Thanks PKJ! 
Glad to have your feedback. Things have been a bit bumpy these days because I started to feel a bit foolish for having moved ahead too fast. But your perception and description of what Iām doing at least gave me some reinforcement that at least viewed from outside that I am doing at least something right 
I have simplified my practice a bit this week and still it seems like some good things are happening, one small step at a timeā¦
Week of 4/6
I had scaled back a bit last week after reading some direct advice from Yogani, but I realized I had misinterpreted it. I reread it again and saw that he was talking about how once energy is flowing then results are usually magnified so self pacing would immediately be in order. He used a flywheel analogy with the flywheel flying off entirely and but I was seeing that as something of a dam bursting due to cummulative practice, sort of happening all at once.
So for now I think it is OK to go back to what I was doing since I did not get any major negative symptoms, then continue to self pace accordingly.
Monday
AM - 10 SBP, 20 DM Somewhat distracted DM but was focused during SBP
PM - 10 SBP, 20 DM - felt at one point like I was getting bored of hearing my own thoughts and after that was somewhat better able to stay on the mantra. This felt like somewhat of a milestone.
Tuesday
AM - 10 SBP, 20 DM rather distracted DM. Seems like when I roll right out of bed and into meditation I am too stiff or somethingā¦
PM - nice evening sit 10 SBP, 15 DM, did some stretching first and felt nicely grounded, very relaxed, felt very peaceful. Third eye energetics extended down into my nose and cheeks somehow.
Wednesday
AM - 7 SBP, 15 DM - was in a bit of a hurry so somewhat abbreviated practice.
PM - 10 SBP, 20 DM - This was a wonderful DM. I started late, around 11:30 PM. I had eaten just 2 hours earlier so it wasnāt because I had fasted. Anyway, I felt so peaceful, calm, connected. Unlike many other DMs where I find myself thinking about the time, in this one I was ready for it to go on forever. The only thing different was I added in Kechari again during SBP, and let my tongue just get comfortable hanging out there.
Thursday
AM - 10 SBP, 20 DM - average sit.
PM - had to sit on a full stomach, but still did 10 SBP, 20 DM
Friday
AM - late sit, 10 SBP, 20 DM
Epsom salt bath prior to PM sit, helped me relax
PM - 10 SBP w some kechari, 20 DM
Saturday
AM - 10 SBP, 20 DM
PM - 10 SBP, 20 DM
Sunday
AM - 10 SBP, 15 DM - felt something in my lower spine as if I was feeling the spine itself. This was only for about 5 or 10 seconds, and it was more static than I would have expected if it was āconductivityā. Prior to that though I definitely got a burst of conductivity that was pleasant and brought goosebumps. Also had some hypnagogic imagery of some kind of yellow rounded door that looked like a cross between a door and musical instrument, but managed to just go back to the mantra.
PM - 10 SBP with maybe 3 of that Sama Vritti, 20 DM.
Last sit of the week was the most interesting. Usual times, but during SBP for some reason I decided to really use force to inhale and exhale. This led to some prolonged conductivity as long as I did it, maybe 30 seconds.
THen in meditation I felt like I was in the bigger space, and if I got off the mantra and focused on my visual field it was lots of sparks despite sitting in pure darkness.
For some reason my eyes seemed to be looking more down than up, and they were darting back and forth a bit. I started to feel my 3rd eye not just forward but sort of at the base of the back of my head maybe?
Dear technoyogi,
Love your enthusiasm and sincerity.
I love reading your contributions but please allow me to comment. From my perspective I feel you are adding too much too soon. You are a do, do, do when meditation is all about be, be, be. Whilst the techniques (some very advanced which in certain Yoga traditions you would not have had access to until 5 - 10 yrs of practice)are available and certainly do-able, Yogani says something about adding on practices. It should be guided by your Inner Guru. By adding more and more for the sake of keeping it exciting, you will miss the beauty of adding a technique at exactly the right time for the right experience. It would have all gone stale by the time you are actually ready for it. This is, of course, merely my perception. Please filter accordingly.
Sey
technoyogi
In my opinion inner guru will be best guide to move forward how much we need to do the practices. In my judgement each path is unique in certain ways even though we may follow similar guidelines. So if your intution says more then go far it as it may be applicable to your case. Just my 2 cents.
