Restarting practice after a long break

[splain it to me]

Hi all.

I started with AYP back in 2006, and have gone through extended periods of daily practice, and extended periods of no practice.  I have recently restarted after a break of about two years.  My first sessions back felt just wonderful, and had an immediate effect outside of meditation, with a sustained inner silence that was stronger than I've ever felt.  However, after a few days I have developed headaches, fatigue, and irritability.  I started up doing the practices I was doing when I stopped.  I feel that I need to back off, and I'm wondering if I can get some guidance.

Here is the routine I have been doing:

- 10 minutes pranayama with sambhavi, mulabandha, and siddhasana
- 20 minutes meditation with SHREE SHREE I AM I AM mantra
- 5 minutes samyama

I decided to back off of siddhasana since that seems like the most high-energy thing, but my session this morning without siddhasana was unbearable, and I had to stop after 5 minutes of pranayama and about 12 minutes of meditation.

I've never experienced such negative side effects before, and I'm wondering how to best pace myself.  Aside from stopping siddhasana and using shorter sessions for a while, does anyone have any advice for me?  Could the enhanced mantra be giving me trouble?  I remember reading that it's best not to switch back to I AM after starting up with an enhanced mantra.  I've been unable to find much on the website about self pacing in the context of restarting after a break.  What have your experiences been?

Thanks so much!

[woosa]

Hello

I would stop doing the pranayama completely and stick with meditation and samyama and see how it goes. If you are still having negative effects then I would stop doing samyama. And then if you are still not comfortable then it would be best to go back to I AM.

Another way would be to just to do the I AM mantra only and see how it goes. From there after a few weeks you could add spinal breathing and stick with that for a while and keep slowly building up.

I know exactly where you are coming from because I have had a similar routine to yours. I had to strip it down to breath meditation and one round of samyama. Any more and I end up with headaches. For me the shree mantra causes too much crown activity.

I wish I could be more clear. but I'm afraid you will have to do some experimenting yourself you see what is your comfortable limit.

All the best!

[maheswari]

quote:. I had to strip it down to breath meditation and one round of samyama.

dear woosa
this is exactly where i am now![]

[splain it to me]

Thanks for your input woosa.  So you don't even do a mantra meditation these days?

[woosa]

Maheswari, your opening must be affecting my opening and my opening is affecting you. AND we're affecting everyone else's, who are affecting us.

If ya get my drift.

Yeah I AM is too much for me. I've been doing breath meditation for about 4 months now. Whenever I do I AM I start getting a slight headache which gets worse through the day. No thanks! But breath meditation is ace, so it's not a bad thing in the slightest.

Hope you find the balance that's best for you.

[splain it to me]

Glad it's working for you -- thanks for sharing!

[maheswari]

@ woosa

[JosephUK]

I understand what you mean woosa i feel that this group is interconnecting in many ways.

i'm just doing breath meditation at the moment but i feel that i have a massive kundalini awakening deep inside which is causing a great deal of tension causing me to hold all sorts of bad postures and sometimes asanas, but often just uncomfortable postures.

it seems so easy for me to overload these days, even during my breath meditation today i overloaded with too much ecstasy moving with lots of tension.

it seems maybe spinal breathing is the only practice i can do.

I guess splain it to me the culmination of your practices before resulted in developing significant bhakti, which MAY make you more sensitive.

there seems to be a lot of people doing some serious self pacing so its no surprise post 2012 with the global awakening taking place and with the powerful nature of these practices that were all slowing down.

interestingly i believe that nada yoga could be quite useful (from what ive read)

simply saying "shiva shakti" "where are you, what do you want to say" then if there romance is bubbling away within just let them talk.

for me shakti calls the name of shiva and likewise shiva calls to shakti.

ive found i have more love for shakti than shiva which maybe the reason why i'm experiencing imbalances.

when they dont talk just dont focus inwardly and just focus on the breath.

this seems totally natural to me.

love

joe

[SuryaDeva]

Hi

I just realized that I posted a similar question but in the wrong section:)

I'm also restarting after a few months break and trying to figure out how to modify my practice. I developed a habit of doing pranayama with kumbakha on both inhale and the exhale as taught to me by my teacher before I even started reading AYP. It worked before just fine but I also did lots of asana and other physical exercise.

 But now I feel extremely irritable and angry all the time and have horrible headache. I actually blamed it on a certain drug withdrawal but now after reading this thread I think it could be because of my intense pranayama practice. Somehow I thought I could just restart the practice where I left off but now I'm not sure....

Wish you all well