Seth Ananda Posted March 4, 2009 I have been finding it Fascinating putting my Daughter to sleep at nights. I often lie next to her as she falls asleep and I guess cause I often meditate while I wait, I am in a more sensitive space to feel these things. Â While she lies there awake with her active personality there is a kind of Yang feeling, but there is the Definite moment when she Falls asleep, its like a switch and her energy suddenly goes yin, sort of like a vacuum. Â It was such a surprise when I first felt it, as the feeling is so strong and I had never felt it from Adults I have slept next to. Its so deep and peaceful. Â I was wondering about peoples reflections and Ideas about this.. Â Do baby's (and possibly Taoist masters) sleep in a different way to the rest of us? Her sleep seems to be much more vitalising or refreshing than an Adult's. As we get conditioned do we loose the ability to go so Yin at night? Â Please comment... Â Seth Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
hagar Posted March 4, 2009 I have been finding it Fascinating putting my Daughter to sleep at nights. I often lie next to her as she falls asleep and I guess cause I often meditate while I wait, I am in a more sensitive space to feel these things.  While she lies there awake with her active personality there is a kind of Yang feeling, but there is the Definite moment when she Falls asleep, its like a switch and her energy suddenly goes yin, sort of like a vacuum.  It was such a surprise when I first felt it, as the feeling is so strong and I had never felt it from Adults I have slept next to. Its so deep and peaceful.  I was wondering about peoples reflections and Ideas about this..  Do baby's (and possibly Taoist masters) sleep in a different way to the rest of us? Her sleep seems to be much more vitalising or refreshing than an Adult's. As we get conditioned do we loose the ability to go so Yin at night?  Please comment...  Seth  Ah, yes!  How I was in awe of this when my son was smaller. I also lied next to him and felt the shift. It was like "....... the whole world is at peace......" It is definately energetic, or more on a Shen/space/light dimension. But a profound experience.  Babies are filled with pre-natal Yang and Yin, yet I feel that this is not the whole explanation. I also feels like when I sit with my teacher. When there is a connection to the Cosmic energy, there is a shift, and I am immediately affected. The feeling I got from the sleep transition was exactly the same, like a connection to a greater peace and energy, almost like the little being was resting in the great communion it came from just some moments ago...  Makes me feel so lucky to have experienced it, and I know totally what you mean.  h Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Seth Ananda Posted March 4, 2009 Ah, yes! Â How I was in awe of this when my son was smaller. I also lied next to him and felt the shift. It was like "....... the whole world is at peace......" It is definately energetic, or more on a Shen/space/light dimension. But a profound experience. Â Babies are filled with pre-natal Yang and Yin, yet I feel that this is not the whole explanation. I also feels like when I sit with my teacher. When there is a connection to the Cosmic energy, there is a shift, and I am immediately affected. The feeling I got from the sleep transition was exactly the same, like a connection to a greater peace and energy, almost like the little being was resting in the great communion it came from just some moments ago... Â Makes me feel so lucky to have experienced it, and I know totally what you mean. Â h Cool, thanks. Do you think its prenatal yin or shen? please explain. I defiantly relate to the Deep peace part... Is your teacher a Taoist or..? Â Seth Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
hagar Posted March 4, 2009 Cool, thanks. Do you think its prenatal yin or shen? please explain. I defiantly relate to the Deep peace part... Is your teacher a Taoist or..?  Seth  Well, he's mainly Daoist, he's a qigong master.  I'm not a scholar on Daoist energetic theory. So if you want the details ask someone else. What is immanent in a baby is the pure pre-natal yang that has not decayed yet. This Yang energy can also be felt when you hold a baby, (atleast most babies). Like burning hot, makes you sweat, yet deeply soothing, almost sleep inducing.  What happens in the falling asleep moment is more of the energetic ripples that occur when consciousness re-merges with the cosmic energy, like being a part of a drop of rain that suddenly hits the surface of the ocean......and is together with everything.  What amazed me was how strongly it affected me, eventhough I was awake myself. Just witnessing.  h Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
joeblast Posted March 4, 2009 My ex girlfriend said (back when I had a good established longevity breathing routine) that it made my sleep so much more peaceful, kept the same abdominal breathing as while I was awake. That practice made an hour or two of meditation feel like 4-5 hours of sleep. Its been a while since my son was of that age, but reading this brought back some fond memories of him sleeping when he was very small. I totally know what you're talking about Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
soundhunter Posted March 4, 2009 Well they do a great deal of their growing when they're sleeping. Often when they are wee infants they go to sleep and when they wake up they look different, their faces have grown in the space of a couple of hours, or they wake up suddenly doing new things, it's crazy how much stuff is happening within them as they lay apparently passively. Talk about non action being powerful! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Seth Ananda Posted March 4, 2009 thanks everyone  Joeblast, would you like to describe the Longevity breathing routine a bit more? that rang some bells for me as I remember sleep after long pranayama sessions (with a lot of belly breathing) Often feeling quite different to normal sleep. I wonder if it was similar... Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
