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Jane Alexander (SFJane here on at the bums) was of the opinion that psychosis was caused by far too much chi in head centers wreaking havoc, and that getting that energy down helped heal it. She was bipolar and occasionally psychotic and used qigong and meditation to heal that, with an emphasis on dissolving blocks and sinking energy. I observed in forums over the years that those who got psychotic, or near psychotic, through meditative practices seemed to get out of it if they just grounded enough. My own experience of extreme chi deviation bordering on psychosis had the same cause and cure. The cause was too much energy rushing to the head and what reduced the symptoms was getting the energy down. This all made me very curious if grounding practices could be especially important in the healing of regular psychosis, not just the meditation and qigong induced varieties. So, once when I ended up in conversation with a woman in Starbucks that was in and out of psychosis frequently I explained this to her and asked her what she thought about it. She said she found it very interesting because she had once gotten out of a psychotic episode by combining going for an extremely long walk with constantly paying attention to the soles of her feet and their contact with the ground. I also talked about this with a psychologist that worked with people that were recently committed to a psychiatric hospital. She liked the perspective and said a lot of what she does to get those who are lost in psychosis to a place where they can start working in a normal therapy type way was through having them do lots of exercises with their bodies to get them back into reality and in contact with the here and now through their bodies.

I'm not a wise master so not replying as one comes easy:) Hard to give definitive signs that can make you certain. But I can say a few things. Having been in the world of yoga, qigong, alternative spirituality and self help workshops where people work on their traumas and trying to wake up etc for over 20 years one of my clearest observations is that trauma healing often takes a really long time if it was sufficiently severe. From what you wrote you sound more like you are in the moderate trauma category and that makes it much more likely you have gotten through most of it. But unfortunately for a lot of people they spend well over 10 years going from method to method and doing superhuman amounts of therapy and bodywork and workshops and yet still struggle to get to the core. Many do seem to get there though and for a lot of people I think the missing component is often a consistent practice of something like qigong and meditation to work alongside therapy and you've got that aid so your odds are better IMO. As for signs I guess a "regulated" nervous system and lack of strong "triggers" is what most people in the "trauma healing world" would point to. Do you have strong fight, flight, freeze or fawn reactions that are out of proportion to the situations you find yourself in? Having mostly harmonious interpersonal relationships would be another sign. And I would say having a fairly stable self worth even when you objectively mess up would also be a strong sign. Feeling very grounded when not doing qigong would be good sign of trauma healing too:) Bruce Frantzis says something in his bocks about how when using the dissolving method to dissolve blocks and trauma it is common for a major block to apparently dissolve only for it to resurface in more subtler ways when the right triggers are there. Then you dissolve that too and yet again there may be even subtler triggers showing up and so on until it is fully dissolved. He writes something I think about how to try to make sure blocks are dissolved fully but I can't remember it anymore. Frantzis dissolving method is a very good trauma healing method IMO. You keep scanning deeper and deeper looking for stuff you missed. Makes it easier to find things than if you just concentrate on the breath or white light or a mantra or something like that. Jane Alexander, SFJane on this forum, wrote the book Possessing Me about using those practices to heal unusually severe trauma. She has some old posts about it too. Michael Winn has a video on primordial and maybe a pdf on it too. I think he maybe calls it enlightenment qigong. Andrew Fretwell has an online teacher training about it so I presume he has basic online courses about it too. He calls it WujiGong. Andrew is a nice guy. I recommend learning it from him. Though what else he teaches mostly comes from the HealingTao tradition of Winn and I think there is much better qigong/alchemy around than that.

I would say that Michael Winn at least approaches it quite a lot better.

The liver sound from the six healing sounds is great for working with suppressed anger

I tried this based on your suggestion and it seemed to mostly work but could somehow still agitate my knees somewhat. It didn't get the energy down as well as standing but seemed like it may do the job long term. I stopped all practices for a while and cut this too. Now I have restarted with the standing vs as I had a hunch all my work with exercise and treatments working on correcting my legs had paid off and turns out it had. I seem to be able to do deep earth pusling for a while without too much issues for the knees or ankle joint. The grounding effect has so far been very good. I have been burnt too many times to be super confident this will work long term. So many grounding exercises work for me initially but eventually makes things worse. But so far this seems to be working. I am on day 8 now. I haven't been this hopeful in many years:). Thanks for the advice!

