aeon Posted March 7, 2010 I will never recommend them to anyone, ever. You don't learn a damn thing about your mind or emotions from using them. Not only that, the longer that you use them the more you flirt with disaster. Â SSRIs? Lead to being divorced from the ability to feel love. Causes weight gain. Can cause acute suicidal or psychotic impulses in people. Cause sometimes irreversible impotence in men and women. Nice. This will be remembered as the era when we medicated people who were suicidal with drugs that cause suicidal impulse. Asinine. Â Antipsychotics. The leading treatment for bipolar with psychotic features and schizophrenia. Proven to cause brain cell death. They perform an effective chemical lobotomy. Totally not holistic or healing. The worst drug you could ever take if you are a spiritual person. Causes death of personality and organically damages you in mind and body. Seriously poisonous. I've been on them. I know. I felt it first hand. Â Lithium. Has some kind of effect on people with severe mood swings. Over fifty years of treating manic depressives with lithium and still the exact mechanism of action on the mind is unknown. Causes obscene weight gain. Damages your nervous system right away. Hand tremor, jaw tremors, mental fog. Seriously folks, all that drug induced mental fog has to be dealt with when you get into meditation. That fog stays inside you and obscures your consciousness. Â Have any of you, Mr West, anyone? ever been on lithium? How about you take 500mg of lithium 3xs daily and watch as your body becomes toxic. Your sweat and your tongue taste like metal. If you didn't have a chemical imbalance before, lithium will give you one. Causes kidney, thyroid and nervous system damage folks. Sometimes permanently. Â I've been through it. I know how it feels to be utterly divorced from thinking and feeling as a consequence of being forcibly treated with both lithium and antipsychotics and consequently tried to kill myself while I was on them to escape. Â Anti-seizure meds. Neither schizophrenia or manic depression have been proven to be seizure disorders. Some folks have beneficial results from them. Anti-seizure meds work by reducing the sodium channel ion action that causes an electrical impulse to result in a physical action. Every thing you do with your body from masturbation to sparring to using your keys to open a door uses these sodium ion channels to induce movement. Some people come down with CFS and permanent muscle and nerve damage as a consequence of using anti-seizure drugs. Â Folks, these drugs do nothing but harm you. Big Pharma is not interested in your well-being. They want to make money and they will lie through their corporate teeth to convince you to take their drugs forever. They call it 'maintenance treatment'. Absurd. Â I am living proof that it is possible to overcome manic depression without using polypharmacy or counseling. I have a mother with chronic depression and a sister who takes lithium for bipolar 1. Neither of them are happy nor do they have my training. Mental illness flows in my family. I've heard all the bullshit pseudoscience on this. I've been told, while inpatient, that I had an incurable genetic disease caused by a chemical imbalance. What a crock of shit. Â There is no proof of these chemical imbalances. The serotonin theories have been debunked into the ground. Â The real honest to god truth is this: Â No one on this planet knows what causes the symptoms that end up being called manic depression. No one knows. In over a hundred years of science there has been zero advances in understanding what manic depression is or what causes it. Having new drug treatments is not an advance in understanding causes. Having a few well designed studies that show some shared genes in people with the diagnosis is not an advance either. Â What is known is that the prefrontal cortex acts a 'referee' for thoughts and emotions in the brain. The prefrontal cortex has been fingered as being underdeveloped in people with both schizophrenia and bipolar. Â Meditation has been proven in many studies to directly effect the prefrontal cortex. It makes it denser. These brain changes stick around even if the person stops meditating. Â You take lithium and antipsychotics for bipolar and you will move further and further away from being healed. Â You meditate long enough and your brain may simply grow out of it. Your brain will grow controls over your emotions and your thoughts and psychosis will be a thing of the past. Â I was diagnosed with manic depression with schizoaffective tendencies at age 14 in 1989. I started with BKF's stuff in 1996. By 1998 I had been depression free for 2 years. By 1999 the mania and the Voices were gone too. In 2001 I celebrated my victory over my dual diagnosis with five years depression free without the use of counseling or polypharmacy. Â It is now 2010 and I am still fine. I've written a book about how I recovered. I've done exhaustive research into the state of modern mental health science and meditation brain science as part of the background for my book. It's in the process of editing and getting it published will be the hard part. Â I am neither antipsychiatry or antimedicine. I am not even antidrug. I am pro personal responsibility. I am pro self-healing and I have absolutely no patience with people who trot out all the latest Big Pharma sponsored studies on chemical imbalances or their skewed and slanted clinical studies that show their latest Blockbuster drugs as being effective. Especially since the inevitable class action lawsuits will prove in the course of discovery that Big Pharma was cooking their studies and lying wholesale to the public about negative side effects or actual efficacy versus placebo controls. Â You want more information on how badly the consuming public is getting railroaded by Big Pharma's lies I can go on and on. I can machine gun this thread with a deluge of studies and exposes on Big Pharma's lies and bullshit. I shouldn't need to. Google is your friend. Â Â Thank you so much for your long and thoughtful post. I am incredibly pleased to hear that you have effectively dealt with your issues. This is all extremely helpful to me. When your book is published please do let us know! Â You know one thing I did not bring up here on this thread is that even if we find solutions (real solutions, not drugging to sedate or kill ones personality) for the ones we know with psychotic disorders, we may not be able to convince them to try them. Often these individuals will not want to listen to anything anyone offers to them. It seems that one has to find the right time to approach them when they are in a calm state. And it is difficult to know when they are in a calm state, or to know what will trigger them to go from a calm to an agitated state. Â Â Female essence is very balancing.. how does it factor in this case? Â Yes for males i was wondering the same thing, i would think that a male with a psychotic disorder who had sexual interactions with females may be able to swap some energy and use some more "yin" chi to balance himself out?? Any techniques here? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
SFJane Posted March 7, 2010 (edited) * gaaahhhhh! * Fabulous post. First hand experience, clear research. Thank you, Jane. Sincerely. Â You are very welcome Trunk. I know my posts are tl dr but I'd rather say too much than not enough. Â Â Aeon and I chatted for a bit and I don't think he would mind (i hope not) if I shared my thoughts on it. Â Psychosis is a funky subject. The simplest definition is: Cognitions or thoughts that are not based in reality. That is pretty broad. Psychosis is often considered to be the end product of a manic episode. It can be caused by many different kinds of drugs, toxins and even diseases like encephalitis and lead poisoning. Many spiritual experiences seem to mimic clinical psychosis. The subject of whether or not so-called spiritual or religious experiences are psychosis is hugely polarizing and controversial. Â How do you tell the difference between an enlightenment or quickening experience or a psychotic experience? Very tricky subjectively speaking. There is not a whole lot of literature about it. As we all know the processes involved in meditation and chi kung can cause both psychosis and spiritual experiences. For us, it's even more critical to be able to tell the difference. Â Some factors to consider are: How does the