6th_sense

Hi Bulletin,

I'll be glad to help you in any way that I can. Hold your breath this is a long one.

I guess you would like a brief history of what I went through:

I used to suffer from constipation when I was in grade 10 and beyond.
It was off and on nd I didn't suffer from too many stomach cramps -
they were relatively predictable at the time.

When I entered university I started getting extremely stressed and
tired and couldn't handle university any more, so I quit in 2nd year
and left to do my own thing. I did occasionally still get stressed and
I had moved out of home to live on my own. One fine day I heard a
knocking on my ceiling while I was sleeping and my body reacted to it
each time exactly when that happened. Because I had practiced
breathing techniques of my own invention in the past I was in fact
capable of overcoming the problem. But the problem only became worse
over the course of time - and my techniques advanced.

After a while of living on my own I lost my job in hi-tech, and I
decided to re-enter university and got into university back with the
2nd year batch. I was on the dean's honour role, but during the summer
after I started getting extremely stressed and had my intestines
blocked with food and finally went to emergency where they found it on
X-rays. I had at around that time been taking metamucil to help with
keeping myself regular but it didn't work. So I slowed down my work
schedule and took a lot more rest for the remainder of my bachelor's
degree.

About three months after I graduated, I hadn't found a job yet - so I
was still at home and I was relatively relaxed taking an easy pace to
finding a job. This is when full blown IBS hit me. I was in severe
pain and I had so much fatigue that I couldn't do anything. Every day
I would be lying balled up on a couch in pain almost all day long.
While I had my techniques to work with - I refused to use them because
I couldn't believe that I could control my pain through my mind - and
I was hellbent on finding what was physically wrong with me. I was
also holding back on using my techniques, so that I could describe
what was happening to me to the doctor. I generally prefered a medical
way out, to having to use my mind to "work" my way out.

For a whole year I waited while my doctor conducted tests to see what
was happening to me. When my doctor finally decided I had IBS - I was
ready to give up on looking for a medical solution to my troubles, and
then concentrated my efforts on using visualisation. My techniques
grew in strength and in clarity till I finally understood that the
source of my trouble wasn't internal but external.

Since then my techniques have improved my life in many many countless
ways beyond which I can even begin to describe. I still visit the
boards because I am looking to see if there will ever be an easier way
out. While I do suffer from the occasional bout of pain - it has
never been permanent and I am currently successfully searching for a
way to reduce my eczema. I don't often suffer from constipation or
diarrhea any more - coming down to a bout of one or the other once in
2-3 weeks and never severe. I have been suffering from strong
temporary bouts of fatigue which I am occasionally overcome.

IBS is now more of a nuisance and a hassle than what it used to be for
me. If I consciously stopped using the visual techniques - I would be
balled up on a couch somewhere in severe pain and crying all day.

As for what I am currently doing: If you are looking for a description
of visualisation and how it is started and how it works, I have a
couple of things to say about it.

The techniques I've posted in the past are a vastly simplified
explanation of what goes on in my head in order to control my IBS
troubles.

At the fundamental level visualisation is a technique that if you
master, you will be capable of spawning newer techniques on your own
to solve the troubles caused by IBS and improve your life in other
ways as well. If you should happen to talk to a well practiced yoga
practitioner, he will tell you that it was invented by yogis. The
technique I use is unique to myself - a yogi will try to find ways to
claim it is an invention of yoga if they are told how to do it. They
do have visual techniques that work along similar lines - but their
techniques are based on imagery with no scientific reasoning to
support why they do specific things - I attempt to understand why my
techniques are effective or ineffective through explanations related
to physical realities.

It is a technique that can be likened to Karate in a sense. It is
quite difficult and complex to master, but most of the effort involved
is in its practice. If you are prepared for what may be a long slog, I
will attempt to explain it to you. I will however, be forced to use
invented words in order to distinguish its description and reduce the
possibility of confusing the behaviours required from each other and
other common things we do from day to day - so that might slow things
down a little more. I will have to keep a record of what I explained
to you in order to allow the explanation to break up into separate
sections.

Cheers, Raju.