heart chakra stimulation bringing up buried sadness?

[Seeuzin]

Hey, I have another question =) Lately I've been asking the universe to send energies to my heart chakra (specifying that it send only "the right kind of energy," as my friend instructed me.) The universe has been sending me energy when I ask, and I usually open my heart chakra for 10 mins, then close it again, and thank the universe. I do this every 2nd or 3rd day in my energy work practice, so not that often.

Well, lately I've been feeling mega-stressed, more than I think is warrented given that I'm not under super high stress...sometimes it feels kind of out of control in the sense that I feel like I lose my sense that things will get better, which I usually have even when I am feeling really bad. I KNOW these feelings will pass, but it doesn't FEEL like it, hehe. In addition, the pain feels similar to what I felt as a teenager during my profound depression. I have a lot of pain "buried in my heart," and I wonder if I'm feeling it now.

For the first month, my chestbone area would hurt when I openned my heart chakra. Now it doesn't hurt to open it, but I just feel terrible. I would like to determine the reason I'm feeling this way. If it's because I'm openning up old pain buried in my heart chakra, then I will feel encouraged because I know that is what I need to do, and that would help me see this through more gracefully.

My question is - can openning up the heart chakra in this way, and only doing it every third day or sometimes every other day, cause old pain and anger and anxiety to come up this profoundly?

[ButterflyWoman]

Oh, yes. Very familiar with this one.

I've been practicing deliberately sending love and blessings to, well, pretty much anyone and everyone. At first I was euphoric, but then I crashed big time, and a bunch of very, very DEEP negative beliefs about myself and some other things, stuff that was really blocking me. Very painful, and that's an extreme understatement.

I'm sort of on an even keel again. Yesterday I was feeling joyful totally without any instigation from me, so I just decided to accept it and be happy for a while.

It's a bit of a roller coaster ride, to be honest. I believe, because I've gone through these transformations before, that it will be worth it.

My advice is to just ride it out. Don't give too much weight to the emotions that come up. Acknowledge them, but don't assume they "mean" anything. You don't have to react to them or do anything, if that makes sense. Just let them come up and then release them.

The best metaphor I can give is that of vomiting. It's got to come up. Just let it go, don't fight it, and know that it WILL be healing and it WILL eventually end.

Love and blessings to you.

[Korpo]

I KNOW these feelings will pass, but it doesn't FEEL like it, hehe.

That's aversion. Aversion and resistance play big drama telling your mind this is unbearable. It usually isn't. It is your mind's habitual reaction, which makes you accumulate pain through avoidance. When you don't avoid emotions and pain, you have a real chance to diminish them and get clear of them.


In addition, the pain feels similar to what I felt as a teenager during my profound depression. I have a lot of pain "buried in my heart," and I wonder if I'm feeling it now.

You have excellent intuition, I'd say. Trust it! :D


For the first month, my chestbone area would hurt when I openned my heart chakra.

Probably etheric/physical blockages that got cleared out first.


Now it doesn't hurt to open it, but I just feel terrible.

Emotion is subtler, finer. You are accessing what "ails your heart" at a deeper level.


I would like to determine the reason I'm feeling this way. If it's because I'm openning up old pain buried in my heart chakra, then I will feel encouraged because I know that is what I need to do, and that would help me see this through more gracefully.

You already know. Why don't you trust yourself?


My question is - can openning up the heart chakra in this way, and only doing it every third day or sometimes every other day, cause old pain and anger and anxiety to come up this profoundly?

The Daoists consider the energies of happiness and anxiety to be heart energies. The "pressure on your chest" is as much heart energy as "heartfelt laughter". When I accessed these kinds of energies myself for the first time I had NO explanation why I suddenly felt anxious or totally hilarious on the verge of a mania. The energies the Daoists identify with the five elements are unfinished, under- or overexpressed emotions that are stuck within you. You did not express them fully when they arose first time, and now they accumulated within you, forming a block. Congealed, frozen energy, bereft of flow.

Now your practice sends energy into your heart. The flow of energy hits the blockages. Blockages most of the time just obstruct energy flow but do not block it out completely. So there is more heart energy than your blocked system is capable of handling. The blockages get partially softened, liquid, unfrozen, and what is within them can arise again.

