Month 6 Discussion

[Anonymous]

Part 1 of Month 6:

Relax, Drop, & Open your chest and shoulders and balance your head on your shoulders.

1. Review (what you have done the last 2 weeks.) (Use 3 sets of 6 breaths)
—Stabilize the diaphragm and belly breathing. Recognize the tone of your whole bodies emotional feeling and mental state.
—Relax and calm them down

2. Warm up–(Use 3 sets of 6 breaths)
—With belly breathing let your breath descend down the front of your body through hips and legs until you can feel your breath entering your feet and returning back up to your belly and diaphragm.

3. 3 sets of 7 (Notice how the chest feels)
—rub palms, place on chest, notice the feeling
—drop chest (tap, massage, then feel chest without touching–noticing each process and what you are feeling.
—massage belly (recognize what the chest does)
—pat the belly like you would a dog (recognizing the feeling)

4. Be aware of the entire front of your body

Please give me some help on this summary. There is quite a bit of work to be done this month. I’m looking forward to the process.

[Anonymous]

Hi, Joan.

This is a good summary. Thanks for your work.

Here are a few things I wrote down when I listened through part 1:
In the process of activating the awareness of the chest, feel the breath and the relationship between the breath, heart, and emotions.
Keep the diaphragm lifter.
Feel into the chest and neck to feel and relax tight spots or tension.
As usual, note distraction and the countdown to distraction.
Rub the area around the heart (he says “pet it” at one point) and let the emotions smooth out.
As the heart softens, relax and drop the chest and shoulders.
Seek to join the dropping of the chest with the awareness of the body and breath in the lower body.

You’re right: this is a lot of stuff to integrate in a single meditation.

I hope others will chime in with their observations.

[Anonymous]

Thanks Matthew
Those comments are very helpful.

I’m finding this month’s ideas are much easier for me to follow. There is more to do and that helps me meditate longer. The previous two months lacked the details I needed.

[Anonymous]

Yes, there’s a lot to do in this meditation. It really is pretty complicated. I find the time passes really quickly.

[Anonymous]

Side breathing is a new challenge for me.

[Anonymous]

Month 6 (Part 2)
Goals:
–Get to know your midriff and sit better.
–Side breathing
–using your midriff and dropping your chest, raise your upper back and spine. Lifting the midriff also lifts the diaphragm and activates the body’s left and right channels of energy.

1. Review (3 sets of 7 breaths) Make sure the diaphragm stays lifted without collapsing. Drop your shoulders.
–Do this until your mind is calm and focused.
–Be aware of the front of the body (face to feet)
–With each breath release your anxiety and physical pain

2. Opening the Midriff (3 sets of 8 breaths)
–put your hands on your midriff (also known as your love handles)
–tap and massage midriff and chest
–Be aware of tight spots in midriff, chest, and neck
–Then use this awareness by breathing into the midriff.
–Rest and resume counting
–Midriff will rise with the inhale. Simultaneously feel the front of body, face, chest, belly, legs, and feet with each breath.
–Drop and release the shoulders
–Simple movements to feel the midriff:
V of forefinger and thumb
With back straight, bend forward using midriff to come back up. (one cycle of breaths)
Make circles or go side to side, body right and left, forward and back.

3. Raising The Spine
–The balance point for dropping the chest is raising the spine
–Both work like an elevator
–When the upper spine collapses so does your head and neck.

4. Lower and Mid Spine (from tailbone to just in back of your diaphragm.
–notice what the midriff does to influence the lower spine.
–Breathing into midriff and belly, feel the vertebrae and muscles that connect to them.
–Does focusing on your midriff and creating space in your lower back make you aware of any emotional tone?
–Relax and recognize these emotions

5. Upper Spine
–Breathing into and raising the midriff also links the upper spine
–Inhale (Lift) Exhale (Relax) Let the vertebrae stabilize

[Anonymous]

Hello All,

Are we to be incorporating all this into each session for the first half of month 6? I took it as we are to work on each one progressively and incorporate the next component of instruction as we go along.

Nonetheless, the summary is very useful; I always enjoy hearing what everyone has to add.

Thanks for sharing.

[Anonymous]

As I began to include breathing with my midriff I found that I was naturally breathing with my lower back/kidneys. My initial thought was that this was a good thing; should I be doing so? Or should I leave it out until we are instructed?

I haven’t looked ahead in the coming months but it seems as though we are slowly incorporating taoist breathing techniques as the months go by.

Many Thanks,

Kevin

[Anonymous]

Has anyone had any experience with moving the liver or spleen and have any insight to offer?

[Anonymous]

…yes, Bruce offers loads of helpful advice on the liver and spleen during month 8 – all very helpful in consolidating learning and experience from earlier months – personally I find the liver easiest to move because anatomically and energetically it’s big and obvious – the spleen, being small and ‘out of the way’ is harder to ‘reach’ – that said, I feel my connections are more in ‘qigong’ mode than meditation, although there is a growing sense of ‘the meditative’.

[Anonymous]

Thanks Colin, Im looking forward to the process.

[Author]

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