Forums IMPORTANT: PLEASE READ Spring Forest Qigong low blood pressure

I'm wondering if anyone else has had experience with SFQ as related to low blood pressure (which I have). As I progress deeper into the exercises and I feel my heartbeat and breath slow way down, a sense of fear takes over that stops me from going deeper into the experience. Sometimes it is as if I'm about to enter a door of light, and I've stepped forward with one foot but am unable to move the other foot. With the fear I will have the sudden urge to cough, swallow or whatever - an instant distraction - and I then loose the sense of entering the emptiness. Along with this a headache will start to build and sometimes last throughout the day (as if the energy is stuck in my head). I feel that for some reason my body is trying to distract me, hold me back from moving forward. I know the answer is to relax and be okay with the experience - I'm trying. To get back to low blood pressure - part of my fear is that everything is slowing down too much - should that be a real concern? I've read the posts about SFQ being good for high blood pressure, but what about low blood pressure - am I right in presuming that it will "normalize" things?

Any comments or suggestions would be much appreciated.
Love
Etoile

I will share with you what my first thought was when I read your post ... it reminded me of the proceedure you are to follow if you are alone and think you are having heart trouble, you are to cough as hard as you can which creates a compression using your own diaphragm. The bodies own wisdom? Won't say for sure but this was my imediate response to your post.

My second thought came later as I was trying to decide to post my first response. I was wondering if you had tried to change the position of the tongue against the roof of the mouth? I had a "bottle neck" of energy in my shoulders and neck resulting in a terrible headache. It wasn't until I noticed the pressure over my right eye and down the right side of my nose that I made the energy connection. But placing my tongue on the roof behind the teeth had no effect. It then occured to me to move the tongue to a different place on the roof of the mouth and when I did this it was like a 'mud slide' from the top of my head all along the front channels to the lower dantien.

Listen to your body, it will talk to you.

Thanks marrs for you suggestions - I'll try changing the postition of my tongue and see what happens. I agree that my body is telling me something - I'm just not sure what? I'm torn between "listen to your body" which seems to be telling me to stop - and "trust the universal energy" which will take me deeper into the emptiness. Two different messages - which one to follow, I'm not sure.

Love
Etoile

Etoile

Some thoughts that I had in response to your last post.

Do you do the exact same combination of 'practice' each time? Perhaps your body is indicating that a change is in order. My practice changes frequently so I have not been locked into any one series of excercises one specific way. I have had to modify the excercises for a sitting position because of injury. But thinking about it would probably have done so anyway as I too have *very* low BP. That said I have a question for you ... when you began your SFQ did you have trouble doing it standing?

When you speak of the 'fear' is it mental or can you physically feel fear, this may hold a clue? Either way there could be other things that you are resolving in your practice (mental, emotional, spiritual) that may need attention before your body will move forward. Sometimes paying attention to what you are dreaming will reveal what you are wrestling with too.

Personally, IMO, just me, I would really be hesitant to 'push' through something that was so strongly trying to get my attention. But I also do not subscribe to the 'no pain no gain therory', pain is there for a reason. Aches and itches ... I push, but pain I look for the reason.

Be kind to yourself!

P.S. thought ... your energy and the universal energy 'combine' together ...

[This message has been edited by marrs (edited March 08, 2005).]

Hi marrs - I changed the postion of my tongue during active ex. this morning (further back rather than just behind my teeth) and the experience was quite different - no fear, no headache, but I didn't sense the "emptiness" as strongly. Maybe this is a better place for me to be right now. I'm wondering if you're right - that I need to change things around. I do the same exercises every morning with most of my time being spent on The Moving of Yin and Yang because that has always been the exercise that has appealed to me the most. I thought that somewhere I had read that Master Lin said it is ok to choose just a couple of exercises that feel "right", and sometimes people do the same exercises for years - or maybe I heard that on one of the tapes - or maybe not? During some of the other exercises I feel like I'm going through the motions but I don't actually sense much of anything happening - no sense of colour, energy, etc.

As for problems with standing - other than feeling some physical fatigue in my legs and back, I've never had trouble with standing during the active ex. At night I do the sitting meditations laying down due to back problems. My understanding is that low blood pressure is due to poor circulation, so one would think that SFQ would be good in the sense that it gets the energy moving - but on the other hand, going into the emptiness slows things down - so?

The fear that I've been sensing I think is more mental/emotional than physical although I've been unable to understand the source. Over the last few months I have been recording my dreams and fear is a common element - of what I'm unsure.

A few years ago I read a book on back pain and it said that your subconscious self will create pain as a distraction to prevent you from looking within, as a means of "protecting" you. The proposed solution was to ignore it, not let the pain control you, and to go about your life and completely disregard the pain - and eventually the pain would go away because your mind would realize that the distraction no longer worked. I do wonder if that is what is at work here - the fear, cough, etc are distractions - maybe.

It seems for every answer there is another question, but then I guess that is what keeps life interesting.
Thanks so much for your suggestions - I'll try changing my routine around and see what happens.

Love
Etoile