I’ve been doing meditation, bodywork, “energy” work, phenomenology, and much more for over a decade, via many different systems
I don’t think reading books gives you real access to a system.
I started meditating a decade ago after reading Koichi Tohei’s book about Ki.
Around three and a half years ago I switched actual in person training and it was a remarkable difference.
Yes I could sit in full lotus beforehand. It wasn’t difficult to figure out on my own because it’s easy to get a good description in a book, but I missed a lot.
You may be trained in PP, but are you trained in phenomenology? Russell T. Hurlburt has been publishing peer-reviewed phenomenology papers for decades. He gives examples of people who are absolutely certain of their inner experience but quickly and confidently revise their claims after a few training sessions.
Phenomenology is part of what Danis Bois teaches. Speaking directly after a meditation about what you experience and hearing what the other people experience is an essential part of building concepts.
Not wanting to use the word “energy” for a long time Danis simply speaks about “inner movement” and ignores the subject of the medium that moves. In that context there are people who need a year with guidance till they develop the relevant perception.
To me it’s not at all surprising that you can spend a decade with books and trying to do what you think the book tells you, without developing those qualities.
I don’t want to get to deep into the subject on LW, but chakra’s are in my conception places where energy is bound. If all of you intention is on having energy concentrated in those chakra’s, then there’s no movement. An orgasm is something where energy flow happens. If you stopped flow by binding all your energy to your chakra’s that would be an explanation for the negative side effects you are describing.
I certainly frequently discover something new in my inner experience, but the fact that energy movement happens is very basic. I might be that my perception is numb for a few days, but that doesn’t mean that there’s nothing there.
It’s like my heart beat. There are times when I can feel my heart beat. there are times when I don’t. I think most people don’t perceive their heart beat on a daily basis. Certainly in school when we tracked our pulse the teacher told us to feel our arteries with our fingers to track.
I would guess from your experience that you know what it feels like to feel your heart beat and also know what’s like to not have a conscious perception of it.
For me energy flow perception is similar, but a lot more essential. I feel blind if it’s down. Fortunately it’s relatively stable over the last months.
At the beginning it showed up for a few days to then go away, so that any decent investigation was impossible because the perception constantly changed.
Now it would be worthwhile to see whether I can match my energy perception with another person, to be more clear about what’s just in my head and what’s “out there” and perceived the same by multiple people.
It would also be worthwhile to make experimental predictions about the results of particular energy interventions. Sitting in a seminar last weekend I did things when passing a note to a person sitting in front of me to get their attention more by drawing energy, then by tapping them on the shoulder but at the moment things like that are more playing around then running real trials the QS way.
If you stopped flow by binding all your energy to your chakra’s that would be an explanation for the negative side effects you are describing.
I think we’re just having a terminology issue. Spontaneously or deliberately, I can experience what could be described as undulation and movement throughout my body at any time, continuous “traveling” fluctuations. But, I would describe this more as “spreading activation” than “flow.” Like, I don’t think something is moving but, yes, sensation can move or spread in a seemingly non-discontinuous way. Do you think we’re describing the same thing?
(Also, I’m more inclined to belief this is all in the brain’s maps [electrochemical] than too much actually happening on-site [mechanical, mechanotransduction, or electromagnetic].)
Lots of research has already been done, but I haven’t looked closely at the quality. My impression is that there are positive effects, but I doubt that those effects would be any different than from placebo or a proper control. That doesn’t mean it’s not a valuable practice, though.
Importantly, in the peer-reviewed literature (however poorly conducted, which could make results meaningless) all effects seem to disappear as soon as there is any sort of blinding. To me, this implies that the phenomenon is 100% psychosomatic and autosuggestive. But, again, that doesn’t diminish the value of these experiences and practices; it only bounds and contextualizes them.
All that being said, I do most definitely still have probability mass assigned to air-gap mechanotransduction and electromagnetic radiation, for expert practitioners, but, again, it’s a very small amount of probability mass.
Like, I don’t think something is moving but, yes, sensation can move or spread in a seemingly non-discontinuous way. Do you think we’re describing the same thing?
I would very likely label what you describe as energy flow and I think most people who do energy work would do so as well.
That said there’s a variety of different experiences of energy flow.
(Also, I’m more inclined to belief this is all in the brain’s maps [electrochemical] than too much actually happening on-site [mechanical, mechanotransduction, or electromagnetic].)
Even with sight and sound there a lot happening in the brain. It’s possible to have hallucinations in those channels. Energy perception seems to be more frickle and easier to mislead.
The problem with the “it’s all in the brain’s map” explanation is that it doesn’t account well for effects one person causes in another person.
“Energy signatures” of removed organs on the other hand seem to remain from what I heard (not something I verified myself). That suggests that there a lot happening in the brain.
To me, this implies that the phenomenon is 100% psychosomatic and autosuggestive.
If there an interaction with the intention of healing, then there are certainly suggestions in place but that’s not true for every experience. I have plenty of experiences where something surprising happened that I didn’t expect.
An average 70% pain reduction was sustained over the 4 hours following TT, which was twice the average pain reduction following the placebo touch. Using a Wilcoxon rank sum test, this was statistically significant, p < .01. Study results indicated that TT may have potential beyond a placebo effect in the treatment of tension headache pain.
