trollo

Thanks CT, you re very kind.

"Off the top of my head, i can recall you mentioning TM as your basic, starting-out practice, then started to experience some psycho-physical issues, and sought advice from the KSG, alternating with trawling thru Mantak Chia's material, as well other resources, for support, is this correct?" No, i did those things in chronological order, not all togheter. I tried something, when the effects were absent or negative i stopped and tried something else. "This approach, in my opinion, is less than optimal or even appropriately planned, if you are seriously wanting to resolve your dilemma." I had not any better option. As i already said all the teachers i met in person were totally unable to understand my issues or just looked not interested on them, looking apparently more interested just on my money and a subscription to their courses. The amount of egoism, ignorance, greed i found in the so called 'teachers' i contacted astonished me. "as its clear you have some strong opinions yourself" what strong opinion? I think there is a misunderstanding, i do NOT have any strong opinion, but i do know what i did, how and for how long i did it. Also i know what i felt and what i feel inside my body. I m open to every suggestion, but for sure i'm not open to try everything it can be suggested. Please do notice that ALL the stuff i tried and that you are now dissenting with was not the outcome of my superficiality but were the result of suggestions given in the same way you are giving to me yours here. So basically you re saying i was wrong to do teh things i ve been suggested to do but it seems you strongly criticize the fact i m not open to accept and follow any suggestion i found here. I need to be extremely cautious with every opinion and suggestion i receive, and you shouldn't really take it as a personal question. That's why i asked everybody to specify their level of expertise. Sorry. I also would like to find a Meditation master but it seems extremely difficult to find one that is really knowledgeable, and able to help me concretely. I don't live in India or China, i don't have money to spend in a research all over the world and if i did i wouldn't know where and what to search. Otherwise i would not be here. Also i noticed that many so called masters put their financial interests before your needs; when you speak with them for the first time they tell you they are able to help you, once you spent the money and spent a few time with them you realize they are not able to help you and that they are not even interested on doing it. This has been my actual experience with my qigong teacher (and other yoga teachers i talked with) , she doesn't even remember the reasons why i signed up to her course. And i did it 5 monthes ago. As another example i want to recall what Steam (now Andrei) wrote "The idea that meditation is harmless shows how much ignorance is in this world." and i agree with him, but the response i obtained from a 'supposed' Yoga Guru who live here in Italy to my questions talking by the phone was "meditation cannot do any harm" so the discussion was closed and i supposedly was just an idiot talking about obsessions.

Also, i think i can say nowadays to be quite sure that something about 'energy' happened in my body. Something that acted deeply at a physiological level. It changed my metabolism, my sleep rythms, in part it changed my personality as well. I don 't like to be fixed on ideas, and in fact i tried to treat many of my disturbs as medical issues, but , trying to be honest with myself, it seems obvious to me that they are at least in part related with meditation effects. Maybe an ayurvedic dr should be the right figure to deal with my issues.

Hello. I think you maybe misunderstood what i wrote. Maybe you got the impression that i tried many different kinds of meditation practices all togheter. It's not so. I did TM since 2009 to 2011, then stopped. Then i tried a few things that a few people suggested to me on that Kundalini Support group. First i tried the pranayama exercises as i already wrote. And i had another time insomnia, so i had to stop. Then i tried QiGong, and i'm still practicing it, though the benefits are quite absent. That's all. I don t understand why you think i over burdened... i don't think i did. Instead i did very few things, in part because of the fact that i have difficulties on reading (due to my problems) expecially from a website (the monitor hurts my eyes a bit and makes my brain confuse). I still have to finish the Gopi Krishna book that i began in hope of some answer. I think i didn t understand what you mean for 'contraction'. Anyway the reason if i focus a lot on those issues (as well as into all other problems i may have) is because they are simply impeding my life, and as i cannot simply substite it with that of another man, i have no choice than trying to solve them. I m not focused every day of my life on meditation issues, i focus on other problems as well, but often i realise that i should have employed more of my time for them (medit. side effects) because i suspect they are the cause for many of my actual health problems.. Instead i believe i wasted quite a lot of time without doing nothing. about what i wrote on Mantak Chia: well as i was suggested to do MO meditation i read a book of Mantak Chia and i found out with big surprise a part where he speaks exactly of meditation side efffects and Kundalini-alike side effects. He writes he cured that just with MO meditation 'cause he explain those kind of disturbs as an incorrect circulation of Qi throughout channels. The book i'm referring to is 'Awakening the healing energy through the Tao'. Guys i never invented anything of what i did. Everything i did or read about was suggested by some fellow like you. Like here, also in the Kundalini support group i've been overwhelmed by a big amount of different suggestions all in contraddiction with each other, that led me to more confusion than before. I could have wasted my whole life to try them all, even the most absurd of them. but i simply selected the more reasonable and easy to implement and to understand for my means.

