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Hi Matthew,
You mentioned you do meditation THEN qigong etc.
Do you find any difference in your practice whether you do either first?Thank you,
Kevin
….Hi All, I tend to practice Gods Playing in the Clouds before meditation, as a qigong set to prepare for meditation. That said I usually practice standing meditation (and sometimes seated) ahead of all my qigong, tai chi or bague practice. I find meditation before qigong calms the mind facilitating a more meditative qigong session. Qigong before meditation opens up the body facilitating better alingments and less physical distraction during meditation. So perhaps be attentive to meditate before qigong if you find it a challenge to remain present during qigong; and be attentive to qigong (or yoga?) before meditation if maintianing postural alignments and physical distractions are a challenge during meditation. I don’t think there is any harm in mixing and matching as long as you remain mindful.
Yes, I meditate first. I practice really early in the morning and seem to need the meditation as a transition from being asleep to the moving practices I do. I don’t often practice at night, but if I do I reverse the order and meditate after moving practices. In addition, after meditation I find my moving practices are much more focused and I’m more present.
My ultimate goal is to have everything be a meditation, whether moving or sitting. That’s why I’ve been really working on the bagua in addition to the Meditation Circle. I see bagua as being a perfect complement, as well as a highly developed meditation system in its own right.
Ive always done the reverse but I think Ill give meditation first a try.
Many Thanks.
kevin
Well, I checked now month 7 which seems to develop to a more “normal” experience with first feelings ot the liver.
I had extraordinary experience on my deficits by the second MP3 of month 6 instigating me to write. The best audio until yet.
Astonishing how it is possible to detect these deficits in awareness ny breathing in the midriff and later the lower and upper spine bettering it more and more.
As you get relaxed by Tibetan rituals doing them in a forward and backward or slightly circling movements of the torso a hidden secret is obviously using like in this Taoist meditation also the buttock and midriff parts as important energy giving parts by the whole body breathing process allowing to detect and better deficits in the postures.
I also get the feeling though not doing it sitting in a lotus position with different breathing chambers and there again the buttocks and midriff are most important.
Axel
It’s good to see that people are still going at it! It’s always helpful to hear other people’s practice experiences. Thanks to everyone who posted!
Ice is a term used to descibe how a blockage feels. If you are scanning your body, and looking for the tension, contraction, etc that Bruce mentions, your mind will come in contact with places that feel more “dense” than the rest. Your mind makes contact with this denseness (or however it feels to you), and this is the “ice” phase. Let your mind rest on it, and feel your mind soften the blockage. Try to “allow”, not force. It feels like a ray of light melting an ice cube – the light does not have to “do” anything, by its nature it melts the ice without force.
If and when the blockage breaks up, you should allow any remaining energy to dissipate outside your body, away from the place where the blockage originated. Try to feel this melt away, like gass, out to the edges of your etheric body.
I find it helpful to not have a definite image in your head of what this should feel like. Just feel around in there, and use these descriptions of what it should feel like lightly. Good to remember that “ice to water to gas” is not a visualization, it’s just meant to give you an idea of what the actual feeling might be like. I hope this helps. Sorry, I almost didn’t see your question in the middle of this thread!
Yeah, I have problems feeling emotional energy also. Often, when I’m sitting, and especially when my thoughts settle, everything just feels pretty neutral. I’m sure that some repressing of emotions is involved, perhaps personality plays a part. I’m a pretty quiet, non-dramatic person. I keep hoping to hit the jackpot some day in my meditation sittings…I can’t believe it’s all calm in there, and if something’s there, I want to find it. But I do feel better knowing I’m not alone in this!
Thanks Catherine Chenoweth for taking your time to elaborate on ice water gas concept. I was so focused on actual visualization of ice melting to water on my blocked shoulder . Thanks again, your explanation has walked me step by step. I will work on my shoulder patiently. I am almost done with month 3, everytime i start doing meditation, the tension in my shoulder blade deviate my attention.
Catherine are you by the way instructor at Bruce’s centre.
Thanks alot again
jay
I’m glad it helped, Jay. I have been studying with Bruce for about 14 years, although I haven’t certified in anything yet. I have worked before as an assistant at the Taoist Arts Center, run by Susan Rabinowitz, and I’ve also done some teaching on my own here and there.
Thanks Catherine for starting this thread. I was interested in your comments about emotional energy and how you are experiencing it. I am still waiting for the very subtle clues that would indicate what is happening in that area with my meditations. So far, I am just continuing the process without any ties to emotions.
Could it be true that a person must get beyond the “tingling” sensations of chi before the next stage can be felt? I get an electric shock type experience that moves down from my neck through my hands, arms, body, and legs when I am moving chi through my body. I might be equating that experience with my search for emotional reactions and they are too subtle for me to recognize.
