Water Method vs Vipassana

[Sloppy Zhang]

The best benefit of an in-person Water Method instructor is that s/he will guide a student through the dissolving practice. Bruce describes that as "ice to water" then "water to gas/steam." Although I'm not a fan of the imagery of ice, one could substitute an image that works best for him/her.

 

In opening the energy gates of your body, he gives another metaphor for dissolving practice-

 

Clench you fist really, really tightly, so much so that the knuckles turn white- this is analogous to "ice".

 

Relax your hand so that while you still form a fist, it is loose and has no tension- this is analogous to "ice to water"

 

Relax your hand even more, opening it and letting the fingers spread wide apart, but don't force it open- this is analogous to "water to gas".

 

I actually used this metaphor/image (don't try to picture it, feel how it feels instead, experience it) to make the most advancement in my dissolving success. Basically, I did what I did with my hand at any point in my body that felt tense. It really helped me more.

 

It can also help with physical problems. A couple weeks ago I woke up in the middle of the night and was about to have a Charley horse, but dissolved it pretty much instantly and had no problems.

[寒月 Hanyue]

You ask, he gives his opinion, you decide he's talking shite

 

You being the plural and collective you, by the way.

 

Each will always make up their own mind and find their own path. But if you want to know if what Bruce is teaching is similar to something else, you should at least listen to what he himself has to say, no?

 

Its all meditation so its all the same anyway right

 

Take care

[Raymond Wolter]

Thanks everyone for your valuable inputs. From what I understand, the Water method involves the specific intent to let go and dissolve whereas Vipassana is all about staying aware, moment to moment.

 

Here is an interesting book which follows the Vipassana approach but aims at dissolving energy blockages - Life Force

 

Chi moves with the mind - and so the author prescribes just being aware of the blockage and without any specific intent to clear it, change it or mess with it. Makes sense, does it not? And the dissolving happens without a specific effort or force aimed towards dissolving per say.

 

Here is some interesting discussion on the Water Method on Robert Bruce's forum.

 

I've personally found relief from simply getting into the "witness" state. Or, um, identifying with the I AM within. From that place of deep neutrality I face the negative emotion or memory. I hold it in a clear mind. Simply doing that seems to make the negativity dissolve. The trick is rooting myself in that feeling of myself as a joyful, immortal spirit.

 

The Outer Dissolving Process of working with physical and etheric blockages is very similar to Robert's NEW Etheric Wrap. It works with focusing the mind on a blockage in a relaxed fashion, with the intent of letting go and trying to remain aware of the blockage.

 

This "staying aware of the blockage" is a principle that goes deeper. It counters the tendency of our mind to "run away" from stuff we don't like to experience - pain, uneasy and constricted feelings, negative emotions, you know it. This habit of the mind is a survival reflex for dealing with trauma - some experiences are pushed away to avoid overloading the mind.

 

The problem is that what we don't deal with starts to shape our mind and reactions. Automated patterns arise. Body functions cease to work properly, muscles become tense, blood flows stop to circulate freely. We start to react tense and irrational to situations we are confronted with. Emotionally - sudden bouts of anger without valid reason, overreacting, sadness because we became attached to things and cannot let go of them, fear of the dentist, etc. Mentally - Prejudices, belief system blocks ("No, no, it cannot be like that, because of ..."), etc. Automatisms of tension that influence each other holographically and seem to make up our personality.

 

Yet Taoism following back to Lao Tse believes that there is a natural order of things, when you are in tune and your energy free flowing, where you are capable of authentic, spontaneous reaction. And if you use energy work and meditation you uncover this original state, step by step, and relax into your being. The traumatic tendencies, all what reins you in, that is not truly you. In fact these are the "places" where you have given up being yourself for some reason - because your mind could not deal with a situation, an overwhelming emotion, a trauma, because it was easier to conform to a set of rules than to express yourself.

 

These are unintegrated experiences. The energy stopped flowing, and you stopped being natural. You lost the state of just being, just flowing with the experience. Worry and thoughts arise, emotional turmoil, and touching on that can quickly feel overwhelming. The tendency is to turn away as quickly as possible, to have a sharp pang of that emotion - a flash of fear, a burst of anger, chest-narrowing anxiety. You want to run away from it, to vent it. But you do not want to really face it down. And there lies the rub.

 

You see, in order to reintegrate your experience, you need to do that. You need to live through it and come out the other side. This is of course hard in every day life and that's exactly way it is such a great idea to sit down for half an hour, shut the world out (or at least turn down the volume), make place for the reintegration to happen and apply more of your mind to it than usually.