Also i please ask again everybody to specify your level of experience of the matter when you put a response here. I m in need of suggestions from persons who are really knowledgeable or who had a similar experience like me and possibly who found a solution, or who know some very knowledgeable person to contact to suggest to me. I'm already confused enough.

Yascra, i think you should try to identify yourself with someone who didn't came here just to have a little talk, but who is actually quite in desperation and in need of 'practical' help and information. If you say something that i don't find practically useful or not clear to understand/implement or incomplete i have to point it out. I need to pull out a practically constructive converstation from this thread, and i cannot put before etiquette to this. Also a productive conversation moves throughout critics, questions and clarifications and i don't see anything rude in this. As i already wrote i don t want to be rude but i need to be 'practical'. I need to find practically useful information and that's all. Again, i'm not here just to talk but there s my health at stake. P.S. Also your suggetions were actually the first things to be pointed out from the TM teacher, and we had a long and unhappy conversation on this, cause his statements weren t going to help me practically in any way. The experience with this TM teacher has been terrible at least, and that's probably why i immediately rejected your ideas (which could be anyway also in part be true).

There isn't always a reason 'why' for things like depression unluckily. This is the real problem. Also about the disturbs i developed after meditation... well sorting out them it s exactly what i'm trying to do, that s why i'm here too. But this seems a task harder than i expected. I too alreday wondered by myself if all those issues wasn't in some way medical and psychological problems that my body was trying to keep under control and that meditation triggered out. But the point is: now that they popped out how do i practically solve them?

Believe me there are millions of people in the world who practice TM. If you consider all the people who practiced it since the 60's till now you get an incalculable number. Expecially in USA trancendental meditation was incredibly widespread in the 70's and other widespread forms derived from it like Deepak Chopra or Benson's relaxation technique exist.

Ok guys, i d like to know if you are some kind of teacher or whatever kind of expertise you have. Seriously. I ve already received the response that i wasn't sufficiently 'spiritually' prepared for a meditation practice, but this in fact doesn't explain why there are billions of common people like me who practice meditation without harms, and i never found a report of such harms as mine with such a sporadic meditation practice. About the Deci belle suggestion on consecrating the rest of my life into spiritual detaching from the world and religious study, well this doesn't help at all, i want a life, if i wanted to detach from life or get away from it i wouldn't be here now searching for help. About the Steam suggestion: i fear i will find a Ayurvedic dr who simply listen to my story and doesn't understand a single word of it; it happened already. There are a lot of so called ayurvedic dr or TCM drs who are in reality just improvized new-age fellow that should do another kind of job in their life.

I also contacted Mantak Chia by mail. He responded to my detailed mail with a simple and telegraphic phrase where he say basically what he says in his book, 'spin energy in the dan tian'. The point is that i don't feel any energy at all.

