I figure this is as good a place to share this as any, since it relates to the goal you mentioned.
I’ve recently added Paragon to my stack too, after @JCDenton pointed out the Neural Clarity feature in Paragon while touching on how the nervous system scripting in recent upgrades might impact KB.
While I was reviewing the copy after reading that I came across Harmonic Shift. I’ve been able to sense this feature out in the last week and it’s pretty useful.
For your use case, Cellular Sleep and Healing Alignment seem to work in favor of your goal.
But as far as action taking, I mainly wanted to share what happened for me this morning after waking up from a sleep cycle. When you’re just waking up from a sleep cycle, and before you switch the light on and start sensing and feeling and reacting to the pressure of the sensory input, you’re still pretty connected to your subconscious / greater being and it can give you guidance. So this is one of the best times to work with subs that don’t require you being out in the world to take action.
I’ve been playing around with a little stack overkill the last couple of stack runs, and that stack overkill includes Paragon as the primary driver but combining it with different spiritual subs - RoS, Alchemist ST3 (for intensifying my own practice in the direction of my health and non-health related goals), AEON, and of course very occasionally KB1. Also been experimenting with ultrasonic periodically to see how I react to them differently to the normal mask.
Anyway, through connection with the subconscious, and my recent spiritual exercises targeted at awakening the third eye / connecting with the light within / divine shabd, and reading about how the nerve force connects with all that, I must have reached a level of integration where these particular breathing practices involving kumbhaka (breath retention) started to make sense. So here’s the basic steps, and you may or may not want to try this with your new stack as a form of action taking in addition to whatever else you’re doing.
- Silent mind, awareness turned inside. You need to be able to track your own nervous system and what’s happening inside well before the rest can work, and these two things are the key for that.
- If necessary, warm your face and the nerves/muscles in your neck and around the shoulders either with your own hands (I used a gas stove to warm and transfer the heat since it’s winter here), or something like a warm towel, in order to relax the nerves enough to make the next steps easier.
- Bring your awareness to your neck and the areas around it. The neck contains multiple nerve plexuses with literally millions of neurons, second only to the gut brain, many more neurons than the cardiac plexus or other ones throughout the body. It’s also the junction box between the head and rest of the body with many nerves leading in both directions, so it’s the perfect place to begin sensing.
- While exhaled and sensing this area, zero in on an area of tension or imbalance, or void. You’ll be able to know the thing to zero in on by a sensation when your mind crosses it that makes you want to inhale deeply into the area.
- Stay focused on those nerves until you can get a good exhale in where you feel that sense of fullness, then hold the breath in. It’s best not to lock the diaphragm in place while you’re doing this most of the time unless you can do this without the upward moving air causing pressure in the head.
- Focus on awareness of the nerve path / surrounding nerves with a calm awareness and allow that band of nerves to just resonate together and be ennervated / feel alive. Cultivate a sense of brooding over the area, like a mother hen over her eggs, or a calm watchfulness. You’ll know the feeling when you get it, it’s like a con-centering.
- When you feel like the process has run its course, or just before it’s going to become uncomfortable retaining the breath, exhale and allow the tension to leave.
- Repeat this process moving throughout your body. Basically you’re releasing more and more subtle levels of energy that feels sick or inharmonious by mixing the breath and the nerve force from the surrounding regions with it. It’s a form of “eating” your stored up tension/samskaric traces so they’re not leaking out into the rest of your body and eventually causing action.
You’ll probably notice as you do this that you start hearing your own digestive system kick in as well at times. Once you feel like you’ve had enough, just sit or lie with eyes closed feeling your internal being and centering for a bit before you return to ordinary “reality”.
Since depression, like many other physical ailments, starts in the nerves / nervous system, or at least works its way down into that, diving down into your own nervous system and clearing it out is a good way to address that.
