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I know a girl who has an extreemly serious eating disorder. She will likely die not far from now because hear organs related to eating are colapsing. Everything seems to have been tried and nothing has worked. I thought maybe brainwave entrainment could do her some good. A program that takes her to very relaxed and peaceful states and takes her to some of those frequencies that are most known for being beneficial for healing the body and mind. To begin with anything like combining this with affirmations or meditation on her own part is futile. She dosen`t realy have the will to work to become better herself. It would have to be something she just listens to and which takes her mind to a prefered state, not someting she needs to work for. Does anyone have suggestions for what kind of programmes could be good for her and were I could get them.

Thanks for the advice, I will pass it on

It is kind of a mix of both. She does of course want to get better but on the other hand she is both extreemly week, tired of trying and a self distructive streak wich prevents her from realy trying. However, if brainwave entrainment can take her to a beneficial frequency it would be a good thing anyway. At least worth a shot. I you can post such a session that would be great but how does that realy work. How do I get it to an mp3 (I am technologicly challenged). Isen`t delta a bit deep to start with? Aren`t one supposed to go to alpha and then work towards theta and then delta?

I get the point but to me Taoism is a very, very logical religion

For example, Otzi the Iceman, whose 5,000-year-old frozen corpse was discovered by hikers in the Alps in 1991, was tattooed with lines and dots that appear to correspond to acupuncture points and meridians, suggesting that the practice may date back five millenniums. He also carried pieces of a birch fungus that contains a natural antibiotic, indicating he may have been taking an herbal remedy for intestinal parasites. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...8100102417.html Thought you guys might find this cool to know

The only thing I know about strokes is that the psychology of the person who has one i extreemly important in determining if there will be another. In Healing Emotions by Daniel Goleman some research about this is mentioned and the possible role of meditation in prevention of a second stroke is discussed (huge I think). Acupuncture sounds like a great idea. You could read up on how Christopher Reeve got as far as he did. I think visualization is important becasue when you visualize movement the parts of the brain that controle those movements are activated. Reiki and healing sounds great. At AYP they have a weekly session of coordinated healing meditations for one person at a time. You could sign her up for that.

Some NLP is good for discipline and goal setting. Visualising your goals and feeling how it feels to have acomplished them and using suggestion is very effective. Especialy for people who have better concentration than normal because of meditation.

Just wanted to say a couple of things about bipolar disorder. At this site people rate different types of treatments for various ilnesess. The ratings for yoga, qigong, accupuncture and meditation against bipolar disorder are excellent: http://www.revolutionhealth.com/drugs-trea...lar-ii-disorder http://www.revolutionhealth.com/drugs-treatments/meditation http://www.revolutionhealth.com/drugs-trea...olar-i-disorder http://www.revolutionhealth.com/drugs-trea...olar-i-disorder http://www.revolutionhealth.com/drugs-trea...olar-i-disorder Mindfulness based cognitive therapy has also been shown effective against various mental disorders amonsgt them bipolar disorder and even schizophrenia. There are also other stuff like herbs and vitamines that get good reviews. I have also read that these three things are proven to be effective for bipolar disorder: omega-3 (fish oil), inositol, and folic acid. I am sure a good chineese herbalist would be able to find good combinations of herbs that help. I also asume that those who have rated qigong, meditation and yoga have been doing fairly general aproaches not something particulary tailored for bipolar disorder. If one gets a program which aims against balancing bipolar disorder and is individualized it has to be a lot more effective. Energizing sequences for down days and grounding sequences for manic days etc. In general I would think mindfull meditation styles like Vipassana would be very good but that types such as inner smile or loving kindness would be highly valuable because they give a sense of inner worth and in general promotes happiness strongly. I also suppose healing sounds and five animals or something which in a similar way aims to cleanse and balance all the emotions would be superb. The pranayama Sudashan Kriya taught by Art of lving has been showed to be extreemly effective against depression and is now being tested for effectiveness in bipolar disorder. Sudashan Kriya is almost the same as Bastrika. Intuitively I feel that the microcomsic orbit caould be very effective but thats just a hunch. I am pretty sure that a well thought out program of qigong or yoga combined with proper meditation, brething excercises and accupuncture herbs and diet would have a huge impact on bipolar disorder. If it is coupled with good therapy and possibly western psychiatric drugs I a sure the results over a couple of years could be huge but also noticeable in a week or two.

