Does practicing qigong ever cause you volcanic eruptions of extremely intense emotions?

[Qigongjack]

This has happened on occasion with me. It most recently happened today after maybe doing too much spring forest qigong in one day yesterday. I feel like years of deeply buried anger, fear, and resentment are welling up and spewing out like a supervolcano, all coming to the surface and erupting.  I'm pretty sure it's qi purification but is there a way to ground myself to make the process more manageable?

[Gerard]

Unfortunately there isn't. Remember you are dealing with layers and some only fully manifest during certain years when a particular energy is dominant during that year; eg. Water Rabbit (2023), ruled by Yin Wood (rabbit) and Water (2023-ends in 3, 2 & 3 are Water years). Manifested organs: Kidney & Liver.

 

Emotions will be more active with their pairing organ/season and time of the day; eg. Anger & Lust/Desire (liver/wood and heart/fire are involved, spring & summer, 11am-2pm/Heart & 11pm to basically 9am in the morning is when Liver is at its strongest time.

 

To peel off the layers one by one is a lengthy process. This game is about being patient and persistent:

 

“Knowing trees, I understand the meaning of patience. Knowing grass, I can appreciate persistence.”

 

[Annnon]

this is actually a great post, let me ask you, do you have spontaneous movements while practicing SFQ?

 

When I did it it caused me a lot of weird movements/twists in my body and sometimes I even fell to the ground, do you have any of these?

[Trunk]

On 9/30/2023 at 6:50 PM, Qigongjack said:

... is there a way to ground myself to make the process more manageable?

 

Stillness meditation, breathing, centering.

 

First instruction, "follow your breath".

2nd instruction, (stuff is going to happen) "keep your cool" and refer to instruction #1. 

 

This sort of thing happens periodically.  You'll find that your tolerance and skill at sitting through this kind of weather increases with experience.

 

p.s.

Also, on the other hand: physical exercise, etc

[Sahaja]

On 10/16/2023 at 4:07 PM, almaxy said:

this is actually a great post, let me ask you, do you have spontaneous movements while practicing SFQ?

 

When I did it it caused me a lot of weird movements/twists in my body and sometimes I even fell to the ground, do you have any of these?

I believe that spontaneous movements are often associated with yang qi that gets freed up in the practice and that we go to the ground (prostrations etc) as the bodies natural act to ground/stabilize this yang qi to the yin of the earth. The advice I have received is to stay down and let it do its thing to complete the process of grounding. From my experience it’s a pretty common form of spontaneous movement. 
 

Generally spontaneous movements are a function of your qi  getting activated not which qi gong set you do.

[markern]

On 1.10.2023 at 3:50 AM, Qigongjack said:

This has happened on occasion with me. It most recently happened today after maybe doing too much spring forest qigong in one day yesterday. I feel like years of deeply buried anger, fear, and resentment are welling up and spewing out like a supervolcano, all coming to the surface and erupting.  I'm pretty sure it's qi purification but is there a way to ground myself to make the process more manageable?

You may want to look into trauma regulation techniques and trauma sensitive mindfulness. There are quite handy techniques for making overwhelming emotions calm down when lots of trauma gets activated. 

You may also benefit from trying to be aware of when these things start and then immediately stopping practice and doing something else where your mind becomes absorbed into something else. That way you may stop the releases at an early stage with just more manageable levels of emotions and you avoid exacerbating the emotions that do come up by not getting too drawn into them. Often when painful emotions come bubbling up we automatically become hyper focused on them, drawn into them with a sort of tunnel vision. This amplifies them A LOT. Avoiding this hyper focus by broadening awareness towards the whole body can help get us out of this hyperfocus. So can focusing outside of ourself on our physical environment or getting our minds more focused on some other activity. 

Edited October 22, 2023 by markern

[BigSkyDiamond]

spend time in nature walking and grounding.

work in the garden, get your hands in the dirt.  If you don't have an outdoor yard or garden, then do this with houseplants or on the porch or deck.

 

issue the instruction "this is too much, temper this to a pace that is more manageable."  "turn down the volume"

pay attention to the amount of time you do the practice which seems to trigger it, and manage or reduce the time spent doing it.

in other words don't push yourself too hard.  more is NOT better it can cause imbalance.

 

step away from processing and consciously focus on concrete mundane physical activity such as washing the dishes doing the laundry or other chores.  The benefit of this is win-win in that it provides the therapeutic benefit of not overloading on processing; and you end up with a cleaner tidier living space.   this is not suppressing or ignoring the therapeutic flow.  But it keeps it at a manageable level which is an essential element of healthy self-care.  it is OK to sequester it and not spin out.  

 

a therapist told me how important this is.  clearing a bunch of intense stuff is well very intense.  a part of our therapy was with art and she had me physically put the pieces in a box with  a lid and set them aside, and come back to them at designated times.  This was a way of clearly delineating and containing them and thus not staying in an unending place of raw pain.  for me it is a good visual to use also when overwhelming stuff comes up and is clearing.