Imagine you had a plastic sack full of ice. Now you pump mildly warm water through it. The ice cubes would lose ice around the edges and start to melt, the water would cool. Similar are your blocks. The extra energy softens them layer by layer, bringing the energies within them back like the warm water transforms ice cubes back into water. But not all the ice simply dissolves at once. It dissolves from the outer layers to inside, and until an ice cube is fully dissolved, it still cools the water around it (hence putting an ice cube in a drink keeps it cool). As long as a blockage is not completely liquid, it will still have negative effects.

The heart energies you observe are not by their nature prone to side effects. Our personal desires, attractions and aversion express themselves in them. Neutral heart energy is just empowering. Only when it gets stuck it causes problems, over- and underexpression, out of the balance.

If you do not run away from the emotional pain but face it with equanimity, you will greatly diminish it. Panic lends it power, equanimity defuses it. Realise that the emotion is "old". Nothing now triggers it. It cannot get worse. It is conserved in time and space until changes within you work through it. It's the same ol' and you can get rid of it. I find that helps tremendously in energy work and meditation.

What you experience is the natural process also happening in my dissolving practice: http://forums.astraldynamics.com/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=9353

Take good care,
Oliver

[ButterflyWoman]

I KNOW these feelings will pass, but it doesn't FEEL like it, hehe.

That's aversion. Aversion and resistance play big drama telling your mind this is unbearable. It usually isn't. It is your mind's habitual reaction, which makes you accumulate pain through avoidance. When you don't avoid emotions and pain, you have a real chance to diminish them and get clear of them.
THANK YOU! I've been going through that a LOT lately. I know it's a negative pattern, etc, but I couldn't seem to pin it down to change it. It's very elusive. But you just put your finger right on it. Thanks for that.


If you do not run away from the emotional pain but face it with equanimity, you will greatly diminish it. Panic lends it power, equanimity defuses it. Realise that the emotion is "old". Nothing now triggers it. It cannot get worse. It is conserved in time and space until changes within you work through it. It's the same ol' and you can get rid of it.
Also very helpful.

[Korpo]

That's aversion. Aversion and resistance play big drama telling your mind this is unbearable. It usually isn't. It is your mind's habitual reaction, which makes you accumulate pain through avoidance. When you don't avoid emotions and pain, you have a real chance to diminish them and get clear of them.
THANK YOU! I've been going through that a LOT lately. I know it's a negative pattern, etc, but I couldn't seem to pin it down to change it. It's very elusive. But you just put your finger right on it. Thanks for that.

It's funny, I read it in several books lately, and it is kind of a "magic ingredient" when working with these things. I found it in a Buddhist Vipassana manual. I found it in the "Power of Now". I found it in Charles Tart's "Mind Science - Meditation for Practical People". It is also the basic for the dissolving practice. But sometimes it takes an enormous amount of "Duh!" to realize it. For me it did. ;)

Be well,
Oliver

[Seeuzin]

Hi Korpo and OlderWiser,

Thank you both, what you've said really resonates with me. Especially the aversion part. I've been learning some Buddhist terms and I think their Sanskrit term for aversion is "dvesha." In an attempt to overcome it I tried one night to meditate not on my breath, but on the strong feelings I'm having. I got a little frustrated because after a short while the feelings got less, and they were harder to focus on. Then I remembered some things I'd read about Buddhism and was like hmm...maybe that's supposed to happen...lol.


It cannot get worse.

This is the one part I have trouble with. =/ At the worst part in my depression, I had lost all will to eat. I wasn't anorexic in the sense that I KNEW I was too skinny. I wasn't trying for the "perfect" body or anything like that; I knew I was too skinny and was even scared I would die if I couldn't find the will to take in nourishment. But the sight of food could make me ill. I wasn't bulimic, either...in that I only actually threw up due to this feeling like two times over a period of many months and would consciously resist the feeling of nausea.

I was also unwilling to consciously committ suicide, because I knew that would be wrong....but perhaps my subconscious or any negs who might have been messing with me had other ideas at the time....

I still recall laying in the psych ward on one of the couches, trying to muster up the energy to be alarmed at what was happening to me. I knew I needed to be afraid, to a degree, in order to find the energy to do something about what was going on. I could only barely do it, and sometimes I couldn't do it at all. I was severely spaced out and hallucinating (psychotic) but they didn't diagnose me as such at the time because my depression was so deep you could barely make out other features of my illness.

