New guy from the Czech Republic

[Mnemonist]

Hello,

I would like to join this forum in order to find some answers to my recent mysterious condition.
I am a 18 years old student of grammar school in the Czech Republic and I used to play piano very well till last year. I have read some Mantak Chia´s books and now I am trying to make balanced MB yin and yang diet. 

My interests: music (very quiet one due to my current condition), calisthenics, art of memory (speed cards, history dates), self-improvement, languages (French, English and Russian)

 

I have been struggling over a year with a pressure around the top of my head and hypersensitivity to sounds.
This pressure makes me very anxious, spaced out and I have great problems with concentration. I have been trying to move this strange pressure in my head downwards but I have never succeeded. The only ´progress´ I made was when I started practicing Microcosmic orbit as Chia advises. That progress was back ache, even more pressure in my head and even more sensitivity to sounds.

I believe this condition is caused by concentration of too much yin (chi) in my head. It doesn´t allow me to lead a normal fulfilling life. I had to stop playing the piano and cease some social activities because of my sensitivity to sounds and dizziness.

 

I hope I will find some useful advice in your community
Dominik

[soaring crane]

Hello Dominik, and welcome to the forums!

 

Glad you found your way to us. I happen live on the other side of the mountains, across from Pilsen :-)

 

I wish you success in your search for the answers to your situation. In the meantime, I'd suggest stopping all the high-energy meditation work you've picked up from Mantak Chia. Maybe put those books on a shelf for a while.

 

Please take the time to read the two posts pinned at the top of this Welcome page and take a look at the forum terms and rules. This covers all you need to know when getting started.

 

For the first week you will be restricted to ten posts per day but after that you can post as much as you like. Also, until you’ve posted fifteen times in the forums, you’ll be a “Junior Bum” with somewhat restricted access and will be allowed only two private messages per day.

 

Good luck in your pursuits and best wishes to you,

 

SC and the TDB team

[wilfred]

welcome from the UK! you're mighty young to be aware of any of this energy stuff, impressive! wishing you fruitful interactions and practice in the future 

 

i had/have a similar problem with too much energy in the head, seems commonplace with technology-modern culture causing non-stop mental chatter, leading to lack of concentration/clarity. can also cause all sorts of health problems. good news is there's plenty of grounding practices and folk around here well versed in all things cultivation related 

[RiverSnake]

IMO, stay away from Mantak Chia. Many of his techniques can injure your health. There are better sources for internal work. 

Edited June 18, 2015 by OldChi

[Taomeow]

Hi Mnemonist,

 

I would suggest visiting a good acupuncturist.  Many pressure-in-the-head problems respond pretty well -- but if there's no improvement, I would get a medical check-up to exclude anything serious.

 

Second the non-practicing anything while this is going on -- except one qigong move known as Beating The Heavenly Drum.  Your symptoms/lifestyle seem to point to qi getting "stuck" in the head and having trouble circulating -- the move I'm talking about is safe for specifically this problem.  My taiji teacher often asked the class to perform it at the end of the practice in order to move any stray qi down and away from the head.  Look it up -- if you can't find a demo, I'll describe it.  

 

Good luck! 

Edited June 19, 2015 by Taomeow

[soaring crane]

 

Second the non-practicing anything while this is going on -- except one qigong move known as Beating The Heavenly Drum. 

 

That's an excellent idea, yes. I do it all the time with my own groups, should have thought about it here. I know a few other things as well that I can write later.

[Mnemonist]

I am so glad for your quick responses! 

Pilsen is a wonderful city but you should visit Czech Krumlov and Prague as well  

I'll definitely look up the Beating The Heavenly Drum exercise! The school holiday is approaching at last and I will have enough time to start practicing.

I am now also on Macrobiotic diet. I have been fasting (eating only rice with chopsticks to became more aware of the food) for 3 days now and it was the best thing that I could have done in my situation. I feel light as feather and I can concentrate much better.
Moreover, during this Restart (that is how my local Shiatsu guide calls my diet) I have also noticed natural downward movement of energy last day when chewing rice followed with peristaltic movement in my stomach (no it is not due to the rice). I think it is caused by mindful chewing ( I chew each bit now 50 times) - the energies mixes in my mouth and can go much easily down.

So now I started doing some breathing exercises and I have been surprised by the quick progress - I moved plenty of chi/energy/ki down to my navel. Today my head felt so light and I was very bright at school. Normally I would process the information the slow analytical way but today it was more intuitive and multitasking was not surprisingly problematic. My slow term memory was also much better. Believe me I was as happy as never today. I truly enjoyed myself.