aftermath of a spiritual awakening experience effect you and affect you? What are the immediate ramifications? What are the long term consequences? Â Caution: generalizations ahead. Â A spiritual experience usually leads you to a healthier relationship or understanding of your life, other people or the nature of reality. That kind of experience can come with a huge rush of energy that races around your insides for seconds or even days. That may be a sign of opened energy channels, freed energy blocks or a higher vibrational state has been attained. Â A psychotic experience can also have intense energy sensations. When I had psychosis my thoughts subjectively felt like barely contained rage fused with lightning. It felt godlike. I once became obsessed that if I stared at anyone for longer than a few seconds that I could make them explode. I had a fixation that if I looked at cigarette lighters or cars they too would explode. It's awesome to feel like that. My temper was explosive. Â The training I was doing at the time I had those kinds of psychotic experiences involved a variation on what is commonly called 'cleansing of the 5 senses' or something like that. I was taught this exercise when I was 13. I had an interesting twist though. After I would do an hour or two of stopping every stray thought in my mind for awhile I would focus on objects and try to make them move. Â Not too long after I started those practices I began to hear voices. Â I have also had spiritual experiences and I've occasioned to call them either quickening or stillness experiences. Quickening experiences makes your hair stand up in places. It feels like liquid electricity is running up and down your spine and you feel like you can fly if you just exert a little effort. Usually, after such an experience I felt calm and had a better understanding of whatever I was contemplating or working on at the time. You settle back down pretty quickly. Â Stillness experiences are exactly what they seem. Some giant frozen chunk of dark matter calves like a glacier and falls away out of your interior landscape and the noise in your mind spontaneously or gradually abates. You feel real and peaceful and centered and totally happy just Being. Â After both those kinds of experience you carry on with your life. Usually for the better. You have a better attitude or become more attractive or successful. Â Spiritual experiences and psychotic experiences can both make your energy intense. People will notice it and may comment on it. That you fill up a room all by yourself with your presence. Cultivation and madness can both have that effect on you for different reasons. Â A psychotic experience can morph into paranoia and delusion. If that happens your social and self care skills can go south in a hurry. Some of the more obvious incidences of psychosis are people you hear about walking around naked at night claiming to be Jesus or the Virgin Mary. Â There are subtle forms of psychosis where your mind just interprets everything wrong. If you really want to see a good example of a continuously psychotic mind take a gander at those EBM videos. I am sure you all have heard of the phenomena of Epic Beard Man by now. Despite his actions and the popular support he enjoys as a meme right now, that guy is not completely in this reality with the rest of us. His mind interprets data differently than what the rest of us see. Â For example Tyrone (michael) approached EBM with a cigarette in his hand. In EBM's mind it became a knife. EBM stated that he knocked out Tyrone for 22 minutes and some seconds. We all saw that Tyrone did not get knocked out at all never mind 22 minutes. Nor was Tyrone a murderer on parole. EBM is quite clearly psychotic. There is another video about Soulja Girl "I'm pressin charges!". She is also psychotic in that video. Â Those are examples of psychosis. Cognitions not based on reality. Â What I did to deal with psychosis was learn to sink my chi. Â If you sink your chi into your lower dantien and your feet the chi will drop out of your mind. It will naturally complete the downward current. If you practice sinking your chi it will keep you grounded. You end up feeling more real. More here. More solid. When you practice the downward current and sink it will severely curtail so-called manic episodes. Â Folks, I respect the fact that a lot of you have some experience with internal energy. Â Consider these symptoms: Â Inflated self esteem. Pressurized speech. Irritability and or psychomotor agitation. Derailment. Incoherency. Flight of ideas. Grandiose thinking. Â These are some of the classic symptoms of mania. The so-called manic portion of bipolar disorder. Â Using the TCM model, what do you think causes that? Â Excessive energy running around loose in the brain has a spillover effect in our subjective experience of the mind. Â Which makes more sense.? Cover up those symptoms with drugs that don't change the reason for the energy imbalance? Or correcting the imbalance? Â You can practice working with the downward current by doing palm/sole breathing. And by focusing on the Yin aspect of the microcosmic orbit. You can project energy from your tailbone into your feet and move from the balls of your feet to your heels again and again. There are some moves in Dragon and Tiger chi kung that cause you to move chi downwards with your hand movements. You can use the breath. (longevity breathing) You can literally place your hands in front of you and wash your chi downward from your head to your belly. Marriage of Heaven and Earth does that perfectly. Ba Gua walking and putting your mind in your feet and below the ground can drop your chi. Just doing The Commencement of any tai chi form causes energy to move up and down both inside and outside your body. The book 'Opening the Energy Gates of Your Body' has several techniques that are useful. Â There are many ways to direct your chi to sink down. Start with one of them and work on it. Make it a habit to sink your chi into your belly and feet and use that as your maintenance drug or as a counterbalance for energy building and circulating practices. If your chi is stable and flowing well it won't race around uncontrollably to the point of making your thoughts and emotions go crazy. That's been my experience. Edited March 7, 2010 by SFJane Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Ya Mu Posted March 7, 2010 (edited) ... You know one thing I did not bring up here on this thread is that even if we find solutions (real solutions, not drugging to sedate or kill ones personality) for the ones we know with psychotic disorders, we may not be able to convince them to try them. Often these individuals will not want to listen to anything anyone offers to them. It seems that one has to find the right time to approach them when they are in a calm state. ...   You hit on one of the problems. Heck, I can't even get any majority of folks with few problems much less folks with major problems to actually practice qigong. Most people do not wish to assume responsibility for themselves.  And to Jane, look into self-publishing. Since you are going to have to promote your book anyway you may as well self-publish. Be aware that since, as I said above, most people do not wish to assume responsibility, there are people walking around out there that actually do better with meds than not. I know for you it is an emotionally charged issue and, since you overcame it, you think most will want to. Not true. For 30 years I have tried to promote qigong by walking, living, and breathing it. Very few actually listen to me. Out of thousands of students I doubt there are more than a couple hundred who truly practice it. Out of teaching at two different medical schools and one hospital not one person at these facilities, with the exception of one truly outstanding MD, actually continued the practice. And in clinic (medical qigong), if you don't fix it the first visit most will not return. Most would rather keep up weekly visits to chiropractor or western MD for drugs than to actually come to a medical qigong practitioner for healing, much less learn it for themselves. Edited March 7, 2010 by Ya Mu Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
