markern

1434 A delegation from the Chinese fleet arrives in Florence and meets with Pope Eugenius IV. They leave behind a mass of knowledge, including maps, astronomy, mathematics, art, architecture, and printing If this is true then were is the actual influence on tehse toughts in the European renaisance. There certainly was none in terms of architecture and art. The devlopment of printing techniques in europe is, as far as I can understand from previous reading, traced in al steps of its development and does not show chinees influence. Chineese mathematics was completly different from European mathematics. If it had influnced European matheamtics we would have seen a huge shift towards chineese style mathematics and we did not. Maps I am more inclined to belive and possibly astronomy but since the devolopment of European astronomy is well documented in history a chinees influence should be easily seen as a complete shift and as far as I can remember it is not. I can easily imagine there being some truth to this but if knowledge was transmitted to the Europeans it was either lost, ignored or not very significant. This is sensationalist history at its worst with intelectual rigour a long the lines of the Da Vinci Code I can certainly imagine the Vikings discovery being a drunken accident but the discoerers of Vinland as they called the US were Noregian, we have dug of plenty of viking battleships in norway and teh record of norewgian vikings conquring and looting is large so the vikings being Danish is not true. Generally speaking, the Norwegians expanded to the north and west to places such as Ireland, Iceland and Greenland; the Danes to England and France, settling in the Danelaw (northern England) and Normandy; and the Swedes to the east. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vikings And although it is true that the Danes were more prevalent in England and France we did plenty of looting and wife snapping in Ireland and Enlgland.

Sorry guys but the Norwegians discovered America way before both Columbus and the Chineese. Several hundred years before actualy, and there are archeological sites in the US that prove it and records in Europe of their travels. As to setting of the renaisaince that would also be wrong. If it is true that the Chineese gave Europe a lot of knowledge it is a fact that important developments of the renaisance were ALREADY on it`s way in Europe and that the renaisance had all to do with the revival of GREEK knowledge and philosophy. That knowledge was in part rediscovered in Europe and partly transimitted back to us via the muslim world. The influence of Greek tought in the renaisance was EXPLICIT. Numrous artists, writers, philsophers and scientists made it absolutely clear where their inspiration came from and what that they in large part were trying to imitate and further develop what had been in Greece. The historical record of this is massive and the indirect evidence when comparing Greek tought and art the renaisance is obvious beyond any doubts. If the Chineese did bring Europe some inspiration I find that fascinating but it would have been peanuts compared to what came to from Greece.

A friend of mine has been addicted to drugs for several years. Mostly heoin the last couple of years but also cocaine and numerous pills. While he is addicted he has a good education and good job for a computer company making good money. It apears to me that he is sometimes able to quite for a few days or a few weeks but never longer. What I am wondering is if it could be possible to get him doing Kunlun within one of those off periods and getting him hooked on that instead. If he had been a former addict that had come completly off drugs I would rather have recommended stilness meditation, healing sounds, inner smile and Qi Gong or yoga and psychological work but it seems to me that this would not be enough to hook him initialy becuase his clean periods are too short for milder practices to realy give strong effect and take hold. Kunlun seems to me to be a too powerfull practice to start of with for someone in a catastrophic mental and physical state but as the option probably is continued addiction it is a lot better to try. What do the Kunlun people here think? What kind of effects can one experience doing Kunlun for a short while and how would it be for an addict wich is in withdrawl?

Has any of you felt that you have gotten intelectual benefits from retention? Or by not having sex/masturbating? In CHias books he suggests retention will increase brainpower. I can at least see that the energy gained from retention might bosst brainpower somewhat. I also seem to come across research that seems to indicate some sort of correlation between sex hormones and IQ like on this page: http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2007/04/intercour...ntelligence.php

