AboutJoost Boekhoven Expertise I have been doing yoga and meditation for more than fourteen years. Like most people, I am doing this to find peace of mind, and to get to the depths of my being. On the way, I am discovering my connection with the universe and God. Spirituality brings out the best in yourself, but in the beginning also the worst... There are a lot of obstacles on the way to peace of mind. Most people stop when they encounter the first difficulties with meditation and never get to know their full potential. I have gone through a lot of such difficulties; and I found it worth the effort! Now I want to help others who go through the same problems, or who have questions about meditation and spirituality in general.
Experience If you measure and display your accomplishments in spirituality, you haven't accomplished anything spiritual yet.
Question Dear friend,
I am experiencing a clicking and misalignment in the base of my skull around the first cervical. I have tried a few chiropractics. Now I am trying a specialized upper cervical chiro and may try a network chiro too.
I practice yoga, tai chi and chi gong. I recently learned how to strengthen my eyes with Chi and part of the method involved bringing energy to this base-of-skull point. I understand nerves go to the eyes from here. This would explain why my eye sight AND neck were deteriorating..
I hope my neck will be fixed soon and I will keep working to relax my eyes with the chi program.
Other suggestions on healing my subluxated atlas bone?
Also, in 25 days I am going to India for my first pilgrimage. I am looking for tips about studying/traveling there if you have any great ideas to offer.
Thanks,
Jake
Answer Hello Jake,
I'm sorry to hear you have this problem.
I wish I could solve it directly, but that is beyond my expertise. Nevertheless I may be able to tell you something useful about it.
It is possible that as you said, bringing energy to this base-of-skull point is the cause of the problems. This is an unfortunate effect of learning things out of context.
There are few teachers in the West who understand enough about spiritual techniques, about working with cakras and energies. When yoga and meditation were brought to the West, more than a century ago, they were adapted to the Western mind. Western people are more extrovert than introvert and often don't have the patience and self-discipline to learn the whole science of yoga and meditation. They want the most visible results and they want them fast. So the Eastern teachings were watered down and usually taught incomplete. A clear example is pranayama, a system of breathing techniques. Pranayama has a strong effect a person, and requires the practitioner to be very concentrated. Uncontrolled thoughts are amplified by pranayama and bring about changes in the mind or body of the practitioner that can be at best disturbing and in the worst case dangerous. A good teacher doesn't allow his students to learn pranayama until they have been doing meditation for several years and have reached a level of sufficient control over their mind. Moreover, they need to avoid food that brings restlessness to the mind, and avoid actions that bother one's conscience.
But most teachers teach pranayama out of context, without sufficient preparation, just as a nice trick. Many a practitioner gets out of balance because of it.
The teachers cannot fully be blamed; many are not aware that they teach incomplete techniques. They just repeat what they leaned from their teachers, who got just the spiritual highlights from their teachers and so on.
The result is a big number of teachers who are sincere but teach like a driving instructor who shows his students the gas, the clutch and maybe the break, but doesn't teach the traffic rules. Accidents are sure to follow.
This may have happened to you with your technique of bringing energy to this base-of-skull point. You may have to start strengthening lower cakras first, or strengten your nerve system so that it can handle the energies that you release. For this you would need moral strength and a finely tuned body i.e. you need to follow moral principles and do certain yoga exercises, and possibly adjust your diet. For instance meat, onions, garlic, mushrooms can be good in certain circumstances for certain people, but they can throw your body and mind off balance as well, especially when you do spiritual practices.
This may all sound disheartening! But if it makes sense to you, all you need to do is find a teacher who knows more about spirituality than most do, who gives you the whole picture and not just the attractive tricks.
These teachers exist. I have experience with only one school of yoga and meditation that is like that, Ananda Marga. There must be a few others as well, but I don't know them. Apart from Ananda Marga I only know schools that teach incomplete yoga/meditation.
The good thing about Ananda Marga is that they have centers all over the world, teach classes for reasonable prices and don't accept money for individual consultations or for teaching individual meditation techniques. I know most of their teachers as knowledgeable and loving people and I learned a lot from them.
If you want to check them out, you can look them up in the telephone book. If there is no office nearby, you can contact a central office in your country of region and ask for a travelling teacher to visit you.
If you need, I can look up the nearest center for you.
They can also tell you a lot about India, possibly even accompany you there; my most recent experiences there are from long ago.
