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I’m looking for some advice on avoiding or dealing with extreme emotional reactions resulting from qigong practice.
I’ve got some emotional trauma resulting from spiritual experiences that ultimately proved confusing and harmful. I can’t get into the mindset of trusting my inner wisdom – this is precisely the thing that is painful. I suffer from chronic pain and breathing trouble, and in general from being emotionally numb.
I’ve tried zhan zhuang, yi jin jing, bits of ba duan jin, tao yin, and the microcosmic orbit, and all these practices have essentially the same effect. I feel anxious, drained, and emotionally vulnerable. Basically I feel like life is overwhelming and I need to hide out in my room. Honestly I’ve lost friends since I’ve been doing qigong, and I’m going to stop forever unless I get some good advice. I’ve been to someone I believe was a talented qigong healer, and his only solution was doing more qigong.
Tai chi makes me feel uncomfortable. Even the slightest thing involving subtle energy is painful. Regular yoga is okay, probably because anything subtle energy-based has been stripped out of it. At the same time, I’m an extremely sensitive person, and I can quickly feel my energy and go very deeply with these practices when it’s called for.
Honestly, I’m beginning to think that practices that build sensitivity, like qigong, are not the way for me, and maybe I should somehow learn to be less sensitive or just to assert my will over the world instead of getting carried away by sensations. But what sort of practice that would be, I don’t know.
Any insight would be much appreciated.
meditate
Hi, I’ve been in a somewhat similar situation. About 20 years ago, when I was a teenager, I was part of an occult group where we were trained to do pretty extreme meditations to try and raise the Kundalini and the activate the Microcosmic orbit. This unbalanced me from quite an early and I experienced some of your symptoms throughout my 20’s.
I became very sensitive to energy, felt drained most of the time and had little desire to socialise. But I have since rectified the problem and feel much better now.
You definately want to stay away from practices like the microcosmic orbit. I’m not sure what kind of zhan zuang you were doing, was it like hugging the tree with your arms in a circle at heart level? That’s probably not a good idea either, I had negative effects from that as well when I was going through that time.
A lot of these practices raise the qi upwards and/or make the qi more diffuse which is not want you want. What helped me was focusing on moving the qi *downwards only* and focusing on condensing qi where safe and possible. You basically want to be like a pyramid with the wider base on the bottom and the narrow point on top, At the moment I think you’re more like an upside down pyramid with weak lower centers and over-active higher centers, resulting in ungroundedness, disconnectedness from the world, anxiety, social issues etc.
I practice Dragon and Tiger now and again, but I find it’s only as effective for this as your ability to store and condense the resulting qi in the dantian after practice. If that’s not on point, then it tends to exacerbate the symptoms in my experience.
The dissolving method as outlined in Energy Gates Qigong is very effective. In this practice you move qi downwards from the top of the head down to below the feet. I find it’s more effective when you feel the qi becoming heavier as it descends down the body until it reaches the feet where it becomes very heavy and condensed, like your feet are very heavy and dense at the end.
Another very helpful practice I have found is a practice by Dr. Lawrence Wilson called the ‘Pushing Down Excersise’. This is much more forceful than the dissolving method and you basically create a powerful suction below your feet and suck the qi down your body with great force and for a long time. I’d probably recommend this the most, but it’s quite forceful whereas Bruce Frantzis’ methods are in general a lot more gentle so bare that in mind, I’m not sure if he would recommend such a technique. I can only speak from my own experience.
Here are some links about this excersise:
– https://www.drlwilson.com/articles/DOWN HEALING.htm
– https://www.drlwilson.com/articles/PUSHING.htmThe technique itself: http://drlwilson.com/articles/meditation.htm
If you do these practices alongside a physical excersise regime like cardio and weightlifting (particularly lower body excersises such as squats, lunges and deadlifts) you should be able to reverse your situation and become a lot more grounded, centered, present and solid in the world.
Thank you David. I’m going to try the techniques you sent and see how it goes.
The zhan zhuang I was doing involved standing straight for a few minutes and then raising the hands to circle the heart. That was a very challenging and unpleasant exercise. The instructions warned that shaking and emotional releases might occur, and one night I did start trembling, and terrible thoughts about how helpless my life was filled my mind. People say these emotional releases are supposed to be good, but I can honestly say that nothing good came of this. As I have repeated similar kinds of releases, I have only felt weaker. The other exercises had similar if less drastic effects. I’m more familiar with Chinese medicine than with qigong and I have tried to diagnose what’s going on in TCM terms. My tongue changes a really strange pinkish purple color that looks like bad blood stagnation, but it seems weird that stagnation would occur if blockages are being dispersed.
