by Telexx » Fri Oct 14, 2005 11:35 pm
Hiya,<br><br>Firstly: Tai Chi (or Chi Gung if mobility is severely impaired) is an excellent practice and well worth picking up - it makes you calm, it teaches you control over your flailing limbs (well they flail clumsily if they're anything like mine heheh) and it does actually put you into a kind of meditative state - certainly a state where you can relax and kind of be at one without yourself (without, hopefully, sounding too new-agey).<br><br>I think Tai Chi is kinda like Yoga in the way that Chinese medicine relates to Ayurveda (sp?) - they have similar concepts and benefits. Either Tai Chi or Yoga will instill peace to body, mind and well being - this pretty much seems obvious (unless you're the webmaster of skepdic.com).<br><br>Secondly: I wish I was a highly visual person; I can call the voice of a friend or relative (or enemy, for that matter) at will into my mind's 'ear' with some clarity, I suppose in the same way that many people can visualise the face of a friend/relative/enemy. I am auditory-minded though, and as such I have had to work at improving my visualising abilities. I suspect that playing out a scene visually in the minds-eye is more useful, psychically, than playing it out in the minds-ear, kinda like the power of film vs radio. That's just my experience however, having practiced with this stuff before and after learning some visualisation improving exercises. <br><br>(I do find the auditory ability useful though, for example I am writing a novel and the character's voices flow into my mind with some clarity thanks to said ability).<br><br>NashvilleBrook - I hope the visualisation exercises I outlined before are useful, if not in a learning 'how to meditate' way but certainly in a 'what to do when you can meditate' sorta thing.<br><br>If psychic development is an aim of your meditation practices then you should consider the apparent prevailance of alpha waves in the brain when psychic techniques are being used. There is a lot of (obviously contradictory, given the topic) research in existence regarding alpha waves but in my experience this sort of training has been v.useful.<br><br>Basically, for psychic development, meditate to some kind of pre-recorded alpha wave track (essentially this is a form of self-hypnosis or "autogenic" meditation), whilst positioning your eyes 20 degree higher than the horizon:<br><br>1- Look up at a 45 degree angle, say at a wall opposite to you, and start the alpha-wave track.<br>2- Close your eyes (your eyes will lower with your lids to roughly a 20 degree angle hence looking higher than required when the eyes are open - this has been found to improve 'something' relating to visualisation (or auditilisation for that matter, not that such a word exists!)).<br>3- With the alpha-track playing, count yourself into a hypnotic state using typical methods (walking down ten steps through a beautiful garden etc - many such methods can be found on the web).<br>4- Because your ears are full of the alpha-wave 'clicks' your brain will synchronise to these due to that wonderful phenomenon of resonance.<br><br>(At this stage, you are kind of like in that 30 mins before you fall asleep, and as such in a great position to manipulate the things you call to mind at will, but however alpha waves are actually faster than the waves found when you're almost asleep - faster than a typical hypnosis level even which is commonly described as being at a 'theta' level - some 5 hertz faster in fact; nevertheless meditating at an alpha level still gives an experience of that pre-dream like quality but you can control it more easily than deeper self-hypnosis).<br><br>Beyond that some people are adamant that alpha waves are related to ESP matters and so vice versa.<br><br>Eventually, you can slow your brain to that alpha-wave meditative state at will simply because you know what it feels like, you know how to relax to that level, and your brain is trained to generate alpha waves when you relax in that manner through the work you've done - this I've found useful for practical things like instant recall - finding lost items or remembering where I've hear ed a particular name/seen a particular face, remembering a quote from a book etc, etc - I have also found this useful for creative brain-storming (free association, mind-map diagrams etc) and it's perhaps been useful for things more difficult to prove like visualisation/manifestation etc.<br><br>Erm rambled on more than I'd intended but it is all kind of interesting to me and practically useful so hope you find that useful -- as stated, any practice that can aid the recall and control of the dream state is useful for lots of reasons.<br><br>Take care,<br><br>Telexx<br><br>PS: SW I would just like to say: Don't know you but your positivity is inspirational (hope that doesn't sound patronising it isn't meant that way) & I hope you manage to kick that "dark" butt you're looking for! <p></p><i></i>