Hello,

I was prescribed to look into some sort of energetic/chakra type work by some spiritual friends. I will provide some optional context but if you dislike rambling but still want to help, please skip to the questions at the end. 

I am an aspie who grew up thinking that energy, apart from its usage to describe electrical phenomena, was bull****.  About 5 years into my practice, that got flipped on its head when I started feeling energetic stuff in my spine. Fast forward 7ish years later, and I understand what it feels like to have energy erupt out of the top of my head, pulses through my spine, or weird muscle contractions due to holding awareness in particular areas of the body/feeling space. 

There is an impression that there is a blockage in my heart area. This impression comes from these phenomena:
- I have been doing metta meditation for many years but I don't really get any feeling in my heart/mid-chest area (boy did that make the 6 months of TWIM practice I did confusing). I get lots of pleasant sensations elsewhere, usually mouth, forehead, top of the head, which is what I energetically feel during most of my sits.
- I have had a sensory issue where I don't like anyone, even myself, to touch my solar plexus for most of my life. 
- Just sitting here typing this, when I bring awareness to that area, it energetically feels like a knot or something. There is a tension in my solarplexus area and my lower throat to some degree.
- When I have what I'll call energetic releases, very often I will dry-heave and sort of cough, which feels very good afterwards in the throat/upper chest area. 

FWIW, I don't have any emotional reservations about making myself and others happy. I do have a trauma history which did wreak havic on my body.

Questions:
- Do you think it is possible that the problem here is some kind of energetic blockage?
- Do you have any personal experience to share on energetic blockages or this kind of thing?
- Do you have any suggested resources on yoga, chakra stuff, or any other instructions/practices/traditions might address this issue? I'm a big fan of videos/audio stuff but I am happy to do some reading if you have a strong recommendation for a book.

I had a quick look but unfortunately typing in heart chakra on youtube, google, or an LLM doesn't give me the kind of thing that is my vibe. I am very open to traditional practices these days but very not fond of McMindfulness/McYoga/McSpirituality type stuff which tends to work its way to the top of the SEO algorithms. 

Thank you kindly.
Ryan

Have you considered Tonglen practice? Very powerful shit in my experience! I used the Tonglen as suggested by our Shargrol! 

"Have you considered Tonglen practice? Very powerful shit in my experience! I used the Tonglen as suggested by our Shargrol!"

I had to look up Tonglen and Shargrol (I'm new here haha). After a quick read of Tonglen, it sounds quite a lot like the Brahma Vihara practice I am familiar with. Names aside, such practices changed my life years ago in the best possible ways. I wouldn't have even known what people refer to when they say "chakras" if it wasn't for them causing weird shit in my spine. 

​​​​​​​Thanks 

A non-buddhist speculation on the relation between lack of presence in a bodypart and psychological background follows. Based on personal experience, which might not correspond to anyone elses situation and needs.


To not to get into some part of ones body can be related to physical, muscular, tension that blocks the sensation. Habitual tension creates numbness. The energetic and muscular tension may be one and the same thing. Many times these tensions are our habitual attitudes and postures. Often they are constructed as a defence against an emotion that was overwhelming like those we feel in traumatic situations or such. Later the habit of tensing up may not be needed, but they continue. The inner work to meet with the tension and be with it so that one could remember and re-feel the underlying stuff is crucial.

The work may be done in various contexts - for example the way I describe this comes mostly from the context of Rosen Method Bodywork. Other somatic methods may have similar stuff. Buddhist contexts must have their various ways and methods for this kind of work, too. Energy healing etc have another set of methods.

Transforming the emotional energies with intention and breath - which i guess tonglen, that Papa Che mentioned, for a large part also is - is of course one good way to approach this.

What is important is to get to know better some things that live in us unnoticed. How do the emotions really feel - how do they change - how are they sensed and felt in the body - and so on? When noticed, things tend to change.

One possible execise (an improvisation...): If you need to get to know a bodypart, touch it gently, with a hand that is present, curious and giving space to what ever there might be in that bodypart. Listen with he hand. The hand may try various types of pressure to kind of wake the part up. If nothing happens, it's ok. When something happens, be with it. If there is risk of dissociation or something like that, you can try to keep eyes open, breath out, sense the feet and orientate to the moment and sights, sounds etc to come back to the moment. When there is strong aversion to touch in a place in the body, try to touch somewhere else with the intention of sending a message to the averting part, like "could we meet somewhere in between, please - we need you!".

