My first full lotus experiences

[Protector]

ah? what? horse stance? oh darn, now that you got my attention I have to talk about full lotus

 

I was thinking about how long I might be able to meditate now since I only do the horse stance so I decided to do empty mind meditation in full lotus for an hour. I lost track of time and a thought came to mind, wouldn't it be funny if I open my eyes and see on the clock that I sat there for only 59 minutes? I open my eyes, get up, and see the clock, 59.

Edited February 6, 2012 by Sinfest

[Spirit of the Tiger]

Really 1 hr and a half and you "attain the female orgasm?" Is that with the PC muscle kept squeezing? is that also whilst meditating or just sitting? I was able to do 1 hr one day and probably could have gone longer. It was getting out of it that was tough. Also holding my feet with the hands probably made it easier.

Edited February 6, 2012 by Spirit of the Tiger

[Spirit of the Tiger]

Also.. Dr. Lin of Actionlove.come or lininstitute.com warns against flexing the PC muscle for guys as a practice for various reasons and says men should actually focus on the 'area between the tailbone and anus' rather than "huiyin/PC muscle flexing." This one is harder to isolate though because it happens quite involuntary and you'll notice it when you contract the abdomen and relax it you'll feel smtg also relaxing down there but it isn't exactly the full PC muscle contraction that is popularized nowadays. It actually happens before you get to the PC muscle contraction. It's subtle..

 

I'm also not sure that it's all that different from the PC muscle or even anal sphincter.. It seems all those terms might be referring to one big muscle there which are all interconnected so that's why i say it seems hard to isolate or grasp what exactly he is talking about.

Edited February 6, 2012 by Spirit of the Tiger

[Spirit of the Tiger]

I got into lotus position and this time my top foot did not get numb. Actually I think because I got into it really tightly. When I began practicing the lotus posture I would think my feet jusst needed to be on top of the other leg but recently I remembered a video explaining that its actually supposed to be that the foot needs to be in as close to the hip as possible and closer, to the center rather than "just on top of the other thigh" which meant that I used to just think I needed to place my foot more on outside distal portion of the thighs.

 

Well today I noticed something interesting other than my top foot now not going numb... but I felt a distinct stretching in my knees and hip/groin area? I dont know but it generated a lot of heat in my abdomen and I was feeling energy.. Also usually my knees would feel sore or hurt a lot after a while but this time it was hurting but then the pain would fluctuate going away... almost as if I was "working through the pain" and just opening something up. So I just ignored the pain and it went away even when I tried looking for it. Then it would come back in a wave but only to feel like I was working through something and I felt tingling all over and heat and shaking around my abdomen area.

 

I thought it was very interesting. I felt like I was stretching something... or I thought maybe this is Really the way it's supposed to be and eventually the pain will go away due to 'opening up' to the correct posture. I also helped a little bit with my hands pulling on my toes to pull the feet more up and in.

 

After I got out of it... I still felt pain but this time being a different kind of "pain".. it went away differently leaving me feeling as if I was opening something up (stretching ligaments and tendons, and also energetic pathways?) that is now making way for longer full lotus sitting and . In fact I could have gone on for longer but I had to use the restroom .

Edited February 7, 2012 by Spirit of the Tiger

[Mark Foote]

You are right! Yes, the truly stable practitioners actually rebutted them and were trying to tell them they are to mind THEIR stability, not mine.

 

I remember a friend telling me that they sat zazen with John Daido and his students, and my friend had a cold, so she blew her nose- Daido thundered "let it run!", something like that.

 

When I took judo in high school, my teacher was known for his gentle style. Seems funny, since judo translates as "gentle way", but most judo teachers don't emphasize the point. My teacher, Moon Watanabe, used to say "it's easy to hurt the man, it's hard to be gentle" or words to that effect. The local branch of the main judo organization actually sent at least one student to my teacher, so that my teacher could teach him to be more gentle.