 

When you feel a pang of fear in "real life" it can get worse. In meditation however you may be pleasantly surprised it doesn't. In real life the ongoing flow of experiences may compound the fact, and that creates a feeling of dread - the fear you feel may get worse. But if you go back to a situation, if you stay with the feeling, if you focus on it, it does diminish over time. That moment you encountered it was at its worst, and you can become aware of it diminishing, dissolving. You have unfrozen part of the energy that got blocked. You have actually improved on your situation. The feeling of dread possibly so appropriate when encountering a new situation that creates fear is now a misperception. It already happened - what can make it worse but your own dread of it?

 

So, focusing on an emotion as it arises, holding it gently in your focus, can begin the process of easing back into a relaxed state about the issue. It is the start of an inner healing process, an untying of inner knots that begin an unraveling which may go much deeper than your conscious awareness.

 

How do you access the emotions? Either you sit down and meditate when you confront a situation at home that retriggers an emotion. Sometimes I do that. Or you try to think about the situation, or hold the intent to work on a specific problem when going to sit down for a session. Reviewing your day is a possible process. Or you simply work on emotion whenever it arises on its own within your meditation session.

 

What you do then, to formalise it a bit, is to hold on that emotion. You can feel it, don't you? Maybe a sensation, close to burning, down your throat. Or a constriction thereof. An anxiety like a wrapper around your chest. A searing hot anger shooting to your head. Spine-shivering fear. Try to focus on that. It will become the point where you untie it.

 

Now stay with it, try to keep it in focus, gently. Be unimpressed. Let go of its importance. Face it down. Possibly feel the arising energy flow, if you can. Notice it diminishing or pulsating. Take in its characteristics. Become aware of detail. Keep the connection.

 

You can continue this until you either can no longer - please do not strain your mind, though. Become aware of your limits and respect them. When you feel your focus becomes shaky or you are not making any more progress, let go of it, and refocus on something else, depending how you meditate. Sometimes your mind will enter the emotion and staying becomes effortless or you even only half-lucidly stick with it. Then really strong dissolving happens - either of the emotion itself or the gaps in our perception. Try to refocus when you become aware of losing touch, and you feel you still can go on.

 

Follow this to a feeling of letting go, of releasing, possibly of emptiness, of calm. Rest in that feeling. Either now a deeper layer of emotions comes visible, or that emptiness and release stays, or you have an experience. All of that is okay. Many, many different things can now happen, every mind is different.

 

When you think you are finished you can now move your awareness - you *did* become aware that your mind did focus on certain spots in the process, didn't you? - downwards. You can then rest it in the Lower Tantien in the center of the abdomen. Allow the energies to be taken in and stored/converted. Then travel onward with your mind to a point below your feet and rest there, too.

 

You have now begun to release an old issue from yourself. You have made energy flow again. You have neutralised and grounded what you found. There is a good chance that your problem/issue has diminished in importance, and will impact your life less and less.

 

This is the "Inner Dissolving Process". To learn it, the "Outer Dissolving Process" can be used. When you deal with the energies of your physical and etheric bodies you now learn how to feel energy, how a blockage feels, to look for the symptoms of blocked energy (tension, contraction, uneasiness, when something is not feeling right, strength), and start to learn to let go. You also learn how to ground. And the relaxing of the body lays a fundament for relaxing the mind.

 

With Taoist practices, body-stored tension often goes first. But in the end you will see that a tense muscle and a tense mind aren't so different. The tense muscle pair is pulling into two directions at once, and you need to stop the nervous system signals that create that pull. Your mind may also try to pull in opposite directions, back and forth, and over time you will feel that, how to let go of it, and get rid of that, too. It is more subtle, I grant you that, but that is why you sit and make room for this to happen in the first place. If in doubt, always go from the coarse (the physical and etherical) to the more subtle (the emotional and mental).

 

I had worked myself hard for several days in energy work, and on top of normal stress I did not seem to make progress. At first I had made tremendous progress, but I had basically forced things to conclusion. I was stuck.

 

I was mentally fatigued, had too little sleep, was really tired. I sat down.

 

I just touched on the blockage with my awareness, nothing more. I only intended to breathe deeply and let my mind go loose a little. The feeling in the blockage (neck muscles) changed to somewhat liquid - I did not really try to manipulate it. I oversaw that actually "Ice to Water" had happened. Then it dissolved swiftly and quickly. I was perplexed. It was so effortlessly easy!

 

I thought my progress had been halted by mental fatigue and tiredness, but within a quarter hour I found, layer by layer, that I could dissolve most of the muscles on the back of my neck with little effort, which had seemed undoable before. And in my lower back, too!

