Dimiel

I did my first session and decided to start with 10 minutes. After that I was just observing the effects which were quite intense both physically and mentally and lasted for about 5 minutes. An interesting observation for me was that after I was done with the shamanic breathing my breath just naturally stopped. I don’t know exactly for how long but I would guess for two minutes. This of cource makes sense because the blood gets so highly oxygented from the breathing. But I found this breathless state was really blizzful and mildly psychedelic. I’m looking forward to do a longer session soon. Did others also experience this natural stopping of the breath? Or should I just force myself to continue breathing (with normal rythm) after I’m done with the shamanic breathing?

@cirkussmile Thank you! Very uplifting thoughts! Probably I have been focusing too much on diagnosing and analyzing this “condition” which only has made it worse. Yeah I have been experimenting with different kinds of meditation techniques like pranayama. Also trying yoga is a good idea for sure.

Hi guys, I went to my first 10 day vipassana retreat six months ago to jump-start my meditation practice. It was very intense but a positive experience for me. On the seventh day of the retreat I experienced something that I have later on come to understand probably was my first jhana; blisfull rapture and free flow of energy through out the body that lasted for about a minute or so. After this jhana-experience things started to get weird. I started to feel extreme pressure inside my skull and very sharp pains inside my torso. It literally feels like there is a long sharp object inside my body all the way from my head to lower back. I asked the teacher about it at the retreat and he said that this is normal and just a deep sankhara (some kind of energetic block). He told me to keep meditating equanimously and eventually this sankhara will dissolve. During the last 6 months after the retreat I have kept meditating on average 20-30min daily, however I have noticed the following tendency: the more I meditate the sharper this pain becomes and also I start experiencing other “symptoms”. These symptoms include dissosiation, feeling like everything is a dream, I feel like my body is vibrating, most of the time I feel too warm (even though I live in Finland where it is really cold at the moment). Also I feel like I have gotten stuck in my head very badly and just confused. The severity of these symptoms correlates with how much I meditate and based on my research sound like what they call kundalini-syndrome. I have found conflicting information about how to deal with kundalini-syndrome. Some say that it is better to take a break from spiritual practice and just focus on grounding etc while others say that you should just “push through”. I have tried both approaches and it just seems to be impossible to move on. So I wanted to ask if some of you guys have experienced something like this after a vipassana-retreat or otherwise? How have you been able to deal with it? Any tipps would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.