One question I have it may not be the right forum as I have acid reflex and I was reading one of your posts where you mentioned you were able to heal it. Could you pls elaborate on that.
Thanks and blessings.
PKJ
Hi Sey,
By all means I welcome your comment, really that is half the reason I do a journal like this (the other half is that hopefully it can be of use to someone else later if they are starting out too).
Your comment is not the first time I have been told that I should have more ābeingā and less doing. I am hoping that DM will gradually phase me out of that.
In the meantime, I am at sort of a middleground. 2 or 3 weeks ago I was doing siddhasana all the way through with SBP that included mulabanda and sambhavi and followed by samyama. Sometimes Iād be throwing in level 3/4 kechari, too.
I intuitively felt that the level of inner witness was not really sufficient for samyama so I dropped that. Also scaled back the kechari. The sambhavi and mulabanda I am still deciding on. It felt like prior to starting to do them I had experienced something similar at different stages throughout my life. Like I had been doing Sambhavi instinctively at times. And this may not count, but mulabandha as PC exercises. Iād learned tantric control through this and just intuitively had been doing bramacharya.
Given my spontaneous kundalini even about 18 months ago that started me having OBEs, I figured something has already arisen energetically so this also is something I factored in. And oddly I have a lot of āexternalā validation about possible spiritual progress from past lives that I didnāt seek out. Iāve been told by my wifeās father that he thinks I was a monk in a past life. And a woman in my OBE group has had past life memories of her as my assistant when I was an ayurvedic practitioner. So as I factor everything in, I feel like I am just doing my best to āfall in lineā with where the combination of bhakti and self pacing and various life events seem to be leading me.
Then there is the odd facility with which kechari comes to me. It almost just āfeelsā right. Like being with such a long tongue is so that I can do kechari haha 
In a lot of ways, Iām just happy that my hardcore science oriented mind ever had experiences in the first place that could get me on this path. The me from 20 years ago could not have ever imagined doing the things I do now lol.
I actually donāt feel like I have added these things to keep things exciting because thus far none of it has been very exciting anyway. If I compare the experiences I get to OBEs then I should be back to concentrating all my energies on having more of those!
So all this said I will still take to heart your council to be, be, be more than do, do, do to the extent possible where I am now. That is the second time this year I have been told that.
Hi PKJ,
Well, long story short I wound up healing the acid reflux through lucid dreaming after trying about 100 other things. It is interesting too because 9 months later the physical reason for the acid reflux was found, I have a Hiatal Hernia. But whatever the case, the lucid dream fixed the symptoms. I went from slugging down antacids all the time and waking up 3x per night with severe anxiety and sometimes only sleeping about 4 hours total to sleeping like a baby.
I will copy for you the dream from my journal below, but first I will also cite the book where I learned the techniques to do this. It is Robert Waggonerās book Lucid Dreaming: Gateway to the Inner Self. That book can teach you how to lucid dream if you donāt know how, then how to heal yourself in a lucid dream.
Took me about a month of intending to heal myself to 1.) have the lucid dream and then 2.) remember to heal myself.
Here is how it all went down:
6/22 Lucid Healing Dream
Had a normal dream that I was at some kind of a concert, and people were jockeying for position and then I left and went to a nearby room. I had the realization that I was semi lucid, but I also felt like I had to struggle to keep it. I started touching things in order to ensure that I would stay lucid. I ran around the room looking for things to touch and came to a table and started touching objects on the table in an effort to gain full lucidity.
(It is at this point in my recording I took on my iphone after waking up, that I start recalling a dream that had happened prior to this, and where I was shocked to hear myself talking about being in the Statue of Liberty!):
I recalled a dream that had immediately preceded this, where āit was weird, it was as if we were in the face of the Statue of Libertyāā¦ it was a club that I guess was inside of the face of the Statue of Liberty, and there were women there reaching out to me, all of them dressed oddly like a street performer woman I had passed by in real life earlier in the day (she was from Japan and dressed sort of like Little Bo-Peep). There was something happening in the audience that felt mystical to me, there were people in the audience reading special books out loudā¦
At this point in the recording, I go back to the present moment in the dream where I am at the table, and apparently it is in the dream that I also had recalled being at the Statue of Liberty, maybe something about what I had been touching on the table made me recall that. Anyway, I became fully lucid and apparently started running around trying to find things to do. As I had not been actively practicing OBE/LD, I did not remember any plan of action yet. I came out on the porch of a place I knew in the dream to be a post office and there was a woman there I tried to talk to. She seemed uninterested in talking as many of the characters in my dreams often are. She walked off to her car and I waved at her but she ignored me.
