Greenbirch

Update: I am doing Kriya yoga again, even Kriya Pranayama. No side effects so far. I think my earlier adverse response to Kriya yoga had to do with two things potentially: A week before starting Kriya yoga I had an intense Kundalini experience: hot energy rose up my spine and cool air come out of my head. I was in some kind of an elevated state for about two weeks after that. When I started to do Kriya, I got insomnia. I suspect starting yoga when something intense is happening energetically is risky and it's better to wait for the experience to come down. (This feels very obvious in hindsight) Before starting again, I started to do asanas and be more active physically. Now I don't do asanas anymore and I still don't have any side effects. Kriya is challenging and also very rewarding. I love the moments when I get a very subtle understanding of how a practice should be done or when I get interesting sensations in my body. You don't have to master the practices 100% to feel effects. I am far away from mastering Khechari Mudra but I can definitely feel sensations in the 6th chakra when I hold my tongue in a raised position. I definitely recommend starting the practice! Just be patient and approach it incrementally while listening to yourself and how you are feeling.

How much phosphatidylserine do you (Leo or anyone who has tried it) take per day? I did not find that info on the video, maybe I missed it although I tried to look for it.

If your illness happens regularly after you have done kriya, I would stop the practice, recover and start doing preparatory practice. In Hatha Yoga Pradipika, for example, it is said that the human energy system should be prepared with asanas and various purification techniques before starting pranayama. The analogy given by the book is that without preparation if your nadis are very blocked and weak, pranayama would be like pouring acid into plastic tubes - the tubes would melt. Based on this, it could be possible that your system is not ready for pranayama yet. The purpose of asanas is not having a nice stretch but to stimulate the nadis and help them clear. Personally, I stopped kriya because I got insomnia. Now I am doing asanas, meditation, and talabya kriya. My goal is to strengthen my system while continuing to stretch my tongue. Later I'll start adding the other practices back while carefully monitoring my wellbeing.

I stopped Kriya after 6 days of practice (Nadi Sodhana, Ujjayi Pranayama, Talabaya Kriya, Om Japa, concentration a little over 5 minutes) due to insomnia and exhaustion. At the same time, my recent Kundalini experience died down (during which I was elevated for several days) - not sure if it is related to the Kriya practice, but it (or exhaustion) seemed to coincide with the experience dying down. It is not placebo. These practices are potent and one needs to be careful. I am not sure if I will pick up the practice again; losing the state of elevated consciousness really hurt and I keep connecting the loss of it to the Kriya practice. If I start again it will be after practicing asanas and thus preparing my body for pranayama.

What kind of (negative) symptoms have you all experienced after you started to practice? I don't have the books yet, but I experienced some Kundalini energy going up my spine and now I have physical symptoms. I wonder if it's because I went into it without proper preparation (kriya yoga). Do you think kriya yoga could help lessen any symptoms that might come up? Or are symptoms, physical and mental, a part of the process as chakras clear up? Any tricks to deal with those? Someone mentioned grounding exercises, could they work for all symptoms?

Does the orange to green transition require achieving self-reliance? Or, in what way is that required? Can stage orange be integrated even without financial success for example?

If you can't relate to the perspective of the other, think what color they are. For example, blue: think of a time in your life when you were blue. Try to see that while the other person may be blue in a different way, the mechanism is still the same. You had to go through that stage, and so does this other person. Also: try Metta meditation (loving-kindness). I haven't been doing it for long, but I am already seeing great results: compassion for myself and others, even people who annoy me, starts to emerge naturally. Great for counteracting judgment

Right! I keep finding these blue-type thinking patterns, even though they are not about the normal blue values. It's like orange values packaged in a blue box or something ("you need to make a ton of money or else there is something profoundly wrong with you"). Not sure if I am overthinking this, or if it's valid to classify a pattern of thought with a color, no matter what the thoughts are actually about. Would it be useful to utilize this model to say that family values can stay in us as these blue-type, very absolute values that our subconscious or even conscious mind uses to guilt us? Like having a "religion" inside your subconscious mind in which your family's values are the word of a very unforgiving god. And as long as these thought patterns are there, a part of us is blue, no matter where we are on the spiral otherwise...

Great, thanks for the encouragement!

I voted blue-orange, although I have to admit my dad had a lot of green. He was raised blue but became a very orange, highly educated entrepreneur who chased money. However, he was surprisingly open-minded. He left a plethora of books, including topics such as "how to heal with your hands", which I really started to notice only after having advanced to more green myself. My mom's open-minded reaction to the book topics has been a nice surprise; it seems she is not as rigid in her beliefs and materialistic as I thought I think I have avoided "color conflict" for most of my life by adopting a kind of a blue right-wrong attitude: what your parents say is right ("you have to go to university"), and it is your duty to adhere to their values.

I commend your efforts; it's not easy to move out of the familiarity of depressed identity patterns. Dedication is a very important thing you can do, and it sounds like that's exactly what you did: you have made a commitment to get better. It is not impossible to leave the stories behind. Yes, the familiar thought patterns are comfortable, even if they are painful and thus, the process of changing in uncomfortable. I recommend starting a Metta (loving-kindness) meditation practice, for 5-10 minutes a day (I use Insight Timer and search for guided Metta meditations). The idea is to learn compassion towards yourself and others over time - and this is important to remember! At first, the practice may feel like nothing or even extremely uncomfortable, but it is an investment. Over time, when difficult emotions arise, there is a more understanding reaction that is meeting them instead of resistance. This is a powerful tool and a strength one can use to face... well, anything that comes up. Somehow, it seems gentleness towards all experiences helps to transform them. The feelings one has may even reveal something underneath. Perhaps certain thought patterns are there to serve a purpose, and when this purpose is identified, it is easier to let go of it. You use the words "depressing" and "suicidal". Do you have support, such as friends or family who are aware of how you are feeling? Have you considered treatment?

Another method: somatic experiencing. I don't know how many practitioners there are and in which parts of the world. My body started doing trauma release shaking when I was finally in a safe relationship/life situation and armed with the following knowledge: 1. All emotions are valid, even if they don't fit the context (some very mundane situations may trigger trauma) 2. When difficult emotions arise, meet them with loving kindness and welcome them into your experience. Dive into them, imagine what color they are, what is their shape, what does their surface look like... 3. Shaking is good, very very good.

@Leo Gura any news on this function?