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