 

I like your description of what it's about, Taomeow. That said, I've never wanted to be hard-style in my practice, and I think it is a matter of choice in some respects. I liked the fact that Kobun Chino Otogawa, who I used to go hear lecture, was one of the first to ask for and receive permission not to use the stick on beginners at Eiheiji, when he was in charge of practice. Kobun helped the Americans who had been sent to Japan, who had dental problems and problems with their knees, and Shunryu Suzuki heard about it and invited Kobun to help set up the Tassajara monastery- that's how Kobun came to the U.S.A., and against the wishes of his teacher. The thing that I find so inspiring about Taoism and Tai-Ch'i is the very emphasis on softness overcoming hardness. If the teacher is really including the entire U.S.A. and the world in their zazen, where is the need to make the people in the room do this or do that to learn to sit, where is the faith in action without a trace?

[joeblast]

Also.. Dr. Lin of Actionlove.come or lininstitute.com warns against flexing the PC muscle for guys as a practice for various reasons and says men should actually focus on the 'area between the tailbone and anus' rather than "huiyin/PC muscle flexing." This one is harder to isolate though because it happens quite involuntary and you'll notice it when you contract the abdomen and relax it you'll feel smtg also relaxing down there but it isn't exactly the full PC muscle contraction that is popularized nowadays. It actually happens before you get to the PC muscle contraction. It's subtle..

 

I'm also not sure that it's all that different from the PC muscle or even anal sphincter.. It seems all those terms might be referring to one big muscle there which are all interconnected so that's why i say it seems hard to isolate or grasp what exactly he is talking about.

PC, prostate, anus, huiyin, all different things...it isnt exactly easy to isolate them of course, but quite possible.

[宁]

You are right! Yes, the truly stable practitioners actually rebutted them and were trying to tell them they are to mind THEIR stability, not mine.

 

 

Which reminds me

Lady, you should be more careful when sharing advice about the full lotus pose. I read one of your posts where you suggest that the better way to sit is to move the heels as close to the hips as possible. I tried that, and mind you, did it in a gradual manner, with the outcome that it hurt my left knee.

 

Now it 'pops' everytime i want to get into the posture. I need breaks of two weeks up to a month, because sometimes it gets really unconfortable. Note that before that i had no problem whatsoever, and could sit in the lotus pose for up to an hour and a half.

 

Actually i'm scolding myself for trusting internet sources without carefully considering the information provided. It sounded good in the beginning, however what it seems and what it really is proved to be two different things...

 

Bottom line, from this experience I can say that maybe our bones and ourselves have a different way of understanding what 'gradually' means. Maybe to them improving your pose means to let it develop naturally. I wouldn't have done that if I knew what it would mean for me.

So, just offering a second opinion (which, of course, you shouldn't trust, coming from the internet and all), trust your own judgement and experience (for lack of reliable sources, that is)

 

good luck,

 

宁

[RyanO]

Also.. Dr. Lin of Actionlove.come or lininstitute.com warns against flexing the PC muscle for guys as a practice for various reasons and says men should actually focus on the 'area between the tailbone and anus' rather than "huiyin/PC muscle flexing." This one is harder to isolate though because it happens quite involuntary and you'll notice it when you contract the abdomen and relax it you'll feel smtg also relaxing down there but it isn't exactly the full PC muscle contraction that is popularized nowadays. It actually happens before you get to the PC muscle contraction. It's subtle..

 

I'm also not sure that it's all that different from the PC muscle or even anal sphincter.. It seems all those terms might be referring to one big muscle there which are all interconnected so that's why i say it seems hard to isolate or grasp what exactly he is talking about.

 

My understanding is that this advice is meant specifically for when one desires to refrain from ejaculation during sex. I'm not sure he would advocate total lack of awareness or exercising of men's PC muscles.

[Mark Foote]

Which reminds me

Lady, you should be more careful when sharing advice about the full lotus pose. I read one of your posts where you suggest that the better way to sit is to move the heels as close to the hips as possible. I tried that, and mind you, did it in a gradual manner, with the outcome that it hurt my left knee.

 

Now it 'pops' everytime i want to get into the posture. I need breaks of two weeks up to a month, because sometimes it gets really unconfortable. Note that before that i had no problem whatsoever, and could sit in the lotus pose for up to an hour and a half.

 

Actually i'm scolding myself for trusting internet sources without carefully considering the information provided. It sounded good in the beginning, however what it seems and what it really is proved to be two different things...

 

Bottom line, from this experience I can say that maybe our bones and ourselves have a different way of understanding what 'gradually' means. Maybe to them improving your pose means to let it develop naturally. I wouldn't have done that if I knew what it would mean for me.

