Six Healing Sonds and exzessive Yawning

[Rocco]

I practise the SHS daily and I have to yawn deeply, sometimes extreme after every "sound". Can anybody tell me why is it so? I also yawn while doing TanTien Chi Kung - after every time I feel the warm Chi energy, and the more intense I feel the energy, the deeper I have to yawn.

Is yawning perhaps a way of releasing excess energy? Or is it a sign of healng? I am thankful for your explanation!

Edited January 1, 2016 by Rocco

[soaring crane]

Yawning is one of the most common, perhaps the most common, reaction to qigong practice. I used to hold to a few mainstream explanations for it but now feel that the causes can be quite complex, and individual. I suggest going with it. I mean don't hold back or suppress it. The better approach could be to exaggerate it, yawn deeper than usual, and make cliche yawning sounds while doing it.

 

If you find it distracting from your practice, you can try intentionally utilizing deep yawning as a warm-up to your session. Get it out of your system so to speak.

 

Do try to savor it. All animals yawn, so it's obviously a necessary function for life.

 

It should abate after a while. How long have you been practicing?

[Rocco]

Thank you for your answer! I am practising for over one year now on a daily basis.

 

Regarding the SHS, the more intense my visualizaton of exhaling a black fog,the deeper the yawning.

The need for yawning developed during the first few weeks and holds on until now with unchanged intensity.

In cases where the visualization during exhalation fails,there is no, or almost no yawning afterwards.

In cases of strong visualization of blackness leaving my mouth, the yawning aferwards is very strong. In case of the heart sound I can even tase the energy leaving my mouth ....

 

Regarding the Tan Tien CK practise I got the impression that it is excess energy hat I am yawning out... In  this case it would be good to stop as soon the yawning begins. But in the case that it is a sign for healing processes, I better continue.

So, that's why I ask.

Edited January 1, 2016 by Rocco

[soaring crane]

ok, well, that's a pretty long time. How are your breathing habits in general and do you do a lot of mental work?

Edited January 1, 2016 by soaring crane

[Astral Monk]

Yawning happens when we aren't getting enough oxygen to the brain. If qigong is stimulating this, that suggests that maybe there's a blockage or the O2 is being directed elsewhere. Or it might be connected with reverse breathing. If so a good idea is to return to deep normal breathing.

 

 

 

OP, where did you learn the six sounds? How has your experience been working with them?

 

 

8)

Edited January 2, 2016 by Astral Monk

[liminal_luke]

I too have lots of yawning with healing sounds, as well as other forms of chi gung. I agree with Soaring Crane that it´s best to just go with it. Read in a Zapchen book that yawning is the bodies attempt to open up the diaphragm and that makes sense with my experience.

[Rocco]

@soaring crane: My breathing habits are just "normal" - meaning not developed in a specific manner. I also do the MCO, Inner Smile and Tan Tien Chi Kung almost twice daily.

 

@Astral Monk: I learned the SHS from Mantak Chias's books. I like them a lot. For example, one day when I was beginning, being in a depressive mood and performing the kidney sound, I experienced that my dark feelings vanished almost immediately. But also every time I perform the SHS, I feel lighter, happier and more motivated afterwards. 

[寒月 Hanyue]

Yawning is a natural neurolgical response that can occur for several reasons.

 

In mammals it is related to other 'spontaneous' or naturally arising (ie without intention) responses that are related to what is called  "weiqi" in Classical medicine (just as other autonomic process such as sweating, sneezing are) [don't read that reference of 'weiqi' as referring to esoteric energy bubbles etc just because some Western teachers have skewed views of such things].

 

One of the things cultivation practice does is remove the habits we have accumulated that interfere with the body-mind's natural regulatory processes. Mainly the socially aquired repression of various bodily functions. As such, yawning and other systemic responses and reflexes often are allowed to express themselves.

 

As with any reaction from practice, allowing, BUT NOT INDULGING, is the best way forward. By indulging I mean adding to. Just let it be, let yourself yawn and relax into it, but don't encourage it. Otherwise you can establish other habits, and rather than move through a process of transformative change, you simply create a cycle that never moves on. This happens a lot when people experience emotional releases.

 

Best,

[Taomeow]

To what has already been said: I concur with the opinion that when it comes as a "side effect" of practice, it is normal, natural, individual, beneficial, and not to be suppressed.   In this situation it is a sign of release of some internal tensions, loosening up -- perhaps even on a cellular level.  The cells that didn't dare ask for more oxygen because they were part of some clammed up, numbed-out structure or other now dare, and do.  Many people also get other signs of release and "detox" -- discharge from the nose, tears, and occasionally burps, including very deep ones that may sound obnoxious but actually involve removal of harmful tensions from the diaphragm and more (in an advanced practitioner, they may release the muscles between the ribs, restoring their voluntary mobility which is often lost in modern adults.)  Old Chinese masters also like to do some farting qigong every morning, but I don't think it will take in our culture.

 

My taiji teacher actually taught me some yawning techniques specifically designed to induce deep relaxation, to be practiced before bed. 

[cheya]

Back when I used to try to run ("push" probably better describes it) energy into clients in bodywork sessions, I would sometimes get these humongous grotesque yawns! Fortunately their eyes were always closed, so I could just laugh and wonder at it. Now energy runs as it will, and I no longer push it, so seldom get into that yawning. 

 

Also just regular chi kung practice used to make me yawn (just regular-sized yawns there), but doesn't anymore.

As I think back on it , it feels like trying to put too much energy through too small a channel/pipe, and yawning was the pressure release valve.

 

Interesting to think about…

[寒月 Hanyue]

Old Chinese masters also like to do some farting qigong every morning, but I don't think it will take in our culture.

