Adrenaline

You know that pranic movement leads to greater awareness of subconscious material. You know that prana brings awareness. 
So inevitably there is a point in awakening when all manner of hard emotions gets dredged up as a result of this. 

One is fear. But fear is very tricky, you see, because of how self-reinforcing it is. It is an emotional trap that can capture a person and keep them imprisoned. 

Some people repress their fear, which leaves what was creating the fear safely hidden deep in the subconscious. 

Sometimes people will only let fear share a small place in their conscious awareness so it does not take them over. Again, the reason for the fear remains like a weed whose leaves sprout up into the conscious self and are tended carefully by the personal will of the self. 

In awakening, though, fear and it’s chemical mirror, adrenaline, can rise up and show itself in all of its powerful glory. In truth, this can be overwhelming. But hang on; ask yourself what is really happening here. What is happening is prana is merely increasing your awareness so that you now feel more of the fear. At this point, though, you are only looking at the branches growing out of your subconscious, with the root of of the problem lying deeper within. You are being shown a problem, you see, and now you need to be able to go deeper to root it out from the subconscious. 

There is a problem with this situation, which is how fear begets more fear. In order to draw it out, you need a steady sense of calm. Adrenaline does not keep you calm. 
You need to learn how to tame the beast first, then draw it out by healing it. You no longer just calm yourself and then try to forget about it, which is what most people do to cope, but use the fear as a huge sign that is telling you right where the fear is. Now, instead of running from it, you wisely use this as a blessing. 

You now have been shown where a wound exists. You know that it revolves around fear, and you can also know what kinds of events serve to activate it by simply observing yourself carefully like an observer.

 In the beginning of this kind of work, what is often felt can be the kind of fear that is primal, utterly irrational. All of this winds up looking like a tangled mess, which it often is, but lying at the core is often a very simple and utterly uncomplicated event that sparked the fear, which is most often a trauma (s) from your past.  You might have no earthly idea where it is coming from. 

Fear that is strong enough and persistent enough can lead to a deep sense of dread, horror, even….with no known cause (especialy when kundalini awakens-even though pranic force will in the end lead you to healing it….but just not immediately if adrenaline has “got” you).

The worst thing you can do is to react to fear. It can leave you feeling like a deer in the headlights. It can lead you to chaotic behavior and it can make your life hellish. Reacting to it, you feed it. You begin triggering the adrenal response with still more adrenaline.

My dark time with adrenaline stretched into months. It was one of the top five hardest parts of kundalini rising. Besides leading to adrenal burnout, collapse, or adrenal failure, it is very hard on your body. I have a good family friend who had to seek medical attention to restart her adrenals after a long continuous bout with fear and anxiety connected to her awakening experience. However, conquering fear is one of the biggest victories in an awakening because fear robs you of energy that could be used for things like it’s opposites such as love and joy. Love cannot properly grow and flourish when fear and its counterpart hatred are taking up your attention.

Most fear is irrational for the very fact that when you are working from a trauma in the past, fear can color everything you see and blinding you from seeing the world as it is. When you are sitting in the quiet of your room trying to meditate and all you can feel is that piercing pain down deep into the core of you, all you are doing is dredging up feelings from the past. To heal the past, you must bring awareness into the moment. The fear might not be connected to anything in particular, but you will still need to learn how to recognize it in order to move on. This can be the alchemical moment where a giant ball of “yuck” gets transmuted into bliss. Yes, really. So how to do this?

Learn to bring forward and cultivate the Witness. Stand back and watch. See what slight deviation in feeling can shift you out, even for a moment, of fear and adrenaline. Over and over, watch what you are doing to break the adrenaline train. If you are caught in a recursive pattern of fear, you might need to study this in small snatches, those moments when you feel adrenaline subside. Watch and ask yourself what was it that caused the shift to happen. You might have to spend days, weeks even, of watching when these subsidences happen and then identify what it was that did it for you.  Then you can learn to direct your mind to different feeling states that bring on greater bliss and train your mind to remain there for longer and longer periods. Leave healing the source of the fear for now because once you can feel bliss, the issue that caused the fear may naturally dissolve, or you will be naturally guided to how to heal it when you are ready. If you have experience with awakening then surely you have experience with this particular phenomenon.

You want to find ways to lessen the adrenal response, and in the beginning, anything that gives you relief is good (short of medicating yourself-this only delays the process of inner transformation). Watch what shifts you out of the fear and duplicate it in order to extend it. This is for cases of extreme adrenal response. You need a coping mechanism so that you can later deal with the root cause of the fear. Your body will follow you like an obedient shadow.

By feeling this deeply, your body is washing itself of fear, but it is you who must root out the fear locked in the body and tell yourself that this fear is only in the past. This moment now is entirely new.
Over time you train yourself how to step out of fear. 