So, just offering a second opinion (which, of course, you shouldn't trust, coming from the internet and all), trust your own judgement and experience (for lack of reliable sources, that is)

 

good luck,

 

宁

 

I think I read a post where Taomeow advised that the real lotus was the one where your arms wrap around behind your back and grab the toes. Knowing that's beyond me (probably in this lifetime), I never tried.

 

Odd part to me is that you could sit 90 minutes in the lotus, but placing the feet close to the pelvis (and higher on the thighs) did damage to your knee, especially since you did it gradually.

 

I don't seem to sit more than 50 minutes. I'm right-handed, and the left knee is definitely a whole different ball of wax than the right, even just when I stretch my legs (which I do one at a time, sitting on the floor, grabbing my toes and bringing my head to my knee). I believe this has to do with pivots and stretches at the sacrum. Here's my guide, lately:

 

 

The pose of the goddess on the right interests me. I find a similar posture but with the left foot over the right thigh helpful when I am between sitting intervals in the lotus; it uncorks something, and after I watched a Tibetan lama deliver a lecture for an hour in the same pose, I have to believe it's also good for meditation. My assumption is that the djed pillar represents the relationship between the mechanisms of the cranial-sacral respiration and the hypnogogic occurrence of consciousness, and in particular the base of the djed represents the sacrum and the ligamentous attachments of the sacrum to the pelvis. The goddesses are the embodiment of the first line of Fuxi's poem, from 5th century China:

 

“An empty hand grasps the hoe handle

Walking along, I ride the ox

The ox crosses the wooden bridge

The bridge is flowing, the water is still.”

 

(“Zen’s Chinese Heritage”, Andy Ferguson, pg 2, ©2000 Andrew Ferguson)

 

And here's the practice I describe in "The Mudra of Zen":

 

Given the rotation of the pelvis and the stretch of the paired (ilio-lumbar) ligaments in inhalation and exhalation, the placement of the little fingers against the lower abdomen in the posture of Zen provides a direct sense of the geometry of support for the lower spine initiated through reciprocal innervation.

 

In particular, the placement of the fingers on the centerline of the abdomen provides a sense of the ligaments of the vertical muscles from the pubic bones upward; if the little fingers leave the abdomen, awareness of the forward and backward motion wherever consciousness takes place and relaxation of the activity of the body in awareness can restore the little fingers to the abdomen.

 

Similarly, the placement of the little fingers provides a sense of the ligaments of horizontal muscles from the lower back around the sides of the abdomen; if the elbows lose their angle from the body, awareness of the side-to-side motion wherever consciousness takes place and relaxation of the activity of the body in awareness can restore the angle.

 

Likewise, the placement of the little fingers against the abdomen provides a sense of the ligaments of diagonal muscles up from the wings of the pelvis; if the shoulders lose their roundedness, awareness of the turn left and right wherever consciousness takes place and relaxation of the activity of the body in awareness can help restore the round to the shoulders.

 

 

 

When I wrote "Translations of Motion in the Lotus", I noted that the reciprocal innervation between the extensors and the psoas muscles is engaged as the translations of motion culminate in the movement of the skull bones, affecting the cranial-sacral rhythm. I now conclude that the movement of the skull bones also affects the pineal gland and the production of melatonin, perhaps making the hypnogogic state more fluidly accessible with the attendant freedom of movement of the sense of location.

 

That sense of location opens feeling, and somebody with a lot of feeling drew those baboons ascending the hills with their palms in the air!

Edited February 10, 2012 by Mark Foote

[mantis]

It seems this thread has been in the grave for some time, here is to some inspiration (for those whom still cannot)

 

[ChiDragon]

Please keep in mind that not everyone can do the full lotus. There is one thing about yoga which can hurt somebody starting from a cold practice. One cannot just jump into doing it. Please don't force yourself to doing anything that your are not capable of doing. I heard lots of people had to quit the class on the first day because they got hurt. Use common sense. Consider your physical being before doing anything foolish because someone says it was ok to do it.

[voidisyinyang]

Yeah it's been five weeks since my 2nd degree knee sprain. I have been working back into the full lotus just because there is so much bang for the buck from the full lotus practice.