I asked ChatGPT about the differences in effects between the two sets and this was the answer it gave. Is this true? Does it fit your experience or what you have learnt about the forms? 🌿 Eight Brocades (Ba Duan Jin) Nature: Regulating, harmonizing, stabilizing Movement: Symmetrical, predictable, gentle Effects: Calms nervous system Improves circulation (esp. lower body) Opens chest, strengthens legs, aligns posture Builds foundational Qi flow and grounding Best for: Rebalancing after chronic stress or fatigue, building stability before activation 🐅 Five Animals (Wu Qin Xi) Nature: Stimulating, activating, expressive Movement: Archetypal, dynamic, playful Effects: Strengthens tendons and spine Awakens instinctual and emotional energy Improves coordination and flexibility Can slightly energize or excite the nervous system Best for: Developmental practice, mobilizing energy once regulation is established ⚖️ Practical Takeaway If your nervous system is dysregulated or fatigued: do Eight Brocades twice daily before adding Five Animals. Once stability, warmth, and circulation improve, you can add the Five Animals gradually. Think of it like this: Brocades = calm the river Five Animals = increase the current

Springforest includes visualization does it not? That in itself can be somewhat ungrounding. I would just drop the spring forest practices until this issue is resolved and temporarily focus on getting the grounding sorted first. Consider if maybe you need some psychological work/therapy to help with this issue. My observation has been that for some people energetic solutions aren't always sufficient if the imbalances are caused by strong underlying psychological issues. Then it is often necessary to always work in a more psychological way. Talk therapy, bodywork or more self enquiry types of practices or nervous system regulation practices. Human connection is often needed to make things move. Say for example that the reason you got ungrounded initially was because childhood trauma made you dissociate from the body or have a fight response in your nervous system (which is also ungrounding). If you then start doing grounding techniques that may sometimes be sufficient and can even help resolve the trauma but it may also be insufficient because the wounded parts of you simply refuses to let go of its protective strategies just because you do exercises that bring energy down. Those parts of you may not feel safe enough to allow you to get back into the body unless they feel more safe. And that feeling of safety may require talking to another person. Or at least looking directly at the psychological knot causing the ungroundedness. Not saying this is the case but I think it is worth checking in with yourself about. If you want to get the grounding sorted you could do something like this: Do an internal martial art like Tai Chi. It is very grounding. It both gets you deeply in contact with your feet and your stability on the ground and with your dan tien. Do standing meditation. I find it to be supremely grounding. Do deep earth pulsing. A very simple and gentle grounding qigong you can find instructions for on YouTube. Do Damo Mitchells anchoring the breath practice. It is meant to really anchor your awareness and energy and breath in the dan tien. Which grounds you. He has two videos on YouTube with instructions. Maybe add some squats and walks in the forrest. Maybe do walking meditation. You could also maybe add some more general practices like the eight brocades and five animals. They are not especially grounding but more overall balancing (which also means somewhat grounding). Just so not everything you do is super earth focused but a bit more "even". You could also consider trying Primordial Qigong/Wuji Gong/Tai Chi for Enlightenment (different teachers have different names for it). I find Primordial to be both extremely grounding while also gradually awakening higher energy centers. It kinda awakens one to deep witnessing states and more "heavenly" aspects of practice while integrating that into the body and into life instantly.

I have suffered from Qi deviation issues for years because of being severely ungrounded. I had to stop all practice for several years. The last year or so I have been able to restart a bit by doing 15 min of qigong a day. Either the 8 brocades or the six healing sounds and a session of TRE in the evening. I want to investigate more grounding exercises to try to find something that can help me further along. In general a lot of qigong and energetic exercises make me worse. Even those that are supposedly grounding. Though some work in a balanced way in moderate dosages. If you know any, please suggest whatever grounding exercises you know. Both energetic ones, such as a qigong movement, or more pure physical ones that aren't really designed to work with energy but still l has the effect of grounding energy.