Thanks for the replies, I realy apreciate it!! From what those of you familiar with Kunlun say and the input of the former addicts it seems to me that going straight for Kunlun is not the best idea. My imression of Kunlun is that it is extreemly powerfull and sets of radical changes quickly in a way a normal qi gong or vipassana practice would not do so soon, or ever if practiced only to a smal extent. Even I who has practiced yoga for several years am vary of Kunlun because it seems a bit too much for me at the moment. I prefer a more gradual aproach. Because of that I only mention Kunlun to very experinced cultivators because I want people to know a bit about what they are getting into if they choose to try. As I mentioned, the thought behind getting him to do Kunlun was that he is usualy sober for such short interwals that I have doubts wether other practices will kick in soon enough to realy help him. What I am thinking now is this: I will sugest to him that if he gets into some sort of recovery program that helps keep him clean for a little while and helps him cope with the psychological issues and withdrawel symptoms I can help him put together a group of practices that should help him but that does not include Kunlun. I will suggest adding accupuncture imediately as suggested. I have read studies that mindfulness meditation is extreemly helpfull to adicts so I will add that. I have also seen that the Art of Living practice of Sudharsan Kriay (almost like Bastrika) is extreemly helpfull to people suffering from depression and they also teach it to recovering addicts with succes so I will add that as well. Beyond that I will stronlgy suggest healing sounds and if he feels he ha cappasity to add more meditation practices also the inner smile because it helps a lot with depression, anxiety and self esteem in addition to healing the body. Beyond that I will sugest yoga, taiji og qi gong. I think that if he can manage to stay of for a month or two through some sort of program these practices should kick in and help him go all the way. The main problem is how to get him to manage a month or two clean. Another thing I have been thinking about is wether there are retreat like places or monastaries were they could let him stay for a few months ad just do various practices. He has several times expressed a desire to go somewhere were there isen`t any drugs arround in order to help him keep clean and if he went to a retreat/monastary far away from access to drugs he could get that aspect in addition to massive time to practice meditation and energy practices. DOes anyone have any opinions or suggestions about that? Where could he go?

I think it is a very good practice but I know that some people get problems with becoming to intesely aware in their eyes and head and a bit disconected from the body, but usualy it works fine. Over the long term I think other meditations should probably be added but for now I`d say go for it. You could probably get a lot of usefull info about Tratak at yoga forums

Are you doing anything to get other people involved in meditation or energy practices? As I have gained more and more benefits of practicing I have gotten very interested in getting others to start because I see how beneficial it would be to them. I do this when I see a good option for it in normal conversations and I do it by recommending meditation, yoga or Qi Gong to people in web forums when they ask for advice for problems such as anxiety, derpession, ADHD or insomnia. Now I am going to find some mental health forums to find more people to give this advice to. When I feel qualified in the future I plan to give free introductory courses in meditation to give people who would otherwise not have tried it a taste which might get them to continue. My plan is to offer it to doctors, psychologist and students in those diciplins because presumably getting one person like that to practice would lead them to recommend it to a lot of patients. Other ways I have thought of increasing the efficiency of spreading meditation is to offer it to large organisations/buisinesses because if they like the results for a few people that I give a free course to, they might implement a program of free meditation for all their employes. Several businesses has done this. It would also be efficient to offer it for free to scientists/researhcers within fields that might do relevant research such as psychology professors, brain researhers, quantum physicists and philosophers. Offering it as a free course at a health club might make them start offering it themselves if they get good feeback. Physiotherapists, personal trainers, journalists writing about health, school teachers (especially gym teachers), athletes, and anyone belonging to a group that has frequent access to the media will increase the spread. I see this as very worth while becasue no only do I see the benefit for myself in such practices but studies so clearly demonstrate the value for anypne who takes it up in terms of happiness, health and behaviour towards others. So my apeal to you guys is to do whatever you think might make more people practice these things in order to make the world better. Don`t just practice, spread the gospel

Sure inspiring by example is the most important thing but I hav gotten about 10 people to start with either yoga or meditation by talking to them person to person and about 20 or 30 people have said after I recommended such practices for their health problems online that they would take them up. That is very valuable work and the world would be a better place if we did more of it. Especially if we influence thos most likely to inlfluence others like doctors and personal trainers.

I have been trying to do Vipassana meditation for a while, which is the the style I am drawn to. However, Something isen`t working as it should becuase after a while I have started to fall into trance like states where my awareness goes from getting sharper and sharper to being dulled down. It feels like the back, middle and upper frontal part of my barin fals a sleep and that only the lower frontal part remains awake. I former budhist monk I talked to called this mental faling and said it is sometimes a problem. I have tried to corect this by sharpening my awareness of the breath in the nose which is supposed to be the focus point, but it just does not work. I think what I need to do is use a mantra for some time. When I use mantras my brain stays awake more easily. However, I want to try something different than the ones i know of. Does anyone know of a mantra that is good for making ones awareness and concentration sharp and awake while at the same time being relaxing?