 

Qigong master Chunyi Lin says 20 mins of full lotus meditation equals 4 hours of any other type of meditation.

 

So at first I could only get my feet and ankles up onto my knees. But after that stretching I worked on getting my ankle past my calf muscle so that the ankle bone wasn't pressing into my calf bone.

 

So now I can get into a more or less "real" full lotus position and it feels awesome. The small of my back opens up. My skull makes cracking sounds and my neck pulsates as the neurohormones of my lower body shoot up into my brain.

 

The full lotus sublimates my life force energy but it also causes toxins and crap anaerobic bacteria to leach out of my skull.

 

So I try to focus on just practicing in the morning before any food.

 

Still the full lotus is the best to exorcise the left brain of lower emotional thoughts possessing the mind.

 

So basically today I felt the lower tan tien get hot -- even though I had not eaten any food yet -- and so that was about an hour of full lotus.

 

I listen to Indian raga sitar music since I prefer non-western music for meditation.

 

Yeah it is precarious with healing my knee -- I have to be careful but the full lotus is "good pain" as Chunyi Lin says.

 

Of course we should not "force" the full lotus but definitely my lower back and hips stretch out the more I practice.

 

Even before I always noticed that the small of my back even tightens up during the day after just an hour or so.

 

So normally I have relied on sitting in full lotus throughout the day.

 

Yes the energy increases the brain magnetic bliss and then it opens up the heart love energy.

[Mark Foote]

I'm writing lately about proprioception and sitting the lotus; I write for myself, first and foremost, but I'm hoping this approach will also serve for Westerners who want to learn to sit the lotus. I don't sit many sesshins, and I don't care if my sitting is ten minutes or 50; maybe I average about 30. It's about stretch, but it's also about subtle activity that takes place because of the stretch in the ligaments and fascia. These tissues can generate nerve impulses to contract muscles to relieve stretch, and in the lotus there's a constant reciprocal stretch and activity.

 

Here's some of what I have so far:

 

 

I would like to think that zazen, like the practice of “standing” in Chinese martial arts, puts me in a position to realize activity out of the necessity of breath.

 

Sitting cross-legged is sitting with a stretch. The ability to relax and allow action generated by the stretch of ligaments or fascia is part of the necessity of breath in the posture, and informs the place of occurrence of consciousness and the ability to feel.

 

Most people don’t realize that the ligaments and fascia of the body can generate nerve impulses that will contract muscles. Stretch in one of the seated postures of zazen (like the lotus) or in one of the standing postures of Tai-Chi (like the “single-whip” pose) can result in a subtle muscular activity that facilitates the lengthening of ligaments and can gradually include the entire body.

 

Stretch and activity in these postures is an involuntary reflex, as the location of awareness and the ability to feel respond to the necessity of breath at the moment.

 

Moshe Feldenkrais described three exercises that he said would facilitate getting up from a chair without holding the breath. These exercises consisted of swaying the upper body forward and back, then side to side, and finally in a circle around the base of the tailbone. Similar exercises are often recommended for settling into the posture of zazen, although instead of swaying in a circle around the tailbone, the zazen practitioner leans out diagonally over the left knee, then the right.

 

These stretches highlight the ongoing activity of an upright posture, namely the action of the obturators that hammock the hips from the pelvis (side to side), the action of the sartorius muscles that shift the wings of the pelvis (toward the diagonals), and the action of the extensor and psoas muscles that balance the weight of the upper body on the sitbones of the pelvis (forward and back). The idea is to stretch ligaments and facilitate activity in all three directions, to allow the movement of breath to remain continuous even as the posture or carriage shifts.

 

In zazen, the sense of equilibrium associated with the current location of awareness in space brings forward the particulars of stretch necessary to the relaxed movement of breath. In particular, feeling for stretch side-to-side and action in the obturators comes by necessity with a sense of roll in the current location of awareness; feeling for stretch on the diagonals and action in the sartorius muscles comes by necessity with a sense of yaw in the current location of awareness; and feeling for stretch forward-and-back and action in the extensor and psoas muscles comes by necessity with a sense of pitch in the current location of awareness.

 

The sense of pitch, yaw, and roll that an aircraft pilot might utilize is very much at play in zazen; through the sense of equilibrium associated with the location of awareness in space, stretch and activity are initiated that align specific vertebrae and permit the ability to feel necessary to the current movement of breath.