Surrender can help, but this can be tricky at first. Sometimes it can feel impossible to break out of the cycle because it can be so overwhelming. If adrenaline is this bad, it is important to be able to trigger bliss. Surrender can sometimes feel like you will just make it worse. What is true is that by resisting (anything) emotionally, bliss can turn into a nightmare. I know how crazy this sounds. But part of bliss includes healthy adrenal output. Dopamine all on its own will leave you so dreamy and blessed out that you won’t be able to focus on anything except the bliss. A small bit of adrenaline is an accompaniment to the awakened state, but if you have latent fear, the adrenals can shift into high gear and stay there, overpowering the dopamine high and bringing such terrible feelings. It is here that you can manifest paranoia, which is a problem all its own.

Breath work is something that can be very useful in breaking the fear. This breath needs to be slow, deep, and even . I began mimicking the type of breathing I noticed in sleeping people. It worked very well. Alternating nostril breath can be very helpful, and has been used for centuries to stimulate and balance prana through the two channels of yin and yang energies (Ida and Pengali). Try four slow breaths in and out per nostril, holding each nostril closed as you do this, repeating this four times. Continue this at least four times. 
Cranial Sacral massage is very good at getting you relaxed and going deep.

When you get in a fix with adrenaline and fear, believing you need to stay there to soak it in is poppy-cock. The only purpose these negative states serve is to help you in not feeling them anymore. That’s right-flee the building as soon as possible. You will be able to release this fear once adrenaline has moderated.

Music can help, guided imagery for relaxation, and even eating have all been ways I have been able to step out of the pain of the fear body. Climb out and don’t look back. Later, you can release any block you need, but for most people, doing this while the body is in full flame is very difficult. If you respond from a place of fear, you won’t be able to release anything. You will just marinate in it. Once you conquer fear, you can then release the “split” or block.

So often, it is fear alone that keeps you locked in a recursive loop that has to be broken before substantive change can happen. If the block is in you and you are afraid of it, you won’t be able to do this release work.You will simply fear the block too much.

There are other therapies for dealing with fear, adrenaline, and kundalini, and these are included in my blog under adrenaline. Do a search and you will find much more.

If you are experiencing adrenal overload, it’s not easy, but it can teach you a high level of mastery over what appears to be involuntary.

~P.

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Kundalini & Adrenaline

It was one of the hardest parts of my awakening experience.  All of a sudden, awakening turned a corner and went into high gear.  As if it wasn’t high enough!  With it came a sudden influx of….adrenaline.  But this was no ordinary adrenaline rush.  Oh no.  This was a constant flow of adrenaline as if some unknown button had gotten stuck in the on position.  To say it was excruciating was a mild way to put it.  I had days where I could not escape the rush that went on for days, weeks, months.  It was awful, and I was very worried that if I didn’t do something about it, it could do some permanent damage.  I would sit in the most comfortable chair I had where I could relax the most without falling asleep and try to get control over this crazy thing that was happening inside of me.  Tears streamed down my face.  I wanted to leave, exit, be done.  It was no fun.  I felt driven by this constant drumming of this chemical soup in my body.  I wanted to leap out of my skin.  Please let it be over, I thought.

I did a lot of physical exercise which did help some.  This, though, was only temporary.  As soon as I got off my bicycle or stopped my vigorous walk/run, it would all be back, pounding out its painful rhythm again.  You see, it is entirely possible to wind up in a state of adrenal failure some call adrenal burn-out.  A family friend who went through kundalini a few years ago described her harrowing experience with it and how she was able to break the spiral down into who knows what.  For her, she simply surrendered.  In the middle of the night, unable to take it anymore, she just asked the universe what it was she needed to do.  And then it came….a deep sense of release and calm began to settle all around her.  She had gotten out of the briar patch.  She also had adrenal collapse or burn-out and had to take adrenal gland treatments to get it functioning properly again.  Word to the wise.  Don’t let this go on for too long.  And if it does, be ready to talk to a doctor or other practicioner like a naturpath.

For me, I wish it had been so simple.  However, my experience showed me how to balance on a very specific wave of awareness that involved tuning my body chemistry in just the right way.  I don’t know if anyone going through this will relate, I can only say what it was I observed, which was that I was hyper aware of every little thing going on inside of me.  I could feel each drop of adrenaline being released.  I mean, I really mean, I could feel it.  It was located near my kidneys.  At first, I didn’t know what it was, but with a quick anatomy lesson, located the adrenals right over top the kidneys.  I could then feel the drops of adrenaline, for they were now like drops instead of the steady flow they were in the months past, and could trace each one upward as it moved into my heart muscle and affected it.  I could FEEL this.  It was not imaginary.  I learned, over hours and days and weeks, how to identify it because it was so persistent and strong.  When you see enough of something like this, you learn a lot about it.  So I tuned in, and I found that over time, the bliss response is actually a complex cocktail of different body chemicals.

