Chi sensitivity/Old hag

Chi sensitivity

Sometime in the spring of 1992 I began to be sensitive to chi in my palms and fingers --- i.e, I could often, especially late at night, sense a tingling or warming in the hands, sometimes orientation dependent, and sometimes stronger during geomagnetic storms. Later this has progressed to warming/pulsing of or between individual fingers, or even dowsing effects (flashes in fingers when walking, perhaps over buried streams), and to spark sensations which I will describe later. The tingling is intensified at some music concerts, and I think is related to low frequency acoustics among other things. It is also intensified by some yoga asanas, especially twists, and by bending back/stretching the fingers. It may be related to the acupuncture effects of the thorns described earlier (though the thorns were thicker and blunter than acupuncture needles, and more painful).

Some who do yoga or tai chi or qi gong or martial arts worldwide can also sense chi. It is related to breathing, since focussed breathing can intensify the effect. I often do that at musical concerts, envision swirling the chi to help the musicians link with the crowd, plus at the start imagine a balancing of their chakras, kundalini raising, yin yang balance, aura fluffing, and enhancement of their simultaneous voice and instrument projection (the notes that burn in the mind as well as the ears) ability. At a ritual or dance one can also do this, to raise the energy. But I'm not sure if this really works yet. It seemed to help (e.g.) at a 1995 Vancouver (Commodore) Shane MacGowan concert but that may have just been a gradual warming up of the band plus sound tech adjustments. Maybe it did, but anyway, this Wildcat of (220 years removed from) Kilkenny likes him.

Old Hag/Photic Sneeze

I have twice experienced the classic so-called "old hag" experience, where you wake up and cannot move, as if a heavy weight was pinning you down. I think this is termed a hypnagogic or hypnapompic experience, this is discussed more in either the soc.religion.shamanism FAQ or the alt.out-of-body FAQ or both; I haven't looked at them recently. (Someone later mentioned that this is often discussed on alt.dreams.lucid ["LuciD in the sky with diamonds...?"] and that it is a normal process of sleep designed to keep you from falling out of bed when dreaming. Hmmm, but I don't dream, or rarely remember any.)

I experienced this once here in Newfoundland on the living room couch, in the mid-80s, and once again in Vancouver on my sofa bed, which I had left in couch form, I think, around 1992 or 1993.

I am interested in any good folklore/mythology stories about the "old hag" type experiences, or this "photic sneeze." Both are relatively common, but I wonder if they are related, and how many have both.

A musical aside: fans of the uillean piper Paddy Keenan (who recorded Old Hag You Have Killed Me with the Bothy Band) may want to know that he has just released a new solo album, recorded here in Newfoundland. More info on that is on the web page by Don Walsh. He (Keenan) swirls the chi pretty well himself with those lightning rod pipes; he (and I tried to help) really charged up the local Blarneystone last year.

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