quote:
Originally posted by Bill
[When I did taoist practices a while ago I had a hard time getting a feeling for the energy coming down the front and now I think that maybe thats a phase of the practice that shouldn't be done intentionally but that it happens when it is right.
My experience is that blocks down the front need very careful and conscious addressing. The practices that yogani cites for addressing front channel (jalandhara bandha, dynamic jalandhara/chin pump, kechari and sambhavi) are "balanced" practices that hasten the "up" as well as the "down". For those like me who are naturally very blocked on the "down", more specific work on that is required, and IMO you can't beat the Taoist practices for this. Note that even yogani does tai chi. Neither spinal breathing nor the aforementioned front channel practices will ground you sufficiently if you have a bad front channel downward block.
the big problem happens when kundalini arrives.if you have a downward block in the front channel, pranayama up and down the spinal nerve won't help much (the "up" will carry loads more energy...last thing you need....and the "down" will be insufficient to balance). You're going to need to work on that front channel, to ground the energy.
The reason walking is so inevitably prescribed for kundalini issues (and general over-energized symptoms) is that the connection of feet and earth grounds the energy. But whereas the Indians are only concerned with upwardness, the Taoists have developed far more sophisticated tools for grounding. Look to them for anything grounding, anything yin, anything water. Yogani says that increased silence/shiva is the answer to over-energization. Yin, grounding, water, are the taoist analogs to silence/shiva.
I started with microcosmic orbit, abandoned it for AYP, resumed it when AYP awakened my kundalini, and abandoned it once again, because I didn't want to mix and match practices. But I'm currently back to microcosmic orbit, have worked VERY hard on my front channel, which is finallly (after many years) opening, and it all feels very very very right. Doing meditation with a dynamic energetic loop in place (using no will to keep it in place!) is incredibly smoother, and much harder to overdo, than doing it like a thermometer, with the mercury ready to blast through the end of the glass.
If you don't have a downward block in your front channel (or symptoms of gravely requiring grounding)***, then none of this is relevant to you. This advice is highly specific to just a few practitioners.
***- symptoms include headache, feeling of pressure in forehead or crown, vastly faster and more intense "upward" pranayama than "downward", TMJ (pain in jaw joint), irritibility after practice (even with sufficient rest).