I first identified something that served to bond me to things and people.  I didn’t know what it was, but it was real.  This chemical was stronger than many others.  This was what I call the first step into bliss.  This can also be accompanied by sexual feelings, or a leaning into bliss.  But I was not fully there.  As I slowly learned, there were other feelings that were matched in physiology, and there were two that were obvious to me.  Once all of these different compounds were surrogate through my feelings, they were matched in my body through its chemistry.  See?  Feeling does it.  But you have to WANT it so bad, you will do anything for it….and this is strong enough to counter what adrenaline is doing in your body.  Again, this was what I did.  Later, I did some research to see if there was anything out there to match what it was I was feeling with the first compound.  I found the compound; oxytocin.  This is the bonding hormone.  It goes up when women are pregnant, specifically their last trimester and continues through until after the birth.  It is present in both men and women and it is what makes us feel the rush of being head over heels in love with someone.  Oxytocin is interesting because it is also a neurotransmitter!  Wowza, huh?  Yes, so it is not just important to how we feel, it is involved in transmitting important signals in the brain.  Love signals perchance?  I think it is most certainly likely.  Then along cam what I suspect was either dopamine or endorphins.  I am less sure about these, but I know they were involved.  I learned this balance by hook and crook over a period of some months.  Once I got the first step, the other steps became much more rapid and the process began to fall together much easier with each step taken.

It was like listening to a chorus in my body.  I would FEEL the bonding hormone.  Just FEEL it.  Then something else was needed to balance that and broaden it, too.  THAT would then be felt.  Another voice was joined and suddenly I would find I was atop this wave.  I felt BETTER!  And I will tell you, it was not easy STAYING on that wave.  I fell off LOTS>  But I would get back up and get back on and each time, I got better at it.  this simply goes on and on until I can return to it with less and less effort.  The truth I will tell you, in MY experience, was that none of this actually countered adrenaline.  Nope!  This is what is so amazing to me.  Adrenaline was like….my enemy for a while.  this giant gorilla of a thing ready to clobber me….and did.  Many times!  I have the bruises and a couple of T-shirts.  I am happy to give you one of them if you want.  I joke, but what is no joke is that once all of the compounds were balanced, adrenaline was an important part of the overall chemical chorus in my body.  Yep!  adrenaline was STILL there, but it was now no longer the ONLY juice running my body!  Now, all of the chemistry was tuned to this new condition I found myself. Pretty wild.  Adrenaline helps to create bliss…..but it has to be in the right proportion.

We associate adrenaline with fear.  We can, however begin to associate very different things with it if we just let ourselves.  For me, adrenaline now has a different role to play.  This is alchemy, my friends, pure and simple.  What once was horrible, turned golden.  Kundalini makes it so that you can see all of this under a microscope.  So use that microscope to your own best advantage!  Let what might have blown everything out of proportion be the force that now gives you an up-close view of your physiology!  Brilliant!

Just settle in and relax as best as you can and then think of something that would make you feel really good.  In fact, I often found I didn’t have to think of anything from memory, I just KNEW how to feel different.  But why hadn’t I felt different before?  My sense is that we have latent fear in us that is being swirled around, is getting ready to flee our bodies, but before it does so, it gets mixed up, kind of like silt in a river clouds the river for a while.  the body is simply responding to a somewhat over-blown effect that is now working overtime.  the other side to all of this is adrenaline kind of forces you to learn how to be…..different.  Can you do it by just surrendering?  I suspect you can.  Maybe that way is the simplest and best.  For me, I am curious about how everything works.  I am the kid who took things apart.  That is how I am .  Curious.  For you, who knows?  But the bottom line is to go with what you feel is right.  And who knows, you might find that you do something completely different.  You know, if you ask, it will come to you.  In one way or another, through dream, direct cognition, a voice in your head or heart, or someone dropping off an article without ever knowing what you are going through, it will come.

Okay, just felt the need to put this all down for the just in case column.  I hope it helps someone out there!