A friend of mine asked me if I knew about chineese herbs that can relive anxiety and depression. I don`t realy know anything about chineese herbal medicine but I do have an impression that it is very good for many things. Do you know how good their herbal treatments are for mental inlnesses? And do you know how safe they are? Do you also know anything about how they might work if one is already on a form of drug for the disease (he is on Zoloft)? I am also wondering if you think it is wise to order a well recognized herbal formula online without consulting a chineese herbalist in person. When I read about one such formula it talked about working through lifting stagnant chi of the chest but I can imagine anxiety and depression will often be caused by or connected with stagnant chi elsewhere instead. So unless one has a herbalist to check what kind of blockage it is it seems like one could very well get the wrong medicine. I say this because I am not sure we have any chinesse herbalists in Norway. We might, I am going to check, but I have never heard of it here. http://www.drshen.com/herbsfordepression.htm I found this when looking around. Does anyone know anything about this one in particular? While we are on the topic, does anyone also know about herbs for memory and intelectual abilities. I would very much like to boost my memory. I also have two parents that are starting to get old and are starting to be a bit forgetfull. I am very vary of talking supplements beyond an ordinary healthy diet so it would ahve to be something considered very safe and established.

I think Pilates would be excellent. It realy gets you into the Dan Tien but it does it in a very physical way. Often I think it is best for people with mental problems to aproach such things in a vewry physical way because going too much into the energetic can be destabilizing. Pilates also structures the whole body which over some time has a profound pshuchological effect and balances you emotionaly and energeticly. Beyond that it seems like horse stance and visualising roots would be excellent. My perception is that many people with various emotional problems and people who are stuck in thier head and unrooted also have a very constricted flow of energy in general. Some sort of qigong that is very basic but still gives a good flow of energy is probably very helpfull. As a person who has been far to much in my head and very ungrounded I have some personal experience with this and what I at least experienced was that solely doing grounding excercises made me unbalanced in a differnent way. All my energy left my head and got stuck in my feet and organs and I couldn`t get it up. It totaly blocked my ability to think concentrated for days. What I needed was stuff that was balancing to the whole body before I started doing stuff that was particulary focused on getting energy down. Iyengar yoga has been good for this. As has very simple taiji and qigong. Particulary qigong that is very balanced between developing rooting and upward lifting energy in a perfect balance. Flow of energy in general was also beneficial. That being said I did learn one excercise that was particualry helpfull. Lift right hand up simultaniously as you lift the heel of the right foot up. Then slowly push the hand and foot down simultaniously as you imagine both pushing the energy into the ground and feet. As you are almost finished pushing down you start moving the left hand and foot upwards and then do a round on that side. Besides working particulary on grounding I think there are other stuff she can work on that would be very beneficial. Several studies has showed that mindfulness meditation is extreemly helpfull for most mental ilnesses. Any type of simple work with release of the breath should be beneficical. As would a simple and balanced program of qigong or yoga. I would imagine healing sounds would be excellent as it so specificly targets and balances emotions. Same thing with five animals. Inner smile should be excellent as well because it reduces anxiousness reduces depressive thoughts and emotions and gives self acceptance. Same thing with loving kindenss however I perosnaly prefer inner smile over loving kindness because I have problems maintaning balance with the strong feelings of love it generates. However, I know it has been taught to people with emotional problems in mindfulness classes with success. I would also imagine accupuncture being very helpfull against emotional problems especially when one of the problems is having too much energy in the head/being energeticaly unbalanced.

I need some quite basic breathing excersizes to get a free, even and deep breath. I am thinking of doing full yogic breath and sanbag breathing but I feel like I could benefit from breathing according to some sort of count rythm. Does anyone have suggestions for that. Some sort of count to make me breathe slow and good?