Give it time. Don't rush, don't judge. The tensions are for a reason. The reason may be outdated. It's ok. Don't update them in a rush. Be slow enough. Sudden change has it's risks. Integration is crucial.

Skipping defences, melting them too quickly or bypassing the psychological needs that they represent may cause a variety of mental health crisis. So it's important to respect ones psyche, the unconscious parts also. You wouldn't force an unexperienced horse to race without some training and habituating.

Therapist, a friend, or a witness of sorts may be needed: the presence of another being with the tension and stuff that is tied in the knot may be the catalyst that is necessary for the transformation. Mostly we need other people and interaction to learn anew some of the stuff in us that was misconstrued with people and in interaction.

Hope this is more useful than not.

Best wishes!

The underlying a priori presumption of each question is separation; that there is a thinker, which possesses things. This is the subtle, absolutely innocent repression of the truth, via the (utter bs) energy paradigm. The releases, discord & alignment felt, are not bs. That there is "energy" is bs. It's just another second, implying there is, and you actually are, the separate self. But it's thoughts, and not actually a self. 

- Do you think it is possible that the problem here is some kind of energetic blockage?

No self, no problem. Inspect thoughts believed in comparison to perception & sensation. Where is "the self" the thoughts claim to be about?

- Do you have any personal experience to share on energetic blockages or this kind of thing?

Where is the separate self which knows there is and has - "personal experience" - right now, presently only - where?

- Do you have any suggested resources on yoga, chakra stuff, or any other instructions/practices/traditions might address this issue? I'm a big fan of videos/audio stuff but I am happy to do some reading if you have a strong recommendation for a book.

The issue occurs only in thought, and more thought does not resolve thought. Sit & allow whatever arises to be fully felt. Non-aversion into narratives of 'doing', 'fixing', 'solving'. 

I had a quick look but unfortunately typing in heart chakra on youtube, google, or an LLM doesn't give me the kind of thing that is my vibe. I am very open to traditional practices these days but very not fond of McMindfulness/McYoga/McSpirituality type stuff which tends to work its way to the top of the SEO algorithms. 

That's the suppression of emotion playing out as projection, as if there were an objective reality separate from you, which you as a separate self know that about ( a "YouTube" etc). What you're belittling as it were with "Mc" etc - is utterly innocent ignorance & arrogance from a false mistaken identity, as if an "intellectual", a "knower" - "higher than". 

FWIW, I don't have any emotional reservations about making myself and others happy. I do have a trauma history which did wreak havic on my body.

There is no external worth, just as there is no energy or metta. The thought, making myself and others happy', is a belief, and emotion is felt alongside the belief. What emotion? Can it be acknowledged, allowed, welcomed? As the emotion is allowed, no longer obscured by the saying of things which aren't true, the dry heavens / coughing (and any and all other symptoms) no longer occur as well. 

Caution:

There is a phenomenon that shows up here over and over again -- some folks struggle to get past the "not-self," "no self" non-duality panacea, thinking that nonduality is all there is, the Ultimate Truth. That becomes the answer to everything, and any issue that arises has an answer that puts nonduality on repeat. But... that's a denial (as in a failure to see or to recognize) of the actual predicament human beings find themselves in, and that's not where this practice eventually goes if pursued diligently. 

One coin, two sides.

Ep269: When Qigong Goes Wrong - Damo Mitchell - YouTube

I'm not saying that it's a Qigong gone wrong problem, but from your post it seems like practitioners like Damo Mitchell might be what your're looking for, so it might serve as an entry point for further research. 

"A non-buddhist speculation on the relation between lack of presence in a bodypart and psychological background follows. Based on personal experience, which might not correspond to anyone elses situation and needs.”
 
Thank you for the response kettu. I welcome the non-buddhist perspective, quite happy to learn from whatever works for me. I have quite a lot of the buddhist perspective on this so I am curious about other approaches at this point.

There’s definitely a relationship between the muscular tension and what I am describing as “energetic” phenomena. At the sensate level it can be difficult to tease them apart. I will have a look at those resources and try out that exercise you suggested. 