I had a sense that I needed to find a higher purpose in this dream, and I can recall that many things happened yet I do not remember all of them. I have the vague memory that as I walked around there was somebody sort of following me, discussing the activities of other people.
Now here is where the dream finally starts to get interesting. I came across someone who looks like a woman I know in real life. She asked me about some experience she thought I had and I told her that to my knowledge that had never happened. I realized though that here was one of the first dream characters in a long time who might be interesting to talk to. At this point I noticed there were more people sitting around her in a semicircleā¦ the setting seemed to be in a cold room, that gave me the feeling of the Arctic. Though, I suppose if the room were somehow housed in the face of the Statue of Liberty at night, it would be pretty cold too!
The woman asked me about my progress, and I seemed to think she was asking me about my spiritual progress, and part of me felt like I had not been making the progress I wanted to make and beyond that I did not really know how to answer. So I said āWell, in terms of my progress, I have been here a long time in this dream.ā This to me was important to report because I knew that a lot of my dreams do not last as long as I would like them to.
Now in my recording I felt that was strange that I had known the dream was long and eventful because I could not remember a lot of the dream upon awaking. However, I did then suddenly recall as I talked into my recorder that in the dream I had created a ātotemā somewhat like the totems from the movie Inception. Except this totem was used to keep me lucid throughout the dream and instead of a spinning top like in Inception, this was an opaque greenish, opaque, heart-shaped crystal that I carried in my pocket. I used this heart crystal to focus my intent and energy as I went along in the dream, carrying it like a āgratitude rockā like they talk about in the movie The Secret. It reminded me of a small jade heart that I had bought in Guatemala when I was about 12 years old in real lifeā¦
In the dream I was telling the group about some of my exploits in the dream up to that point (which again regrettably I did not remember too well upon waking up). I then told them āWell, I have not been lucid dreaming a lot recently, in part because I have been sick and have had to sleep in an weird upright position that is not very comfortable, and I value what sleep I can get these days more than trying to wake up to practiceā¦ I am just more focused on trying to get healthyā.
This was a good thing, because it reminded me about my number one plan of action, namely to get healed in the dream. Now I had attempted a healing about one month prior and did have some minor improvement (this was to heal acid reflux, I also had a more successful dream before that where I did heal a severely swollen, painful jaw). So in the present dream, I asked all the people in the group āYou know, that reminds me, maybe while I am here, maybe I could receive a group healing from all of you guys?ā The answer came back fast and unanimous āSure!ā
I remember then pulling up my shirt to expose my stomach and then going to sit in the corner. Again the details here are a bit fuzzy, but the group formed a closer semicircle around me, and I remember they were directing energy toward me with their hands. I heard one of them actually saying something that sounded like an incantation, while urging the rest of the group āletās direct the energy with our handsā!
There was a wonderful blue glow emanating from their hands and entering my stomach, I could actually feel the rich, vibrant warmth of it. At this point I started to lose lucidity and I was in between dream consciousness and waking consciousness, and the scene began to take on the quality of an animated cartoon of sorts. The blue energy stream began to transform into this blue stream of energy that was now exiting my stomach instead of entering. It became this blue arc out of which tiny fish seemed to be jumping into and swimming upstream in a stream of energy that somehow filled my bedroom in real life and that I could see through my closed eyelids and eye mask.
As waking consciousness took hold even more, I imagined that perhaps this was representative of some bad microbes leaving my stomach. There was a video sales letter I had watched earlier in the day with an animation of ābad toxic bugsā which may have been responsible for that thought and this representation as well. The people in the group were still there guiding the process and the fish. Now my wife seemed to be there too and she was entertained by the ālittle fishies jumping out of the oceanāā¦
At this point I was almost fully awake and the vision was gone. I considered trying to re-enter the dream, but I knew that there was a lot of content and that if I did not record it then and there I would likely forget most of it, so I elected instead to wake up fully and record it.