Very interesting topic. I know that in India quite a lot of kids are thaught a good bit of asana early on. I also know that the Bihar perople will often giver mantras to kids for meditation at around 5 or six I think. They also said in one book that around 8 years the pineal, pituary or thymus gland (or all I don`t remember) starts getting a lot smaller and that makes giving certain mantras and excercises to counteract that apropriate. They warn against most pranyama at a young age. Especialy anything advanced and powerfull and certainly anything that realy afects the lungs and ribcage physcialy because the body is growing and it can mess things up. However, they also say that simple alternate nostril breathing can be taught very early and will harmonise most of the hormonal changes during puberty (especialy if started a few years before puberty) making everthyng surprisingly smood. There are kids yoga classes all over the place these days and aparently the kids like it a lot. I know htere are books about how to make it fun for them. I have also heard of quite a bit of success with short breathing and meditation excercises. Actualy there is a kindergarden in Oslo, Norway that do meditation every day and has done that for many years. I would expect very simple mindfluness of breathing would be excellent as long as it is short enough. Lama Surya Das had kids listen to a bell and try to "go with your mind were the bell goes", in efect into silence and nothingness. This apeared to work extreemly well and made some of them have realy deep experiences very , very quickly. I certainly belive that getting some of this stuff in early will have profound efects and make everything later a lot easier. Yoga Nidra might be apropriate at a certain point. Inner smile should definitely be taught because I think tehy will love it and do mini inner smile sessions throughout the day. Some sort of short loving kindness towards self and others might also work very well. As could some sort of visualisation. In general I think keeping it simple, not to strong, pleasurable, balancing and very very safe should be the guiding principles. In time we will also figure out how to do this best. The results will then be amazing. I would suggest that if you kids like it you could as their teachers if you could do a couple of seasions teaching their classmates a few very easy things. A couple of asanas, easy breath awareness, the bell and inner smile perhaps. It would benefit the kids imensly and it would create a lot more harmonious environment for your children to go to scholl in. Oh and by the way. about half of boys actualy experience multiple dry orgasms before they start having ejaculations and sometimes also a bit after this as well. So it should be alot easier to teach them that skill. However, retention dosen`t necesarily sound very smart to start so early.

I have had a couple of very, very mild mild experiences of what I think bliss is at it`s most preliminary levels. This summer experiencing with the I AM mantra from AYP I had tingling feelings in my root chakra slowly flowing up my body all over but a little more in the spine. The last two days doing Vipassana I have had a slightly different version. I focus on the breath in my nostrils. When my concentration reached a certain point I felt like my conciousness fell downwords extreemly quickly making me a lot more relaxed and concentratied in a milisecond(the sound whooom seems to always come up as an asociation when this happens). At the same time streams of energy started coming up from my root chakra all the way up towards the head. They were spiraling streams and they were in the middle of my body not in the spine. They were also fairly brodaly distrubuted so it did not feel like it was concentrated to a certain energy channel but traveled broadly in mye body. The associated colour was somewhere between white and silver but not quite any of them. At the same time the rest of my internal vision became much darker when I felt my conciousness drop.This felt like bliss, very pleasurable but not all that strong. It was closely related to my experience of having valey like orgasms especialy from prostate stimulation. I think this was an extreemly mild version of what many others experience. I am very much a beginner in meditation although my yoga has been steady much longer. I meet a budhist monk once who had reached Samadhi and then lost it again. Pure bliss was one of his descriptions. However I don`t think he felt it like streaming or tingling or orgasmic but like it was totaly and stably present in every cell in his body all the time in addition to the same being case for total relaxation and tranquility, total awareness, total fluidity of conciousness (he said in Samadhi your mind can go anywhere instantainiously), total compassion, total love for all and total connection to everything, complete timelessness. If you go to aypsite.org you will find lots of descriptions of how bliss feels to people. The AYP practices are very quick and very strong on producing bliss. I am curiouss to now what people know about Vipassana and bliss. My impression originaly was that it came much later than with many other styles of meditation but my teacher said he experienced it very quickly with Vipassana and I am surprised that I had my little taste so sonn and at such a low level of concentration.