RE: Actuality of Being
“The underlying a priori presumption of each question is separation; that there is a thinker, which possesses things. This is the subtle, absolutely innocent repression of the truth, via the (utter bs) energy paradigm. The releases, discord & alignment felt, are not bs. That there is "energy" is bs. It's just another second, implying there is, and you actually are, the separate self. But it's thoughts, and not actually a self. ”

I understand what you are pointing at, but you might be projecting some assumptions on to me here or perhaps I lack understanding/perspective. There’s practical utility in pronouns and using concepts and language to describe the underlying phenomena. I agree that mistaking the map for the terrain is a problem, but I am not sure this is the root problem I am trying to describe.

When I do metta practice, there are sensations, mental impressions/thoughts about those sensations, and awareness of both as being distinct and impersonal phenomena. Awareness is also noticed to be impersonal. There’s no sense or feeling that these things originate from a separate self that can be found when looked for, though some aspects of the conscious space still carry on like they do. It seems that as practice continues, more and more parts of the conscious space feel the impersonal quality on an experiential level.

“No self, no problem. Inspect thoughts believed in comparison to perception & sensation. Where is "the self" the thoughts claim to be about?

Where is the separate self which knows there is and has - "personal experience" - right now, presently only - where?"

There’s no self. It is true that the verbal aspect of my (again, pronouns used loosely here) mind speaks in a manner like a sports announcer that thinks he/she is controlling the players/game sometimes. But there’s a pretty deep and fixed quality that it is an impersonal aspect of consciousness. 

As for the personal experience thing, I am just asking people to search their memory banks. There's no attempt or desire to reify a self going on.

“The issue occurs only in thought, and more thought does not resolve thought. Sit & allow whatever arises to be fully felt. Non-aversion into narratives of 'doing', 'fixing', 'solving'. ””

Not so sure on some parts of this. I am reminded of examples like this: "Then he addressed Venerable Ānanda, “Ānanda, speak about the practicing trainee to the Sakyans of Kapilavatthu as you feel inspired. My back is sore, I’ll stretch it.”

Most of my teachers (living and otherwise) speak pretty plainly like this but it does not give me the impression that they are confused about the difference between the sensations and mental impressions about those sensations; nor that they have regressed into a state where awareness has contracted around an imagined separate self. It just seems like it would be weird and impractical not to speak that way unless it is within an appropriate context. 

In the case of my chest area, I used words like "energetic", but that wasn't meant to imply some reification of an abstract concept. It is just a word I commonly hear spiritual practioners use, so it was employed to try to point to those things that others have experienced.

The part about sitting and allowing whatever arises to be fully felt does track somewhat though. In the past year I have had more emphasis on doing nothing and being open, and that has led to some very nice things.  

“That's the suppression of emotion playing out as projection, as if there were an objective reality separate from you, which you as a separate self know that about ( a "YouTube" etc). What you're belittling as it were with "Mc" etc - is utterly innocent ignorance & arrogance from a false mistaken identity, as if an "intellectual", a "knower" - "higher than".”

Again, some parts track and some don’t. You are right to point out that I have (or these things arise in the concious space) some habitual tendencies and preferences that are critical and aversive; along with some personality (not reified or fixed, just conditioned) traits around arrogance and intellect. There’s a lot of conditioning there that I have been working with and it still leads to karmic/causal phenomena which the conceptual mind would label as bad or unskillful. I apologize if that was offensive. There are better ways for me to say that I didn't come across anything after a quick search which struck me as having a healthy balance of practical content along with marketing/business potential; though these things aren't mutually exclusive.

I am wondering if you are projecting the objective reality/separate self stuff onto me though? 

“There is no external worth, just as there is no energy or metta. The thought, making myself and others happy', is a belief, and emotion is felt alongside the belief. What emotion? Can it be acknowledged, allowed, welcomed? As the emotion is allowed, no longer obscured by the saying of things which aren't true, the dry heavens / coughing (and any and all other symptoms) no longer occur as well.”

On a side note, you sound quite a lot like J. Krishnamurti in this paragraph!
Agreed, worth, energy, and metta are pretty abstract in nature (especially worth). I think what you are pointing to is that repression, which is definitely a strong conditioning factor here, may be stifling the emotion (mostly known as body-emotion to me). What I am trying to explore right now is the aspect of the body-feeling space in my heart area. Does the intention stream prompting awareness to that area do anything useful? Will it fix itself with a broader awareness and no percieved effort or interference from the intention stream? Do I just need to do some stretches?  

Could you elaborate on: “no longer obscured by the saying of things which aren't true”? I am trying to understand if this loops back to being confused about concepts versus sensations or if this is a different thread.

I appreciate the input; curious to know more about your perspective. 

