even if you meditate correctly, part 3

Now we look at an interesting case of a yogi who can do jhana,  keeps brahmacariya well over a long period, more than a year, but develops some of the problems described in that article, such as anxiety, disturbing and distressing states in meditation, panic attacks, physical health problems, etc.

the yogi keeping brahmacariya

 I'm going to start off with more of a rough sketch / outline, and fill in with more details and editing over time. I just want to get the information and the solution out quickly, and refine the descriptions later as needed.

So even though I eat super healthy, do at least 8 hours a day of some combination of sitting meditation, walking meditation, taiji, yoga, hiking, I developed what I could feel was an energy blockage somewhere near my lower and middle spine area. Even consulting some taiji masters, meditation masters, I got useful advice and tips on how to deal with the mental part of the equation, but nothing that really helped diagnose what was going on in my particular case, what was the root cause and how to fix it. I had to figure that out on my own, trial and error.

physical and mental problems resulting from that spinal blockage

* trouble sleeping,
* panic attacks,
* body feels hot like a fever, but also could get shivering cold, could feel hot and shivering cold  at the same time!
* mental outlook, normally extremely resistant to negative or states of depression, but I can see day by day that if I didn't figure out the problem soon anxiety, depression, maybe thoughts of suicide would be possible.

the solution (these things healed the spinal blockage)

(this whole routine takes about 60-90 min to do)
I was able to fix the problem, by making these adjustments to my exercise routine.
Make sure I follow mayo clinic guidelines for daily exercise, incorporated into my routine, such as:
* at least one session of  30 min continuous cardio, where I have elevated heart rate, deep breathing using full range of breath (in sedentary mode, me maybe only use 30% of our range of breathing).
* for weight resistance training, I do at least this much every day, 18 pull ups, 18 pushups, 18 knee lifts hanging on the pull up bar with some spinal twisting
* lotus kicks, at least 81 repetitions, left leg, right leg, standing, lying down. This works not just your abs, but the whole core, the whole body, and also helps loosen hip area tissue that are tight and a bottle neck for yogis who do lots of sitting meditation
* after the cardio portion, with body loose and warmed up, this is the best time to get in at least 15-30min of yoga, because the stretching will really take and make forward net progress of more flexibility over time. Whereas if you try to do yoga and the body is cold, of course it still has much positive effect, but it would increase your elastic range over time.

diet adjustment

* added more salt to my diet, because I chronically under eat salt in meals I cook, to avoid getting too much salt, for health reasons since most people eat too much salt,  but also as an austerity to make sure I don't become attached to tasty food. But what I realized that over a long period of time, I probably had some salt deficiency accumulated. So I added more salt so that my food cooked "tastes good", but it's still much lower salt than you would find in a restaurant. The lesson here is when food "tastes good", it's your body giving you feedback that you need that nutrient. The mistake I made is overcorrecting for a problem I don't even have. Americans tend to way overconsume salt, and they eat out at restaurants frequently. I eat at restaurants maybe a few times a year, I could count on one hand. I always cook my own meals, so there was never any danger of me having too much salt.

* take a multivitamin everyday, especially one that has all the B vitamins with good assimilation bioavailability. I've been using Oxylent daily, it's a highly rated multivitamin that comes in powder form you mix with water, which absorbs much more efficiently than a pill.

Previously, before I had these health problems, I would take a multivitamin pill maybe once at most twice a week.

the important insights

since I already ate very healthy, and already got 8 hours  daily of meditation, taiji, yoga, everyday, people were shocked I developed those health problems at all. I was shocked.  These problems lasted for about 2 months before I hit the combination of things in the solution above, then I could see the problem start to go away gradually, and after 3 months I felt completely healed.

The weak link in the chain takes down the whole chain

 your body is a network of interconnected loops of energy. Not just the physical stuff like blood, lymph, etc, but non physical energy circulating that's invisible to the naked eye.  If you can meditate correctly, noble silence of second jhana, or even first jhana, you'll feel these currents and loops of energy, kinaesthetically, as heat, electricity, force, visible light. At various stages when your battery is not fully charged, you'll feel bliss or comfort, that can range anywhere from something like getting a high quality massage when your body is sore, to feeling like your whole body, every cell in your body is experiencing an orgasm. This can last hours, if you keep 8 precepts and brahmacariya well.But blissful side effects only happen when your batter is not fully charged, just like food only tastes good when you're really hungry. Pleasure chemicals in your brain are doled out to induce you to follow biological imperatives. Once your battery is charged, it ceases to dish out the pleasure chemical inducements, or can even issue signals of pain, for example if you overeat.

So the weak link in the chain, especially if it happens in a critical part of the body, like the spine, and wreak all kinds of havoc. I would say for my case, 80% of the solution is due to the additional daily exercise I incorporated into my daily routine that I didn't previously do (daily), and 20% due to chemical multivitamins.

why am I telling you this?

i'd be the last person anyone would expect to have those kinds of weird problems, with the way i eat, exercise, meditate. But it still happened because my vegetarian diet, for a long period mostly vegan, led to nutritional deficiencies (over decades), with my normal body temperature being on the cold side. Hands, feet, ears, get cold easily.

If you do a lot of sitting meditation, and you get cold easily, then the kind of spinal blockage I describe can happen to you too.

By following the solution above, my normal body temperature is starting to gradually rise, and my yoga/stretching is starting to increase my elasticity and range of motion over time. I'd always been puzzled why I plateaud and wasn't improving in the flexibility dept. despite my doing taiji and yoga correctly, ever day. The reason turned out to be simple. Not enough body heat, not a high enough normal sedentary body temperature. And the solution is actually very simple. Follow mayo clinic guidelines on cardio and resistive weight training.

what caused me to make my error?

I thought cardio was just an inefficient wasteful use of valuable energy that would tire me out and cause me to be able to meditate less and need more sleep. That all the taiji and yoga I was doing was more than enough daily exercise.

What I discovered through daily practice (with the fix) is that if done properly, 30min of cardio done with a taiji mentality of complete relaxation, this is not tiring at all, but gives me more energy than when I don't do it.

See the slow jogging, and chi jogging video for some ideas.
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1s7fmyVR2v6O3jQl3OsTJfcbJVLn2448n
if you watch how the kenyans jog, that's how good, efficient, relaxed form should look.
I do a type of slow jogging, that I call, qigor gorilla jogging, that's basically a slow version of the olympic kenyan runners. Doesn't even go much faster than walking, and can even be slower than a walking speed, but the full body pushing off the ground fires all the leg muscles, the buttocks, enages the core, elevates the heart rate, works up a light mist of sweat. So relaxed and easy I can do it for hours if I needed to, after 30min every day for a few months, it feels as easy as walking.

better than caffeine

getting enough cardio is much better than caffeine.
(more on this another time)