 

In juggling, the juggler realizes the momentum and weight of each object as a contribution to the juggler’s own sense of physical location, in order to relax the activity of throwing and catching; in practicing zazan, the sitter experiences the orientation and weight of any body part that crosses the mind as a contribution to the sense of physical location, and the pitch, yaw, and roll inherent in the experience of location informs the stretch and activity necessary to the relaxed movement of breath.

 

To be clear, the effort is to relax and calm down. Master Cheng Man-ching’s instructions for the practice of Tai-Chi emphasized a thorough relaxation of the entire body, followed by a relaxation of the chest:

 

 

“(The practitioner) should relax. The relaxation should be overall, that is, throughout the entire body. And it should be thorough, that is, without the least strain anywhere. The aim is to throw every bone and muscle of the entire body wide open without hindrance or obstruction anywhere. When (one) has done this, (one) will be in a position to talk about ch’i. To start with, (one) should let (the) ch’i sink right down to the “tan t’ien”. To do this (one) should first relax the chest, for the ch’i can only sink freely when the chest is relaxed. Gradually the ch’i will be felt to accumulate.”

 

(Cheng Man-ch’ing, T’ai-chi Ch’uan, North Atlantic Books, 1981, pg 7, copyright Juliana T. Cheng- parantheticals paraphrase original)

 

 

 

And a little more:

 

 

The Chan teacher Yuanwu appears to have described the induction of a hypnogogic state, when he wrote:

 

 

“You must strive with all your might to bite through here and cut off conditioned habits of mind. Be like a person who has died the great death: after your breath is cut off, then you come back to life. Only then do you realize that it is as open as empty space. Only then do you reach the point where your feet are walking on the ground of reality.”

 

(Zen Letters, translated by J.C. and Thomas Cleary, pg 84)

 

 

Yuanwu began by telling the reader to “bite through here”, drawing to mind the placement and movement of the jaw relative to the current sense of location; attention to the placement and movement of the jaw engages the sense of proprioception, or “the awareness of movement derived from muscular, tendon, and articular sources” (credited by Wikipedia to Sherrington’s “The Integrative Action of the Nervous System”, 1906), and Yuanwu instructs his reader to engage the proprioceptive sense with the sense of location (“bite through here”), just as the Gautamid did in his description of the first meditative state (the ability to feel that leaves out no part of the body and the lather ball).

 

Yuanwu made a connection between proprioception as a contributor to the singularity of location and the ability to “cut off conditioned habits of mind”, where to “cut off conditioned habits of mind” meant to cease any voluntary activity of thought or direction of the body, just as though one were letting go of life itself. Yuanwu stated that as a matter of course, such a cessation of habitual activity results in a feeling that the activity of breath in the body has been cut off, and causes a person to come to their senses as though they have been returned to life from the dead. Returned to one’s senses, the location of awareness is freed to shift in three-dimensional space without restriction, as in empty space; activity is engendered by virtue of the occurrence of a single-pointed awareness that is inclusive of the senses, proprioception and equalibrioception among them, rather than through conditioned habits of mind.

 

Although Yuanwu was not explicit that walking on the ground of reality requires an aware state of relaxation like that in which any subject of hypnosis rests, he was quite explicit that walking on the ground of reality is associated with an experience of necessity connected with the movement of breath, and he implied that such an experience is a gateway to an altered state of mind.

 

[Taomeow]

It seems this thread has been in the grave for some time, here is to some inspiration (for those whom still cannot)

 

 

Excellent! No strain on the top of the foot at all. In this correct position, any pain will be karma-releasing rather than muscle-pulling. (I would rotate the heel of the left foot slightly so there's no contraction in the achilles ligaments, and "even out" the toes of the right one. Both can be done with your hands.)

[voidisyinyang]

Last night I had hiccups. So first I tried just to relax. Nope. So then I did what I usually do -- flex my diaphgram to stop the spasm. The hiccup still took over. So then I thought -- well sneezing is a reflex of the cerebrum and I can "flex" or focus my brain to suppress a sneeze. So I'll try the same to stop the hiccup. Nope.