 

I realised I had forced my way before and had paid the price: Where you force, the tissue tightens. This means less energy flow and impairs the Dissolving Process. By forcing my way I had brought my energy work to a halt.

 

I keep on forgetting that. Somehow "Soft is more, strong is less" keeps on slipping my mind - it seems counter-intuitive in our competitive, harsh, stress-inducing environment. But Dissolving is the root of relaxation, the return of awareness into the body, and therefore soft works better than hard - by far!

 

As I focussed my awareness on my sore, strained neck muscles. I could feel live pulse into the blocked areas and the muscles unwind. I went on and on, seemingly without effort.

 

At the same time my mind untensed, I felt fresh energy within me, and while still knowing I was tired could finish my day in better mood and with more energy. The progress I made on my neck muscles was tremendous that day, I was really surprised.

 

 

 

Postby Korpo on Mon Nov 26, 2007 10:16 am

I found an even simpler description of the process:

 

Active waiting.

 

What you do is to find the energy construct you want to dis- and resolve. Stay aware of it and just wait. Keep your awareness on it. If your awareness wavers, breathe into it to renew awareness.

 

Stay with it after it becomes unfrozen to release the energy deeply. If you encounter inner space where the blockage was, stay for a while within it to possibly uncover an underlying, deeper issue.

 

During this process thoughts, images, memories, basically all kinds of sensations can come up. Ignore them (you don't have to suppress them) and stay with the underlying energy until it dissolves.

 

When you feel like you make no progress, scan further downward for more blockages and move the energy there.

 

At the end of the meditation drop the energy in your Lower Dantien or below your feet.

 

Take good care,

Oliver

 

The negative emotion is an energetic conflict within ourselves, where energy does not flow freely. As you make the energy flow again, the negative qualities start to disappear. When you stay with the energy, you start to dissolve it more and more.

 

The process for a negative emotion is "Ice to water, water to space." Whereby "ice" is the non-fluid state, where energy movement is blocked. When you can make it liquid again, you have reached "water". Energy is flowing, but not released. It has not attained the neutral quality, it has still aspects attached to it that allow it to recongeal and freeze. It is relaxation, not total release.

 

If you now stay with the energy, with a concentrated but relaxed mind, the energy dissolves into "space", a feeling of inner space, of the vastness within. The spot expands. You have uncovered a part of your self. Sometimes, if you stay with that space a full release into "emptiness" happens. The energy refines into "consciousness without content".

 

What you experienced is not a function of the negative emotion you worked with. What you experienced is the state of a more pure consciousness which is blocked out by the negative emotion. This is closer to your original state, a more natural state of being beyond the workings of the ego.

 

Staying with the breath is a tool to induce better body awareness. It is a good way to get in touch with energies, relax them, keep continuously aware without spacing out and expanding awareness over time into every edge of your body. It also has grounding properties, IMO.

 

There is a certain quality to dissolving I try to explain by a mucle/tissue blockage:

 

When you scan your body for blockages, you arrive sooner or later at a place that is in some way "wrong" - tense, contracted, does not feel right, feels strong... etc. These are the symptoms of a block. A block has a shape, a contour, I can feel with my inner awareness that there is something hard or numb within me and it has a form.

 

I apply several ways to dissolve a block. I stay aware of it and it starts to soften, and my awareness sinks deeper into this block and gets a new grip. This works best if you have a clear "grip" on a block, on blocks that feel hard and well-defined.

 

Areas that have gone numb and seem hard to grasp led me to develop a slight variant. You can feel the edge of the block, but not get a full grip on it. "Pushing" with your awareness this block does only lead to a stronger feeling of contraction or uneasiness. It's like forcing a lot of energy into a small valve and the same time being fully capable of feeling the effect this overtaxing the valve has on you. It's your awareness, these are your nerves, you will get feedback.

 

So what works better for me is to feel the contour and to softly move part of my awareness, a subtle feeling, into a spot that is within the block. You could shoot a big splash of water at a scragged rock and most of it would splash back. But if you slowly pour it over the rock from above part of it will filter in. This is the same - it is soft, subtle and gives you a little awareness where you had not. After I have become a sense of a "location" within the block I start concentrating more. My mind moves into this spot more and more, and my energy in there expands. The layer of blockage is dissolved.

 

The funny thing is that by pushing hard, even for a prolonged time, nothing such happens. It is exhausting. It builds mental fatigue. It feels horrible. Pushing into the blockage is like taking your pain head on. Infusing yourself slowly into the same spot is like suffusing sand with water. At some point the sand is wet and starts to slip away. It does not require force, just a steady trickle of water. At any moment a certain amount of water can trickle into the sand, and its consistency will suddenly change to something muddy and fluid. This is how mud slides work - at some point enough water got soaked into the ground to serve as a liquid layer that breaks the cohesion of the ground. Dissolving can work like that, too. The key is just to get awareness into where it was not, and the blockage will do just that - dissolve.