Thanks for the reply Those sounds good. The first one is inhale for six hold for three exhale for six and then hold for three before inhaling again for six right? Just checking to make sure I got it right. Does Kosher yoga have anything to do with Judaism by the way or is it just an accidentaly funny name??

More meaningfull sex obviously is a good thing. I would also rather have people have sex with each other than masturbate and fantasize because I think that would be more gratifying and create better bonds between them. However, I don`t see masturbation or sexual fantasies as a problem at all. Neither do I see sexual fantasies and masturbation as a problem when it includes the use of pornography. I just don`t see the problem. When I have been at various forums were sex is discussed, the majority fully accept their partners use of porn. Presumably that number could go up to about a 100% depending on how the culture develops with regard to it`s views of porn. I am aware that in a few instances some people become more or less addicted to it in a destructive sense. Spending far too much time downloading stuff and far to little focusing on their partner. However, the same thing goes for a million other things. Also stuff that you that might be considered a good thing to beging with unlike internett gambling which creates a lot of addiction. People get addicted to fortune tellers (actualy a huge problem), they get too sucked into cultivation to fulfill their obligation to their children and partners (Gopi Krishnas father stopped talking to his family, although living with them, and let his wife support the whole family while himslef spening al his time meditating and getting closer to god), people get addicted to their jobs and that can often be a problem even when they are doing very important work for others because they neglect and damage their families, people also get completly hooked on self development workshops that in isolation can be good but are destructive when attended every other weekend and leading to obession with oneself, my habit of reading loads of spiritual bokks has at times been obsessive and destructive to my life, same thing goes for some peoples realtionship to watching the stock market to make good investments. If you look at the reasons poeple give for devorces I am also sure you would find spening too much time with friends or golfing or hunting instead of ones partner is a much more frequent reason than porn. I also suspect that it is often when the relationship itself has degenrated that porn becomes a substitute that can make the other partner jealous. As I do not see porn or fantasies as problematic in themselves I don`t see why it should be deemed problematic overall just because some people get addicted to it since the same thing goes for a bunch of other stuff that in themselves are wholesome. Although I definitively see the problem with much of hte porn industry it is also a fact that huge amounts of people have put their homemade porn online for free and are still happy that they did (although lots of people also regrett doing that). As porn becomes more accepted the industry is also changing and you get different people working there. If you look at sites such as ifeelmyself.com or beutifullagony.com you will find very healthy normal people that make porn because they themselves enjoy it. The more accepted porn is the less you will have only emotionaly damged people drawn towards the industry. In Shakespears time being an acter in a theatre was seen as on par with being a prostitute. That obviously made a lot of people with healthy self respect stay out acting. Same thing goes for porn and that is changing and that will in turn change the whole industry and improve what is being produced. If one sees what for example Annie Sprinkle has made one sees a lot of very alternative and valuable pornography that actualy enriches peoples lives a lot.

http://flux64.wordpress.com/2006/08/21/subtle-body-anatomy/ Dosen`t this match pretty well the Lower Dan Tien?

I have been practicing yoga for quite some time and I have a little bit of experience with tai chi and qigong. I am wondering if you consider practicing qigong in addition to yoga safe? An opinion I have heard is that it is dangerous to mix powerfull alchemical practices and breathing practices and meditations from different traditions while blending asanas and other milder energywork like tai chi can be fine. However, in qigong there seems to be a bit more specific manipulation of energy than in tai chi. It also has a bit different principles for aligning and using the body than yoga (it seems to me at least), so I can see there might be some conflict. However, the qigong I want to use is a very normal qigong practice only aiming for general health, it is not specificly geared towards spiritual purposes. That I would think makes it more compatible with yoga. What do you guys think? My reason for wanting to try this is that although I love my yoga, it is so physical that it is not as easy to realy get into the energyflow as in the easy standing postures and extreemly slow movements of qigong. I have also come across a qigong class my accupuncturist says is especialy good for health purposes and strongly recommends.