 

So then I went into full lotus to stop the hiccup. Literally I took one breath in and the life force energy shot up and my parasympathetic nervous system relaxed my diaphgram and the hiccup disappeared immediately.

[joeblast]

whistlin while I work shhh, dont mind my messy desk

 

[mantis]

Thanks for the encouragement Taomeow, your posts regarding the full lotus have been really helpful.

 

Looks great joeblast, I think my coworkers would be taken too far aback if they saw me sitting like that on a chair

[voidisyinyang]

Thanks for the encouragement Taomeow, your posts regarding the full lotus have been really helpful.

 

Looks great joeblast, I think my coworkers would be taken too far aback if they saw me sitting like that on a chair

 

Oh yeah years of all night data entry work made possible by the full lotus position.

 

My dad asked me why I no longer had carpal tunel and I said because I sit in full lotus. He just was confused. haha.

[Mark Foote]

 

So then I went into full lotus to stop the hiccup. Literally I took one breath in and the life force energy shot up and my parasympathetic nervous system relaxed my diaphgram and the hiccup disappeared immediately.

 

 

This morning was my last dose of antibiotics for an upper respiratory bug. I inherited an arrhythmia of the heart, and had the good fortune to have it healed through an ablation four years ago. Apparently the lack of oxygen while I slept threw my heart back into arrhythmia, three times in the last two weeks; the last time nothing I could do seemed to help, couldn't lie down, couldn't just sit, all uncomfortable; I got in the lotus, and the heart went back into rhythm even though I was basically falling asleep sitting up. Could be coincidence and the aspirin kicking in, but I do think it's possible to enter a hypnogogic state, between waking and sleeping, in a posture like the lotus and I think that's probably healing.

[voidisyinyang]

This morning was my last dose of antibiotics for an upper respiratory bug. I inherited an arrhythmia of the heart, and had the good fortune to have it healed through an ablation four years ago. Apparently the lack of oxygen while I slept threw my heart back into arrhythmia, three times in the last two weeks; the last time nothing I could do seemed to help, couldn't lie down, couldn't just sit, all uncomfortable; I got in the lotus, and the heart went back into rhythm even though I was basically falling asleep sitting up. Could be coincidence and the aspirin kicking in, but I do think it's possible to enter a hypnogogic state, between waking and sleeping, in a posture like the lotus and I think that's probably healing.

 

Wow -- glad the full lotus helped! I have definitely slept in full lotus before.

 

I was just emailing an old University friend telling him how I was in full lotus on the toilet in this University building. I had been working at night and it was cold out and anyway -- I was literally snoring while in full lotus on the toilet. Someone called the cops on me! I got raided but somehow I got out of the stall and stood in front of the mirror before the cops actually got into the bathroom. I must have really sprang out of full lotus. haaha.

 

Anyway Yan Xin's Shaolin master Haiden -- he didn't even sleep at night. Just full lotus meditation. Well qigong master Chunyi Lin and Wang Liping -- they do four to five hour full lotus meditation sessions at night and then sleep four hours or so.

 

Yeah I usually sleep on my right side so that my heart is on the left side -- so there's less weight on my heart. Also I take tons of cayenne to keep my sinuses open and also to lower my blood pressure. I buy cayenne in bulk -- 10 pounds. It's awesome. So if I have any egg, meat or dairy I put tons of cayenne on it. Also I use cayenne like coffee -- instead of coffee -- in the morning.

 

Yeah I was watching tons of t.v. while healing my knee but now that I can sit in full lotus at the computer I can use the computer more. Sitting in a chair at the computer just doesn't work for me.

 

I use garlic as my antibiotic since it's also antiviral.

 

Then I drink spirulina to counteract the rotten egg smell.

[宁]

Last night I had hiccups. So first I tried just to relax. Nope. So then I did what I usually do -- flex my diaphgram to stop the spasm. The hiccup still took over. So then I thought -- well sneezing is a reflex of the cerebrum and I can "flex" or focus my brain to suppress a sneeze. So I'll try the same to stop the hiccup. Nope.

 

So then I went into full lotus to stop the hiccup. Literally I took one breath in and the life force energy shot up and my parasympathetic nervous system relaxed my diaphgram and the hiccup disappeared immediately.