aeon Posted March 7, 2010 You are very welcome Trunk. I know my posts are tl dr but I'd rather say too much than not enough.   Aeon and I chatted for a bit and I don't think he would mind (i hope not) if I shared my thoughts on it.  Psychosis is a funky subject. The simplest definition is: Cognitions or thoughts that are not based in reality. That is pretty broad. Psychosis is often considered to be the end product of a manic episode. It can be caused by many different kinds of drugs, toxins and even diseases like encephalitis and lead poisoning. The subject of whether or not so-called spiritual or religious experiences are psychosis is hugely polarizing and controversial. Many spiritual experiences seem to mimic clinical psychosis.  How do you tell the difference between an enlightenment or quickening experience or a psychotic experience? Very tricky subjectively speaking. There is not a whole lot of literature about it. As we all know the processes involved in meditation and chi kung can cause both psychosis and spiritual experiences. For us, it's even more critical to be able to tell the difference.  Some factors to consider are: How does the aftermath of a spiritual awakening experience effect you and affect you? What are the immediate ramifications? What are the long term consequences?  Caution: generalizations ahead.  A spiritual experience usually leads you to a healthier relationship or understanding of your life, other people or the nature of reality. That kind of experience can come with a huge rush of energy that races around you inside for seconds or even days. That may be a sign of opened energy channels, freed energy blocks or a higher vibrational state has been attained.  A psychotic experience can also have intense energy sensations. When I had psychosis my thoughts subjectively felt like barely contained rage fused with lightning. It felt godlike. I once became obsessed that if I stared at anyone for longer than a few seconds that I could make them explode. I had a fixation that I if I looked at cigarette lighters or cars they too would explode. It's awesome to feel like that. My temper was explosive.  The training I was doing at the time I had those kinds of psychotic experiences involved a variation on what is commonly called 'cleansing of the 5 senses' or something like that. I had an interesting twist though. After I would do an hour or two of stopping every stray thought in my mind for awhile I would try to focus on objects and try to make them move. I was taught this exercise when I was 13.  Not too long after I started those practices I began to hear voices.  I have also had spiritual experiences and I've occasioned to call them either quickening or stillness experiences. Quickening experiences makes your hair stand up in places. It feels like liquid electricity is running up and down your spine and you feel like you can fly if you just exert a little effort. Usually, after such an experience I felt calm and had a better understanding of whatever I was contemplating or working on at the time. You settle back down pretty quickly.  Stillness experiences are exactly what they seem. Some giant frozen chunk of dark matter calves like a glacier and falls away out of your interior landscape and the noise in your mind spontaneously or gradually abates. You feel real and peaceful and centered and totally happy just Being.  After both those kinds of experience you carry on with your life. Usually for the better. You have a better attitude or become more attractive or successful.  Spiritual experiences and psychotic experiences can both make your energy intense. People will notice it and may comment on it. That you fill up a room all by yourself with your presence. Cultivation and madness can both have that effect on you for different reasons.  A psychotic experience can morph into paranoia and delusion. If that happens your social and self care skills can go south in a hurry. Some of the more obvious incidences of psychosis are people you hear about walking around naked at night claiming to be Jesus or the Virgin Mary.  There are subtle forms of psychosis where your mind just interprets everything wrong. If you really want to see a good example of a continuously psychotic mind take a gander at those EBM videos. I am sure you all have heard of the phenomena of Epic Beard Man by now. Despite his actions and the popular support he enjoys as a meme right now, that guy is not completely in this reality with the rest of us. His mind interprets data differently than what the rest of us see.  For example Tyrone (michael) approached EBM with a cigarette in his hand. In EBM's mind it became a knife. EBM stated that he knocked out Tyrone for 22 minutes and some seconds. We all saw that Tyrone did not get knocked out at all never mind 22 minutes. Nor was Tyrone a murderer on parole. EBM is quite clearly psychotic. There is another video about Soulja Girl "I'm pressin charges!". She is also psychotic in that video.  Those are examples of psychosis. Cognitions not based on reality.  What I did to deal with psychosis was learn to sink my chi.  If you sink your chi into your lower dantien and your feet the chi will drop out of your mind. It will naturally complete the downward current. If you practice sinking your chi it will keep you grounded. You end up feeling more real. More here. More solid. When you practice the downward current and sink it will severely curtail so-called manic episodes.  Folks, I respect the fact that a lot of you have some experience with internal energy.  Consider these symptoms:  Inflated self esteem. Pressurized speech. Irritability and or psychomotor agitation. Derailment. Incoherency. Flight of ideas. Grandiose thinking.  These are some of the classic symptoms of mania. The so-called manic portion of bipolar disorder.  Using the TCM model, what do you think causes that?  Excessive energy running around loose in the brain has a spillover effect in our subjective experience of the mind.  Which makes more sense.? Cover up those symptoms with drugs that don't change the reason for the energy imbalance? Or correcting the imbalance?  You can practice moving with downward current by doing palm/sole breathing. And by focusing on the Yin aspect of the microcosmic orbit. You can project energy from your tailbone into your feet and move from the balls of your feet to your heels again and again. There are some moves in Dragon and Tiger chi kung that cause you to move chi downwards with your hand movements. You can use the breath. (longevity breathing) You can literally place your hands in front of you and wash your chi down ward from your head to your belly. Marriage of Heaven and Earth does that perfectly. Ba Gua walking and putting your mind in your feet and below the ground can drop your chi. Just doing The Commencement of any tai chi form causes energy to move up and down both inside and outside your body. The book 'Opening the Energy Gates of Your Body' has several techniques that are useful.  There are many ways to direct your chi to sink down. Start with one of them and work on it. Make it a habit to sink your chi into your belly and feet and use that as your maintenance drug or as a counterbalance for energy building and circulating practices. If your chi is stable and flowing well it won't race around uncontrollably to the point of making your thoughts and emotions go crazy. That's been my experience.   Thank you once more, I wish I could express to you how grateful I am for the time and energy you put into helping me and explaining to others this issue. For many of us it is a very bewildering thing to deal with especially since we have no point of reference for what our friends are going through.  From your post I take it that it is ok for individuals with psychotic symptoms to do any form of sinking the chi from the head or higher regions to either the lower tan tien or the feet?  when one finnishes such excercises is it ok to keep the energy in the feet?  You can project energy from your tailbone into your feet and move from the balls of your feet to your heels again and again.  does this mean one directs the energy from the tailbone through the front of the legs to the balls of the feet to the heels and then through the back of the legs to the tailbone and repeated? or does it mean direct the chi from the tailbone and just circulate it in the feet?  You can practice moving with downward current by doing palm/sole breathing  is this just concentrating and moving energy to those 2 areas respectively?  thank you once more Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