Thanks for good advice. My meditation is improving somewhat becuase i say stuff like "be awarw" to myself. I am holding of on using mantras for still some time becuase it feels like I can figure this out somehow. It apears to me that the position of my eyes has a lot to say. If my eyes look straight forward (even though they are closed), I stay a lot more awake than if they turn down. However my natural inclination is to turn them down. Especially since I am meditationg on the breath in my nostrils whcih are al little more down than straight ahead of the eyes. However, if I try to look straight ahead I get a little bit too much intense and it seems harder to be aware of my nose. Besides I thought the instruction was to be aware of the breath in the nose and forget about everything else. Not to controll things like the eyes but just let them do whatever they do.

I know very little about taiji, Qi Qong and chineese practices in general as my path has been mostly yogic and not so long. However, I will try to say what I can. It is my impression from reading this forum that finding genuine and good teachers within these traditions is difficult. Finding one that can teach you lots of good health practices apears not to be that hard but if you want to use these practices for spiritual development that has the potential to lead you al the way to enlightenment that seems much more difficult. Because this is so difficult I would advice you to use Vipassana, either in the style of Goenka or preferably in the insight meditation tradition of Jack Kornfield and Joseph Goldstein, or Zen, as your main enlightenment path. The reason for that is that al these thre styles of meditation have thorough maps of al the stages towards enlightenment written in acessible books and there are numerous well recognized teachers within all these traditions that can lead you there. You don``t have to find one random Qi Qong teacher either but can attach yourself to a broad system of monastaries and schools that teach very similar and have several enligthened teachers. These are also styles of meditation that should be compatible with whatever energy practices you learn from the Chineese tradition. They are also mindfulness based traditions, which apears to be what you want, rather than fire paths moving energy around. As such they are also very safe compared to all the more uncertain stuff you can learn out there. Mantak Chia and Michael Winn also have knowledge of a Taoist style of meditation/alchemy that leads all the way to enlightenment. I can say this with certainty because I know a budhist monk that first reached nirvana within budhist practices and was recognized by his teachers as having reached nirvana but then lost it and achived it again through Mantak Chias system. (The experince of nirvana was exactly the same within both styles of meditation but the paths were very different). However, Mantak Chias system has gotten a lot of criticism here and are lacking in several ways, especially with regards to mindfulness. It is also a lot less safe then Zen or Vipassana. Michael Winns system apears to be better and safer al though it is just an adaptation of Mantak Chias system. His style is more yin. Because of your particular interest in health and healing my advice would be Spring forest Qi Qong. From what I have read here it apears to be extreemly powerfull, safe, and particulary geared towards health and healing. The guy who teaches it seems to have a very good reputation and apparently exceptional healing powers. The only problem apears to be that his style requires a lot of visualisation, which not al people like, and that is not so much geared towards enlightenment. However, as long as you have a style of meditation like Vipassana or Zen that is your main enlightenment practice, that would not be that much of a problem. This Qi Qong would benefit you energeticaly and in terms of concentration in ways that benefit your meditattion and your meditation would do the rest. After having a solid ground in this powerfull system you evetualy will have a good judgment about what other systems or teahchers could help you with a practice more geared towards enlightenment. THe main benefit you want from an energy practice if it is meant to support your development within a stilness type of meditation like Zen or Vipassana is deep concentration/awarenes. Once that is established to the highest degree as a result of energy work and meditation, your meditation takes care of the rest. This is opposed to a use of energy practices were your manipulation of energy is meant to do all of or most of the work to lead you towards enlightenment. As long as you practice something that cleanses and structures the body and gives great power of absorption you have the main things for supporting a stilness type of meditation. My last advice would be to be very carefull with sexual practices. Retention over long periods of time seem to be difficult for many. I do not have a clear answer about how that should be practiced but from reading around it seems that Dr Linn (or what he is called) has the best system. Much safer and easier than Chias stuff. Furthermore it is my impression that there are two/three main things that balance out the enourmous energy you build up through retention. One is yin energy and witness conciousness, the other is heart energy/love. It apears to me that how much witness conciousness/stilness you have built in meditation and how much yin you have aquired by other means and how much work you have done with the heart/heart chakra energy determines how much of the very yang arouesed sexual energy you can integrate safely. The guy calling himself Trunk has a website that deals well with these things.

Welcome! Are many people practicing Taoist/Chineese stuff these days? I`m wondering if some cross fertilization between the Chineese and Indian tradtions are on the way.