 

good post, i propose a thread about different afflictions, physical or otherwise, that can be cured or aleviated by means of FL

[joeblast]

Thanks for the encouragement Taomeow, your posts regarding the full lotus have been really helpful.

 

Looks great joeblast, I think my coworkers would be taken too far aback if they saw me sitting like that on a chair

Its even funnier when you slowly rotate the chair around, and just smile back at the odd looks.

 

or stranger still when you bring in the big socket set that has a strong enough phillips head on it to loosen the screwbolts on the bottom of the chair so that the arms stay out of the way of your feet

 

they already know I'm a strange one, but luckily my job function changed so I get to work from home - you can tell by the plywood desk hahaha I wasnt going to spend 3, 4 hundred on something just to fit in the corner here!

 

I think wrt lotus healing various things, its a matter of cultivating something and then putting it to use, just like meditation. I dont really bother using cayenne to keep my sinuses open, all I have to do is generate that certain frequency of "kl energy" and plenty often that causes my sinuses to empty, tear ducts to clean out - if there's something to be let go of, of course. for me, lotus is huge when I piss my back off - that's when I have to be careful and do enough exercise to counteract the negative effects of lotus - it mainly gets the outsides of my hip joints. that's also where imbalance comes into play - say the left side of my L5 freaks and gets a tension-knot, making it hard to bend it - my lotus will be noticeably lopsided (at least to me) and I have to be careful not to overdo "the good side" because that winds up further imbalancing, the good side overstretches and I wind up pissing off the hip joint on the outside, opposite side.

[voidisyinyang]

Well there should be a master full lotus thread on thetaobums that some mod could sticky at the top of the forum -- I remember it linking a lot to Wang Liping promoting the full lotus position, etc.

 

Basically real meditation goes beyond feeling the physical body sensations so the pre-natal chi opening up means a good full lotus with no pain for 2 hours non-stop. I haven't had that since my 2000 intensive qigong training to finish my masters degree.

 

So like Chunyi LIn sat in full lotus for a month -- I asked him what was his longest time and he said 2 months of cave meditation.

 

He said he wants to do a year. But he said he didn't sleep the whole time - just a few apples and a few bottles of water. Otherwise it was just non-stop full lotus.

 

So because the full lotus amplifies the yin-yang energy dynamics -- the healing is unlimited.

 

I used to sit in full lotus for hours everyday while I transmitted energy by flexing my pineal gland and then I took in negative emotional jing energy through my perineum.

 

So I did that for ten days non-stop a couple summers ago.

 

On the tenth day my nephew visited and I took him on a tour of the forest and then I climbed a ladder up to our roof to show him my experimental roof garden.

 

Yeah so that was after ten days of full lotus with no food but just water.

 

Still my brain was leaching toxins after that -- so as Chunyi Lin told me that until I store up energy in my lower tan tien then the pineal gland transmissions would always be weak.

 

So I stopped flexing my pineal gland - it's been a year of no pineal gland flexing. haha.

 

Still I spent five years flexing my pineal gland in full lotus and I had tons of amazing healing experiences of other people.

 

This one dude -- a total stranger -- I healed his liver blockage of anger -- my own liver burned hot and I sucked up his anger. I was in BK and he walked in and I just glanced at him - but he was staring at me. I was reading while in full lotus. He wanted to attack me at first but he sat behind and to my right.

 

He actually walked up to me and said: Thank you.

 

That was it - it was amazing. Because at first my liver got super hot and then it cooled down and so I knew I was safe. But I was really surprised when he acknowledged to me that he knew what had happened - he was a big Indian indigenous Native American.

 

Mainly though it was the "O at a D" phenomenon.

 

But again I was flexing my pineal gland before I purified the sublimated jing energy -- so basically I was shooting out my jing energy on a carrier wave of pineal gland chi energy. Just enough to activate people's vagus nerve to heal them.

 

But I was burning out my jing energy from that -- probably five "O at a Ds" a day for five years. Some of them sessions lasting several hours non-stop.

 

Still I have no regrets - five years of free healing. I had to take antiseptics all the time because my brain leeched out the anaerobic lower body bacteria -- so don't flex your pineal gland before purifing the jing energy into chi energy.

 

Yeah so full lotus plus the emptiness is the way to go.