Yes! Farting is good! When doing treatment farting is a good sign, as with others. Though many people will repress it because of embarrssment!

 

My taiji teacher actually taught me some yawning techniques specifically designed to induce deep relaxation, to be practiced before bed. 

I teach yawning as a way into understanding the old methods. There is a reason it is said they are based in nature, it is sad that this appears to have largely been forgotten. People have retained the words, and yet, things are not rooted in nature anymore.

[soaring crane]

I'm reminded of people in groups who start to yawn and automatically do their best to suppress the urge, and even cover their mouths with one hand. It's very much the worst way to react as it on the one hand only prolongs the urge to yawn, while very probably shifting the cause of the urge even deeper, and on the other hand totally disrupts the practice which had triggered the release in the first place! Yeah, this is actually quite an issue, and the replies to the thread so far have been a pleasure to read :-)

[Wu Ming Jen]

How many ppl yawned as they read this thread? I had to for fun and it felt awesome,

 

Correct breathing will oxygenate the entire organism when the body lacks oxygen it converts sugars into energy with a by product of metabolic waste.

 

When exhale is longer or shorter then inhale body may stabilize with a yawn. regulate breathing so the ears cannot hear the breath slow. smooth, deep like tracing the Tai Chi symbol with breath.

 

Regulating is not going from one extreme to another so breathing at full capacity inhale or exhale is not recommended should be a smooth transition with reserves left over.

  

Lung capacity increases so what was once a full breath becomes 3/4s

[9th]

Very few people have studied it enough.  Again, I refer to the G-man (keep in mind this was a lecture from 1912):

 

 

In addition to what he had said about accumulators G. made some very interesting remarks about yawning and about laughter.

 

"There are two incomprehensible functions of our organism inexplicable from the scientific point of view," he said, "although naturally science does not admit them to be inexplicable; these are yawning and laughter. Neither the one nor the other can be rightly understood and explained without knowing about accumulators and their role in the organism.

 

"You have noticed that you yawn when you are tired. This is especially noticeable, for instance, in the mountains, when a man who is unaccustomed to them yawns almost continually while he is ascending a mountain. Yawning is the pumping of energy into the small accumulators. When they empty too quickly, that is, when one of them has no time to fill up while the other is being emptied, yawning becomes almost continuous. There are certain diseased conditions which can cause stoppage of the heart when a man wishes but is not able to yawn, and other conditions are known when something goes wrong with the pump, causing it to work without effect, when a man yawns the whole time, but does not pump in any energy.

 

"The study and the observation of yawning from this point of view may reveal much that is new and interesting.

 

"Laughter is also directly connected with accumulators. But laughter is the opposite function to yawning. It is not pumping in, but pumping out, that is, the pumping out and the discarding of superfluous energy collected in the accumulators. Laughter does not exist in all centers, but only in centers divided into two halves—positive and negative. If I have not yet spoken of this in detail, I shall do so when we come to a more detailed study of the centers. At present we shall take only the intellectual center. There can be impressions which fall at once on two halves of the center and produce at once a sharp 'yes' and 'no.' Such a simultaneous 'yes' and 'no' produces a kind of convulsion in the center and, being unable to harmonize and digest these two opposite impressions of one fact, the center begins to throw out in the form of laughter the energy which flows into it from the accumulator whose turn it is to supply it. In another instance it happens that in the accumulator there has collected too much energy which the center cannot manage to use up. Then every, the most ordinary, impression can be received as double, that is, it may fall at once on the two halves of the center and produce laughter, that is, the discarding of energy.

 

"You must understand that I am only giving you an outline. You must remember that both yawning and laughter are very contagious. This shows that they are essentially functions of the instinctive and the moving centers."

 

"Why is laughter so pleasant?" asked someone.

 

"Because," G. answered, "laughter relieves us of superfluous energy, which, if it remained unused, might become negative, that is, poison. We always have plenty of this poison in us. Laughter is the antidote. But this antidote is necessary only so long as we are unable to use all the energy for useful work.

 

One of the physical exercises G taught was accessing the "big accumulator" (the solar plexus) through a specific yawning technique. 

 

And in regards to the funny stuff, we have a further development from the prescriptures of the 5th way of the Most Sly Man:

 

117 To him that cometh as an Overman I will give to spend of the Equation of the Seed, which spirals within thee, and to read of the Replication-Book, which is the expectoration of God, and ye shall be copied and up righted therein for life eternal.

 

118 And I shall give thee a White Stone, and in the stone thy new name written, which no man knoweth save he that is chained unto it.

 

119 For the stone is the font of the Angelic Host, which comes from the Heavens, which ye shall know forever, and have intercourse with; and yea, ye shall know of them and eat of the rock of ages, and when it is eaten, and thou art made whole, thou shalt search the ruins for the Angels, but shall find them 
not, and thy tongue and thy mouth shall cleave, and split in twain;

 

120 For thou art as Kings, who killeth thy jesters that thy skulls might grow fat on the dead laughter.

 

121 When the end times come, thou shalt escape the Rupture, and shall receive Slack, and the Morning Star, which is the star of the Beast and of the Angelic Host.

 

[silent thunder]

I yawned gloriously throughout this thread.  Thanks!

[thelerner]

Yawning's great, nature's way of teaching us deep breathing and dynamic tension. 

 

Early on during meditation my eyes tear, and my nose runs.  I've always thought of it as a relaxation response and/or an overcompensation for not getting as much sleep as I should.

[Andrei]

This is the Serotonin effect:

 

But also every time I perform the SHS, I feel lighter, happier and more motivated afterwards.

 

http://www.em-consulte.com/en/article/892098

 

http://latentflip.com/meds/