OnARoad

Been meaning to follow this up for a long time. Hope it helps anyone else in same situation. My experience, my hypotheses. Buy an electronic BP monitor. Keep it hooked up to you whilst trying out different ideas. Best method: cancel all apppointments, don't drive, stay at home. For emergency action take a deep breath and hold your breath for as long as you can. Exhale steadily, and hold whilst empty of breath if desired. Systolic BP drops like a stone. Sit on sofa with hands on knees whilst doing this, concentrate on knees or feet. A lot of energy that was going up the back takes the easy route through the shoulders/arms down to the knees and doesn't go into the head. DON'T put the tongue in the roof of the mouth at this stage as that makes the mind go there and therefore the energy. Once the systolic has dropped put the tongue in the roof of the mouth and as exhale try and force energy down through the tongue. If things are going well keep the tongue in the roof of the mouth, put hands together. This keeps the energy circulating round the body 'cos at this stage you want to keep a bit of energy going and keep forcing it through the tongue so that you don't have to go through this experience again. Start concentrating on the tongue. Imagine energy going through the edges and the underside of the tongue and then the top and edges of the tongue. The whole idea is to get more precision/concentration in the tongue so that energy flows through it. Equally concentrate on the very tip of the tongue for the same reason rather than just sticking 'the tongue' in a generalised fashion against the upper palate. Can try tapping the tip of the tongue against the palate but this didn't work for me. If the pressure builds up anywhere in the head tap that part of the head repeatedly with the fingers. Then tap from the top of the head to the tip of the nose, then tap the tip of the nose repeatedly (feels great, don't know why it does), then tap from the tip of the nose down the face and throat down to the belly. Other methods of reducing BP: Seated, left hand on back of neck. This shortcircuits some of the energy going up through the neck before it gets to the head and takes it down through the arm and then elsewhere round the body. Can also try left hand on back of neck, right hand on knee as this shortciruits the energy through the left arm and then through the right arm to the knee. Seated, both hands cupping the eyes and fingers pointing upwards covering the forehead, elbows on knees, fairly straight back, incline forwards, normal breathing. This takes the energy that has ALREADY gone over the top of the head and if it's stuck at the forehead or tongue shortcircuits it down to the knees. General massage, intuitive. This dissipates the energy. Sleep as much as possible. This stabilies the system - the body sorts itself out without the tension of worry about high blood pressure or excessive thinking trying to work out what to do next. Try sleeping with one hand on the back of the neck and one hand on the tummy as this short-circuits energy that would have gone into the head. Sit with BP monitor attached, try out different things e.g. energy down front of body from throat, down backs of legs only, from throat down backs of legs to heels, from heels into the ground etc. Hypothesis: the act of sitting and emptying the mind even at a beginner's level raises the vibes. It's very noticeable. The body doesn't know what to do. The low voltage/frequency of normal energy that has plodded half-heartedly round the microcosmic no longer cuts it. Blockages become apparent. The body sorts these blockages out given time but it takes times so it's best to begin meditating cautiously to see what happens. The effects of meditation aren't immediate - they take a few days (as a beginner) to appear. This is because the high frequency energy builds up steadily but relatively imperceptibly in the head. By the time it's noticed the meditator has probably stopped meditating. Dissipating this higher frequency energy with the hands is the best way to solve the problem (with intuitive massage, in my case tapping the back of the head over the crown to the forehead repeatedly and brushing down the arms and legs repeatedly but see what works.) However, the higher frequency energy in the head can ONLY be dissipated if there's also higher frequency energy in the hands. Shortly after meditating the higher frequency energy in the hands dissipates and massage/tapping etc. no longer works. This is why it's so important to massage immediately after meditation. Which is what I do now. I've learnt the hard way. :-)