Anyway I’m going to play around a bit with what you said about trying to condense qi rather than disperse it, and with the exercises you mentioned. Do you think the dissolving exercise has a different effect from zhan zhuang? Because for me zhan zhuang was definitely very rough.
Thanks again for your reply.
I’ve had some similar experiences. It even went so far that I developed symptoms of schizophrenia and was forcibly institutionalized twice for that. Unpleasant stuff. I’m not sure if it was the practices I was doing at the time or genetic predisposition, or whatever, but my response was to shut down to anything I considered ‘spiritual’ at the time. This even extended to basic interpersonal sensitivity if you know what I mean, haha. I wanted to completely phase out of whatever I was into and become macho and materialistic or whatever it was that seemed cool at the time.
I did this ‘tough attitude’ practice from about age 20 to 23. I wouldn’t say I felt at peace or anything, but it was way better than spiraling down a rabbit hole (I was seriously delusional). I kind of used anger to mask all my feelings if that makes any sense. It was a totally contrived front though and I probably looked a silly. Maybe even a little like the president of the United States, but hopefully not quite that bad.
I gradually started to soften and did Yoga for a while. Then a few years ago I picked up Chi Gung again. Can’t quite recall why. But anyway, I was still paranoid about falling down the rabbit hole again, so I did it completely from a physical perspective. I just ignored any sense of ‘chi’ and focused on the biomechanics. The thing is though, you really need a good teacher to even begin to get an idea of what to go for biomechanically. It’s basically impossible to figure it out on your own, from my perspective.
Anyway, I’m softening even more now and starting to try for opening and closings which seem kind of chi-esque to me. But just working alignments into my body for so long seems to have given me a lot of the kind of internal strength I was trying to force with my macho shit. It’s really hard to explain how it works, you have to experience it. It’s like you open up all the places that feel weak, I’d guess. But you can’t do it in the exaggerated yoga way, cause it doesn’t stick in the same way. I’m still just a beginner, but that’s what it feels like.
It doesn’t sound like you’re a schizo, but hopefully you can find some useful parallels in this excerpt of my sad little journey. One thing I want to add is that I do think there is an element of danger in Chi Gung for people who are naturally unstable like me. Sometimes I just have to practice less to reduce what I suppose is the “upward current”.
Thank you for sharing, Ryan. I’m not schizophrenic, but I can definitely relate to your story. I’ve absolutely been through a phase of extraordinary anger at the world, treating people like crap and just basically shutting down, and you know what, it felt good. At the same time it’s frightening to be numb and to watch yourself behave in ways you never would if you were fully inhabiting your body and mind. I also feel that qigong can greatly soften the hard places, but what you do when you turn into a gooey mess? It sounds like you also connect easily with your spiritual side, but struggle to integrate it. In my experience no one has any answers to this. Our dilemma is no longer that we want spiritual experiences and don’t know how to have them. If that were the case, things would be easier. There are programs you can follow and clear steps you can take. But if any master has the answer to this, I haven’t found them. I think we have to inhabit our own reality and take small steps forward, relying on our own internal guidance, even if it isn’t always reliable. But that’s just my two cents, and I don’t have any final answers.
Yes, what I got from the ‘hugging the tree’ exercise was just more diffuse qi. Without the neigong component of sinking qi, I believe those exercises are counter-productive for symptoms like yours.
The dissolving method sinks qi which makes you more grounded. But for a much more powerful and quick effect Dr. Wilson’s methods are very useful from my experience. His pushing down exercise in a ntushel: while standing or sitting, suck qi powerfully down your body from your feet. That’s all you do. I find it helpful to imagine two powerful vaccuum cleaner nozzles attached to my heels and turn up the power to maximum. The key is feeling, you want to generate the feeling of suction below your feet. And you’re sucking qi from the top of your head down your body like a straw, with the suction part below the feet. I’ve managed to create a very powerful suction on a few occassions. I do this several times a day now and it’s helping me a lot.
Condensing is a bit more tricky in that you don’t want to do it wrong. I find feeling qi condensing at the feet with the dissolving method is safe, since you’re dissolving blockages in the body and then condensing only at the feet. Condensing in the dantian has to be managed with more care, and I’d only recommend Bruce Frantzis’ method for storing qi in the dantian as outlined in Dragon and Tiger.
