Growing Pains

[Maddie]

I was curious if anyone had knowledge or experience with the symptoms and/or side effects of progressing in cultivation? It seems that I will have four or five really good days of doing my Qigong, and then a day or two of feeling really crappy where I can not practice. Then this will clear up and I will resume practice again for several days until I feel crappy again for no reason that I can tell in particular. For example I might just feel really tired one day even though I went to bed at a normal time, or feel weak, or cold, or slightly sickly, or just generally bad. Its not like I get sick, because I don't get a fever or actually get ill in the real sense, but I just have this vauge and unusual feeling of not feeling good. Is this a part of the process of clearing your channels and opening blockages?

[goonis38]

I was curious if anyone had knowledge or experience with the symptoms and/or side effects of progressing in cultivation? It seems that I will have four or five really good days of doing my Qigong, and then a day or two of feeling really crappy where I can not practice. Then this will clear up and I will resume practice again for several days until I feel crappy again for no reason that I can tell in particular. For example I might just feel really tired one day even though I went to bed at a normal time, or feel weak, or cold, or slightly sickly, or just generally bad. Its not like I get sick, because I don't get a fever or actually get ill in the real sense, but I just have this vauge and unusual feeling of not feeling good. Is this a part of the process of clearing your channels and opening blockages?

 

Hey there,

Yes I felt this way the other day, and couldn't meditate properly and things where not quite right. But by the next day built back up... Melanie

[VCraigP]

I was curious if anyone had knowledge or experience with the symptoms and/or side effects of progressing in cultivation? It seems that I will have four or five really good days of doing my Qigong, and then a day or two of feeling really crappy where I can not practice. Then this will clear up and I will resume practice again for several days until I feel crappy again for no reason that I can tell in particular. For example I might just feel really tired one day even though I went to bed at a normal time, or feel weak, or cold, or slightly sickly, or just generally bad. Its not like I get sick, because I don't get a fever or actually get ill in the real sense, but I just have this vauge and unusual feeling of not feeling good. Is this a part of the process of clearing your channels and opening blockages?

 

This reminds me of some thing my teacher discussed. It is important to do your practice daily. You must push through these problems or they will not be cleared. continuity of practice is what creates real achievement. If you practice for 5 days steadily and then stop because of feeling crappy you will allow the gunk to settle back in and continue to create problems. If you persevere and push through with daily practice you can clear that and eventually run into a new deeper level of gunk, hence making deeper progress.

 

good luck

 

Craig

[NeiChuan]

This reminds me of some thing my teacher discussed. It is important to do your practice daily. You must push through these problems or they will not be cleared. continuity of practice is what creates real achievement. If you practice for 5 days steadily and then stop because of feeling crappy you will allow the gunk to settle back in and continue to create problems. If you persevere and push through with daily practice you can clear that and eventually run into a new deeper level of gunk, hence making deeper progress.

 

good luck

 

Craig

 

Well Put. New levels of Evolution = New levels of problems.

 

 

@Dmatt.

 

There's a Tibetan saying.. Drink Your Food, Chew Your Water. Meaning Chew your food till its practically liquid, and each drink of water be held in your mouth and mixed with the saliva till its warm.

 

It helps more then one may think.

Edited September 30, 2010 by NeiChuan

[Maddie]

In the books that I have including Dr. Yang's, it always says that you should not practice when you are feeling tired, ill, ect...

The original intent of my question though was to understand things that come up as a result of practice, i.ec side effects?

[Birch]

I will post my most recent "understanding" which is just how I've come to figure this stuff. Take this explanation as you wish and please also put holes in it as you wish.

 

The human "condition" lends itself very well to "modifications". Furthermore, once modifications are made, a person will defend such "as self" (despite the actual harm to the person incurred) due to the discomfort one feels with dissonance, paradox, uncertainty etc...Worse, one won't (necessarily) realise what one is doing to oneself.

 

When discomfort (or injury) is felt, awareness withdraws from the "place" where the "origin" of the discomfort was first felt.

 

This place of withdrawal of awareness becomes a "rock" (or a "block" like we like to say on TTB) around which our self flows. The potential for massive restriction in perception, thought and resulting behavior arrives via this process.

[Maddie]

I will post my most recent "understanding" which is just how I've come to figure this stuff. Take this explanation as you wish and please also put holes in it as you wish.

 

The human "condition" lends itself very well to "modifications". Furthermore, once modifications are made, a person will defend such "as self" (despite the actual harm to the person incurred) due to the discomfort one feels with dissonance, paradox, uncertainty etc...Worse, one won't (necessarily) realise what one is doing to oneself.

 

When discomfort (or injury) is felt, awareness withdraws from the "place" where the "origin" of the discomfort was first felt.

 

This place of withdrawal of awareness becomes a "rock" (or a "block" like we like to say on TTB) around which our self flows. The potential for massive restriction in perception, thought and resulting behavior arrives via this process.

 

largetalons.bmp

 

Napoleon "Do the chickens have large talons?"

 

Farmer "I don't understand a word you just said"

 

Im the farmer here

Edited October 1, 2010 by dmattwads

[Birch]

Hi Mr Farmer!

 

How are your chickens? Ok, I will try to do a little better at my explanation. It's still a work in progress and I can't speak to the first part yet well enough so I'll tackle the second part. This part:

 

"When discomfort (or injury) is felt, awareness withdraws from the "place" where the "origin" of the discomfort was first felt.

 

This place of withdrawal of awareness becomes a "rock" (or a "block" like we like to say on TTB) around which our self flows. The potential for massive restriction in perception, thought and resulting behavior arrives via this process."

 

 

When you (as a whole organism, not just your thoughts) get hurt (or I guess if you hurt yourself with your thoughts but I won't get into that too far), the part of you that gets hurt goes through a sequence of events that eventually allow the injured area to heal.

 

Pain is IMO part of the sequence that maintains a focus of awareness on the part of the organism that needs "work" or that needs "detoxification". Why such a focus should be required for the sequence to work its stuff is still something I'm mulling around.

 

However, if following injury, circumstances do not permit the full sequence to take place (for example if you hurt your leg but need to run on it to get yourself away from a continued source of injury) this focus is removed from the equation (usually temporarily) until a later (safer) date at which the focus on the original injury can resume so the healing sequence can resume and complete.

 

However, because pain is felt as unpleasant (which it is), we wish (more often than not) to avoid it. So we basically allow ourselves the option to avoid feeling it by withdrawing our awareness from it.

 

But the downside is that this interferes with the healing process because the focus of awareness is still not yet in the "right" place for healing to occur. So the whole organism has to adapt to this situation by protecting the part that hasn't healed yet, using "avoidance" strategies and behaviours, perceiving "similar" situations so it can avoid them etc.