Sorry the nadis Gopi Krishna wrote about were Pingala and Ida

Hi. I read about the two nadis Pitta and Vata (i think..) in the book of Gopi Krishna. This is the reason why i'm interested in Microcosmic orbit taoist meditation because it sems to me it could lead to regulate direcly my energy system... I bought this summer a grounding device that i use during sleep. It improved a bit my sleep but nothing miraculous, and it seems to stop working after a few weeks. I always do 8 brocades without shoes. I tried this summer to follow Mantak Chia 's book instructions on MO meditation, but i never felt anything meditating in the Dan tien even after 2 monthes. Strangely i seemed very sensitive to any yoga practice i tried, but no to taoist meditation. When i signed up last october at Chi gung i did a trial yoga lesson. I don't know what kind of yoga it was, but it involved breathing with various part of the diaphragm. I did just one lesson but that night i hasn't been able to sleep at all. The thing i wonder is: shouldn't an ayurvedic doctor be able to help me? How is it possible that an acuputurist were i ve been found out nothing wrong in me? Shouldn't this be supposed to be their job (i mean dealing with energetic imbalances)?

Ok. Thanks for the responses. I'll responde to each of you. 1. x King: "Here is my theory about your side effects: During a good meditation you gather increased amounts of energy into your body, which is not necessarily a good thing. Especially if your body is not ready for it. Imagine using a lightning to power a lamp, the lamp simply can't handle that amouont of energy." Its possible, yes. For sure my body and brain were not in a good shape, but in TM nobody ever advices you that you need some kind of particularly optimal physical shape to do meditation. Instead it s considered a practice suitable for everyone. And in fact, reports of bad side effects as mine or worse are very rare. In the almost totality of cases such episodes (that had often led to psychosis) occurred to people involved in 'advanced courses' that implied 'tour de force' of hours of meditation per day. So i simply don't think that all the millions of people practicing TM in the world nowadays or in the past were all persons who had attained a deep livel of internal peace or who prepared their bodies for years with specific disciplines. They were normal and 'impure' persons as i was and still they had just benefits from TM, some had no effect, but for sure the 98% of them didn't had such issues as me. "Do some asanas or a horse stance in the morning for 20minutes." I actually practice the 8 pieces of brocades everyday, that is already a big commitment. "Drink a lot of water. Try eating vegetarian food at least untill the side effects are gone." I'm vegetarian since i was 17, just recently added fish. Funny enough, on the Kundalini support group somebody suggested to me to eat meat because she said it s 'grounding'... "And do pranayama (once a day is enough, though three times is preferable) for opening the nadis (this is probably the most important part). Start with an easier pranayama like laying on your back in savasana (the head should be on a higher ground, use a pillow or something else). And breathe in the ratio 1:2 with no pause between the breaths." I tried a few things after TM. One of this were a few pranayama exercises suggested to me in the KundaliniSupportgroup very similar to the one suggested from you. They had on me an effect similar to TM, but milder: it rose a lot my mood and energy but caused to me bad insomnia and i had to stop. x Idiot_stimpy: "Have you ever explored the possibility that the mobilized energy is causing the body to clear things up? Kind of working through your karma at a rapid rate?" This was basically one of the things that the TM teacher used to say. 'You re doing clean housing and this is dust' , unluckily this supposed 'dust' lasted for years and if i didn't stop to do 'clean housing' i would have probably been killed by dust (i would have been led to mental insanity at least...) If you re giving a medicine to a ill person and he feel always worse and worse the more medicine you give, do you insist to give that medicine untill the patient die or do you stop and suspect that maybe there is something wrong?? How long should this 'cleaning' be supposed to last, for the whole life?? How long can a human being live without sleeping?? Should i be supposed to try (at least) to have also a real life or should i withdraw myself from the world for an indefinite amount of time hoping that the 'dust' run out? x Yascra: "Hmmhmm, a general rule I'd like to hint you at is that meditation doesn't cause health problems, but tends to bring up and clean up things that are already present in your body, in a latent manner. This process can be quite uncomfortable, but usually it is not harmful in itself. Quite the opposite, it helps you to clear out things before they become serious." Again, i don t want to be rude but this is a vague and generical statement. There are a lot of things in my life that can be interpreted that way, in a way or another, but this in fact doesn't help me... the question should be interpreted 'medically' but i don't think that Medical Professionals exist who would accept such a supposition game... As example: Did i have a 'latent' sleep problem?? What should this mean? How should i be supposed to solve it? Did i have latent immune issues? Etc etc.. "I guess that some part of the problem might be that you're kind afraid of this whole thing so that you can't relax and let things happen." Of course i'm afraid NOW after i experienced all those bad side effects, but i wasn t afraid at all before i understood that all these issues were scaused by meditation. How should be fear supposed to cause urinary inflammation? "Have you ever been a religious person?" No, and i don't want to be