mjjbecker Posted March 7, 2010 You hit on one of the problems. Heck, I can't even get any majority of folks with few problems much less folks with major problems to actually practice qigong. Most people do not wish to assume responsibility for themselves. Â And to Jane, look into self-publishing. Since you are going to have to promote your book anyway you may as well self-publish. Be aware that since, as I said above, most people do not wish to assume responsibility, there are people walking around out there that actually do better with meds than not. I know for you it is an emotionally charged issue and, since you overcame it, you think most will want to. Not true. For 30 years I have tried to promote qigong by walking, living, and breathing it. Very few actually listen to me. Out of thousands of students I doubt there are more than a couple hundred who truly practice it. Out of teaching at two different medical schools and one hospital not one person at these facilities, with the exception of one truly outstanding MD, actually continued the practice. And in clinic (medical qigong), if you don't fix it the first visit most will not return. Most would rather keep up weekly visits to chiropractor or western MD for drugs than to actually come to a medical qigong practitioner for healing, much less learn it for themselves. Â @Jane, Â Have a look at Lulu.com, http://www.lulu.com/ . It will get the work out in the public domain. Some successful authors on Lulu have been signed up by publishers. Â @Michael, Â Unfortunately so. Many moons ago when I taught taijiquan, I asked a student if he had done any practice during the week (the student had signed up for an intensive instructor training course BTW). The reply was no, but he had done some meditation...It is very disheartening for a teacher to continually have to teach the same thing over and over again, because students have forgotten between classes. Â This isn't of course limited to qigong or martial arts. I have the same with English students here in China. All of them are 18 or over, so can be considered adults, with a reasonable grasp of the concept, if not an appreciation of, responsibility. I am often asked 'How can I improve my English'. There are loads of good resources online for English learners. The students are internet savvy, except when it comes to finding information that will help them with their studies it seems... Â There is a huge amount of information now on qigong, easily available. Astounding amounts of information, especially when I think it wasn't that long ago there was no internet and we had to rely on books and magazines. More information does mean more crap to wade through, but there is pure gold out there for those prepared to spend the time doing their research and THINKING about it. Â But there we come back to personal responsibility. Â Of course, yourself, myself and others have harped on about the importance of studying qigong with a QUALIFIED teacher. Books, videos, etc. are nice resources to have, but the ability to ask questions and get feedback from a QUALIFIED teacher is vital. Sure, there are some good practices people can 'probably' do on their own, but who is to say they are i. doing it correctly and ii. aren't one of the unlucky souls who will have an extreme reaction to the practice? Â But there we come back to personal responsibility. Caveat emptor. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
markern Posted March 7, 2010 (edited) SFJane, I find what you write about your experience fascinating. If you get your book published let me know and I will go to the bookstores in my city that has spiritual books and ask for it and recomend they take it in if they haven`t. They tend to by a couple of versions of stuff people ask for to see if more people are intereseted. If it gets to the level where it might be published in diferent languages I can get it read by a sympathetic publisher and if it is published I can get it in the hands of a journalist or two that has some understanding of meditation. I have already tiped my meditation teacher of about you and he is soon to do a phd on the effects of long term qigong and meditation practice. I think people who belive in it, people on the bums for example, can do a lot to spread cultivation type stuff by doing what one can to spread stories like these to the right people. Â Aeon, one thing he can do with absolute safety to get chi down is pilates. Because one learns to move from and initiate movement from the dan tien one learns to get the mind down there and so the energy sinks as well. In general it structures the body and the movements of the body in a manner that creates harmonious flow of chi. But it does this in an almost purely physical manner. It produces very little chi so it is perfectly safe. It takes a long time though. 60 min 3 times a week for three months will do a lot. It will not help much in opening the front channel but chi will sink. Â Another physical method is various balancing exercises that do not focus on chi. the four corner balancing exercise that is at the end of Sonnons intuflow beginner series is a good example that I do everyday for precisely this reason. You can find it on youtube. It will get his focus down to the bottom of his feet and help him sink the chi. Â There are also various squating type exercises that are very grounding and I think several bums know some of those. Tips anyone? Â Trunks site alchemical taoism has some tips on opening the front channel. But he should get a teachers help for this though. Why not take a short vacation in Miami and see Santiago or Tao or both. Then they could tailor some stuff for him that not only helps with the front channel and grounding but other aspects of balancing and healing him that are not aparent to you or us now. They are available through skype though so you could do it the lazy way. Â As for wheter a male could get more balanced by having sex with females or just being arround them I belive they can. As far as I understand the theory mostly agree on this it. It has also been my experience. When having sex with women I have found in addition to the loss of energy from ejaculation I get quite a lot of energy of a very cool and balancing nature. Recently I had a sexual encounter with a girl that actually has some energy from cultivation work and can project it and that was a whole different level. I felt much more cooled of and balanced. A week later I still do to some extent. I have also found that after I started cultivating there are energy exchanges going on all the time with people arround me and that I get/suck in cool yin energy from females and they get hoter more yang from me. Especially if i sit close to a female friend or If I take a massage with a female massage therapist it can be quite strong. It gets less intense the less I practice energy stuff. I can manipulate it to some extent and increase or decrease it somewhat but don`t bother to do it. Not planning on becoming a small level Drew Hempel just yet:) Edited March 7, 2010 by markern Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
forestofclarity Posted March 7, 2010 SFJane, Â I've read many of your posts here at the Taobums. You seem to link your occult exercises with the arising of your mental illness. You've also indicated that you have a family history of mental illness. This leads me to wonder: did the exercises cause the illness, or merely quicken its arising? Â The reason I ask relates closely to my second question: have you heard of others in similar situations overcoming mental illness with Taoist techniques, or do you find yourself alone in this? Another way to say this: do you know anyone who started with mental illness outside of meditative/qi gong who then overcame them in a similar fashion? Â Â Â *Written in E-Prime Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