The review demonstrated that there are many approaches to therapeutic touch research, samples are described incompletely, and the therapeutic touch practices vary in the studies. Most of the studies supported hypotheses regarding the efficacy of therapeutic touch, though a number had mixed or negative results.
There also a huge difference between an effect being there and the effect being clinically useful. Kirsch et al (2008) might have found that anti-depressives on average don’t provide clinically significant results, but that doesn’t mean that the drug has no effects.
Relaxing a muscle for ten minutes and solving the problem in a way that the muscle stays relaxed two weeks later are two different problems.
Experiments with shorter timeframes are likely better if you ask a question like: “Does this do something?” as opposed to “What clinical relevance has the effect?”
I don’t think reading books gives you real access to a system. I started meditating a decade ago after reading Koichi Tohei’s book about Ki. Around three and a half years ago I switched actual in person training and it was a remarkable difference. Yes I could sit in full lotus beforehand. It wasn’t difficult to figure out on my own because it’s easy to get a good description in a book, but I missed a lot.
Phenomenology is part of what Danis Bois teaches. Speaking directly after a meditation about what you experience and hearing what the other people experience is an essential part of building concepts.
Not wanting to use the word “energy” for a long time Danis simply speaks about “inner movement” and ignores the subject of the medium that moves. In that context there are people who need a year with guidance till they develop the relevant perception. To me it’s not at all surprising that you can spend a decade with books and trying to do what you think the book tells you, without developing those qualities.
I don’t want to get to deep into the subject on LW, but chakra’s are in my conception places where energy is bound. If all of you intention is on having energy concentrated in those chakra’s, then there’s no movement. An orgasm is something where energy flow happens. If you stopped flow by binding all your energy to your chakra’s that would be an explanation for the negative side effects you are describing.
I certainly frequently discover something new in my inner experience, but the fact that energy movement happens is very basic. I might be that my perception is numb for a few days, but that doesn’t mean that there’s nothing there.
It’s like my heart beat. There are times when I can feel my heart beat. there are times when I don’t. I think most people don’t perceive their heart beat on a daily basis. Certainly in school when we tracked our pulse the teacher told us to feel our arteries with our fingers to track.
I would guess from your experience that you know what it feels like to feel your heart beat and also know what’s like to not have a conscious perception of it. For me energy flow perception is similar, but a lot more essential. I feel blind if it’s down. Fortunately it’s relatively stable over the last months.
At the beginning it showed up for a few days to then go away, so that any decent investigation was impossible because the perception constantly changed.
Now it would be worthwhile to see whether I can match my energy perception with another person, to be more clear about what’s just in my head and what’s “out there” and perceived the same by multiple people.
It would also be worthwhile to make experimental predictions about the results of particular energy interventions. Sitting in a seminar last weekend I did things when passing a note to a person sitting in front of me to get their attention more by drawing energy, then by tapping them on the shoulder but at the moment things like that are more playing around then running real trials the QS way.
If you stopped flow by binding all your energy to your chakra’s that would be an explanation for the negative side effects you are describing.
I think we’re just having a terminology issue. Spontaneously or deliberately, I can experience what could be described as undulation and movement throughout my body at any time, continuous “traveling” fluctuations. But, I would describe this more as “spreading activation” than “flow.” Like, I don’t think something is moving but, yes, sensation can move or spread in a seemingly non-discontinuous way. Do you think we’re describing the same thing?
(Also, I’m more inclined to belief this is all in the brain’s maps [electrochemical] than too much actually happening on-site [mechanical, mechanotransduction, or electromagnetic].)
Lots of research has already been done, but I haven’t looked closely at the quality. My impression is that there are positive effects, but I doubt that those effects would be any different than from placebo or a proper control. That doesn’t mean it’s not a valuable practice, though.
Importantly, in the peer-reviewed literature (however poorly conducted, which could make results meaningless) all effects seem to disappear as soon as there is any sort of blinding. To me, this implies that the phenomenon is 100% psychosomatic and autosuggestive. But, again, that doesn’t diminish the value of these experiences and practices; it only bounds and contextualizes them.
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=therapeutic+touch
All that being said, I do most definitely still have probability mass assigned to air-gap mechanotransduction and electromagnetic radiation, for expert practitioners, but, again, it’s a very small amount of probability mass.
I would very likely label what you describe as energy flow and I think most people who do energy work would do so as well.
That said there’s a variety of different experiences of energy flow.
Even with sight and sound there a lot happening in the brain. It’s possible to have hallucinations in those channels. Energy perception seems to be more frickle and easier to mislead.
The problem with the “it’s all in the brain’s map” explanation is that it doesn’t account well for effects one person causes in another person.
“Energy signatures” of removed organs on the other hand seem to remain from what I heard (not something I verified myself). That suggests that there a lot happening in the brain.
If there an interaction with the intention of healing, then there are certainly suggestions in place but that’s not true for every experience. I have plenty of experiences where something surprising happened that I didn’t expect.
The first result I clicked on that list says:
A bit further we get a meta-analysis concluding:
There also a huge difference between an effect being there and the effect being clinically useful. Kirsch et al (2008) might have found that anti-depressives on average don’t provide clinically significant results, but that doesn’t mean that the drug has no effects. Relaxing a muscle for ten minutes and solving the problem in a way that the muscle stays relaxed two weeks later are two different problems. Experiments with shorter timeframes are likely better if you ask a question like: “Does this do something?” as opposed to “What clinical relevance has the effect?”