@ Pai_Mei re. the video massage - that is 100% what I need - thank you! Years ago I was in a class where we did introductory meditation for a few sessions, and we finished by briefly cupping our hands over our eyes as in this video. When I started Glenn Morris's meditation (intermittently) a few weeks ago I finished in the same way, but it clearly wasn't enough and I was also going through the motions. Duh. THAT is definitely what I need. Also re. reversing the MC, and drawing energy down from the head, I shall try that. That looks like good advice. @ idquest I had no idea what T'ai Chi or Bagua walking was until I looked it up! I learn something new every day. @ Harmonious Emptiness Thank you for the advice, left palm on the abdomen, right palm on top, whilst bending the ankles. And not engaging the thought mind. :-) I do that very easily. :-) Just put the radio on and then switch off whilst half-listening. :-) My wife would recognise that. :-) @ james liem Thankyou, just focus on the TT, good advice. I'm very grateful to everyone for their help. It's not over for me quite yet but at one time my resting (resting!) BP was 160/90 with a heart rate of 90. Now my resting BP is back to normal, which is 120/65, heart rate 55. When I start moving around the BP and heart rate are still up, but I'm going to follow the advice here. As you can imagine, I was terrified, thinking that everything was spiralling out of control. Someone else was kind enough to email me, and I followed their advice, which I think is excellent emergency advice - lie on the ground, put left hand on abdomen, right hand on top of left hand, breathe in and out of abdomen only, focus on abdomen and nowhere else. (I think I've got that right). I couldn't lie on the ground outside because it was wet - I could have, actually, thinking about it now - and so I lay down on the floor. It got really boring and painful, but I did that for a few hours. I also tried sticking my feet in hot ginger water (hot water plus powdered ginger) to open up the channels in the legs, sat down on the sofa with my left palm on my belly button (the left wrist on the belly button was slighly less powerful and seemed more effective for what I needed at the time), tried doing a headstand (thinking this would ground the energy) but it didn't seem to do much, walked around the room in low stances (after receing some email advice) but that tended to energise me and send energy going up the back, made sure my belly was full of food, tried sending the upward energy up the back from the back of the neck into the throat and downwards so that it didn't go into the head. I also tried sending the upwards energy from the Ming Men into the TT but my energy was too strong for me or something because it still kept going up the back. On the down side, just putting thoughts into my head was giving me slight headache e.g. if I rested my mind in my head to see what the energy was doing, closing my eyes was giving me pretty pictures on my eyelids which is the last thing I wanted since I wanted my thoughts out of my head, and doing any sort of movement at all was getting my energy going and I was trying not to get it going. Also sitting at a computer was too much for me since it meant energy in my head. Eugh. Hope the above things that I tried are of use to anyone else that is reading this and I am very, very grateful to the community for their advice and help, and to the two individuals who emailed me. What I need to do now is find an acupuncturist who can see and feel energy (ideally someone who's gone through the Kundalini) before the next emergency. Hopefully there won't be a next emergency. I hope this isn't going to be a long search. I'm also going to lay in a stock of emergency seaweed so that I can bring my BP down fast if it happens again, although I have a cooled blood system. Sitting around doing 'nothing' whilst trying to get the BP and heart rate down is horrible. I like my body and I like being active in it. :-) Thanks again.

Thanks, people. Now I have this problem that my BP is still dramatically way up. One of the TB members has been kindly emailing me, and I'm still having a discussion with this person. In the course of this discussion I've been working out some stuff in my own mind. I've been used to having a steady stream of energy up my back, thinking it was going down my front but probably only a trickle was going down the front and I was getting away with it somehow. Focussing in my head has somehow has somehow locked it there. At the moment I wish I'd never started this meditation. I was fit and healthy and had a very good BP and heart rate, now it's gone through the roof. I need to get it down, fast. What I'm doing is concentrating purely on tip of tongue down to Tan Tien, over and over again. Every time it gets down to the TT there's a little shake of my body. I desperately need some simple physical or breathing exercise / pattern that will get this energy out of my head, I don't really care how at the moment. I've tried taking a cold shower, that didn't do much, I've tried breathing in with lower abdomen with tongue in roof of mouth trying to suck energy down into abdomen, then exhale quicly (and not forcefully) as I disengage the tongue so the energy can't go back up the front channel. Not sure if that's going to work or not. I'm thinking of eating a heavy meal of meat (I'm mostly vegetarian) or maybe sticking my feet in cold water. Any ideas? Any help appreciated, I don't like this at all. Thanks.

Hi all, I've not got much beyond the microcosmic. At least, I thought I'd got the microcosmic ... I'm reading Glenn Morris's books, and am now going through them a second time making notes. Anywayz, I decided to get started at a low level by sitting in the sage seat, deep breathing and looking at the back of my eyelids. All well and good - I've only spent 5-10 minutes a day, intermittently, just to get the ball rolling whilst I double check the books and triple check everything that I do. What appears to have happened is that I've suddenly got light-headed and my blood pressure has soared up. I'm on an incredibly boring diet (brown rice, veg, beans) and have been for years; I do physical exercise, and exercises related to energy work (have done that for years, too). Many years ago I stopped eating so healthily and stopped energy work for quite a few years. When I restarted I had the same problem - light headed, increased blood pressure. I went to see acupuncturists, but they didn't take on board the fact that I was doing energy work and just prescribed me herbs to lower heart beat and blood pressure. Long story short, heart beat went down to about 40 a minute on their herbs, and I thought, this isn't right. So reread Mantak Chia's books, thought my Microcosmic might not be so good after all. So spent a lot of time sending energy down through the tongue (tongue roof of mouth, had been doing that for years), finally figured out that though I was feeling energy going down my front from my throat down it had only been trickling down through my tongue. I hadn't really been doing a very good microcosmic. Ho hum. Kept focussing on tongue, energy down through it, nice and warm, blood pressure down to normal. Now I'm doing this basic, simple meditation and appear to be getting the energy stuck in my head. Focussing down through my tongue doesn't seem to be having much effect. My energy up my back is stronger than years ago - that could be why. I also feel, somehow, that my frequency in my head is a lot higher than the rest of my body. Have temporarily stopped the big draw (leading to eventual kundalini) and stopped meditation. Any advice? Putting my hands on the front of my head seems to allow energy to go down the arms and then to the front of the body. Don't know if this will solve the problem yet. Thanks!

Hi, I'm from the UK, I've been plodding away at this sort of stuff for a while, have read Glenn Morris's books. Hope people don't mind if I only use this forum occasionally when I get stuck/have emergencies. Glad to offer help but I haven't got much beyond the microcosmic.