This is not true. Both Vipassana and Zen are producing loads of enlightened people. If you go to Zen monastaries in Japan or if you go to budhist monastaries in Thailand or Vietnam you will find plenty. Thomas Merton found huge numbers of enlightened monks when he traveled in India and Tibet. The american insight meditation society tradition is also producing lots of enlightened people, at least at the level of the first and second levels of enlightenment in the Teravadin tradition. It usualy dosen`t take them that long either. The very highest levels of enlightenment takes a long time to reach. Considering that western practioners usualy started to practice in the seventies or eighties at the earlist, there is plenty of time left for that. Why haven`t you heard of these people? Well if you read Jack Kornfields book about living budhist masters you will find about a dozen enlightened Theravadin monks of whom several are very famous in their own countries but you probably haven`t heard of any of them. And these are just a small collection. If you look at the western insight meditation society, as I said there are plenty at at least the lowest elvels of enlightenment (maybe also higher), but that those not automaticly mean they will start making big names for themselves like Osho, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, Maharesh Yogi or people like that. THey were/are just charismatic frauds anyway. There are plenty of people teaching quitely or not teaching at all that have gotten enlightened. Wise words. But for me, the way I see Sidhis is that they are fun. I wouldn`t work particulary hard to get them and I wouldn`t feel special if I had them, it would just be so much fun to move objects around with my mind or levitate.

I have benn doing the six healing sounds for the past three weeks. It has made me fel a lot better and realy cleansed things up. It has also gotten rid of a lot of excess heat in my body. However, now it feels like it is making me too cold. My organs are all feeling way more cool than I would prefer. I also feel like my energy has benn drained out of my head and down into my organs/body so much so that it feels bad. I have had that problem before when doing rooting practices. I am normaly way too much in my head and getting into the body feels good but with certain rooting practices all energy just disapears from the head and I almost cannot read books or think anymore. To compensate I have to do practices that work on spreading the energy evenly or something to pull it up. Does anyone have any tips for me about this stuff?

Has anyone done Mantak Chias wisdom chi kung meditations or does anyone have any opionions of them?

I am interested because I very much like the inner smile and I am also interested in practices that enhance cognitive skills. Wisdom CHi kung seems to give the benefits of the inner smile, cognitive enhancements and at the same time grounding you in your body. I can imagine that many other excersizes for increasing memory and IQ makes you too much stuck in your head. Another reason for my interest in it is that it (and the inner smile) don`t seem to conflict with my Vipassana which I think Mantak Chias 7 formulas might easily do. What do you mean by it being preliminary? THat it`s not an enlightenment practice? Or that there are meditations that work on the same things but are more advanced? Does anyone know of other practices that are good for training cognitive skills, particulary memory?

As the examples in my previous post shows, there are and has been many enlightened people who had very active sex lives and families with children before and after enlightenment. Hence, there is no way reserving Jing through sexual abstinence is necessary. It might speed up the prosess, but wether it is absolutely necesary is not realy worth discussing since the evidence of it not being so is overwhelming and easily accessible. The only thing worth discussing is wether abstinence speeds up the process or not. Compared to normal sexual activity it obviously speeds things up as this is the experience of almost everyone who tries and has tried. Compared to preorgasmic sex it apears to me to be quite a bit slower as far as I can see from the experience of AYP people and others. By the way I cannot realy understand peoples rush for enlightenment. I don`t see it as very worth while to sit on top of a mountain meditating in stead of living amongst people and actualy helping them while meditating less and getting there slower. I think it`s selfish. To make you a very compassionate and functional member of society some sort of cultivation and meditation combined with a lot of loving kindness practice and some good psychological work will achieve most of what can be done to make you an unusaly goodherated and psychologicaly healthy person and takes a lot less time. There isen`t realy that much more gained by actualy getting enlightened in terms of what you will do for other people. I am also often surprised how little emphasis many people put on more conventional psychological work. As Kornfield has written extensively about this does not take care of it self at all. For a few lucky people the spiritual work is more or less all they need but for almost anyone else psychological work of various kinds is eesential. Despite enlightenment, your ego won`t go away. It will only be a lot more subordinated to your true nature, the Dao or whatever one likes to call it. For reference to what many respected masters say about wether the ego is destroyed or subordinated, read the book halfway up the mountain. It has interviews with a bunch of people about this and they are pretty much in agreement that your ego remains, is necesarry and needs to be made healthy and functional. Spiritual practice often helps with this but more often is not sufficient (depending on what you call spiritual practice). There is a Zen saying that "the enlightenment does not make the person but the person makes the enlightenment". There is also a not too often expressed opinion in many tradtions that enlightenment is more like a start on a never ending path of spiritual work than it`s begining. Hence, it is an illusion to think problems will just disapear. A good idea would be to adress them right away so not to let ones neurosis` make you mess up other peoples lives too much. Much of the saintly behaviour of enlightened people is not the result primarily of enlightenment, but the systematic training in a monastic lifestyle or a Sanyasin lifestyle. It is more about how this has built up a personality and how this personality is held in place by a system of rules and social pressure. It is howver deconstructable as aparent when highly realised masters go astray when they are taken out of the context that supports their saintly personality. Enlightenment helps a lot but it is not any sort of guaranty.