Anyway, I say all that to say this...this pain still seems very potent. What it brought me through before is evidence of this. Even if the pain can't get "worse" than it was then, it's still got the potential to be pretty bad, lol. >< I guess now is the time to do it, though....when I am still recieving help from my dad and don't have too many responsibilities. It worries me, though. =/

[Korpo]

Ah, I can see. I had no idea it was this bad. Sorry!

In my experience you don't relieve the experience as intense, and you can - through carefully and gently using your awareness - influence the intensity of what you work on.

I guess the fact that you came out of this helped form a certain kind of strength, but I know it is easy to overexert oneself when new capacities seem available. A careful and gentle approach might be best.

Do you have access to a therapist to work through this or accompany your practice? It might be very helpful to have a person you can tell things to under the seal of professional discretion, also to have someone who can monitor you carefully so you don't bite off more than you can chew at a time. I know these resources are not available to everyone in every country, but it might be a good idea. Also an additional safety guard, if you will.

Generally it seems that meditators and energy workers sometimes experience the "Dark Hour of the Soul", a phenomenon where they resolve something big from their past. This can temporarily over-exert their capacities, letting the old emotions not only arise, but also make you refeel them more strongly than you would if you could release them directly. When you cannot get the emotion fully out of your system, a certain residue will influence your moods and might trigger a rough time, emotionally. While this normally results in a cleaner state afterwards, it surely helps to have someone to relate to while enduring it.

Take good care,
Oliver

[locsgirl]

Hi Oliver
I only just found this site and was mooching around when I found this topic. Just wanted to say what excellent advice you have given. Having been through a similar experience myself and meditating on heart chakra work, I think that your take on it was spot on.

[ButterflyWoman]

Personal experience here, nothing more or less, so take it for what it's worth.

When the memories/pain comes back, it IS intense. And if you've been through hell, it IS terrifying to think that you're going to have to go there again.

The thing is, it's not the actual "thing" again. It's only the memory of it, and it's just coming back so you can get rid of it.

There were times during my massive healing/breakdown when I was sure that I was going to die just from the sheer agony of the memories that were coming back fast and furious. I repeatedly told what few friends I had left that I feared it was going to kill me, that I would just cease to exist (that was actually my ego talking, and as it happened, it DID cease to exist for a while, but I grew a new and better one).

The healing won't kill you. It may hurt like hell, but it won't destroy you. You need to get all the poison out of your system, that's all. It's painful, it's scary, it's messy, but it IS healing, and ultimately, it will be for the highest good to get that stuff out.

I will say that medical intervention was helpful for me, along with cognitive therapy, in addition to spiritual things I was doing. It all goes hand in hand. I'm not advocating anything one way or the other, but if it gets too painful, talking to a doctor isn't a bad idea. Once the healing phase has passed, it gets much better.

[Korpo]

OW, aptly said. I think that's an excellent assessment and advice. :D

locsgirl, thank you. :oops:

Oliver

[Seeuzin]

Hi yall,

I have a good therapist and also know of a reiki master that I work well with that I see about once every month or two, if needed I can see her more.

I tried your inner dissolving thing Korpo, and I was shocked to find out that I went from feeling really bad to only somewhat bad in only 10 minutes of doing it. I don't expect it to work that fast or that well every time, but it was evidence to me that it really does work!

I'm not feeling overwhelmed atm. Still not feeling the best, but I've been given a rest period of sorts, it seems. It is very encouraging.

I know it won't be easy but I've decided that now is the best time to take this on. Thank yall very much for your help and well-thought-out replies!

[Korpo]

I tried your inner dissolving thing Korpo, and I was shocked to find out that I went from feeling really bad to only somewhat bad in only 10 minutes of doing it. I don't expect it to work that fast or that well every time, but it was evidence to me that it really does work!

If you are aware where the stuff sits, and the stuff is ready, or your mind, or how you want to put it, it can be very effective, yes. Glad it worked for you. :D


I'm not feeling overwhelmed atm. Still not feeling the best, but I've been given a rest period of sorts, it seems. It is very encouraging.

I know it won't be easy but I've decided that now is the best time to take this on. Thank yall very much for your help and well-thought-out replies!

Best of luck! :D

Get as much as you can out of your system now, and the years after will be so much better. If you receive energy from the Universe, maybe you can ask for "the right amount I can handle comfortably and benefit fully from".

Take good care,
Oliver