Bruno Loff:
I would really be encouraged to take the "energetic approach" if I had a treatise similar to daniel ingrams, with a map of what to expect, stage-by-stage, describing the physio-energetic experience of enlightenment.
Some thoughts:
Models (process), maps, and practices. There is this thing that happens to us called 'awakening'. It is experiential and outside of regular human experience. So we create models in order to speak about it and have a conceptual way of working with it. Models basically describe a process in conceptual terms. Maps are based on a model and depict stages and then we can speak of practices and how they change at different stages.
The basic energetic model looks like this: You have a subtle energetic body that is composed of channels and centers. Energy/Consciousness is bound up in blockages in these channels and these blockages are experienced as duality. Through practice, these blockages are cleared, and over time our energy/consciousness is collected in the lower abdominal area. At this point, it moves up into a central channel and this marks the point where our experience becomes non-dual (ditching the split). Though details differ, both Vajrayana and Taoism follow this general model.
Can we map this over to the Progress of Insight? I suspect so. If you look at the energetic model/process experientially then when we do the practices and these blockages are opened up, there is a release of energy. This opening (in the subtle body) may be clearly and sometimes dramatically experienced (A and P). The repressed or blocked trauma that this blockage represented is now no longer repressed and presents itself to our surface consciousness (dark night). It eventually works its way through and ultimately we are back to experiencing our subtle body now free of that blockage which feels much more comfortable and expansive (equanimity). If we keep practicing, the cycle will continue. There is most likely a relationship between specific centers and paths. I never gave much attention to this and can't say what those might be.
As far as what to expect: everyone is different. You will have your own experience and whatever that is, it won't be what you expect. If you want to do intensive energy work then work with someone that knows what they are doing – intensive energy work can release more stuff then you may be ready for. As we have seen here at DhO, intensive noting practice can have the same effect - so same suggestion applies there. As I have related energy work to Daniels map, it stands to reason (if I am right) that energy work need not be more intensive then any other approach. It is more how you understand what is going on - which defines the focus and type of practice. Thai Forest Tradition uses energy work, so does Goenka and Shinzen Young and probably many others.