Hi, Joan! Well, I can try to put to words what the experience has been for me. Interesting about the “electric shock” sensations you get. I don’t get these in my meditation, but it sounds a lot like the feelings I get sometimes with acupuncture.
In lieu of really knowing what to say, I will just ramble a bit about my experience, and hope that someone gets something out of it.
I have spent quite a bit of time in my inner dissolving practice just going in without an agenda, and trying to dissolve anything that feels like a blockage. My sensitivity has definitely increased over the years, and at this point there’s just this bunch of “stuff”, that is constantly shifting and moving under the focus of my mind. It seems like there is more “stuff” in there to play with now, my experience of what’s inside seems a bit more vivid, like there is more to work with, but i don’t quite know what it is I’m working with. From time to time, I hit an area, and I get a feeling of intensity. It’s really hard to label it as a certain emotion, but it feels like there must be some emotional content. I just can’t pin down what it is.I find I have better luck when I’m not consciously and purposefully looking for an emotion. I just notice what is there, and that’s all I have to work with, and really that’s all we ever have to work with. Bruce has pointed out before that if you find a blockage, you may or may not recognize what type of blockage it is, and if you can’t identify it, it’s okay. For some reason, it’s taken awhile for that to sink in for me. I have to let go of the need to know what that blockage is, what it’s related to, etc. Also worth noting, I remember telling Bruce once that when I get a strong emotion, the emotion seems to permeate my body, instead of directing me to a specific place where the blockage is located. From what I remember, Bruce’s answer was basically, “That’s okay.” So if I’m feeling a strong emotion, I just start at the top and work my way down, assuming that since I’m feeling this emotion, the likelihood of encountering blockages related to it increases, whether or not i know the specific content of each block.
Once in awhile, sometimes after a seminar, I feel like I get a sense of a layer a bit more subtle than I had been able to recognize before. It’s encouraging, and I do make progress, even though it’s not always linear. I think my biggest hang up has been wanting to know “where I am” all the time, wanting to put that “You Are Here” pin in the map of my spiritual progress.
So – hope that helps somebody. Probably worth pointing out that the practice I’m talking about is the inner dissolving practice, something a lot of us did for awhile before Bruce created this introductory program. And thanks for all the summeries of each session, Joan – those have been helpful!
Thanks for thoughtful answer. I just have one thing to add. For those of us doing the inner dissolving meditation practice, in the most recent seminar I did with Bruce one thing he stressed was working with an agenda. This is something I haven’t done much of. For many years I’ve approached this as you have, primarily without an agenda. However, I now see how important and useful an agenda can be. In a way, it’s related to the week 3 and 4 work with the liver Bruce describes in the guided meditation for month 7. It can be really had to feel an emotion that is not actively moving or arising. In the guided meditation Bruce has us deliberately trying to cultivate a feeling of anger to see how it feels in the liver. I can see how this will be a useful tool for learning to recognize emotion. I did this meditation for the first time today.
I haven’t done much dissolving with an agenda, either. I have a really hard time for some reason with deliberately bringing up an emotion. I’ve tried to do it in classes with Bruce – it just doesn’t seem to happen for me. I know for some people it’s quite easy – they just have to think of something that makes them angry (anger is just an easy example), and all these emotions boil up like it just happened. Not so for me. I met another person who is similar, we were trying to figure out why we can’t bring up “on demand” emotions like others seem to.
If anyone has experiences with recognizing emotional energy in their meditation practice, it would be interesting to read others’ experiences!
….hi all, I’ve just started month 7 part 2 and have just tried to ‘feel a sense of anger’ during my meditation without success – I tried revisiting past angry moments and present ‘background frustrations’ and achieved no perceptable sign of emotional anger – like a number of you I’m struggling to sense/feel at an emotional level during meditation (or qigong) whether ‘on demand’ or just ‘what’s there’ – maybe I’ve yet to develop the sensitivity – or could there be some sort of muffling mechanism linked to a meditative state? Outside of meditation, I have no trouble feeling and getting angry with my teenage kids!
I have spent quite a bit of time in my inner dissolving practice just going in without an agenda, and trying to dissolve anything that feels like a blockage. My sensitivity has definitely increased over the years, and at this point there’s just this bunch of “stuff”, that is constantly shifting and moving under the focus of my mind. It seems like there is more “stuff” in there to play with now, my experience of what’s inside seems a bit more vivid, like there is more to work with, but i don’t quite know what it is I’m working with. From time to time, I hit an area, and I get a feeling of intensity. It’s really hard to label it as a certain emotion, but it feels like there must be some emotional content. I just can’t pin down what it is.This is an archived forum (read only). Go to our active forum where you can post and discuss in real time.