So the summary is if you can have a lucid dream, you are in a profound trance/altered state. Then you purposely try to have yourself apply energy ideally through your own hands on the affected area, in this case your stomach. I have healed some other minor maladies and also used a bit of a pre-rehearsed incantation, but the energy from you hands is the key.
In this dream I was lucky to have these people help heal me, ideally it should have been directly from myself though. One mistake people make is to go looking for a doctor or other people to heal them. This seldom works for a lot of reasons.
So that is it, have a lucid dream, remember the intention to heal yourself, charge up some kind of healing energy in your hands, apply it to affected area, and enjoy the healing.
There is a guy in our OBE group who is a medical doctor. He had chronic shoulder pain for 3 years, daily. He used the same technique and had a Harry Potter-esque amount of energy get generated, and he healed his shoulder pain overnight.
Robertās book cites lots of other examples.
Hope this helps, I know it is not a turnkey method like drinking apple cider vinegar or what have you, but at the end of the day I thank my lucky stars I found itā¦
Sey
Hi technoyogi
First of all thanks very much for the detailed summary. It really helps to understand the process very well.
Intersting I am doing the similar thing instead of lucid dream but in the awareness or semi awareness state. I direct the prana to stomach and that helps a lot. Interstingly in the past my hands will go to my stomach area automatically. As my Kundilini is awakened so it makes sense to let the hands to the healing process. Yesterday night i did direct the energy from hands to the stomach area and it definitely helps. I am feeling much better and will continue to do the same thing. I will look into the Lucid dreaming you suggested but i think even in the awareness state it will have the similar effect as well. It is just wonderful to read your story and found so many similarties.
My sleep is ok i donāt have any major issues with sleep. I think apart from directing the prana with the addition of directing the energy to the stomach has started getting better.
Any particular diet regimen you used to use it. If you donāt mind sharing it that will be helpful.
Again thanks a lot for the detailed summary.
Blessings.
PKJ
Hi PKJ,
That is awesome that you are directing the prana directly. I imagine this to be a much more direct route than trying to have the lucid dream. A lucid dream can heal you overnight, BUT it might take a month or more to have it in the first place and remember to heal yourself in the dream. If you are doing it in DM you know you are getting incremental improvement each day which is great! Really it is all about our level of consciousness and if one can go in a DM to the level of mind that one reaches in a lucid dream then the same results should be also available essentially instantly
As for your questions on diet:
I tried many diet regimens, yet since the real issue was the Hiatal Hernia none of them woreked particularly well.
If your reflux is caused by something other than a hernia, then diet can help. One thing to figure out quickly is whether your reflux is caused by too much acid, or too little. That sounds counterintuitive but here is how it works.
If you have a loose LES (lower esophageal sphincter) and you produce too much acid (maybe because of stress or other issues) then the acid will come up and burn you just because the LES is not working well. In this case you definitely want to avoid the trigger foods (usually things that relax the LES, definitely coffee was the #1 offender for me, but it can also be things like chocolate, garlic, onions, tomatoes, etc.
The other possibility is too little acid then stomach contents donāt digest fully and create gases that put a pressure on your LES from below and push it open, which again causes reflux. Here the advice is to very gradually add HCl and/or pepsin pills to see if having more stomach acid makes the relux go away. This is one reason why sometimes apple cider vinegar works for people. Yet it has to be very gradual because otherwise you get the opposite effect if you had too much acid. So in this approach you have to monitor closely to see if you get more burning and reflux instead of less. If so you obviously have to stop immediately. If you get less reflux then you can gradually add more of the pills. Look this up online for exact instructions, Chris Kessler is the guy I was following for this I think.
I also tried the low FODMAPS diet, and many other things. One thing I think will help in general is to drink more of your nutrients and the way to do this is to buy a high powered blender. I bought a Vitamix blender which is a hefty investment but one that will pay off over the years. You can make soups, smoothies, chocolates, pretty much anything in a Vitamx or Blendtec or Ninja high powered blender, and it takes a lot of effort off of having to digest food all the time.
Come to think of it, this may be part of what helped me in Yoga, because as we know the digestive process seems to sort of interfere with DM, etc.
