Redirecting thoughts through the solar plexus

[The Cloud]

Summary: Thoughts aren't the center of our existence, and if we can allow our thoughts and other energies flow through our bodies instead of getting stuck in our heads, we can do things like fall asleep easily.

A couple of months ago, I did an experiment. Normally, I think of my experience as taking place somewhere behind my eyes or between my ears, with most of that experience presumed to be thought. While thoughts do actually take place in the brain, the idea of where thoughts take place is entirely arbitrary; it shouldn't matter where I think they happen. With this in mind, I decided to change the center of my experience to my solar plexus, just below my xyphoid process. I picked this spot because it's where my uncle, a martial artist, says that the bodies energy is channeled through.

For the next several days, I imagined my thoughts and energy redirecting from my brain through my solar plexus, so instead of ending up in my head it would come out above my stomach. To help this, I imagined that I was seeing the world from there instead of from my eyes, in order to establish that point in my mind as the center.

I noticed a few things through the course of the week. I had a cold when I started, and it may have been my imagination, but I felt for the first time in my life that I was participating in my own health. I felt as if I was controlling my own energies to expel the disease from my body. I couldn't say whether the cold actually ended early or not, although it didn't last any longer than average at most.

Second, I had a dream. In the dream, there was an older married woman teaching me how to dance, except it wasn't really dancing. It was more like she was using dance to represent the abstract concept of directing my energies willfully and purposefully. I remember the dream as being exceptional because it was the first time I ever felt as if there was a real person other than me inside a dream, a person who knew things that I did not and could say things that I couldn't. Normally, the people in my dreams are just characters representing aspects of myself.

Finally, there is the reason that I placed this in the Personal Effectiveness forum; I learned how to fall asleep. Obviously, I've fallen asleep just about every day of my life, but by redirecting my energy away from my head I found that I could fall asleep with a will. I would fall asleep so fast and deep that I wouldn't even remember it when I woke up. Normally, I didn't have any trouble falling asleep, but it still took time. With this, it was as if that time didn't exist. This consistently happened every time I did it.

I think part of it was that I wasn't feeling trapped in my head. I wasn't aware of it before the trial, but after I noticed that all my energy and thoughts would all go up into my head and get stuck. By redirecting my thoughts outward through a neutral point, I gave my body a chance to fall asleep without my head interfering.

The biggest lesson I took away from this was that thoughts are not the most important thing happening in the world. There are innumerable sensations throughout the body that play just as important a role as thinking does. This wasn't the lesson I set out to learn, but by redirecting my thoughts I found that there were things other than thoughts being redirected as well, and that there is so much more to the body than thinking. I believe the experience has changed my life in all aspects for the better; it has certainly helped me in things less obvious than sleep.

It even helps me deal with pain. Pain can be like thoughts, especially headaches; it becomes stopped up and the center of my experience. I find that there are moments when I can stand outside the pain now. It doesn't go away, I'm just more aware of the rest of my body that's alive and unhurt.

I don't think it's necessary to go through the exact process I went through to get any of this. I just described how I started to help anyone who wants to try themselves. Now, instead of moving my thoughts through my solar plexus, I just have to twitch a muscle somewhere to remind myself that there are things happening elsewhere besides my head.

P.S. As for the thing about falling asleep, I found that there was one thing which rendered it useless; worry. It was impossible for me to fall asleep with a will, or at all, on the rare occasions that I had something to worry about the next day. So it's probably not much help to the worst insomniacs; it could help people who have trouble with stray thoughts, but not those with a bone in their teeth about something stressful.

[C33]

This is a very interesting post.

I don't remember the chakra linked to the Solar Plexus, but it might be interesting checking which one.

One of my favorite artist is Isadora Duncan, and she established a dancing practice through the Solar Plexus.

In fact, practicing her dance is like no other dance practice. I think that she was onto something.

[Criseyde]

I agree with C33, this is really interesting.

Charles Haanel, who wrote the Master Key System, said that the solar plexus is the sun of the body, and it's where the conscious and unconscious (?) meet to manifest physical experience. Or something like that.

It's the Manipura chakra -- the seat of the will.