Hello everybody. I m an occasional meditation practitioner who's struggling with meditation side effects since a few years, and i hope i can find somebody able to give me useful information in this forum. I already tried to contact persons and associations through e-mail, i spoke with an important Yoga master who lives here in Italy, and contacted a few Yoga teachers and a chi gung teacher in my city , all without results. The vast majority of them simply denied (like the Yoga guru and the TM teacher who followed me) that such a practice as meditation could do any kind of harm, a few admitted the fact but simply told me that i did the things in the wrong way without explaining me how to fix things once they are messed up, others like the teachers in my city simply told me "sign up to my course" without giving me any response. No way i could establish communication with Doctors. Just an internet support group called "Kundalini support group" suggested to me that i could effectively have had a case of Kundalini arousal and suggested to me to do "microcosmic orbit" and Chi Kung. I must explain myself. In 2009 i began to practice TM from a book and a cd (the meditation consists on repeating mentally ,staying in a comfortable seated position, a syllable; in my case the syllable was "RAM"). I never had interest in spirituality but i was in an awful psycological condition and suffered of fatigue since a few years and i was disposed to try anything without letting my preconceptions conditioning me. I had tried years of psychotherapies without success, medications without any benefit; instead since 2006 even my physical health had begun to decade with general malaise, weaker immune function, loss of physical strenght and persistent tiredness despite i used to practice sport. As in 2006 i was 29 it seemed absurd to me that this was simply the result of aging. So i tried meditation without expectation as i was very skeptical about such things. But to my big surprise after 3 weeks i began to feel generally good, mentally and physically, as i never felt since a long time. This seemed as a miracle to me. Unluckily almost immediately i began also to developed sleep problems. As weeks went by i felt better and better, and my personality itself seemed almost changed, i was stronger and most confident, physically and mentally. But sleeping was a problem for me. I began to have strange experiences during my meditation sessions, mainly while i was in the deepest states of contemplation. At first i used to notice since the first weeks of my meditation practice that i used to react to relaxation induced by meditation with sexual arousement. This seemed odd to me and quite contradictory with my idea of meditation or yoga effects... this was particularly strange considering that i suffered since long time of lack of libido. One of the benefits of meditation on me seemed to be a restoration of my libido, that was now very strong. But this wasn't the oddest thing. Sometimes during the moments of deeper meditation i felt as a hot sensation, like energy, like a stream of adrenaline but very pleasant almost like an orgasm that rose through my back, passed throught my neck and reached the head. I didn't give any importance to that though.. I began to feel too much energised. During my Gym hours my stamina seemed limitless. I began to enjoy to run fast and for long time. I was nervous, always full of energy and desire of doing things but i could not simply stay still for a moment and used to do everything in an accelerated way, like a maniac. I began to have difficulties controlling my behaviours, during conversation with people my enthusiasm was excessive and i simply couldn't stop to speak. I also was easily irritable and unable to control my anger. I was generally wildly emotive and could change during a conversation from happiness to crying for a minimum reason. I began to alternate period of meditation practice to period without practice because i was still very skeptical and couldn't believe that such a simple thing like meditation could create such effects. As i was under antidepressant i initially thought that it was the effect of the medication. But the effects disappeared when i stopped meditation every time, and reappeared with it. In summer 2010 i had another pair of odd experiences. I had stopped meditation practice since a few monthes and i felt terrible. So i decided to start again. After 5 days of meditation i began to feel so energised that i didn't feel the need of eating more than 1 lunch for day, no need for sleep, and i was in a persistent condition of violent sexual arousement. After 5 days i collapsed from lack of sleep. I know that this would seem the report of a cocain abuser, but the foolish thing was