 

 

 

Next paragraph is only for those who have strong gut and want to read my insane story which caused all my current problems... You might not believe anything like this is possible...

 

Last year has been full of changes which I was not prepared to bear at all. My new CAE English preparation teacher turned to be a freak into holistic, astrology and mainly Reiki. At that time I was quite open to new things even though I was pretty skeptical. At last she also turned to be very manipulative which I realized to late. At that time I had problems with my ex-girlfriend and the strange manipulative pressure from my teacher didn't help too. This strange manipulative power greatly influenced my way of thinking - my mother thought I was going crazy but I felt as bright and analytical as Einstein.

Maybe because of the stress and anxiety I started listening to some online hypnosis which in fact was a huge mistake. My at that time sensitive body became oversensitive. So one day after my school bike course I woke up with that pressure feeling in my head. I was really hopeless and I couldn't do anything about it. My teacher told me she would do a Reiki session on me which could help. Unfortunately, she has done some unknown energy work on me and did Reiki consecration which I was not consciously aware of at that time.

Afterwards I started having problems with my ears and I started behaving differently because of the pressure in my head. The only thing helped me was making my hands warm which I realized I could do when I concentrated on them. Feeling the energy was the only thing that kept me from going insane. I wanted to get the pressure out of my head so I came across Microcosmic orbit and Chia which then didnt help at all but showed at least some progress as I could feel the energy move.

 

Thanks to my mother we found a Gypsy man which was really good in esoteric. I did not tell him anything about me but he did tell me more than I knew about myself. He told me that some women is using some kind of black magic and is draining my energy. I didnt believe it at first but then I realized that it is exactly what I feel when I was with my English teacher so I stopped my English lessons with her and didn't make any contact for a whole year.

Me and my mother tried nearly anything we could to overcome my condition. Normal doctors said of course I am normal because they cant measure anything. CT scan was okay. They didn't care about my sound hypersensitivity because they only could help people who were going deaf. 

Then we flew to Ulan Ude (city in Russia - the Siberian part of it near Mongolia) where we visited Siberian Shaman. She told me exactly the same thing as the Gypsy (that that women cast some spell over me and let me drink something what was definitely not tea) even though I didn't tell her anything about myself she also told me I have shamanic syndrome and I could have potentially have shamanic powers. It did quite scare me but at that time nothing really surprised me at all.

She, gypsy and my family had helped me the most during my hard times. But even this relief was only substantial and didn't last long. So I realized that I am the only person who can change something. I tried feeling the energy in me and my head. I started meditating a lot and tried to work with that energy. That provisional energy work helped me the most to not get insane (apart from my great mother). When I stopped doing anything with that energy in my head I would get really dull and insane after a while.

After that year my new English teacher (yes again some teacher) told me about this great guy who is doing Shiatsu and Macrobiotics. I thought I could try it out and he told me about my condition - that I have o much chi in my head (which I already knew). But he also advised me to change diet and the most important thing - to meet up with that manipulative teacher face to face and to tell her what I feel and that I ban her from influencing and manipulating with me anymore.

 

It was the most difficult dialog in my life but also the most freeing. Right after I told her I don't want to be manipulated by anyone and left I felt as if the top of my head uncovered and bad energy flew away. Even my left hand began to tremble.

That meeting had happened 3 days ago.

 

It has been very difficult period of my life and I would not believe something like this could happen to neither adult nor teenager. My great determination to overcome this hell has brought its fruit and I can now finally see brighter future. Together with some basic breathing exercises and diet I now feel like I could come back to normal state of being. This experience has certainly influenced my life but I see it as both terrifying and enriching one. I have so many experiences now so that I could make a really good drama/horror movie

This is my life changing year in a nutshell. It should be a warning for every New age experimentalist as well as for any other person.

Edited June 19, 2015 by Mnemonist

[RiverSnake]

May you continue to grow in Power and Wisdom on your path.....congratulations.  

Edited June 19, 2015 by OldChi

[Mnemonist]

Thank you

[Taomeow]

Ah, Ulan-Ude!  A Buryat shamanka!  This rings such a poignant bell...  

 

Do you mind sharing her name if it's not a secret?

[Mnemonist]

Well I am surprised that somebody knows where Buryat Republic is  Have you been there? 

Of course I can share her name. In Cyrillic it is Туяна Бимбаевна - Tujana Bimbajevna. 

You can say that shaman is good when many people go to her. It means that she helps them a lot. On the contrary when no one goes to shaman that shaman is a bad one.