One of the reason I have tought of that yoga and qi gong should be safe to mix is that you already have yin yoga in Taoism. Some of the yin yoga poses that Griley has pur into the practice comes from India but loads of asanas that are practiced in India have been practice in CHina in conjuntion with qigong. For example the asanas in Mantak CHias Dao Yin. However, I thought this might be a bit different from a full practice of Iyengar, and I always hear so much about not mixing stuff so I am just cheking what people here think

Thanks for the input. Hope you are right. I am doing Iyengar yoga. It is considered very safe both physucaly and energeticaly by itself. Long term I belive that Iyengar provides a safe path of yoga and pranayama that provides extreemly well for my health needs and is very efficient and stable in spiriutal terms. However, particulary in the first few years you have to focus a lot on the mostly physical in order to make the pose perfect and hence stable. It is first when you have realy good alignment and stability in hte pose that it will allow you to sink into a meditative practice to the degree that you do in qigong. Qigong poses are usualy so easy for the body to do without strain and are done so slow that you can have a much more meditative experience and feel more energy much earlier on. In Iyengar once you realy master the poses you start to do them for realy loong and then you get very deep energetic experiences from the poses but for quite some time it just isen`t as energetic as I hope for so I feel like adding some qigong just have that lowly sloe energetic feeling and to reap the benefits of producing stronger currents of energy.

I am wondering what you guys think of brainwawe entrainment. Is it a good addition to meditation? Is it a beneficial way to go deep and then progress further from that state on your own? How much does it effectivize your meditation?

Thanks for the offer. I`ll probably take you up on it some time in the future but I want to get some depth just through disciplining my own mind through Vipassana first. Then when I have some real experience I am definitively going to explore this. I just want to see how it unfolds "naturaly" first.

I would imagine all the letting go completly and jumping around like crasy stuff should help you loose social inhibitions. How about doing Kunlun, some sort of stilness meditation and the healing sounds and ossibly with some added affirmations about being confident after the meditation. I think that should be a package that realy helps you get rid of anxiety.

I don`t know how Kunlun will effect social anxiety but i suppose it will help a good bit in the beginning and a lot after a while. What I do know is that basic mindfulness meditation hos been proven in several studies to combat anxiety a lot. Because these studies usualy don`t have a very long time span it is likely that the results over a longer period of time will be even better. I`m fairly certain they will more or less disapear conmpletly after a while. The Art of Living pranayma Sudarshan Kriya has been showed to have a huge effect in reducing depression, presumably also anxiety. It is basicly a modified version of Bastrika so if you don`t want to take a whole art of living course (six days) to learn the technique you can learn Bastrika from loads of yoga teachers. I personaly and many others have also found the six healing aounds to be an excellent way to maintain mental health and combat insecurites. The inner smile also helps a lot with this. Besides this any sort of taiji Qi Gong or yoga helps. Partly through it`s relacing effect, partly through relasing the breath, partly through producing energy that works in the opposite direction and partly through structuring your physical and energetic boody in a way that is correct and not very conduce to negative emotions. I find that the structuring of my body through Iyengar yoga reduces sosial anxieties and increases confidence and good emotions a lot.

Then we are pretty much in agreement. I would like to read the book as well and I think he is probably right about the expeditions having taken place.

Firstly, I did not say that the chineese did not make these journeys nor that they did not give such knowledge to teh europeans. What I did say was that if such knowledge was given to the europeans it was either lost, ignored or not significant. In other words they could very well have received such knowledge but ignored it, possibly for reasons such as those you suggest. You actualy qouted me on that if such knowledge was given it was ignored, lost or insignificant so there is no reason for you to explain to me why such knowledge might have been there without being used. As stated I have no problem beliving that china sent such an expedition nor that it gave us such knowledge, only that this was what started the renaisance. That is such a ridiculous claim that it is on par with the Davici Code in terms of truth and strength of argument. The fact that the renaisance started way BEFORE the chineese came should be enough to illustrate this although, as I have showed previously, there are numerous other ways of showing the claim is completly laughable. As for using wikipedia I only used it handidly as I was on the web to support the claim that norwegians were in fact vikings not for saying anything about China and the europeans. From my own history classes I know very well that they were but I didn`t have other sources handy and it isen`t very likely to be too much mistaken in this regard. Especially since wat it says is more or less consistent with ewhat I have read in serious history books.