that all that was simply from moderate meditation practice (no more then 20-30 minutes twice a day). Another day, a morning, after a few minutes of starting meditation i felt the warm sensation rising in my back then i felt a strong pain in my bladder and urinary tract and began to feel cold and nausea like if i had the flu. I felt asleep for 1 hours and when i woke up i felt no more malaise. But after 2 weeks i developed a bladder infection that i had to cure with antibiotics. The side effects worsened. I began to suffer of chest pain, and short breath. I began usually to have involuntary muscular contractions (tics) during the day, sometimes in the legs sometimes in my face. Nights were nightmares, every minimal noise would make me literally jump in my bed. I was hypersensitive and intollerant to lights, expecially car's lights, tv and monitors. I sometimes had headaches during meditation. I began to have frequent and long lasting flues. I now known many of these was the effects of meditation, but i was afraid to return to my previous suffering as a consequence of stopping meditation practice. I contacted the assistance of the association who sold to me the booklet. I ve been in contact with them for 2 monthes but they weren t able to understand the nature of my problems and began to deny them. I began to do researches on the Web, i contacted a few ex-TM-teachers who told me stories of serious side effects from TM. Then, i casually read about a thing called Kundalini syndrome. I noticed some of the symptoms were similar to mine, exept that i never had any visual or auditory hallucination. I tried to speak about that to my Chi Gung teacher (i practice medical chi kung since 4 monthes) but she tend to dodge my questions, i suspect she simply doesn't understand my questions, or have no responses to give me. I definitely stopped practising TM more than 2 years ago, but the disturbs are not totally gone away. Instead during the last 4 years i developed several health problems that i developed 'strangely' in the same time even if they are medically unrelated to each other. A few of them seem to improve with Chi Kung. The problem is also that, in fact, as a life long depression and anxiety sufferer (my school career has been ruined by this problems since i was 16 and so my youth) meditation has been the only thing that ever worked for me and not being able to continue it it s quite tragic. So even if in fact stopping meditation practice didn't eliminated totally the disturbs i developed (but reduced them enormously) the other problem is that simply avoiding meditation would mean for me losing the only thing that ever helped me consistently. To this day i still hasn't been able to eliminate completely insomnia and chest pain; plus i developed other health problems that i cannot demonstrate are related to meditation practice but they could be. I wonder if meditation practice in my case could have mobilized energies in my body in an improper way messing up things. All the persons in my city who claim to be experts in some form of traditional eastern medicine like chinese or indian medicine or teachers in yoga or qigong never even tried to put the question in these terms, they never gave any importance to the symptoms and never gave to me any explanation for what it happened to me, exept for generic responses. i suspect they were simply too ignorant to understand my issues and giving me a serious response. I also tried Reiki: i did just one session, in the morning. During the day i felt very tired and in the evening i started to feel awfully like never before untill night. So i got scared and never continued. I have to point out that the reiki healer didn't notice any problem inside me during his 'check up', so i supposed that he simply didn't have any idea on what the hell he had done on me to make me feel terribly like that. It s now almost 2 years i totally stopped TM. Recently i hoped that after such a long time of rest i could have maybe been able again to practice meditation without disturbs, so i tried to start again but very slowly and with caution. I began with only 5 minutes x day... just the first day about half an hours after my 5 minutes of meditation i began to feel strange and feeling a burning sensation in my urinary tract. With minutes passing by i felt worse. It happened the same exact thing that happened to me in 2010 (i wrote it at the beginning of this letter) and as in 2010 i felt a general malaise with nausea and cold and felt the need of sleeping , i did it also this time and after 1 hour of sleep the disturb disappeared. I think this is the definitive proof that this meditation moves something inside me at a physical level, and that something is still messed up since those years.