For breakfast the last 9 months or so I drink a blended mix of green tea, something local called āThought Flow Teaā, 1 oz grass fed butter, 1 oz coconut oil, 1 oz MCT oil, some cacao adn either some honey or stevia to sweeten it. I may not even drink it until noon so that is āintermittent fastingā. This is a low carb solution that still gives you energy, and the low carb is good for both yoga and acid reflux.
Hope some of that helps PKJ, I know acid reflux is NOT fun and wish you the speediest possible recovery! 
Thanks very much for the detailed info. One thing which is main reason is the DM and the kundilini. That is why it is not the medicine which will work. It has been improving gradually from the last few months by directing the prana. Also one more thing which is contributing is the Amrita as i get lot of Amrita as well. As i get lot of Amrita after the DM and also during the day. For that reason i need to be careful about eating as i cannāt fast as the Kundilini is surging. Best way is to surrender to the mother and she takes care by itself. During the DM I was able to do the healing for others but looks like Guru has given me this so when the time will come Guru will take it away. Surrendering every moment is the best way to move forward.
Blessings
PKJ
Very wise words PKJ. I also had to surrender to the state. Later I was given a tool to heal it, it all happens in the time it was supposed to happen it seemsā¦
Week of 4/13
This week started with a bit of a milestone, I got to meet the first person from these AYP forums, Carson Zi We live about an hour away from each other here in Canada and he was gracious enough to make the drive up to see me. We had lunch and talked for almost 4 hours.
There were points where we were both having energy surges, and some of the things he shared were simply new paradigms for me. At the same time he was super down to earth and even though we were talking about really esoteric things it was just like hanging out with a really cool dude. 
Carson gave me some great feedback on my current practice, and gave me the name of an acupuncturist that I plan to visit soon.
4/13
AM - usual 10SBP, 20 DM
Lunch - with Carson
PM - 10 SBP, 20 DM - tried to have a bit more tension in my abdomen during SBP given something Carson said about uddiyana bandha. This seems to have led to more gurlgling than I have heard in a long time.
ALso, did kechari during SBP. Felt the wind on my tongue. My tongue seemed to want to strain further up and I felt some new structures at the top. When I finished my mouth was finished with saliva and it seemed like my taste buds felt more sensitive. It was like my saliva was somehow a bit more pure seeming. Donāt know if this could have been somehow related to Amrita, but there was something different about it I feltā¦
Tuesday
AM 10 SBP, 20 DM
mid day - Wound up chatting with Jeff, who I met because of talking to Carson yesterday. Quite unexpectedly he offers to scan me. Though I had no idea where in the world he was or even what he looks like, I got a strong energetic reaction. He asked me to see if I could reach back to him and I have to admit I pretty much did not know what to do. This was already yet another paradigm shift in 2 days.
Later at dinner I felt pretty energized in my upper chakras. And after dinner my stomach was gurgling like crazy, still is. One gurgle lasted 15 seconds and felt ālongā, like it was some string connecting from my heart all the way to my rootā¦ not sure that makes any senseā¦
PM 10 SBP 20 DM
Started to do kechari for about 15 seconds and then thought I would make this session really tame, not even siddhasana, given the interactions with Carson and Jeff, felt like I should self pace a bit. Very blissful session and I also had a great idea which may eventually allow me to use my marketing skills to work with Mantak Chia (long story).
Wednesday
AM - 10 SBP, 20 DM - rather late sit but still got it done. Forgot my phone so did not get to check my time midway through (I usually check after SBP to see if I hit 10 minutes on SBP, and try to estimate when to finish on DM). Does seem to be like Yogani says, there is an internal body clock, the whole thing took 35 minutes (I usually rest for 5 minutes by laying down)
My PM session that follows was almost perfunctory. I got really busy and just could not get it in. This time between the morning and night time mediation was maybe the closest to overload I have come. Not so much in any kind of physical pains but just feeling like I have imbalanced my life a bit recently in this spiritual pursuit. Iāve been reading tons of material, meeting new people, posting and chatting. But this has taken a bit of toll on my service in the real world. To myself, my wife, and friends and family.
Iām not overly worried, but it does call for a bit of a course correction. I have a really good base of knowledge now to keep me going for awhile, and I will continue my practices. But I am going to cut back a bit on teh amount of time I devote to the learning and discussion parts. And focus on being present with the people in my life, and trying to do a bit more hands on direct help for those in need here in my town.