Hello there, I just wrote a post to part of the forum that I’m not sure if you have access to (Tao-Meditation), but relating to a locking-tension of the nervous-system, triggers a stress-reaction (both done indirectly via a controlling sense and/or readiness in the nervous themselves.. as well as being in a specific- “ready for action” state..)
— while one can learn to be “ready for action” without triggering that state, ie int’l martialarts.. but that has to be learned… while many can trigger that ‘ready to jump’ listening state of tension, even if just standing, or even sitting.. (ie some can seem to be relaxing, and yet be more pins&needles than another person in that same state, or even a different person who is ready-to-explode… who can be in a state of sensitivity and awareness, without any tension… different state).
anyway- this post might be of interest.. (In regards to the other posts, something I might add is that many things may refer to general categories, and- as the saying used to go- ‘the devil is in the details’… ie the specifics matter… thus “chigung” means different things, ‘meditate’ does just mean one thing, and much that is “out-there’ in general popculture called that- may make your situation worse… (so the details, or the what, is significant)
luck in your seeking[Above relates to a specific practice, and some may not agree with or perhaps see relevance, but might point in distinctions that are important.]
I am very sensitive to electromagnetic waves, and feel bad from them directly, but feel better if mixed with longitudinal waves, I call them gravitational waves,
There are several names for qi, ki, chi, gi, prana, pneuma in ancient Greece, mana in Hawaiian culture, lüng in Tibetan Buddhism, manitou in the culture of the indigenous peoples of the Americas, ruah in Jewish culture.
Taichi, Aikido, Yoga, Qigong are through human bodies.
The following videos, images, and sites have been made by qi producing device, though made by human being.
I am not sure whether you like it or not.
But you might try it!
http://dp51070338.lolipop.jp/japaneseqi.htm
http://dp51070338.lolipop.jp/
Hi, I have practised deep meditation for many years and I am familiar with meditation when done properly or when done under the guidance of a proper guru or master. This is not about getting a proper guidance or my belief that meditation can be done safely without unnecessary problem, but because I don’t have your kind of problem and is actually not familiar with what you describe, but maybe I can give some opinions that might help you.
1) Spiritual and meditation practice is a process whereby you turn the mind and consciousness inward and upward (transcend to higher realm). Our mind is outward all the time, that is, in dreams and deep thoughts we are also engaged in the material outside world.
2) We have no problem living in this outside world that we understand. In meditation, we shut out the outside consciousness and experience our inner mind world. Although all human being is supposed to have a pure powerful and blissful inner mind and soul, he is however covered in spiritual dirt or some call karma which is painful, fearful etc. When you go in and experienced this unhappy condition, you cannot forget it easily and come out into the world and be carefree as before. But a person can break through this unhappy stage while in meditation by cultivating detachment to this world of illusion and have a strong desire for God, universal mind and love etc. he can be protected by spiritual energy such as mantra and a master who is in the physical world. Time will slowly heal your spiritual(or mind) wound.
3) If your condition is not too bad you can simply immerse yourself in worldly activities and go back to your old familiar world to forget your bad experience. Get yourself busy and remember that physically struggling for survival is a good feeling.
4) Yoga is mostly physical in nature and it doesn’t disturb you too much. Doing spiritual yoga or you try to enter an inner body atmosphere while doing it, will lead you to live your unpleasant experiences and causes pain.
5)In qigong practice, we try to go inside the physical body. We try to be more sensitive to our inner subtle body to exercise the chi or prana energy. It is as if we have layers of physical, chi, mental and spiritual bodies and each layer gots more and more subtle. All the layers are separate in our concept, but they operate as a unit. Woking the chi body will more easily lead you to contact the inner mental body that has give you the bad experience. Try to understand we have an outer world that we live with and an inner world that we are not aware of.
6)Qigong like most other physical exercises are often designed to stimulate, to built strength, and a stronger body. Your inner world is disturbed and you don’t want to build up more energy but you want to calm it down or to clean it up.
7) Standing AND dissolving sound appropriate for you. The process is like taking pure water to flush down your body slowly from the top of head downward inside your body until it drops all the way into your feet and into the ground. Stay ground with your feet on the ground and the earth will nourish you with pure solid earthly energy. You want your consciousness to lead you through the dropping and dissolving. Feel good about it and keep reminding yourself that all the troubling inner world is transforming from ice to water to gas to nothing. Check up Energyarts sources for the method to do this qigong. Your mind does the transformation and you have to continue to do it for some time.I hope these concepts help you to figure out what is happening to you. Helps to get back your mental health.
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