking for big trouble. I know I practiced retention for an extended period of time and I felt very stressed and it kind of made my thinking weird. Now granted excessive loss of semen can be bad for your health, but as always the case in the middle way so can too much retention with out the proper meditation to go along with it. So again my question is why do you practice retention?

One way to approach the past lives thing as through a detective approach. You take note of which places seem very familiar to you, what preferences that you have, especially ones that are outside of your own culture.

Has anyone heart of the Kleem sound or mantra? It's supposed to draw to you the things you want, as in material things, and particularly women (for men). I was doing this mantra for a while at the end of last year and it did seem like that my luck with women (which isn't really all that much lately, not that I'm really trying too hard) improved. I stopped though mainly because my understanding of Buddhism is that instead of trying to fulfill our desires we should be attempting to reduce them. What I'm not sure of is if that was a misunderstanding on my part, or is a mantra like this best avoided? I've been doing the Zhunti mantra lately and was also wondering if doing both would conflict or not?

Does it happen sometimes that as you meditate a lot that sometimes you can feel kind of sick afterwards?

I appreciate all the feed back. I think my mentioning my German soldier theory might have distracted though from what I was really trying to get at. What I'm really wanting to understand is.... if you work on a chakra for example and all sorts of "stuff" (mental impressions, emotions, feelings) come up afterwards. If you can not associate any of these feelings from anything in this life, is this past life stuff that you are dealing with that is in your chakras?

Something that I thought I'd share for consideration. Now from what I understand of Buddhism and Kara theory in general all of your actions for good or bad come back to you. For a while now due to many reasons (more than I care to get into at the moment) I have believed that my most recent past life to the best of my understanding was that of a German soldier during the Second World War. Aside from the familiarity of Germany and my obsession with WWII since childhood, I think it explains a lot of what I have experienced during this life. As is commonly known German soldiers were not known in general for treating people particularly well. Now the way I figure this ties into karma is that in this life up until very recently just about everyone I was close to and/or most situations I found myself in, there was always someone significant in my life being extremely cruel to me, and trying to exert a great deal of power and control over me. As I worked on my solar plexus chakra therefore I had great feelings and images of cruelty come up as I worked through that. Most recently I've been working on my sacral chakra. It has been rather overwhelming to the point of feeling ill and feverish. All sorts of varied and random sexual thoughts, feelings and scenarios seem to be going through my mind and body. Some of them very bizarre. Due to my past experience with my solar plexus and issues of power and control, this has caused me to consider that perhaps that past sexual experiences and karma from past lives are being worked out? This thought raised an even more broad question. Is karma very specific in its manifestations in our current life? What I mean is if in a past life, if you are cruel to others, will that karma you generate work itself out by having other people be cruel to you? If in a past life you were a sexual deviant, will that cause you to have to deal with issues like that in this life? I'm just wondering how specific karma is, and how it plays itself out. ** Something else I decided to add that I think is noteworthy. When I first began meditation I was primarily working with the meridians and organs using the Taoist healing sounds. My experience from that was that stuff came up but primarily from experiences earlier in this life, as in from childhood. Now that I'm more chakra focused it seems that more of what comes up is from past lives.

It dawned on me that perhaps I sould be more specific because I don't feel that I was getting my point accross perfectly. While yes there are times that I feel spacey, but I guess more specifically the way I'd describe the way I feel lately is very tired, and apathetic. Its just hard to have the energy to motivate myself to do anything. I suppose the reason I began this train of thought with using red is because I figured that since red is the color of the root chakra which is the most physical and down to earth that I was hoping that I'd have more energy and be more useful in the real world. It seems though that red did the exact opposite and made me feel even more tired. Then I tried yellow and was still tired. Just yesterday I tired blue and now I finally seem to be starting to feel less tired and apathetic. I'm not sure why?

My motive in the first place was to be less spacey and more effective in the real world. Suggestions?

I stand corrected, you did say to put black at the bottom of the feet ;-). I don't believe I have used moldavite before. I was reading your response to K about the lower chakras and the upper ones. In my case my reasons for wanting to add emphasis to my root is because I feel that my upper chakras are doing alright, but that I am not very well rooted in physical reality (I'm top heavy). People at my school told me they thought I was stoned all the time (which I'm not) and I do admit to being somewhat spacy. So I want to be more down to earth. Up until recently my answer to that was to use dark stones like Obsidian and Hematite but I found this to be too grounding and not enough energizing. So I wound up feeling less spacy but sluggish. In the half week or so that I've been using red stones I've had some interesting experiences for sure, but I'm beginning to feel a little more interest in reality and a bit more energized (so far).

This made me wonder about practices and sounds for the meridians. I am currently a TCM student and find online and in books all sorts of stuff for the chakras, but what about the meridians. Granted much of what I am studying in the way of acupuncture is for this purpose, but I am curious about other practices that specifically work on the meridians.

ok thanks. Just a final note for the evening that I believe is relevant to the topic at hand. I was doing the "Lam" mantra just a while ago for the Root chakra, and in the midst of it became aware of some negative self-beliefs along the lines that I don't deserve good things... hmmm. Also my appetite as been enomous the past couple days as well.

Whats the Lotus Buddha mantra? It really opens the Root Chakra?

Could you elaborate a little more? Did it specify what the dangers of red are? My own subjective experence with red so far is that it feels good (I'm not saying thats a good arguement for something, as cocaine can make you feel good with out being good for you) but if I was going to describe how it makes me feel good, I'd say it makes me feel good about being me, and being present.

Thanks for the feed back, I actually have used crystals for a while. The reds were Jasper, Ruby, Goldstone, and Garnet. I've had them for a while and have salted and cleared them many times. I believe the difference was not in the fact that I used crystals, but that I used Red ones. I have worked on all the chakras with crystals but in the past I predominately used black stones for the root chakra, as you mentioned. This was the first time I used just red and nothing else. The reason I dedided to use red as opposed to the black that I usually use for the root chakra is mainly a desire to increase my energy level, as I had been feeling unmotivated and lethargic lately. So I guess my question is more about the root chakra itself as opposed to the method of working on it.