So just feel that I had my head a bit up in the clouds, and some grounding will be good. I feel at ease with this journey taking however long it takes, and part of the journey is following my intuition.
So maybe I will update in less detail going forward, not sure, but I intend to still be practicing. Iāve seen people here who practiced for 3 years and only have 8 posts. So I am going to take the advice Iāve heard recently, a bit more ābeingā and less ādoingā
PM - 3 SBP, 5 DM - as I said, kind of perfunctory, but meant to keep up the habit part.
Thursday
AM - 15 DM, skipped SBP for time reasons. Still got immediate ajna activation the moment I sat on the cushion.
PM - did DM while in bed before sleep, so not sure how long it went. Had an amazing OBE experience that night.
Friday
AM - 15 min DM
PM - 10 min DM
Saturday
AM - 5 SBP, 15 DM
Plan from mid week is going so far, so good, I have learned from some of my minor hands on service outreaches.
Took a walk and saw a homeless man with one dangling misformed arm, he was digging through the trash for food with his good arm. I followed him for a bit waiting for a good time and when he sat down on a bench I told him he looked like he could use a bit of help and gave him money. He smiled and I felt even more sad for him because he had only one tooth. Yet his smile was genuine, his old blue eyes actually danced. He insisted on telling me jokes because he āowed meā. I assured him he did not but realized also he wanted to repay me plus he probably just wanted to talk. At some point in the jokes he told me his name was Tommy and that he had native Indian heritage. I got the sense he does not get to tell many people his name or his heritage.
At no time did he tell me the hardship of his life or ask for more as I find often happens. At least in that moment of us laughing at his jokes he seemed genuinely happy in the midst of his harsh circumstances. It may not have been 24/7/365 enlightenment for either of us, but for that moment it was enough. I felt like I learned more from that than I did from the powerful OBE I had last night or an entire week of sitting practice.
Where are you in Canada?
I really love your enthusiasm and honesty Technoyogi!
ak33 - I am in Vancouver, how about you?
Charliedog - Thanks!
Ah ok, Iām in Toronto. Love your journal Btw.
Thanks ak33! Well if you are ever in Vancouver do let me know, and vice versa if I go to Toronto. I am just a permanent resident of your beautiful country for now, though looking to get dual citizenship in the next few years if all goes well
Week of 4/20
Still on a somewhat abbreviated schedule of practice. Most days its 5 min SBP, 15 DM, or some days just 15 DM. Often times it is 100% plain, not even Siddhasana, so this factor of getting busy forced the āself pacingā which I sort of anticipated might happen.
I thought I had posted in here as an update 2 days ago but also had computer troubles so maybe thatās why it didnt takeā¦
Still seems that whenever I sit down on the cushion I get Ajna activity even before I take a breath. It is almost as if there is some kind of conditioned response. Or maybe its that I sometime forget about the activity, I mean it is going on right now.
I thought I had already posted this, but one night I was so tired that I just did DM in bed laying down and drifted off to sleep in the middle of it. Obviously not the recommended way, but I did remember an amazing OBE that night. The key in it was that in many OBEs there had been fear of āgoing furtherā at times, yet in this one I was breaking through these membranes and had the distinct feeling I was moving forward and had somehow passed a test of sorts.
Quick summary of the week - not much new, had some days where I only got around to one sitting practice and just did what I could as I was going to bed as the other practice.
Had some literal clicking sound going on in my throat one session, that was new.
Also have had stronger than usual pulse in my temples. Sometimes now when my 3rd eye pulses it extends beyond just my nose and all the way to my temples.
Week of 4/27
Again, mostly shorter practices with no bells and whistles, but the added balance has been worth it. I have let go of some of the subtle implicit goals that were hiding in my practice early on. I have come to just focus more on the process and less on the goal and it feels a lot more natural to me. One thing that stuck with me from my meetup with Carson a few weeks ago was just to do the sits ālike brushing your teethā.
I donāt spend a lot of effort expecting special results from brushing my teeth. And now so too with meditation, it is just a habit I know is good for me both physically, mentally, and spiritually. So in summary, right now not a lot of attachment to outcome, and a lot of balance has come from that. The pendulum could always swing back to a more bhakti driven approach again later, for now though this is where I am at.
Very good!