 

How do you suffuse? When you begin moving energy you usually use a lot of mental "force". You push. This movement is gross and unsubtle. This is out of our mental model we developed from observing the physical world. Big effort = big effect. With energy I think this is not true. Well-expressed intent beats effort. Too much effort is tension. Too much effort is pushing. Too much effort is like charging head-on into something. That is simply not necessary.

 

Scanning for a blockage does not require effort. Just gently become aware of what is at any given place. Notice. Observe. And above all: Feel. And if you touch unto something that does not feel right, try to find its contour. I admit this step is easier with a bit of pressure - this helps define the contour of the blockage. But if you have that, ease your effort and just gently keep it in mind. Lessen the grip. And then move part of your mind in it as if it were just effortless. Just a tiny bit, as if that were so easy you're not even sure you're *really* doing it. I thought I was imagining things, but instead I was using my mind in the most subtle manner. I was just for my standards really, really gentle and not applying any effort. Effortless effort.

 

My mind moved in. I got "hold" of a spot within I could not feel before, and now it is rather easy to gradually up your presence within. Part of what you find will dissolve. Part of it will stay and present new contours, new layers of blockage, blockage within blockage. But now already a layer has fallen away. By dwelling in this spot before moving on this layer gets cleared away, dissolves away, finishes. The new, deeper layer will zoom in. Your awareness has moved within, deeper, and like a magnifying lens you are now aware of something within the blockage with the same amount of awareness than you were for the full blockage before.

 

You have now concentrated as much awareness in much less space, and can now deal with the rest of the blockage the same way. Frantzis says "you open a door within a door within a door". Every time you move into a layer you also move into something smaller with full awareness. Until it resolves. The small, very hard, core blockage bits becomes as tackleable as their comparatively less "hard" outer layers.

 

At some point, after several layers, you suddenly have found the end of this, and it is resolved. Where the blockage was now there is just a space. Let your mind dwell in here a bit. See if anything comes up. If not, continue scanning downward for further blocks.

 

The sensation of resolving a blockage layer or how easy it feels to go inside is hard to describe. I felt like I was making no progress. The next bits seemed just as big. Until I realised I had "zoomed in", and was seeing the underlying "hard bits", the core blocked energies, just as "big" as I had the outer layers before. The mind moves in and you do not necessarily notice that you work on smaller layers. But you do. It was quite funny to find out I did.

 

The problem I have that blockages can vary in "accessability". Even if you can connect to the blockage it can be hard to keep focused on it and make it go fluid. To me it is a problem of "mental grip". I found a little trick to establish a good grip more easily.

 

In order to keep the blockage steady in your mind it is advisable to envelope the blockage all around. In order to keep focused on it and be able to sink your mind into it I actually found it to be best to "touch" it at least from the backside, too. The side that seems to be the far side for the observing mind that is.

 

A good way to do this was for me by applying Robert's concept of awareness hands. I tried to grab the blockage with this awareness hands and envelop/wrap it with them. This translated into tangible sensations all over the blockage. This is similar to NEW Etheric Wrap, but I found it easier to maintain than trying to wrap a mental bandage around it. (Your experience may differ )

 

The variant I use now is this: I attach to the blockage. While I maintain this original point of contact, I try to touch it with part of my awareness from the backside, too. And then from the sides, until I feel it to have it in my grip. This way enveloping becomes comparatively easy.

 

With full awareness of the contours of the blockage I then work on it with my other tools - continuous awareness, breathing into it, and when a layer becomes soft, I move in deeper and re-balance my grip on the remainder.

 

I had always problems with tensing up or "overdosing" awareness in a problem I was already aware of and wanted to handle carefully. But I found a way today, and it works like a charm...

 

Breathing in energises, breathing out releases. The same is true when you focus on a spot and brief and are aware of the breath as it happens - then this effect strongly focuses on that spot - be it energising or releasing. So breathing into a problematic blockage I'm already aware of can induce a feeling of tension, or put too much awareness into it to be comfortable.

 

Today I found a strategy to finetune this. Upon breathing in I focus somewhere in my body where it is unproblematic - the abdomen or the diaphragm. As the breath changes to breathing out, I refocus on the blockage, and it infuses it with a wave of release *without* changing the amount of awareness or tensing up the spot. I still breathe into blockages I'm barely aware of to get a good feeling of them, but the ones that already are really apparent, I handle now in this way.