joeblast Posted March 4, 2009 (edited) I'm sure certain traditions have their certain methods - as for the longevity breath practice I do, I basically put a few ideas together from a few sources, with my intuition as the glue. A few common facets: Natural Abdominal Breathing (huiyin engaged, the whole 9,) looking down the nose (no-focus line of sight parallell to line of nose,) and I came up with a couple exercises to build sensitivity in the air passageways - so both the air passageways as well as what's engaged in the abdomen are initially trained to a certain level of sensitivity, pretty much the point at which one no longer needs to expend Yi-capital ( =build plenty of muscle memory) on the function and it can be relegated to background - more and more things are stripped from the forefront, until (to swipe a concept recently posted by augustleo ) the background becomes the foreground... for me this process happened as I gained more and more sensitivity, as breath receded into the background, so its not like get one and get the other, its a both evolve at once, almost as byproducts of the other...  I'm in the middle of writing an article explaining all of it, but I just simply havent put in the time to finish it and make sure its coherent, etc   Basically, the familiarization bit of it for the air passageways I describe ways to figure out where you can exert muscular control over portions of the passageway by pulling or pushing air from them. As you exert muscular control, you are firming the walls of the air passageway - the same thing happens when a hose gets overpressurized, more tension mounts on the walls of the hose. Part of my goal in this was to reduce that tension (muscles will become engaged to provide the support to maintain 'wall integrity', so when things are brought to a low working level, no extra musclular control is necessary) as well as limit and eventually remove the tiny little circular air currents that are turbulence...  Air passageways, top to bottom, you have the nostril flaps, maxillary sinuses, ethmoid sinuses, frontal sinuses (and a combination of the previous two if you gently breathe to the superior anterior aspect of the main nasal passageway...=3rd eye,) then going back to the sphenoid sinus/deep superior posterior aspect/Ni Wan, the soft palette, back of the throat, trachea, larynx, bronchi, upper/lower lungs, diaphragm, and when you finally get through all of that, if you've trained well enough to have a very smooth natural abdominal breath, you can literally let go of every aspect of your breath and simply respirate using LTT motion...you can even just about disengage the diaphragm when you have good sensitivity built up. Throughout this whole process, you're working on how to have a more soft, calm, slender, yet quite sufficiently deep breath - the easier you breathe, the deeper you sink into it, the less turbulence you will have throughout your air passageways - and this is the big key to a most energetically optimal breath - no turbulence, the air flows so softly and freely that you dont even feel like you are breathing whatsoever. I got to a point where I could no longer hear my breath, then I put in ear plugs and went right back to work on it until I couldnt hear my breath with earplugs in, until my heartbeat was background...right about there were minute-long breaths for me...amongst other things...  I'm trying to work my way back that deeply in practice, but tumult, oh sweet tumult... stress does a wonderful job, its like trying to free dive 25 feet with toddler bubbles on your arms...  I basically took Yang Jwing Ming's embryonic breathing method (one good point I didnt mention above was to imagine a golf ball or so at the ltt and grow it to a peach/orange size on inhale and back on exhale...good heat generator, that +huiyin seems to be two major activators here...but a particular such as the former can more easily be focused on once more elementary foundational aspects have been attained - but is a big key to the 'embryonic' aspect of it - in utero, we breathe that way, solely with the abdomen) as a lower foundation, took the longevity concept from Frantzis' opening the energy gates (he mentions 30, 120, 600 seconds (2 min, 5 min) as 'milestones' in the practice - getting upwards of a minute for me was accompanied by a surprising metabolic burst...done that 3 separate times, on my way to doing it again now ) and the air passageways was...kinda my own logical addition...  Check it out, I've had good feedback from the couple people I've passed this to so far I do this practice every night before I go to bed (usually after my other practices I do before before bed...) Its like landing a plane and the ground is sleep   oh, one other big key for me was mastering the transitions between inspiration and expiration - as you get to a certain point you're going to need the sensitivity-building foundation in order to fully master that breath transition. you want to keep the 'one breath' going and not pause on this one because this is longevity, smoove circle...) its pertinent to note the negative feedback mechanism built into the brain and hard-wired to the heart: try to slow your breath more than a certain rate and the negative feedback kicks in, increasing heart rate and breath rate by proxy. tension around the heart area will also detract from making progress here, one trick of this is to learn how to properly let go and suspend the heart in the midst of all of this - that is where you start to hit the next layer of the onion, the heart.... Edited March 4, 2009 by joeblast Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Seth Ananda Posted March 4, 2009 Joe, that's fantastic Thanks. I can't wait to read your full article.  And I thought I was good just meditating on the breath expansion and contraction starting and ending in the LTT.  I am going to re read this a few times  Seth. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
