Buddhist meditation practice- i feel good

[missionimpossible]

Hello ,

I am a cfs sufferer from last 15 years. I joined this forum around 2016. I have been unable to work and have been mostly house bound. I am 35. Apart from cfs i also suffer from anxiety and cognitive impairment. I have always felt wired but tired.
I really appreciate the help of a senior member @Hip. I followed his advise and tried some of the supplements, and found some improvements.

I would like to share the good news with all of you. Three months ago during the lockdown period I found( I would say i was guided) a qigong system called Falundafa. It is a buddist practice. I started practicing the exercise movements and meditation. I felt great improvements in a short period of time. Within a few days i was feeling good with more energy, concentration, less anxiety, my sleep quality improved, less brain fog. I am practising for 3 months now and I am feeling better day by day. I am very positive that I will recover fully.

https://en.falundafa.org

This is the website. There are lectures and books of master in the website. Please read them first. It is also a spiritual practice, not just for curing illness. There are 100 million practitioners throughout the world. It is free of cost. Please try it with an open mind. This might change your life. I am very hopeful. If you have any more questions feel free to ask.

 

[hb8847]

It's great you've managed to find something that works for you. That said, I have been practising meditation for around a decade and while it's amazing for lots of things, it hasn't helped at all with my CFS or underlying illnesses. Which isn't surprising - for most people CFS is caused by a real medical illness which no amount of meditation, CBT, or other psychological interventions can fix. So, for people out there who haven't tried it, while I would wholeheartedly recommend meditation for your mental wellbeing I'd be wary of assuming it will make you better physically.

 

[Hip]

I would like to share the good news with all of you. Three months ago during the lockdown period I found( I would say i was guided) a qigong system called Falundafa. It is a buddist practice. I started practicing the exercise movements and meditation. I felt great improvements in a short period of time. Within a few days i was feeling good with more energy, concentration, less anxiety, my sleep quality improved, less brain fog. I am practising for 3 months now and I am feeling better day by day. I am very positive that I will recover fully.

That's very interesting.

Would you be able to gauge the improvement that you have made with chi gong on the ME/CFS scale of: very severe, severe, moderate, mild, remission?

Sounds like you had moderate ME/CFS (house bound) before starting chi gong. Would you say you have now improved to being mild, moving up 1 level on that scale, as a result of the chi gong? Or have you not quite moved up 1 level?



I used to go regularly go to Falun Dafa (Falun Gong) classes in London, around 25 years ago. I used to have an interest in spiritual practices like meditation and yoga, and when I discovered this Falun Dafa form of chi gong, I just added it to my spiritual regimen.

As you know, this Falun Dafa organization is the chi gong movement that is persecuted in China (not because of its cult religion ethos, but because the government there does not like any subcultures which might challenge their authority).

I have often thought of trying chi gong again for my ME/CFS, because I suspect its gentle, almost feminine, physical movements might potentially have some beneficial effects on the autonomic nervous system, which is usually compromised in ME/CFS. But I have never actually got around to trying it.


I can no longer meditate properly, because ME/CFS brain fog has greatly dampened my ability to attain a poised higher consciousness through mindfulness meditation. And the muscle stretching of yoga I now find surprisingly exhausting (muscle stretching seems to exhaust me much more than aerobic exercise), so I don't do yoga anymore.

But chi gong is very gentle, and unlike mindfulness meditation does not require much higher consciousness involvement, so should be feasible for me.



This video shows the Falun Gong exercise sequence.

(I've always found the background music to the Falun Gong videos a little depressing though, for some reason).

 

[Hip]

@missionimpossible, how quickly did the improvements in your ME/CFS symptom start to appear from your Falun Gong exercises? Did you notice benefits right after the first session, or did it take some weeks before you started to notice improvements?

 

[bhh2021]

I'd be curious to hear too.

@Hip I've been practicing some forms of Qi Gong and found them to offer some relief from Long Covid symptoms. I have to run now, but can follow up if you're interested. There are many forms you can even practice seated, so its helpful if you suffer from POTS or if even standing is difficult.

 

[Hip]

@Hip I've been practicing some forms of Qi Gong and found them to offer some relief from Long Covid symptoms. I have to run now, but can follow up if you're interested. There are many forms you can even practice seated, so its helpful if you suffer from POTS or if even standing is difficult.

Thanks for offering to provide details, but I find that I get really bored now doing any of this mind-body work that I used to love doing when healthy. I don't feel that higher conscious awareness anymore in my mind, and to properly perform and enjoy meditation or mind-body exercises, I think you need that higher consciousness present.

I had a huge interest in spiritual subjects, and have a bookshelf full of Zen literature and some Buddhist stuff among other things, but these books sadly have become meaningless to me, because after getting ME/CFS I lost my spiritual spark.

 

[hb8847]

I had a huge interest in spiritual subjects, and have a bookshelf full of Zen literature and some Buddhist stuff among other things, but these books sadly have become meaningless to me, because after getting ME/CFS I lost my spiritual spark.

Tragic isn't it, because it's probably now we need it most. I dream of being able to meditate daily again but I just don't have the cognitive ability.