How do long, slow breaths affect your physical and mental makeup?

[Adishakti]

He becomes an Earth Angel.

 

Now, imagine one's state after doing this 10 X 500,000 times, which is roughly what a retreatant accomplishes in a 3-year retreat.

[Adishakti]

I believe that when you read high knowledge you should read it slowly and let it sink in - you have to digest, adsorb it and make it your own. I'll try answering your question but nothing compares to the answers you'll be able to give yourself.

 

do you witness or do you visualize?

 

From what I understand of the above text is that the author is speaking about Vipassana. I've done Vipassana retreat so I'll share. After first few days of anapana where the spiritual aspirant focuses on the breath s/he moves to feeling the gross and subtle sensations in the physical body. You travel from head to feet and back, and repeat.

 

So you witness.

 

how do i witness the chi?

 

I've learned very little Taijji (my instructor moved to a new city), and from that experience I can say that Chi cultivation takes time. You start with external forms of exercise. With enough expertise, which I didn't get to, you enter in to deeper forms where you cultivate yang and Kundalini energy.

 

on a second note, how does anapana dissolve desires? how do we use anapana to dissolve desires?

 

Why would you want to dissolve desire? Desire is beautiful. Live with it, that's what makes you human. See the movie 'Wings of Desire' or 'City of Angels' and you'll know what I mean. So you don't focus on removing the desire, you simply focus of your "feelings" of desire. You witness desire and every other emotion and very slowly you'll feel some changes. I find it a little difficult to explain it as it cheapens the experience. It's a journey, trust me, and a very slow one. So take it easy.

[Birch]

Those are some very good posts JB!

I can't PM from the device I'm using so could you recommend some stuff that you used to train it? Specific teachers even?

 

Thanks!

[joeblast]

thanks kate funny enough my first really deep experiences with that had been only from practicing YMAA embryonic breathing, picked up the longevity concept from BK's energy gates book, and I had been doing 8 brocades and chia's healing sounds, nothing more - most of the inspiration I had from the EB book was those ancient translations. more valuable than gold, those! took roughly 3 months of nightly effort to achieve ~50 second breaths and most of the phenomena I've spoken of, session times started at 10, 15, 20 minutes and by the time I'd been doing it for 3 months straight, I was indifferent to 20 minutes or two hours, I just sat until I was done. had I been single I'd likely have made more and better progress over the years

 

but I've continued and elaborated, taking things from anywhere I find useful. included things I learned from Max, from Lin, picked up plenty of good stuff right here at TTBs, what various books...taoist yoga, chia, adyashanti, too many rinpoches to count...I read physics stuff in my spare time and that QM-correlation came after reading Allday's Quarks, Leptons, and the Big Bang (which I got to right after reading a bunch of feynman's stuff) and also pouring through anatomy literature, TCM (deadman's et al)...

 

really, its a big mishmash conglomeration. which is why I try to distill it into a post when I'll write about it