Pressure between the forehead and pacing

13. Building a Daily Practice with Self-Pacing
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Hello everyone,

I’ve been searching through the forum for a few weeks and I decided to post since I haven’t found a satisfying answer. Although I could easily give more details, it takes time to read so I’ll try to be concise. I will give any further relevant information needed! Also, I might be unprecise, as English isn’t my mother tongue.

In 2014, I was 19 and ended up by chance on AYPsite. I started meditating as recommended, and within approximately 5 months, I had progressively added the following core practices (probably too many, too quickly): 10 minutes of asanas, 10 minutes of pranayama, 20 minutes of mantra meditation. I also did orgasm retention here and there. I used to do the practices twice a day.
Along the way, I started to feel the energy within my body. I was discovering something completely new.
After roughly 5 months, I finished one of my sessions, got into Savasana before going back to my usual activities. But something different happened: the energy was slowly surging in my spine, from the pelvic region up to the top of my head. I lived about 30 minutes of very intense pleasure and extremely deep relaxation.

Then in the weeks following this energy surge, a feeling I had already experienced during these 5 months (mostly on the last part) became stronger and stronger: a pressure between my eyebrows, and sometimes generally in my skull. It is a feeling of pushing/pulling, mostly on the subtle level, but it sometimes get so intense that the muscles of my face get involved.
The practices were making this pressure so strong, that it came to the point it kept distracting me during the day. My attention was constantly being drawn to that part of my body, and I was not able to live my life normally.

A bit more than 11 years after that, three months ago in 2025, I got back to meditating. I was very hopeful that the pressure sensations would not come back.
At first, I tried meditating with the mantra for 20 minutes. One session was more than enough to understand it wouldn’t work that way: the problem had come back.
Then I tried to meditate focusing on my breath, for 20 minutes. That was much better already.
After two weeks, I added 5 minutes of Pranayama. I only did that once, as it made the problem come back too.

So I ended up simply meditating for 20 minutes twice a day (right after waking up, and before diner), and progressively started to experience so many energetic movements within the pelvic region, in the head, in the spine. I was so glad, as I thought I was finally taking the “highway” (both in terms of relaxation and self-centering, , but also in terms of energetic awakening).
But the same problem came back, again, so I decreased the time to 15, 10, and finally to 5 minutes.
I’ve now been meditating for about 10 days with my breath 5 minutes a day, twice a day, and I already feel that the pressure between my eyebrows and in my head is back. And I don’t know what to do now. I’m scared that within a few days, I’ll reach the point where I just have to stop meditating completely because these pressures are making my daily life impossible. It is making concentration so much harder, if not impossible, depending on the intensity of the feeling.

I practice sport every week (ice hockey, workout) and I have a stable job.
If you were to ask me what’s missing in my life, and that I had to answer spontaneously, I would say: the frequency of contact with my friends, and a loving relationship with a partner.
I’m just writing this to give you an overview.
What do you think I could do to make sure I can keep meditating?
What would enable me, in the long run, to reach the point where I can increase my daily practice time and add pranayama and a few other techniques? The truth is, I have to be very optimistic to actually think that it would be possible.

Thank you very much for your attention.

Robin

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Hi Robin,

Welcome, and thank you for sharing your journey.

It appears you had an energy awakening 5 months into practice all those years ago, though a normal routine asanas, spinal breathing and deep meditation would not normally be considered excessive practice. And you have been susceptible to energy overload in the head ever since. So what to do 11 years later?

Your desire to meditate regularly is commendable. And your prudent self-pacing has been very good, along with grounding in exercise, etc.

You are clearly sensitive to meditation with mantra and also with breath as object. Have you tried using the “passive awareness” technique described in AYP Plus? It is first introduced in Lesson 15, and later expanded on in a Plus addition to Lesson 367. It involves innocently allowing whatever is occurring, where attention (passive awareness) alone can help dissolve obstructions in the subtle neurobiology. It can be used during sitting, and also in daily activity, as appropropriate. The Plus lesson addition covering that is copied below.

If I understand, spinal breathing pranayama (short sessions) did not help bring the energy down in a balanced way. It can go either way with SBP. Don’t rule it out until you are sure it is not helping to bring some balance.

Though your grounding activity is good, you may want to try a more intentional grounding practice. A weekly Tai Chi class and daily practice can help with grounding.

Thanks again for sharing here and wishing you all the best in moving beyond the long time sensitivity issue. Let us know how it goes. It is going to be all right.

The guru is in you.

PS: For more on this, you might want to check the Forum AI with a question like: “What is the passive awareness meditation technique?”

AYP Plus Addition 367.4 - Passive Awareness Technique for Very Sensitive Meditators (Audio)
Mar 26, 2015

Q: Recently I began deep meditation with mantra “I Am” but very soon I got bad consequences: I got pressure in upper part of my back and I got insomnia and bad dreams!