SFJane Posted March 8, 2010 From your post I take it that it is ok for individuals with psychotic symptoms to do any form of sinking the chi from the head or higher regions to either the lower tan tien or the feet? Â Â In this case I am just going to say, if said person wants to. Everything that I mentioned in the prior post is pretty safe. In such a situation it really depends on the individual, the way their psychosis manifests and what their energy work background is. Forms such as Marriage of Heaven and Earth and Dragon and Tiger can really help. Â Â when one finnishes such excercises is it ok to keep the energy in the feet? Â More or less. It shouldn't be an issue. You generally end energy practices by bringing everything back into your lower dan tien. It might help to try finish by having the mind distributing equally between feet and dan tien. Â Â does this mean one directs the energy from the tailbone through the front of the legs to the balls of the feet to the heels and then through the back of the legs to the tailbone and repeated? or does it mean direct the chi from the tailbone and just circulate it in the feet? Â Most chi kung books usually show anywhere from three to seven places where your foot should contact the ground. The main thing to know is that sinking the tailbone into the balls of your feet causes energy to rise up and that sinking your tailbone into your heels causes it to sink down. The act of tucking your tailbone a wee tiny bit causes energy to drop. I don't want to use the word 'rock' but you want to play with how you can move your tailbone back and forward and cause your body weight to shift into different places in your foot. You can imagine an invisible pendulum pulling your tailbone 'tic' into the ball of your foot, 'toc' back into your heels. Â Â is this just concentrating and moving energy to those 2 areas respectively? Â It's two things. Well, three actually. It's just a variation on five gates breathing. The fifth gate you breath into and out of the top of your skull. Omit that instruction for your friend. He's got plenty of energy in his head. Â Part one is simply putting your awareness into your palms and soles. Do that for awhile and you indirectly send your chi into those places. Â Part two relies on intent. Using intent you are pushing down with your hands and feet. If you do it right you may or may not feel actual vacuum and pressure sensations in your hands and feet. Even if your friend can't actually move from intent yet, practicing directing your chi down in your hands and feet will help some of that chi to drop out of his head hopefully. Â I am going to break here and answer other people's questions or reply to suggestions in another post. Â Thank you once more, Â You are very welcome Aeon. I hope this helps your friend. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
SingaporeGuyHere Posted March 8, 2010 (edited) wow.....what were you thinking... teaching semen retention at the age of 14 ?? and a half-opened micro orbit ??  maybe first thing u need is to find a EXPERIENCED QI HEALER to actually see him  the advice given by others here are based on what you post.......but what you post can only be a history of 'events', 'possible causes' and 'current symptoms'  so i will say BECAREFUL about using any methods here since we cant get a 'proper feel' of your cousin's body/energy just by reading a online post  again...best get a experienced qi healer to help...i am seeing 1 such doctor in singapore and my health is getting much better Edited March 8, 2010 by SingaporeGuyHere Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
SFJane Posted March 10, 2010 (edited) Be aware that since, as I said above, most people do not wish to assume responsibility, there are people walking around out there that actually do better with meds than not. I know for you it is an emotionally charged issue and, since you overcame it, you think most will want to. Not true. For 30 years I have tried to promote qigong by walking, living, and breathing it. Very few actually listen to me. Out of thousands of students I doubt there are more than a couple hundred who truly practice it  Well I have run into quite a bit of that. During my research and even before I started writing I was a member of most of the major bipolar, depression and schizophrenia support forums. I've tried to share my ideas with some of the people who could use it the most but it's really quite amazing at how much group think and pseudoscience I've had come way about my recovery.  It's been my experience that for most people popping a pill and dropping in on counselor is about as far as they are willing to go. The idea that you might be able to reprogram your operating system is just mind boggling to some of them. Like you said, very few listen. So I know that most people are not going to try fix themselves. But people like to be inspired and inspiring stories of recovery sell.  I stopped posting on most of those forums due to their learned helplessness and the mutual reinforcement that goes on there. My ideas are dangerous because poor bipolar Timmy might stop taking his meds and wouldn't I feel horrible if I inspired someone into a relapse? I am tired of hearing that shit. You have to take responsibility for your internal world if you are going to make changes to it.  To that end, you can't be blaming nebulous, unspecified chemical imbalances or your astrology sign as the reason you can't change. If Timmy is not ready to face the whirlwind and discover the country of his own mind complete with all the depression and psychotic thoughts waiting to come back, well then Timmy isn't ready to recover without meds.  My case was such that I had no choice but to find an alternative path to healing. It was either be bat shit crazy forever or work on trying to fix myself. I was unable to bullshit myself that being turned into a palsied, overweight vegetable with terminal dry mouth and a serious drooling problem was some kind of beneficial therapy or healing process. So meds were not going to work. When that happens the mental health docs put you in a nice neat box called 'treatment resistant' mental patient and they don't express a whole lot of hope for your future.   I think people who belive in it, people on the bums for example, can do a lot to spread cultivation type stuff by doing what one can to spread stories like these to the right people.  Internal alchemy is the process of changing. If there is one group of intelligent, open-minded people who are going to understand the usefulness of using mind-body training to heal yourself it's going to be you folks. I feel like at least here I am not wasting my words. You are the kinds of people who might actually try to figure out what's wrong and want to fix it. So, that's why I have gone at length about these topics lately.   Markern:  SFJane, I find what you write about your experience fascinating. If you get your book published let me know and I will go to the bookstores in my city that has spiritual books and ask for it and recomend they take it in if they haven`t. They tend to by a couple of versions of stuff people ask for to see if more people are intereseted. If it gets to the level where it might be published in diferent languages I can get it read by a sympathetic publisher and if it is published I can get it in the hands of a journalist or two that has some understanding of meditation. I have already tiped my meditation teacher of about you and he is soon to do a phd on the effects of long term qigong and meditation practice.  This is an amazingly generous offer. Thank you very much for showing so much support for this Markern. It really does mean a lot.   mjjbecker: @JaneHave a look at Lulu.com, http://www.lulu.com/ . It will get the work out in the public domain. Some successful authors on Lulu have been signed up by publishers.  Thank you mjjbecker, for your suggestion. I have heard that some authors get signed from places like lulu, booklocker and others.  Thanks everyone (Ya Mu, et al)that is offering ideas and assistance in publication. I can't thank you enough. A savvy self promoter with a good POD book can get noticed. But there is a lure to being published by Big Publishing. LATimes for example, does not review self published or vanity published books. They have a list of big time publishers like HarperCollins and Random House and if your book is not published by one of the ones on their list, you don't get reviewed by these major publications. There is still a lot of research to do.  Getting back to Aeon for a moment.  You know one thing I did not bring up here on this thread is that even if we find solutions (real solutions, not drugging to sedate or kill ones personality) for the ones we know with psychotic disorders, we may not be able to convince them to try them. Often these individuals will not want to listen to anything anyone offers to them. It seems that one has to find the right time to approach them when they are in a calm state.  They don't call it mental illness for nothing.  