astralc

Southern mantis, may I suggest that you listen to Sifu Rel, he is talking from experience. Reverse breathing comes quite naturally once you get used to it, and it takes practice like anything else you want to learn that is of any value. I prefer to use this method to initiate astral travel and OOB, once you learn to do it it opens you up to whats out there. And may I comment on your concerns about your dan tien being torn when practicing after ejeculation, thats cods wollop, you will find that you will do less ejeculating and more orgasming thru dedicated practice of your taoist meditations and Reverse breathing. Its all about practice, do the hard work first and a lot of your concerns will disappear. And if you pack chi into your dan tien too much it will generally leak out before you explode your guts all over the place

From my understanding and experience filling the dan tien can be done by static meditation, nei gung, and dynamic, tai chi. You are right, the more chi you have the more you can do with it in a deep state trance.

Count me in, Canberra - which may be a souless city given who 'sits' on a regular basis.

You have elicited a lot of advice, personally, I have been OOB and astral traveling since I started practicing tai chi in 1980, if you want to do it then go ahead, don't be put off by the bs fear mongers or the 'holier than though' types. My best practice technique is to chi breath thru the centre point, Tan Tien, and earth out thru the feet. If I do that I am sure to wake up in a dream, go flying or roll out of my body. It takes some practice, but is worth every effort you make. With practice you will move away from the lower energy levels and not have any negative interactions with anyone or thing. The black hell type places can be real or they could be our own manifestations, but again, with practice, we leave these behind quite quickly. I have only had 2 frightening experiences OOB but both times my Tan Tien kicked in automatically and I left them high and dry. The practice of centering and earthing makes your chi levels very strong and is a very safe technique ideal for astral travel. Good luck and let us know how you go, there are a lot of people who are interested in this topic.

Fascinating topic, I once had a visit from myself from the future when I was very sick, but I might have been delusional...

Hi, just joined, looking forward to reading posts and contributing to the forum. astralc

Realistically, I would have to say earthing and centering - being grounded makes harsh things easier to bare, being centered makes it possible to attach and then detach as needed. The flexibility these give makes life a little more interesting. Plus money to pay the bills with some left over for dinner with the missus astralc

From a neurological perspective, the eyes act as a switch to change brain states. When we close our eyes it messages the brain to switch to 'go to sleep' mode. This means that the brain immediately, within half a second, drops off production of fast beta brainwaves (12-40 Hz) and starts producing sleep frequencies, namely alpha the calm, transition, no activity state (8-12 Hz) followed by theta the dream imagery or lucid state (4-8 Hz) and finally delta deep sleep state (0-4 Hz). Conversely, when the eyes open it does the reverse, sleep frequencies drop off and wakefulness brainwaves begin to dominate (back to the 12-40 Hz). Our human brain evolved from small, quite defenseless creatures, living on the edge of survival. They had to be able to switch brain states (brainwaves) according to their environment. If they had slow waves dominant while awake and walking the savannah, they would be very attentive, too sleepy to notice predators and thus be eaten before they could run away to safety. They also had to be able to switch off their alert active brain at night to get a good nights sleep. The brain evolved to use eyes open / eyes closed to be able to change the 'state' of the being. Meditating, as far as I am aware, has many paths, some are designed for open eyes and some for eyes closed. If you are doing tai chi for instance, you use eyes open and enter an alpha state, calm and relaxed. If we are seeking to gain a deep state of relaxation for insight or astral travel etc then you would use an eyes closed form to reach the lucid theta state. astralc