joeblast Posted March 4, 2009 Ahhh, that's basically it. If you like pictures I grabbed a couple, but really, everything of substance is right there above Glad you find it helpful! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Seth Ananda Posted March 4, 2009 Joe I relate to that negative feed back thing speeding up the heart. when I was a violent young Teen I began meditating to develop chi cause i thought that if I could smash bricks then I could definitely smash skulls better. The only meditation I could find was a Buddhist technique observing the breath at the nose/heart/abdomen. as it moved in and out. if i didn't pass out drunk I would meditate at night and a freaky thing started to happen. the breath would shorten and shorten till I could only feel it at the nose, and then after a while it would seem to stop. and my heart would have slowed right down as well. At first I would freak out and make my self gasp big breaths of air but i wasn't out of breath. So after a while I decided to trust it. and low and behold, my body would seem to disappear and I would feel like I was floating in an Infinite sea of the most incredible peace. I have no Idea how long I would stay there but I loved it. Â The effect on my life was huge. Every time it happened I came out seriously altered. I began to Love the feeling of being mentally clear. Began to hate alcohol and pot. Began to find my friends repellent (thugs) and even more began to hate my lifestyle. It led to my escape from my home town and I can't thank it enough. Â But techniques that try to slow my breath only seem to kick in the negative feed back thing. Â Any feedback? Â Thank you Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
joeblast Posted March 5, 2009 Well, breath can be calmed, slowed, but only so much at any given time. So explore the underpinnings of what produces a good easy, stable cardiovascular rate, extrapolate in both directions. That's the reason the embryonic breath was foundational to my idea - basically what I try to do with that is, with every single breath, try to execute the most energetically optimal breath. In practice, not like its a thought, but a direction. Combining the sensitivity building of the abdomen and airways, your cardiovascular rate gradually becomes lower, and through the process you become a little more adept at gaining more conscious control over it. The first time I did this, it took me a good 3-4 solid months to really reach where I did with the technique - I was at perhaps 15-20 second breaths when I started...put ear plugs in my ears as my progress rounded 30, 35 seconds...when I was regularly hitting 50, 60, 75 second breaths in meditation, I could sit down for two hours and have absolutely no idea how much time had passed, but I felt like I just slept for 4-5 hours. The perception was a little more benign at night, though, because I began supplementing ~3 hours of sleep with meditation. The amazing learning trip I've been on since around that time has been amazing, and I really feel ready to stop learning and just do.  Its one of those habits...you kick yourself if you lose the habit  So yeah...my feedback is basically...work on the basics, its not a complicated process, nothing special or tricky...its just another gongfu Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Seth Ananda Posted March 5, 2009 Well, breath can be calmed, slowed, but only so much at any given time. So explore the underpinnings of what produces a good easy, stable cardiovascular rate, extrapolate in both directions. That's the reason the embryonic breath was foundational to my idea - basically what I try to do with that is, with every single breath, try to execute the most energetically optimal breath. In practice, not like its a thought, but a direction. Combining the sensitivity building of the abdomen and airways, your cardiovascular rate gradually becomes lower, and through the process you become a little more adept at gaining more conscious control over it. The first time I did this, it took me a good 3-4 solid months to really reach where I did with the technique - I was at perhaps 15-20 second breaths when I started...put ear plugs in my ears as my progress rounded 30, 35 seconds...when I was regularly hitting 50, 60, 75 second breaths in meditation, I could sit down for two hours and have absolutely no idea how much time had passed, but I felt like I just slept for 4-5 hours. The perception was a little more benign at night, though, because I began supplementing ~3 hours of sleep with meditation. The amazing learning trip I've been on since around that time has been amazing, and I really feel ready to stop learning and just do.  Its one of those habits...you kick yourself if you lose the habit  So yeah...my feedback is basically...work on the basics, its not a complicated process, nothing special or tricky...its just another gongfu Wonderful Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
joeblast Posted March 5, 2009 I'm honored that it is of benefit, it sounds like this will resonate with some of your older experiences. Keep me posted on how this works for you Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