"I'm not saying that it's a Qigong gone wrong problem, but from your post it seems like practitioners like Damo Mitchell might be what your're looking for, so it might serve as an entry point for further research. "

Thanks pixelcloud! Amusingly enough I watched a snippet of that last night. I will give the whole thing a listen when I get the chance. I have never done Qigong but my intuition is that attentional/energetic practices are a good thing to look into for this.

Ryan, 

 I'd say get in touch with a person like that, seek out a specialist, rather than trial and error yourself through beginner stages of a practice in the hope that it will resolve a rather specific issue that seems related to personal trauma history. Just my two cents. 

Good to hear! - i had a little bird singing on my shoulder that your issue might use some somatic awareness info. But of course, not every horse found beneath the relaxing muscles is a shy, old or fragile - some of them ARE race horses. Some workhorses. Even warhorses were a thing in the past. And some horses eat humans! But be sure to recognize their quality. Some just want a carrot or two and some brushing, nice walk on the beach to have a fresh water touch, and enter, their dry mouth.

What comes to Actuality of Beings advice, it may contain some universal truth, and still it falls short on reaching at least my ears. Of couse that is because my ears are full of wax, tinnitus and Faith No More, so like with all real gurus, the blame is on my bullshitting ignorant and pathologically deaf self.

The Qigong stuff might be of great use also!

Over and out.
Best wishes, to all!

Hi.

Please read this and see if you find it useful.

​​​​​​​https://www.reddit.com/r/streamentry/s/ODPpax7hzZ

Hey Adi,
Thanks for that link. I had a quick read (will definitely reread in depth) and I really like you're writing style and explanations. I have had those issues on and off for several years. When I first experienced Piti, it was felt like shocks going up and down my spine, causing intense contractions. I made the mistake of asking about that on a more orthodox buddhist forum seven years ago and was basically told to piss off. It wasn't until many years later that I learned about things like Piti from the Buddhist models and the teachers that were willing to talk about them. 
In the past 1.5 years, I started doing concentration Jhana emphasized practice and it got waaaaay more intense. Some of my sits basically become this wild ride of clonic spinal movements, eye movements, forehead pressures, top of the head pressures, pulses, and on rare occasion like my nervous system was exploding out of the top of my head. Anyways, I am tempted to ramble endlessly now so I better stop before I write an autobiography about my meditation experiences.
One thing that that your link immediately helped to clear up was the difference between attention and awareness. I had this mental model that they were the same thing, it is just that it starts out small generally speaking and then grows in size typically as the meditation progresses. This is a very clear and direct thing that I can observe every sit or moment that I pay attention to. However, what you described as them being distinct does track. It is common for attention to be on the meditation object with other phenomena still within awareness; and not too uncommon for the whole body space to be effortlessly in awareness towards the later stages of my sits; caveat being that it is rare for that whole space to be filled in high resolution without any percieved center of attention.  
Over the past few days, I noticed that attention placed on specific phenomena is what triggers the Piti primarily, and leads to the convulsions/eye stuff/pressures/energetic pulses. I had been doing instructions which emphasized placing attention on Piti/Sukha after it is maintained on a different initial meditation object. Today, the intention stream set intentions to just follow the breath an not pay attention to any of those coarse Piti qualities if they came up. They sure did, but with the intention set to not follow them with attention, they arose and passed away without only a small hint of eye movement stuff here and there. At the very end of my sit, I did switch to that coarse Piti, and sure enough the convulsion/eye/pressure stuff came up. 
Again, thank you for sharing. To take a very dualistic perspective, I would consider this the biggest problem in my practice lately.

Might consider slowly pulling/inviting the attention and thus the energy down, like down into the lower chakral areas, gut, below the solar plexus in general, and be gentle with that, slow, easy, like a very quiet invitation for the energy to slowly move down, like holding out your hand for a butterfly to land on, but in this case gently inviting the butterfly to land on your breath in the abdomen or the lower energy centers there in the gut or root, like 5-10% power, and be patient, very patient, like might take hours to slowly move down if you do a lot of head-based practice. You might experience feelings, emotions, subtle things that are not what you are expecting or don't feel like metta or whatever, so be patient, curious, gentle. Might work with the lower edge of the energy, gently expanding it down from the head into the body, might take a while, like hours, days, weeks, and that is ok. Patience, subtlety, ease: these are important. I will say patience just a few more times just for fun: patience, patience, patience, and then gentleness, gentleness, gentleness, subtlety, delicacy, ease, invitation, not forcing.