But I can recommend her as she is really great and she helped many people. My parents brought her to the Czech Republic last month and she also helped many people here. She is great when you can't have any children, when you have relationship problems or when you are befallen by misfortune in your life. She can also save an ill man from dying or at least prolong his life.

I also know great Tibetan doctors from Ulan-Ude who have cured my father of sclerosis multiplex. He is basically healthy now even though his condition is classified like incurable in western medicine. Though they didn't help me because of complexity of my problem and also because I visited them only once. 

Edited June 20, 2015 by Mnemonist

[Taomeow]

Thank you.

 

I haven't been to Buryatia but close enough -- Altai -- though only as a child.  Knew some interesting people from the area...  Know a bit about the Buryat shamanic tradition, as well as their strong ties with Tibet.  And a less obvious but most fascinating link to proto-taoism.    

 

Looks like you and your parents were very wise to seek help there.  Of course now that shamanism is experiencing a revival in Siberia, one has to watch out for quacks jumping on the bandwagon...  but the real ancient tradition never disappeared even if it went underground for a long time. 

 

If you were told that you're having a shamanic syndrome, this is basically something that is resolved in the spirit world, and usually only upon accepting the choice made by the spirits.  Do you think you did?..  

 

Really interesting, I hope you ride it out successfully.     

[Mnemonist]

I don't think I have consciously accepted their decision because I don't want to be a shaman. It is pretty hard and also dangerous.

But what I heard from Tujana. She told us that there were many shamans in her line. She was already chosen by spirits when she was born and she didn't have any choice but to accept it. She also didn't want to become a shaman because she wanted to lead a normal life and have children (you can have children as shaman but they are in danger from spirits). But the spirit of her grandpa visited her in a dream and told her that she could only choose between dying and becoming a shaman. She didn't listen to him and after a year or so she had a stroke and half of her body was paralyzed. She was at hospital and couldn't move from the bed. The spirit of her grandpa has come into her dreams again and she accepted the offer of becoming shaman. The spirit told her that there needs to be a ritual done in order for her to be deparalyzed. 

I do not remember what she told us about the ritual though I know it was quite interesting but I can ask my father who remembers it for sure. But I know the outcome - she was then normal and could move. The spirit visited her again and told her that she has to seek a women with white hair in Mongolia. So they sold their only cow they had and went to Ulanbatar. There they somehow found this women after a week or so (I don't now remember all the details of this). That woman became her mentor.

If she doesn't do rituals for some time she becomes anxious and has a pressure in her head too. She told us that in Buryatia it is normal that some people have this syndrome but they can still live with it without becoming shamans. They can for example heal people with their hands to relieve the tension in them. Even their governor does some massages once or twice a week and then he returns back to his work. Everyone is different.

 

She has done our family a huge ritual which was half-day long last month when she was here. When she was in trance she touched my head and the pressure was released. I was fine for a few days. She also told me that now everything would get slowly back to normal and that it would take approximately half a year. I thought that if I would be home for 6 months that I can't be possibly cured.

 

But it seems that some synchronicity is happening now - present events gave me a lot more hope. It seems that all the complexity that happened to me was for a reason.

Edited June 20, 2015 by Mnemonist

[Taomeow]

Thank you for the story, Mnemonist.

 

Yes, this is classic.  Hardly anyone wants to become a shaman willingly (except for some excitable people who don't have the calling and don't know what's involved -- they only see the glory part, the power part, and seldom the heartbreaking compassion part, the self-sacrifice, the dangers from every realm, and so on.)  Shamans have been alternatively demonized and romanticized in modern times, but seldom understood.  

 

And you're right that everyone is different -- some people have to accept the call or die, others are given a choice, still others, a quest to determine if they qualify.  And some lose the spirits' interest -- the spirits, too, change their mind.  And some negotiate a deal.  "I won't do it, but I will do such and such instead."  "OK, accepted, this is the price to pay -- pay up."  OK.  Paid in full.  No more spiritual obligations -- or opportunities.  It all depends...  One has to step very carefully making decisions in these matters.  One thing I know is that natural born shamans who lost the power or bailed out in order to have a "normal life" are never happy in this normal life.  It just doesn't fit -- they can make it fit externally, but internally, no.  

 

Anyway...  this is a huge subject, don't let me ramble.  I'm glad to hear you're doing better. 

[Leif]

This might also be worth checking, Hakuin's Naikan:

http://buddhihermit.blogspot.cz/2012/01/true-naikan.html