Forestofemptiness: Jane,  I've read many of your posts here at the Taobums. You seem to link your occult exercises with the arising of your mental illness. You've also indicated that you have a family history of mental illness. This leads me to wonder: did the exercises cause the illness, or merely quicken its arising?  The reason I ask relates closely to my second question: have you heard of others in similar situations overcoming mental illness with Taoist techniques, or do you find yourself alone in this? Another way to say this: do you know anyone who started with mental illness outside of meditative/qi gong who then overcame them in a similar fashion?  I personally think that those exercises just quickened it. My sister with the bipolar diagnosis showed signs of mental illness while we were still children but she didn't have her first real breakdown until she was an adult.  As to the second question. Well, there are testimonials on BKF's site from people who have used meditation and /or chi kung to bring emotional peace into their lives. For that matter, supposedly a woman was cured of bipolar by having her bad energy sucked out her by Gary Clyman.  In all seriousness to my knowledge there are no stories on Amazon about someone completely curing themselves of several mental health conditions by going into solitude and meditating. With that said, there have been numerous studies which show meditation to be much more effective treatment for depression than a placebo.  We've all heard that the process of meditation and cultivation can cause us to transcend our suffering. It's spelled right out in Buddhist ideology. Meditate to get over your problems. The Buddhists and Taoists have known for millennia that meditation can make you a happier more well adjusted person. Most people with mental health labels who buy into the biological reductionist explanation of suffering don't try to see if it's really true that there is nothing they can do to cure themselves.  Believe or it not some people actually like being mentally ill. They think it's just their character and the way they were born. I have had people tell me in correspondence that they would not want to be free of manic depression because it defines them and they identify their personality as being diseased. It's very saddening for me to hear people give up before they've even tried but, what can you do? Edited March 10, 2010 by SFJane Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Upfromtheashes Posted March 10, 2010 Well I have run into quite a bit of that. During my research and even before I started writing I was a member of most of the major bipolar, depression and schizophrenia support forums. I've tried to share my ideas with some of the people who could use it the most but it's really quite amazing at how much group think and pseudoscience I've had come way about my recovery.  It's been my experience that for most people popping a pill and dropping in on counselor is about as far as they are willing to go. The idea that you might be able to reprogram your operating system is just mind boggling to some of them. Like you said, very few listen. So I know that most people are not going to try fix themselves. But people like to be inspired and inspiring stories of recovery sell.  I stopped posting on most of those forums due to their learned helplessness and the mutual reinforcement that goes on there. My ideas are dangerous because poor bipolar Timmy might stop taking his meds and wouldn't I feel horrible if I inspired someone into a relapse? I am tired of hearing that shit. You have to take responsibility for your internal world if you are going to make changes to it.  To that end, you can't be blaming nebulous, unspecified chemical imbalances or your astrology sign as the reason you can't change. If Timmy is not ready to face the whirlwind and discover the country of his own mind complete with all the depression and psychotic thoughts waiting to come back, well then Timmy isn't ready to recover without meds.  My case was such that I had no choice but to find an alternative path to healing. It was either be bat shit crazy forever or work on trying to fix myself. I was unable to bullshit myself that being turned into a palsied, overweight vegetable with terminal dry mouth and a serious drooling problem was some kind of beneficial therapy or healing process. So meds were not going to work. When that happens the mental health docs put you in a nice neat box called 'treatment resistant' mental patient and they don't express a whole lot of hope for your future.     Internal alchemy is the process of changing. If there is one group of intelligent, open-minded people who are going to understand the usefulness of using mind-body training to heal yourself it's going to be you folks. I feel like at least here I am not wasting my words. You are the kinds of people who might actually try to figure out what's wrong and want to fix it. So, that's why I have gone at length about these topics lately.     This is an amazingly generous offer. Thank you very much for showing so much support for this Markern. It really does mean a lot.     Thank you mjjbecker, for your suggestion. I have heard that some authors get signed from places like lulu, booklocker and others.  Thanks everyone (Ya Mu, et al)that is offering ideas and assistance in publication. I can't thank you enough. A savvy self promoter with a good POD book can get noticed. But there is a lure to being published by Big Publishing. LATimes for example, does not review self published or vanity published books. They have a list of big time publishers like HarperCollins and Random House and if your book is not published by one of the ones on their list, you don't get reviewed by these major publications. There is still a lot of research to do.  Getting back to Aeon for a moment.    They don't call it mental illness for nothing.    I personally think that those exercises just quickened it. My sister with the bipolar diagnosis showed signs of mental illness while we were still children but she didn't have her first real breakdown until she was an adult.  As to the second question. Well, there are testimonials on BKF's site from people who have used meditation and /or chi kung to bring emotional peace into their lives. For that matter, supposedly a woman was cured of bipolar by having her bad energy sucked out her by Gary Clyman.  In all seriousness to my knowledge there are no stories on Amazon about someone completely curing themselves of several mental health conditions by going into solitude and meditating. With that said, there have been numerous studies which show meditation to be much more effective treatment for depression than a placebo.  We've all heard that the process of meditation and cultivation can cause us to transcend our suffering. It's spelled right out in Buddhist ideology. Meditate to get over your problems. The Buddhists and Taoists have known for millennia that meditation can make you a happier more well adjusted person. Most people with mental health labels who buy into the biological reductionist explanation of suffering don't try to see if it's really true that there is nothing they can do to cure themselves.  Believe or it not some people actually like being mentally ill. They think it's just their character and the way they were born. I have had people tell me in correspondence that they would not want to be free of manic depression because it defines them and they identify their personality as being diseased. It's very saddening for me to hear people give up before they've even tried but, what can you do?  Yo Jane Thanks for the Great Posts ! Well In regards to my personal history I have been on boatloads of medication in the past - Every type imaginable from anti-psychotics to anti-seizure meds to anti-depressants In very High Doseages I have had electro shock therapy - 30 - 35 medications often multiple ones at once -  I do not know the answer to this puzzle - I would say that having good morals and being an unselfish person will help one to stay present and deal with psychosis but you know this is not true I have times where I am present and I have times where it is just like no matter what I do it just isnt happening  It is a very interesting question how much can spirit acually overcome? For me there are very weird things going on like strong changes in smell - moods and personalitys that change every few seconds - Sometimes being too scared to move -  I mean I cant move and my body aches so bad - so I use chi - alignment - posture - breathing - intent - concentration - everything - and yet there is something I havent gotten - I mean how much can one acually cover up with spirit?  