​​​​​​​D

"Might consider slowly pulling/inviting the attention and thus the energy down, like down into the lower chakral areas, gut, below the solar plexus in general, and be gentle with that, slow, easy, like a very quiet invitation for the energy to slowly move down, like holding out your hand for a butterfly to land on, but in this case gently inviting the butterfly to land on your breath in the abdomen or the lower energy centers there in the gut or root, like 5-10% power, and be patient, very patient, like might take hours to slowly move down if you do a lot of head-based practice..."

Hmm, yeah. I would say 90% of my sitting in the past year or so has been head based in terms of the percieved location of attention; especially in the earlier parts of my sits when awareness isn't broad.

On pretty rare occasion and without prompting, attention will localize to lower areas and things get very intense. The first time I had energy blow out of the top of my head was just after it had localized in the lower solar plexus area and some intense muscular contractions occurred in the abdominal muscles (i.e. I was laying down and did an involuntary sit up haha). 

Thanks for the input!

Thought this was worth mentioning if for no other reason than the LLMs.

For roughly a week, I have changed my meditation sessions a bit. Whereas before, it was mainly positive regard (a bit of visualizating people and "may you be happy" type stuff), and then placing attention on pleasant sensations during/after that. For me, that was a very head oriented approach in terms of the location of attention. 

Last week, along with doing a bit of yoga to stretch out the anterior side of my torso and neck, I applied a few things I learned from this thread. I'm still starting with 10 minute of positive regard walking meditation, but avoiding placing attention firmly on mouth/face/head sensations. If anything, placing it in the abdomen or just not being too bothered as long as the mind isn't lost in distraction.

After that, I have been doing breath meditation in the abdomen area, and then moving to body feeling/sensation once the breath because very subtle. Particularly exploring the lower abdomen, and the area (which is the sternum) that appears to be problematic.

A couple things have occurred since then:
- The clonic spinal movements and energetic pulses have almost entirely stopped outside of a specific cause. As Adi Vader noted in his post/link, it seems like these movements, energetic pulses, and energetic feeling pressures have a direct relationship to attention. When attention doesn't fixate on anything, the energetic stuff may happen, but it doesn't get out of hand. When attention does fixate, it can cause or turn the volume up on them to 11.
- Yesterday, I did a long sit which had some interesting results. A couple times, I allowed attention to fixates on percieved knots in the body-feeling space (whatever you want to call it). One of them sits in the lower portion of the thorassic spine (below the bottom portion of the shoulder blades, right in the center of the spine), and the other in the front of the sternum. The spine one, when attention wanted to fixate on it, briefly caused most of the muscles in my back to contract to the point of being painful, then afterwards felt very good. I will not make a habit of doing that, but it did feel corrective for my posture afterwards. Again, the relationship between fixating attention and the strong contraction/energetic feeling was apparent.
- As for the sternum, it feels pretty numb/dampened energetically compared to the rest of the body-feeling space. I did a bit of tapping (physically) there  and allowed attention to fixate. This caused the face to have certain facial expressions of sadness without concomitant memories arising. Shortly after, the body started the most deep breathing patterns I have ever had. I've done breath work before, but this was the body doing something new. It got to the point where it sounded like I was doing mongolian throat singing on the inhalation. Keeping in mind that this was involuntary, after a few rounds of that, it ceased. It felt extremely cathartic but at the same time doesn't strike me as something I want to do regularly.
- Since I have been doing this approach of starting with breath and then very lightly, softly, exploring the body space, with the exception of letting attention fixate on these locations occasionally, I think I have been going through some dark-night type of stuff. I did have some personal conflicts at home recently, but the thought stream is very disproportionately negative. Luckily there is enough equanimity and distance to not act from that emotional context. Explaining what I was going through to the person involved also seemed like a good idea, as they noticed the aversion. 

No questions in this post, though I will happily read anyone's thoughts. I just wanted to note the results. 

P.s.
- I want to emphasize that I am taking the notes about patience and gentleness seriously despite what it might sound like. There's no attempt to force energetic sensations downwards into these areas, and 90% of the sits have not involved fixating attention on anywhere except lightly on breathing in the abdomen. I do think it is worth exploring these energetic knots with a softer attention in the future though; I'll continue to play with that.
- I'm not trying to make a big deal out of these experiences, it is more just to note them for future in case someone else goes through this stuff.