 

I did this this evening, and it worked like a charm, it makes for a good fine-tuning for the dissolving. After a while it dropped me into a state where I can keep this up while walking down the street, and then it dropped into a feeling of like I don't really have a worry in the world - very neutral and aware, not in any way euphoric, but in a quiet way pleasant. I got rid of so many stuff, it exhausted me - in a good way. The sleepiness of a job well done.

[forestofclarity]

In my mind, I see a question raised by this. In certain Buddhist paths, the idea in a sense is to go beyond intention. Intention relies on good and bad, likes and dislikes, splitting, dualism, and so forth. But this water method is based on a specific method, with a specific intent, aimed at a specific goal. In this sense, the water method may create a tension with non-dual methods.

 

Just a thought.

[Sloppy Zhang]

In my mind, I see a question raised by this. In certain Buddhist paths, the idea in a sense is to go beyond intention. Intention relies on good and bad, likes and dislikes, splitting, dualism, and so forth. But this water method is based on a specific method, with a specific intent, aimed at a specific goal. In this sense, the water method may create a tension with non-dual methods.

 

Just a thought.

 

Well that's kind of the beauty of it- when you reach a point where your intention is causing tension, you even let that go.

[dwai]

What if one does Vipassana with awareness at the Dan tien? I feel drawn to use it instead of the nostrils. As far as I understand som etraditions use the nostrils, some use the abdomen. Using the dan tien should be ok to right as the key is just concentration and awareness of sensation?

 

Can you say a bit more about the uniting of the heart and dantien to produce awareness. I thought that sounded interesting.

 

Nostril or Dan Tien is not important. They are simply tricks into making you split your experiencing self and observer/witnessing self...you could do the same clapping your hand, chanting a mantra...any repetitive action (which will not tire you).

 

Also, Nostril sensitivity is easier than Dan Tien sensitivity.

[dwai]

In my mind, I see a question raised by this. In certain Buddhist paths, the idea in a sense is to go beyond intention. Intention relies on good and bad, likes and dislikes, splitting, dualism, and so forth. But this water method is based on a specific method, with a specific intent, aimed at a specific goal. In this sense, the water method may create a tension with non-dual methods.

 

Just a thought.

 

Imho, Water method will not create any tension with non-dual methods. Water method is Non-Dual as well...

Water method too transcends intention, since the dissolving is only a step in the actual meditation. Also, iinm, the Water method will work on resolving physical, mental and psychic blockages, making the individual healthier and better able to deal with Non-dual awareness...

[Raymond Wolter]

Imho, Water method will not create any tension with non-dual methods. Water method is Non-Dual as well...

Water method too transcends intention, since the dissolving is only a step in the actual meditation. Also, iinm, the Water method will work on resolving physical, mental and psychic blockages, making the individual healthier and better able to deal with Non-dual awareness...

 

 

Thanks Dwai for valuable input. May I ask how you train in water method - through books, or you took a workshop, use a CD etc.? Vipassana is easy for me as there is no intent and just watching. As for water method, I sometimes get caught with the intention part. What is dissolving - is it imagining a block turn into air or smoke, does that happen while inhaling into the organ or exhaling from it, is dissolving different from relaxing like say in yoganidra etc. I really like what Bruce says about water method and am looking for resources to study this method better and refine the practice.

[dwai]

Thanks Dwai for valuable input. May I ask how you train in water method - through books, or you took a workshop, use a CD etc.? Vipassana is easy for me as there is no intent and just watching. As for water method, I sometimes get caught with the intention part. What is dissolving - is it imagining a block turn into air or smoke, does that happen while inhaling into the organ or exhaling from it, is dissolving different from relaxing like say in yoganidra etc. I really like what Bruce says about water method and am looking for resources to study this method better and refine the practice.

 

Hi Raymond,

 

I have been trying to practice Water Method using Bruce's books. I found there were many overlaps with the school of Tai Chi I practice and the Water Method. Outer dissolving takes time...but when it works it really works. It is a physical feeling and not an imagined one, when a blockage dissolves. I'm still trying...it seems to be getting easier with time and practice.

 

Inner dissolving -- I haven't started practicing Bruce's inner dissolving method seriously, but just normal meditation and Tai Chi practice has taken me to the point of facing my inner demons. As I read Bruce's description of the "issues" raised via Inner Dissolving, I could identify several that I have encountered...

 

As far as Yog Nidra is concerned, I do practice it regularly and I can get to a state of immense relaxation through that. It does help in dissolving physical issues but is not focussed on a particular area as we do in Outer Dissolving. At the mental level, it helps meditating in the gap between thoughts...