Sawfoot:
And TomTom, I would be interested to hear what your understanding of energy imbalances? Again it is something you hear about but I am curious to know what that means in your own experience, particularly due to your knowledge of manic depression - do you see depression and mania a form of energy imbalance?
Simon T:
My opinion is that talking about stress, muscles tension, spasms, etc, is much more concrete than the more fancy language used to describe experiences in the world of meditation. Lets take "energy imbalance". What does that mean? There is actual energy that circulate in the form of electricity in our body. It's the nervous system. Are we talking about that? "Energy imbalance" is somewhat of a pleonasm. Energy is either stored, then a form of potentiality, or circulating. Either way, it mean you have more at one place than at the other. I'm not doing this practice to achieve complete entropy. Life is a fight against entropy anyway.
We could talk about energy for more esotheric ideas but I think we should use a different word then, when we get beyond the world that science can see so far. There is many unexplained phenomenons in the world of meditation and language that underline the unknown nature of those phenomenon appears to me as useful. Still, each time we have the opportunity to map a phenomenon with something very concrete that everyone can understand, we should be grateful of that opportunity. The less obscure those practices are, the better everyone will be.
"Controlling"/holding and manipulating the breath can be useful in some meditative systems such as kundalini yoga. However, it can be dangerous to practice similar to this
thread where the person was engaging in tantric sex without proper guidance. The difference here is the person was practicing holding seminal fluid rather than the breath. To say that these patterns of sensation and their relation to the particular nexus points (chakras) is map-able to brain or nerve function is not always correct as people with various meditative problems often are checked out by doctors who, after extensive testing, say there is nothing physically wrong with them. Therefore we are talking about patterns in direct sensate/phenomenological experience (at all 6 doors) and not patterns arising from concepts inferred from sensations such as the body's nervous or electric systems. In this manner meditative energy is actually even more concrete than talking about nerve/brain/electrical function.
It cannot be denied that there are particular nexus points in the body (which become increasingly subdued/tamed/irrelevant as one approaches completion of all paths or "full enlightenment" or completely eliminated in the absence of attention - "PCEs") generally referred to in Indian yogic systems as "chakras." The scientific use of the term energy (the ability to do work) and the meditative term "energy" (patterns extrapolated from the bodymind's direct sensate experience at all 6 doors) are not completely synonymous. The meditative process can also be described in terms of chakra activation and energy flow though this approach is generally not done in Theravada Buddhism as the focus is to emphasize jhanas instead of chakras (though jhanas and chakras arise from the activities of attention with the stable jhanas being certain areas of resting attention at chakra areas).
This is usually described as certain vibrations in certain body parts such as describing vibrations in the lower spine, the groin, the chest area, third eye, top of the head, etc. However, it is important to note that the body parts are being inferred from sensate experience and not the other way around.
Mental illness definitely involves some sort of extreme activation or blockage at/to certain chakra areas. However, I cannot say that this phenomenon alone is responsible for mental illness, but rather it is a response that can be observed to occur during episodes of mental illness. For example, "sexual energy" which is being conceptually inferred from strong sensations in the groin area is present in some types of mania/A&P activity as well as pathologically strong sensations which would be attributed to the third eye area and the crown area in states of hallucinatory activity. Remember the "third eye" and the "crown" are mere concepts that are being inferred from strong sensate activity in these regions (generally labeled as "chakras"). However, I cannot say that this kind of activity occurs in all states of hallucination or mania.