I have been trying to find it myself but not as hard as you did. I`ve only read parts of what he found when I`ve read books of his like a path with hart. His meditation center is called spirit rock by the way, maybe thay can help.

Maybe I'm a misanthrope, but it seems obvious to me that it is immensely difficult to have any sort of spiritual practice while you are in any sort of relationship---and damn near impossible if you have children. Jack Kornfiled has a wife and children. He is the author of several spiritual classics, a celebrated meditation teacher and claims that practicing in relationships with people is the most important practice. He found that the internal peace and bliss he found after several years in asian monastaries did not make him less neurotic and actualy made him a lot worse at interacting with people and doing anything other than meditationg and doing nice things for other people within the highly regulated system of a monastary. Kornfield did a survey, published in Yogajournal, where he interviewed 54 highly regarded spiritual masters (eastern and western) and top students of spiritual masters about their sex lives. Most of these preached the benefits of celibacy outwardly, however only about a dozen of them actualy practiced celibacy tehmselves. 34 (I think it was) of them slept with their students. Some were monogamous, some were promiscous, some were polyamorous, some were bisexual, they were perfectly average with regards to theirs sexual habits with regards to fetishes and kinky sex etc. None of them seemed particualry enlightened in their sex lives. Kornfields conclusion was that al though several of this masters were highly attained and many enlightened, enlightened action in a particular area, like that of ones sex life, presuposes that one draws that area into ones spiriutal practice and works on it and is not at all guarantied by becoming enlightened per se. In the Zen tradition monks frequently have wives and children and get enlightened al the same. If you look at the yogic tradition, a very, very large part of it`s most important developers 2000++ years a go were hoseholders with children. One of the most important yogis, which I don`t remember the name of, had over a 100 children. In this century, Krishnamacharya, the founder in many ways of modern yoga, had children and did not particulary belive in celibacy. Neither does B.K.S. Iyengar (who claims enlightenment) nor Pathabi Jois the founder of Ashtanga yoga. Lama Surya das has a wife and children and has, as I understand, at least reached some of the first stages of enlightenment. At a serious site about Advaita Vedanta they said that most people who get enlightened within that tradition have very active sex lives after enlightenment. I don`t remember what they said about before enlightenment. It seems like Drew Hempel and the Bushmen have a nice spiritual practice that includes a form of sex and which is highly bebeficial in all regards. The number of masters recognized and celibarated in India and Tibet as enlightened who started sleeping with their students when they came to the west and did no longer have the support structure of their monastarys to keep them in check, is absurdly high. In Yoganis AYP system they practice a very simple system of Tantra where both women and men stay right in front of the point of no return, not actualy having orgasms, just preorgasmic sex. Those who practice AYP find that in terms of benefits for their practice the least beneficial is to have conventional orgasmic sex, the second least is celibacy and the most beneficial is to have preorgasmic sex. Further more there is some difference with regards to how long in front of the orgasm people need to stay. Some stay quite far off, some have more or less multiorgasmic valey orgasms and some vary. Wether men feel depleeted or energized after having multiorgasmic sex rather than more preorgasmic, apears to be an individual matter and may vary over time. Furthermore i have read several acounts of people who, after some years of spiritual practice, do not any longer feel depleted even after ejaculations. This seems to be rather rare and I haven`t come across anyone that has a technique of how to get there, but presumably there is, since it somehow happened through the result of spiritual practice.

Lot\s of excellent advice her. I think pilates can be excellent for people that have to slow down with energy practices and do rooting work. It makes you very centered and it aligns and structures your body very well while keeping you on a purely physical and muscular plane. That way you do constructive energywork without going directly into energy experiences which can be difficult to handl in such a way. Otherwhise I believe in drawing energy down to the dan tien, having masters "suck out" the bad energy, kepping energy away from the head, especially the crown, walks in nature, hard physical labour, socializing, jogging because the endorfin rush cleanses and balances in a safe way, standing poses especialy wide martial arts type stances because it roots so well.