I have found lots of techniques which work as being on your back unable to move can be very motivating It is very frustrating to feel love for a woman one hour and then feel nothing the next and not being able to tell what is going on - See that is the thing - in some regards it almost feels like being autistic  You have great discipline you have something very strong in you - a consciousness - I dont know how many people have it - I have it but only sometimes  7 years ago I realized meds were not the answer for me - This is a very tough path and takes a lot of courage - Your family just wants you to take medication because that is what people do - So you explain to them - The more meds I am on the more I lose my mind -  And the thing is that a lot of these feeling are seductive in some cases - It feels good to feel good - I mean shit If I let myself go I can burn out my energy getting euphoric on listening to music - This can cause mania - so music can be like a drug - and one can alter their consciousness at will I agree - you can reprogram yourself completely - so you are watching this new person and thinking this feels so weird - And acually being not manic and not phychotic can be so weird - And the thing is though in these states "powers" really do manifest - I mean their is schizophrenic delusion but there is lots of real magic This is very fun -  I remember a post you made a while back about playing Dungeons and Dragons and thinking you can control the dice rolls - Well in my experience this is very possible - When all ones energy is in ones head - and one has faith and luck and intent and joy and fun and tons of enthusiasm - when ones life is on the line at every moment - Yup magic happens - It happens often - Not Telekinesis controlling things but intent - combined with surrender - and bliss in the head - So it can be hard to integrate - Let magic take over - Live a life of complete magic Or take a practical means to living - Can magic pay your rent ? Sometimes - Courage to be what is in ones heart  You talk about believing you could make people explode - Well it is definitely possible to manifest lots of things What is moral manifestation ? What is Proper use of intent and energy ? In zen Meditation they say "better than any wish fulfilling jewel" Well what use is wish fulfillment without peace in ones heart -  The Hard part isnt getting what you want It is having the wisdom to ask for the right thing - or intend the right thing  And shit there is something in the back of my brain clawing at it that I want to say but cant express - I have not figured out how to plug in - There are so many possiblities and maybe only one - Do you know what it is like to lie in a mental hospital with people screaming in pain - and your mother comes to visit and starts screaming at you - To have electro convulsive therapy - Then "wake up" at the toilet puking your guts out - to be around people and not feel anything -to have reality change every few seconds -  Sobriety is very important - What do I do when I cant move? I get up and do a specific action - I comb my hair or brush my teeth -  The worst thing is not a brain filled with fear or even terror - It is a brain that cannot function - that stares blankly into space -  So yeah I mean lets let this all go - Lets find solutions- Lets kick the ass of these demons once and for all or laugh and have a beer with them -  To anyone doing there best or who has been knocked down I smile at you Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Trunk Posted March 10, 2010 Interesting thread. Adding my 2 cents (links throughout)...  One way to look at retention difficulties is in Chinese medical terms of heat and stagnation. That is, bound up sexual tension that never got fully processed. The pelvic cavity contains very complex tendon and musculature. That makes it a difficult place to resolve stuck tension. And, obviously, saving aroused sexual energy has that danger. :rolls eyes: Affects tissues (especially connective tissue), channels (all of them), fluids (blood stagnation in the lower abdomen). Once enough bound up energy significantly jams up in the pelvic cavity, it's notoriously difficult to get out. Add to that that the Ch. medical model sees vitality (which includes sexual energy) to be a fundamental fuel for all of the organ systems, and you begin to realize that stagnant heat has migrated system-wide to some degree. It's a big project to resolve and you've gotta just chip away at it.  So a big part of the resolution has to do with CIRCULATION and there are a number of ways to do it. Below are some suggestions that are especially non-exotic.  1) Supplements that help circulate and purify blood. Critical part of the puzzle. Here's the best that I've found.  Dr. Ignarro's NiteWorks http://www.drignarro.com/ http://catalog.herbalife.com/targeted-nutrition/heart-health/niteworks-powder-mix pt 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcIWX8C91s4 pt 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBPjZJSHr4A  I think that the Niteworks product is especially suited as it is calming. I caution you against Nitric Oxide products that are made for body-builders because they are invariably rev'ing, amping, usually in a big way and that's the opposite of what you want here.  two Enzymedica products http://www.enzymedica.com/ SerraGold http://www.enzymedica.com/products/SerraGold Natto-K http://www.enzymedica.com/products/Natto_K  2) self-acupressure http://www.precisiondocs.com/~altaoism/MsgIntro.htm http://www.precisiondocs.com/~altaoism/MsgDistal.htm#LiverChannel  3) ANY kind of aerobic exercise to get the blood pumping. Run, swim, anything.  4) Stretching http://www.precisiondocs.com/~altaoism/gapsstretching.htm  5) Sonnon's Intu-Flow product http://www.precisiondocs.com/~altaoism/links.htm#Fitness  - Trunk  p.s. Oh, and the obvious: Go see a dr of chinese medicine. At the treatment ask if there are things that your cousin can also do at home, such as massaging pts and channels. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
RyanO Posted March 10, 2010 Â Â 1) Supplements that help circulate and purify blood. Critical part of the puzzle. Here's the best that I've found. Â Dr. Ignarro's NiteWorks http://www.drignarro.com/ http://catalog.herbalife.com/targeted-nutrition/heart-health/niteworks-powder-mix pt 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcIWX8C91s4 pt 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBPjZJSHr4A Â I think that the Niteworks product is especially suited as it is calming. I caution you against Nitric Oxide products that are made for body-builders because they are invariably rev'ing, amping, usually in a big way and that's the opposite of what you want here. Â Â Hey cool thanks for the links Trunk. I used to take NO-Xplode before I lifted weights and it gave one heck of a boost! I never really considered the benefits of NO for cultivation practice. This stuff looks great. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
gendao Posted March 10, 2010 (edited) You hit on one of the problems. Heck, I can't even get any majority of folks with few problems much less folks with major problems to actually practice qigong. Most people do not wish to assume responsibility for themselves. And to Jane, look into self-publishing. Since you are going to have to promote your book anyway you may as well self-publish. Be aware that since, as I said above, most people do not wish to assume responsibility, there are people walking around out there that actually do better with meds than not. I know for you it is an emotionally charged issue and, since you overcame it, you think most will want to. Not true. For 30 years I have tried to promote qigong by walking, living, and breathing it. Very few actually listen to me. Out of thousands of students I doubt there are more than a couple hundred who truly practice it. Out of teaching at two different medical schools and one hospital not one person at these facilities, with the exception of one truly outstanding MD, actually continued the practice. And in clinic (medical qigong), if you don't fix it the first visit most will not return. Most would rather keep up weekly visits to chiropractor or western MD for drugs than to actually come to a medical qigong practitioner for healing, much less learn it for themselves. I had the same thoughts.. Real healing is out there, the "problem" is that it takes a lot of personal effort. And since your average person has ZERO interest in doing any meditation or qigong, they are just going to settle for popping pills instead.  All you can do is lead a horse to water, but the sad fact is that most will fight even that, much less choose to drink. But I guess it's like getting someone into any hobby - like car restoration or flower arranging. If they're not into it, they're not into it. Understandable, but the stakes are simply much higher when it comes to your health & well-being.  Thing is, 1/5 of Americans still SMOKE, for crying out loud! Despite the fact that it is our country's leading COD and its lethality has been well-publicized for decades now. One thing liberals did in this country is replace all sense of personal responsibility with the "Generation Me" entitlement mentality. Edited March 11, 2010 by vortex Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