This is not the only bad experience I have had with spiritual practices. I did Tao practices a few years, and I got similar problems. I did Tantric practice, and had similar troubles. And now I tried mantra practice (I am) and I got similar troubles!

Why is it that my constitution (my body) doesn’t accept spiritual practices?

Now I am thinking of trying breath meditation discussed in your Lesson 367 on sensitivity (above). But I am afraid that I will receive similar consequences.

If so, then what should I do?

A: It is the matrix of obstructions and energy flowing in your subtle nervous system that are causing the sensitivity. Who knows how this came to be? The fact that you are determined to do spiritual practices could indicate that you have had experience with them in a forgotten past. Perhaps you overdid it then and that is why you are sensitive now. Even so, your bhakti is very good, and I am sure you can find a practice you can stabilize that will bring benefits in your life.

Try breath meditation (above) for 5-10 minutes twice each day for a few months, and see if you can find stability with that. It is suggested not to do any other practices during this period, not even spiritual study, and keep active during the day doing other things.

If breath meditation does not work for you, don’t force it. If the first few sessions lead to excessive discomfort in daily activity, then stop. Then you could try a simple passive awareness watching sensations technique for 5-10 minutes twice each day, like Buddhist Vipassana practice. This is one of the simplest and mildest forms of meditation, and least likely to cause discomfort.

You can find a similar technique in Lesson 15, where attention is allowed to be drawn to a strong physical or emotional sensation and just be there innocently without any intention or analysis. This can help dissolve the uncomfortable sensation. In a case of extreme sensitivity, even to breath meditation, this can be used as the only technique for brief sessions, and see how it goes. If you can find stability with daily use of this basic passive awareness technique over several months, then you can cautiously step up to breath meditation, and then to mantra meditation after a few more months, like that, using the passive awareness technique as needed when strong sensations arise, as described in Lesson 15. Or you could stay with passive awareness alone as your structured daily practice for quite a while if this is the only practice that you can do with comfort.

If structured sitting by the clock with the passive awareness technique is still causing too much purification and discomfort, then you can step back from the sittings altogether, and simply notice what is impacting your awareness during daily activity, and gradually learn to allow it to go as it will without excessive judgment or attachment. This is more in the realm of self-inquiry, where there is no intention to do anything with mind or awareness, except noticing impressions as they occur and allowing life to proceed according to its own flow. In that, we can come to know that all is happening as it should. This is the least proactive of all the styles of meditation and, in fact, is not a structured form of meditation at all. But it is a practice, or a way of looking at the world that can be cultivated with beneficial results over time.

Whatever style of structured meditation you try, make sure to keep your practice sessions short until you know the results over days, weeks and months. It may be that 5-10 minutes of meditation twice-daily will be good for you, whereas 15-20 minutes will be too much with any technique.

“Self-pace” the time of your practice (and the intensity of your focus on all sensations in life) according to your capacity and comfort. Effective meditation is about doing and letting go. The same can be said about life in general. This is very important.

All the best!

The guru is in you.

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Note: For additional suggestions see:

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Hi Yogani,

It is a blessing to have a reply directly from yourself. Thank you for your kindness, and more generally thank you for your effort in shaping and sharing all this precious knowledge with us.

I have already swapped to the passive awareness meditation.

It is right that short sessions of pranayama did not help with the problem, but I am definitely willing to try it again, and to risk a little more discomfort to find a possible answer to my problem.
Would it be relevant, in my case, to do the following twice a day:
5 min pranayama + 5 min passive awareness meditation?

I have noted the information about Tai Chi!

Warmest regards
Robin

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Hi Robin,

It might be better to just do short sittings with passive awareness alone for a few weeks at least to see if that will be stable. If it causes any serious issues outside practice, then discontinue, and look at using it sparingly outside sittings during daily activity if that helps with any symptoms, and with life in general.

Once your sittings are stable for some weeks, then you could try introducing a short spinal breathing session right before meditation, and see how that goes.

Better to introduce and stabilize practices one at a time. If you introduce two at once, and there are issues in daily activity, it will be hard to know what is causing the problem.

So one thing at a time, find stability (hopefully) over weeks or longer, and then look at what might be added. That way you can easily identify the culprit if any stability issues arise. One step at a time, and taking it slow. You can do it.

The guru is in you.

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PS: It might also be good to stay away from tantric energy cultivation for a while, and even allow for release from time to time, which can help reduce energetic pressure in the body, including in the head. All of the methods of yoga are “levers” that can stimulate and/or reduce the various changes involved in human spiritual transformation. We are all a bit different in how this goes, depending on the matrix of obstructions we have within us, including since birth. So becoming familiar with the various tools of yoga (levers) and how they can be used to move forward on our path with good progress and comfort and safety is the name of the game.

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