Krishnamurti might have been an excellent teachers but he was not truly enlightened. At least not if being a horrible person excludes being enlightened, and he was a horrible person. Check out his bio. When confronted by a friend with the fact that he several times pressured girls he had impregnated to have abortions and lie about their affairs with him, his reply was screaming "i have no ego" with tremendous rage. So much for his inner peace. Sleeping with ones spiritual students is even worse than when a psychotherepist sleeps with his client because the spiritual master have even more power over his student. Why could Krishnamurti not pas this simple moral test when most therapists easily can? Why are most spiritual masters not able to pass this simple test either? (Jack Kornfield found in his interviews with famous meditation masters that the majority had slept with their students) Krisnahmurti was basicly a deluded narcisist like so many other "masters". It seems like very few masters are as ethical or compassionate as people I already know and that hasen`t practiced any sort of spiritual tradition. For example, while I found Mantak Chia to be a nice guy, he do not come close to the nicest ordinary people I know. Why after so many hours of practice does so litle change other than the practioner feeling good and being healthy and becoming charismatic.

I am very, very strongly drawn to alterante nostril breathing but uncertain wether it is safe for me to start the practice. My style of yoga is more or less Iyengar and I`ve deceided to broadly following his advice on how to structure my yoga practice and aproximately his advice on when to start pranayama. That way I feel certain not to have bad experiences with prana and that my practice takes me in a direction which gives spiritual results while at the same time is likely to make me very functional as a housholder. I`ve encountered techniques before that I think do not work well for people leading normal lives and I`ve had a couple of bad experiences with prana. I`ve also tried a couple of mild pranyama techniques and found them imensly powerfull after just a minute or two of practice. The problem is that alternate nostril breathing seems to be a practice that Iyengar dosen`t introduce before arround two years of Pranayama and it is a year or two before I would be fit for any Pranayama by Iyengars standards. Since alternate nostril breathing feels like a miracle cure for me, adressing almost all my bodymind issues at the same time in just a few minutes, the temptation to start it now is huge. It just makes everything fall into place. I presume that if I start the technique no and experience problems, I could just back of and after a while I would be back to normal. But since Iyengar structures his pranayama so meticously I am afraid that having gained some depth in alternate nostril breathing from the start could mess with the way he attempts to structure you energeticaly. It seems to me that alternate nostril breathing although powerfull, seems fairly harmless since it is taught very, very widely. I can`t realy imagine that it would be taught in beginners yoga courses all over the place if it created problems for a lot of practioners. Thanks in advance for any input you might have:)

I would never have a guru, I would only have teachers that I would have a high but less then 100% trust in the judgement of. In this case it is absolutely certain that the guru has opinions that are totaly wrong with regards to how to sequence things. He belives that you first need to realy master asanas, then pranayama and only then do you start meditating. This is just stupid and is provably wrong both if you look at historical and contemporary sources of how people got enlightened. It is also clear from numerous studies that stilness meditations are safe and extreemly beneficial for people with no previous experience with any type of energywork. With regards to pranayama he is also in disagreement with a huge amount of other respected gurus. The only reason I put any emphasis on what he says is that his structure of progress in yoga and pranayama is extreemly safe, well written down and has numerous qualified teachers. Safety, clarity and good results is more or less certain. However, most of his students of both asana and pranayama think his structure is good, but his pacing is too slow so they speed things up a bit without experiencing problems. Iyengar also has a tendency to completly disregard and miscredting things that didn`t work well for him despite it working well for loads of other people. If i am going to do alternate nostril breathing I will do it under the guidance of a teacher from the Bihar tradition that I know and respect. I would want to do it daily but only for about 5 minutes. The effect on me is a wonderfull feeling og harmonisation of my brain and body and a deep feeling of relaxation and concentration in perfect balance. I just don`t achieve anything near this from asana or meditation. Actualy it kind of feels like what I have to do in order to be able to meditate properly. It feels like a I have an energy problem that can be corrected very well by this practice so that my other practices work well and not the other way arround.

It is the one that yoganiat AYP teaches. It is very very powerfull but aparently safe. The mantra is "I AM"

I\ve tried I AM meditation a couple of times and to me it seems like it creates one current of energy going from muladhara and up the back and one going from the third eye and down the front. This is purely by reciting the mantra not from any intention I have.