 

 

UPDATE 3/17/2014:  I was watching a presentation being made by a man who has done research into brain function and he explains something that I have experienced quite clearly and offer it here for your consideration as it relates to getting a grip on your body/mind and brain connection.  He explains that there are substances called neuro-peptides that are compounds that turn thought/feeling into a physical representation of that energetic quotient in consciousness into a very real physical response in the brain/body.  For every thought you have, there is a specific orchestration and tuning of neuro-peptides in the brain in order to create a unique and very specific representation of that feeling (which I am assuming is consciousness/energy and thus not entirely physical in the way we normally think of it…although it iS energy) in the body.  This then gives each feeling, thought, and emotion, its own fingerprint. Imagine the body taking what it is your consciousness decides to feel and making a chemical representation of that feeling in the body.  Imagine the brain as like a kitchen and it is getting signals on the nanosecond-scale….trillions of these signals from all parts of you, including your own consciousness (not merely feeling physical sensation only through the nerve endings), and in this kitchen, the brain is putting together unique recipes, like a short order cook, but each order that comes in is itself highly unique, custom-made even.  One recipe asks for no salt, but extra mayo, or some barley, and in another the veggies should be steamed, not stir-fried. There is an amazing level of detail involved in all of this and the brain is engaged in helping to create a physical representation of what it is you are feeling.  One the one side, the brain does take in sensations from the gross body, but there is another level where the feeling parts of the self feed into all of this also.  Its amazing, but it also points to how you yourself can choose, were you to want to, to shift and change the character of your feelings so that your body will output a different result, a different message.  I experienced this deep and detailed level of signal processing in awakening and I know that if I can become aware of it, it is in all of us to be do.  What I experienced was merely a larger flow of conscious energy in my awareness, which I think aided in being able to detect these seemingly miniscule changes taking place in my mind/brain/body/consciousness. In the case of adrenaline, something was happening to keep adrenaline pouring in as if I had no control. This was itself the result of kundalini serving to highlight ever little thing happening in my body, a good thing on one side, but a bad thing when I still had latent fear/trauma in my conscious energy field.  The body was merely doing what it had always done, which was to generate the signals to release the chemistry that my consciousness was sending to it.  When I learned how to feel different, my body began, immediately, to respond to those new signals, those new feelings.

 

At a site managed by the National Institute of Health it described neuropeptides this way:

“The discovery of neuropeptides is founded on groundbreaking research in physiology, endocrinology, and biochemistry during the last century and has been built on three seminal notions: (1) peptide hormones are chemical signals in the endocrine system; (2) neurosecretion of peptides is a general principle in the nervous system; and (3) the nervous system is responsive to peptide signals. These historical lines have contributed to how neuropeptides can be defined today: “Neuropeptides are small proteinaceous substances produced and released by neurons through the regulated secretory route and acting on neural substrates.” Thus, neuropeptides are the most diverse class of signaling molecules in the brain engaged in many physiological functions.”

Source:  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21922398

Now that is a more generic description, but since neuropeptides have only recently been discovered (last 40 years) what is the more current understanding of these compounds in the body?

Larry Young, in his video on neuropeptides explains:

“So the brain has multiple different kinds of chemical communicators or transmitters; one of those is neuropeptides. A neuropeptides is a chain of amino acids that is released either into the blood where it activates receptors in our body, or directly into the brain where it can activate receptors in our brain. When a neuropeptide is released it binds to the receptor and that activates a series of events inside the cell, inside the neuron, and then that causes that neuron to become active. If that neuron is placed within a particular circuit, it can activate that circuit. So now you can begin to see how you can have a single molecule released from one neuron activating another neuron, and then activating a circuit and then a circuit can change an emotion and a behavior.”

Source:  http://www.dnalc.org/view/2388-Neuropeptides-can-Change-Emotions-.html

Based on how Young is describing it, you can begin to see how if a neuron is itself activating a circuit in the electrical/neurological system connected to the brain, this is essentially also what the energy of consciousness is doing.  This is what I have observed.  I am not a researcher, and do not wish to be, I am offering you my insight and you can take it or leave it.  But I do and have experienced energy as made up of a series of switches, which are actually activated by feeling that will themselves serve to allow the flow of universal energy into consciousness.  the body, in this description is doing the same thing.  This description is one I made as a result of my own experience in earlier blog entries.  We tend to think of energy as nonphysical, but I experience it as another state of matter, which of course it is.  As we know in physics, all matter is composed of energy!  Within our own consciousness lies a switching mechanism that is actually composed of our own thoughts.  We let in certain things and exclude others.  We do this selectively and based on what we believe is important.  We do this in regards to day to day experience and we also do it down to the micro-level, and the body responds perfectly by putting out the chemistry that those feelings and thoughts represent. Getting a grip on what is within you, your beliefs and biases, etc., is THE way to shift your body and brain chemistry for the better.  This is itself a form of freedom.  And really, the great things is the body is this amazing tool, and like a computer, we  do not have to get down into the source code, down to the actual calculations being made each fraction of a second in order to appreciate and experience the changes as they happen.  But it may be that if you understand that this is not something that you are a slave to, but CAN change, then knowing how your choice to feel differently can actually begin to dismantling an older means of being and feeling that did not serve you as well as a less cluttered and more direct way of feeling and knowing.   ~P.