[Mark Foote]

 

that's also where imbalance comes into play - say the left side of my L5 freaks and gets a tension-knot, making it hard to bend it - my lotus will be noticeably lopsided (at least to me) and I have to be careful not to overdo "the good side" because that winds up further imbalancing, the good side overstretches and I wind up pissing off the hip joint on the outside, opposite side.

 

 

I've been studying a couple of illustrations Apech turned me onto- from the temples in Egypt, a long time ago. You might find this useful, with regard to the sacrum and L5:

 

 

 

"I would suggest that the reed that the god is holding on either side of the pillar represents the horizontal ilio-lumbar ligaments, that engage as the spine is relaxed upward from the sacrum in the movement of exhalation. The presence of the god is an indication that the tensile support of the ligament is realized not through the direction of any conscious activity, but solely through the experience of the location of awareness and the ability to feel in the necessity of breath.

 

The hieroglyphs on the top of the pillar are in praise of the king of Egypt, but they also depict an orb like the sun, which is perhaps the Egyptian “akh” or consciousness freed of any fixture to location.

 

The toes of the god rest against either side of something shaped like the sacrum of the body; close-ups show that not only is the footrest of the god the shape of the sacrum, but it is also segmented in five parts like the sacrum.

 

The nerves which exit between the fourth and fifth lumbar vertebrae and the first vertebrae of the sacrum allow an ability to feel in the lower legs and along the soles of the feet, right to the surface of the skin. As feeling for the placement and orientation of the legs and feet is absorbed into the sense of location in the occurrence of awareness, the alignment of vertebrae may allow feeling for the placement and orientation of the sacrum to enter awareness, and likewise for the bottom-most part of the spine.

 

That the body can be held upright in zazen solely through the interplay between a sense of location, an ability to feel, and relaxation in the movement of breath is illustrated in another graphic from the walls of the temples of Egypt:

 

 

 

 

 

The goddesses Isis and Nephthys kneel on what may be a woven material, one knee of each goddess resting against what might be construed to be a representation of the first lumbar transverse processes. This is exactly the vertebrae supported by the horizontal ilio-lumbar ligaments, and here a connection between the placement and orientation of the legs at the knees and support for this vertebrae is suggested. The hands of the goddesses frame the lower spine, while the headdresses, the baboons on either side of the image, the hands of the baboons and the hands of the “ankh” (the cross with an oval) all emphasize an upward extension. There are two mounds outside of the benches on which the goddesses kneel, very much in the shape of the pelvic wings, while the dunes the baboons walk on form a space whose interior resembles the cavity of the chest. The large dark border along the top of the image strongly resembles the diaphragm. The “ankh” or looped cross is speculated by some to be a representation of the vertebrae of a cow, and in my mind it’s entirely possible that this shape is used to represent the cranial-sacral fluid system as described in modern cranial-sacral osteopathy; regardless, the occurrence of consciousness freed of fixture to location is again depicted in the orb of the sun, here framed by hands extended upward from the ankh, and touching on the central cone of the diaphragm-like dark line.

 

The benches the goddesses kneel on I believe represent the ligaments that connect the sacrum to the pelvis, and the central point of the illustration would be the upward support provided as feeling opens for the orientation of the legs at the knees and the weight that rests on the ilio-sacral ligaments in the relaxed movement of breath."

 

 

The short rendition would be that feeling in the soles of the feet corresponds with feeling at the ilio-sacral joints, especially as a sense of roll is realized at the location of awareness and feeling throughout the body informs the sense of location. Roll has an aspect that is stretch and activity in the obturators, the muscles that hammock the hips away from the pelvis. Feeling for placement and motion in the knees corresponds with feeling at L5-L4-L3; I have an excellent dermo chart from "Lower Back Pain" by Calliet that shows feeling on the surface of the skin on either side of the calf corresponds with L5-L4, and feeling above the knee with L3. This ability to feel is especially connected with yaw at the location of awareness, and the action of sartorius to swing the wings of the pelvis and engage gluteous and piriformis under the sitbones,

 

even shorter rendition, the information coming from muscles, tendons, and joints informs the ability to feel necessary to relax the movement of breath, and contributes to the induction of a hypnogogic state with its accompanying singularity in the sense of location.

[Mark Foote]

(hiccup)

Edited November 26, 2013 by Mark Foote