Maddie

Important questions: 1. How old are you? 2. How much other qigong back ground do you have? and what exactely? 3. Why do you want to do retention?

Yes your right cause the other day I was working on my lungs due to the spill over from my solar plexus lol, so yea you got it right ;-). It would seem today though that the organ of choise was my spleen. As most of my solar plexus work as been in relation to how I view women, with the spleen it was doing the healing sound to get rid of my rather obessive (lately) thinking about women. And not just thinking about them, but over thinking stuff like "did I say the right thing" "does she like me" ect... It was starting to drive me insane, and also become very distracting to doing anything else.

Yea that makes sense as Zen and Taoism seem very similar. ;-)

Just curious as to what are considered some typical side effects of cultivation? What have been some of the Tao Bum's experiences first hand or otherwise? Is it normal to get very very tired when working on a new area?

Thanks for the replies so far. What I've noticed specifically is that (and this happened to me before too) I began doing hold the ball in ZZ in front of my solar plexus area because in the past with other chakras it was a very powerful balancing effect upon them. And like with other times at the beginning I got very very tired, but then later after I guess what was done was done I did not feel so tired and plus the issues with said chakra were much better as well. But for the past several days I have beeen super super tired. Plus it would seem a lot of solar plexus issues have been coming to the surface, but I sort of expected that to happen, at least it gives me the chance to mentally process stuff I didn't realize was in there. Found a couple interesting links: http://www.spiritportal.org/signs.html http://www.namastecafe.com/edu/symptoms.htm

I don't feel judgmental at all, but I do feel like people don't get me.

If you wouldn't mind I would be interested in hearing your story about how you went through this realization and process?

So what is it about cultivation that would increasingly cause one's energy to set them apart from society?

Even though this was not the original topic of my thread here, I was pondering if another effect of cultivating for a while is ..... well .... just being "different" than other people??? I feel like its very rare that I run into someone that I feel that I can relate to. Then again maybe its this way for others on this site too which is why we all gravitate to TTB's? I just can't shake the feeling that I feel very different than most people, and also that they feel it too and it makes them feel uncomfortable around me? Does anyone else feel this way? Does seeking the Tao really set one apart that much?

Hmmmm maybe that is whats happening to me now then?

I don't know a thing about Kunlun , but I do know that in every new form I've learned it certainly took more than two days to notice results.

I think I'm going through another one of "those" episodes, as I have been doing a lot of work on my solar plexus chakra, and for almost a week now I am simply exhausted. Think its related? *edit: after thinking about this a little more, I'm glad I keep a record of my practice on here, it makes good reference material. I now remember back in October when I was working on my sacral chakra that if you read many of my posts prior to that I seemed to always feel guilty for having a sex drive. Then I began to work on it, and got really tired as I guess the blockages were being cleared out, and now I realize that its natural to have a sex drive, its normal, and I don't sweat it. Now that I'm doing the same thing for the solar plexus, I guess thats whats going on.

dp

LOL omg you crack me up

At the moment I'm working on cultivating self love and self compassion, anyone know of good ways to do that? I was reading this book yesterdy and I forgot the authors name, but it was good, it was called "Love just because" and she told the story about this woman who's liver just failed on her. She got a transplant and after a year that liver was beginning to fail on her too. The woman had heard that in Chinese Medicine the liver was related to anger, and realized she had, had a lot of self/repressed anger stored up inside her. She realized a lot of her anger was self anger, and as she realized this she began to release it and forgive herself. The doctors were amazed because after she did this her liver became healthy again and they did not need to do the transplant. :-)

Um please tell me how does one achieve this lol

I'd agree with you, testicle breathing does take the amount of time you mentioned. So I guess one might call this "penis" breathing? lol, because what I'm saying is from personal experience :-)

Good suggestion

I've done a little candel training, but so far can't extinguish anything. Though I have been able to bend the flame, and do some cool stuff with smoke from incense by throwing chi at it. Also hanging a mobile and spining it with chi is a realitvely easy exercise to do that gives you a good feel for projecting chi.

I had sort of mentioned this in another thread but I felt that it was relevant to this as well, and its what I'm going through at the moment. I believe that to cultivate love and compassion requires opening the heart chakra. I feel that my heart chakra is in pretty decent shape, but that this issue is still tricky for me, and the reason being is that I'm working on my solar plexus chakra. I've read it many times that you have to work on your lower chakras first, because if you don't, they can cause issue for your higher up chakras. How can you practice unconditional love and compassion for someone from the heart chakra, if your solar plexus is petty, greedy, controlling, and you have ego issues? I think sometimes the pre-requs for cultiviating love and compassion is to first get rid of the "junk" that gets in the way.

I'll have to second that, this happens to me now and then, and when it does it just breathe that extra chi in "mr. happy" out and store it in my dan tien, mr. happy calms down, the dan tien has more juice, and the people did rejoice :-D

I look at the ground a few feet in front of me.

Hey Blasto, as a man in my mid 30's I'd have to say that I found your experience and perspective on things very interesting, insightful, and humorus as well :-)