aeon Posted March 11, 2010 SFJane, I find what you write about your experience fascinating. If you get your book published let me know and I will go to the bookstores in my city that has spiritual books and ask for it and recomend they take it in if they haven`t. They tend to by a couple of versions of stuff people ask for to see if more people are intereseted. If it gets to the level where it might be published in diferent languages I can get it read by a sympathetic publisher and if it is published I can get it in the hands of a journalist or two that has some understanding of meditation. I have already tiped my meditation teacher of about you and he is soon to do a phd on the effects of long term qigong and meditation practice. I think people who belive in it, people on the bums for example, can do a lot to spread cultivation type stuff by doing what one can to spread stories like these to the right people. Â Aeon, one thing he can do with absolute safety to get chi down is pilates. Because one learns to move from and initiate movement from the dan tien one learns to get the mind down there and so the energy sinks as well. In general it structures the body and the movements of the body in a manner that creates harmonious flow of chi. But it does this in an almost purely physical manner. It produces very little chi so it is perfectly safe. It takes a long time though. 60 min 3 times a week for three months will do a lot. It will not help much in opening the front channel but chi will sink. Â Another physical method is various balancing exercises that do not focus on chi. the four corner balancing exercise that is at the end of Sonnons intuflow beginner series is a good example that I do everyday for precisely this reason. You can find it on youtube. It will get his focus down to the bottom of his feet and help him sink the chi. Â There are also various squating type exercises that are very grounding and I think several bums know some of those. Tips anyone? Â Trunks site alchemical taoism has some tips on opening the front channel. But he should get a teachers help for this though. Why not take a short vacation in Miami and see Santiago or Tao or both. Then they could tailor some stuff for him that not only helps with the front channel and grounding but other aspects of balancing and healing him that are not aparent to you or us now. They are available through skype though so you could do it the lazy way. Â As for wheter a male could get more balanced by having sex with females or just being arround them I belive they can. As far as I understand the theory mostly agree on this it. It has also been my experience. When having sex with women I have found in addition to the loss of energy from ejaculation I get quite a lot of energy of a very cool and balancing nature. Recently I had a sexual encounter with a girl that actually has some energy from cultivation work and can project it and that was a whole different level. I felt much more cooled of and balanced. A week later I still do to some extent. I have also found that after I started cultivating there are energy exchanges going on all the time with people arround me and that I get/suck in cool yin energy from females and they get hoter more yang from me. Especially if i sit close to a female friend or If I take a massage with a female massage therapist it can be quite strong. It gets less intense the less I practice energy stuff. I can manipulate it to some extent and increase or decrease it somewhat but don`t bother to do it. Not planning on becoming a small level Drew Hempel just yet:) Â Â Â I could not find the 4 corners excercise i think this video clip is the end of sonnons beginner series right? Â Â Â I also personally find similarities between what you said regarding interactions with females as well Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
SingaporeGuyHere Posted March 11, 2010 i do know a qi gong healer in Singapore, in fact i am seeing him for my own problems. he does not use acupuncture...just qi and herbal pills...but singapore might be too far for you ?? Â its a english speaking YET chinese majority country. if you want to try ill be happy to answer any questions you have Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
markern Posted March 11, 2010 (edited) I could not find the 4 corners excercise i think this video clip is the end of sonnons beginner series right?    I also personally find similarities between what you said regarding interactions with females as well  In this one at 3.45   All the mentioned gross physical methods such as this one are very slow though. Safe and sound but sloow.  I am working on the orbit myself these days and soemtimes I get energy up the spine that could easily make me manic if I could not get it down the front again which is very sooting. But sometimes I get very calm energies up the spine. My front is not at all as open as it needs to be but just enough for me to slowly open it by just keeping my toungue up a lot when energy starts to move.  I am doing one of chais tai chi short forms and it is very good for the front channel in addition to being very calming. I will try to find out the name of the form. It is extreemly easy to learn. Tai chi is very grounding in general as well. Edited March 11, 2010 by markern Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
sifusufi Posted March 12, 2010 Any knowledge off the top of your head connecting bone spurring or arthritis with bone breathing or retention (yes I've been pressing for 6 years 80% of the time). Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Upfromtheashes Posted March 13, 2010 yes this happens to him as well music is a strong trigger for his episodes  upfromtheashes do you have any idea what caused your psychotic behavior to begin?    I believe I was predisposed to it or born with it to some degree Parents did some extreme Kundalini practices when I was being conceived Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Trunk Posted March 13, 2010 Any knowledge off the top of your head connecting bone spurring or arthritis with bone breathing or retention  No, but I don't have broad enough exposure to many people who have really worked the bone (breathing etc) practices to be aware of trends good/bad. Joint pain is a possibility, is the closest that I'm fairly sure is reasonable.  yes I've been pressing for 6 years 80% of the time  I don't know what you mean by that phrase. (?) Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
shaolin Posted March 13, 2010 If these problems were causd by retention, then maybe he could try to totally exhaust his energy. Frequent ejaculations every day combined with running every day and weights training. This might be a way to re balance the imbalance he has at the moment. When you train very hard, you exhaust yourself to the point that you dont have energy for anything else, including extreme feelings and emotions. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
sifusufi Posted March 13, 2010 No, but I don't have broad enough exposure to many people who have really worked the bone (breathing etc) practices to be aware of trends good/bad. Joint pain is a possibility, is the closest that I'm fairly sure is reasonable. Â Â Â I don't know what you mean by that phrase. (?) Â Thank you for replying! Pressing the hui yin and power locking. Just a thought Share this post Link to post Share on other sites