10. Tactile Imaging

Tactile imaging (T.I.) is the active use of body awareness to directly stimulate and manipulate the substance of the energy body. This is simply an extension of MBA (Mobile body awareness). When body awareness is focused on a specific area, and that point of awareness is given motion, this motion directly stimulates the energy body in that area. When done at the site of a primary or secondary energy center (a major or minor chakra) that energy center will be directly stimulated. Individual energy centers can then be targeted and manipulated in a strong and dynamic way.

I developed MBA and T.I. for a person who had been blind since birth and of course could not visualize at all, having no conception of what visual sight was like. This person contacted me on the Internet, via a Braille computer, and asked if I had a projection technique that did not rely on visualization.

This was an interesting challenge, so I put my mind to solving the problem. After a few significant Eurekas, I came up with MBA and T.I. - both based on the sense of touch. When I road-tested this new technique, I was amazed at how effective it was. It was light years ahead of any other energy-body manipulation technique, far more powerful than visualization techniques. Since that time, I have used this discovery as the foundation for all my energy-body manipulation, development, and projection techniques.

Ironically, I lost contact with the blind person who started all this, while the new T.I.-based projection technique (called rope) was in the throes of development.
 

Learning Tactile Imaging
Focus body awareness alone on the specified target area and try not to use your eyes unless you really have to. Many people find they cannot learn MBA or T.I. techniques without using their eyes to help target specific areas. Do what is necessary, but wean yourself from using your eyes as soon as you can.

Many advanced exercises and techniques given later in this book do not allow the use of eyes or other targeting or highlighting aids.
 

Circular Exercise
The best way to learn tactile imaging is by doing it. Rest your hands comfortably in your lap, or on the arms of your chair, palms down and fingers slightly spread. Close your eyes, relax, and shift your awareness to the base of your right thumb, topside. There are important secondary energy centers (small chakras) in the thumb joints and you are now going to stimulate one of them. Many people will feel one of the thumb centers (small chakras) activate the first time they work on them.

The first area to work on is on top of the large joint where your thumb joins the right hand. Flex your thumb while holding this joint between your other fingers to help locate it. Lightly scratch a circular area, clockwise, on top of the thumb joint, about half an inch (1 cm) or so across, to highlight it with awareness. Slowly trace a finger around this same circular path, while following the touch of that finger with your point of awareness. That point of touch, that point of feel, is your point of awareness.

 

Continue following this action until you can remember the exact feel of this circular movement and can re-create this action with your point of awareness alone. (A small artist's paintbrush can also be used for this purpose.)

Fig. 5.

Tactile imaging stirring technique on thumb joint
 

Feel the tingling target area on top of your thumb joint with your point of awareness. Re-create and feel the circular stirring action. Move your point of awareness in a small clockwise circle in that area, as if you were stirring it with an imaginary pencil. Concentrate and feel this action, continuing the motion with your point of awareness alone.

 

Move your sense of feel through your skin with a circular motion. Keep stirring this center with one or two circling actions per second. (The timing is not crucial.) In a short time, this action will gain its own momentum and become almost automatic. It will then take very little effort to continue this action. Hold your point of awareness very close inside your skin as you do this. Feel your point of awareness continually circling and moving through your skin in the target area.

After a while - anything from a few seconds to a few minutes during a first attempt - you should start to feel a slight localized heaviness, pressure, tingling, buzzing, or even a bone-deep tickling sensation inside your thumb joint. This may extend into more of your thumb and hand. This sensation indicates that the energy center in the thumb joint has been successfully stimulated into a higher level of energetic activity. If you feel this, immediately move on to the next exercise.

 

If you feel nothing, after trying for several minutes, move on to the next exercise anyway.
 

Stirring Exercise
Move your point of awareness in a straight brushing action up and down through your right thumb, from just above the joint at the base to the tip of the nail, feeling this pathway as you go. Move your point of awareness continually back and forth through this area. You are now brushing your entire thumb with your point of awareness and are thus stimulating that whole area energetically.

 

Feel the brushing action through the whole of your thumb. The sensations you may have felt earlier will intensify and spread through more of your thumb as you do this, as more and more secondary energy centers and energy exchange ports in the thumb become energetically active. Repeat both exercises on the thumb of your left hand.

 

Repeat the exercise on the big toes of both feet, one at a time, starting on top of the large joints of the big toes only, where they join each foot.
 

Stimulation Notes
Often there are inactive secondary energy centers (small chakras) on one side of the body, but rarely on both sides. If you feel nothing after doing any awareness action for several minutes, move on to the next exercise. While energy-movement sensations become apparent in the majority of cases, some may feel nothing at all, although I have found a complete lack of sensation to be rare.

No sensation at all indicates the energy body is blocked or inactive in that area. If this is the case, continue with these early exercises as best you can. It is important to learn and practice the technique. Later exercises in this book restore inactive areas and remove energy blockages.

A hot shower or bath not only relaxes the physical body and cleanses the skin, but also promotes a stronger energetic flow throughout the energy body. If you have trouble doing these exercises, try bathing first.

The tingling in the skin caused by the scratching used to highlight target areas is not the cause of energy-movement sensations. Test this, if you wish, by repeating this exercise in the middle of your forearm, or in the middle of a bleep or thigh, where there are no significant secondary energy centers. This test will be found to cause no discernible energy-movement sensations. Alternatively, try this same exercise on another small energy center, but without the scratching.

 

It is the movement of the focal point of body awareness through the energy body, at the site of an energy center, which causes energy-movement sensations.
 

Using Tactile Imaging
Following are some simple but important exercises that build on those given in the previous chapter. These take you one step closer to taking manual control over your own energy body. Please take your time over these, as the practice of tactile imaging is fundamental to most of the procedures given within this book, including trance and projection techniques.

Their importance cannot be overemphasized.
 

Awareness Hands
The most natural way to use your point of awareness is to feel you have an imaginary pair of hands. Awareness hands are the business ends of tactile imaging. These are powerful awareness tools and you will be using them for raising energy and manipulating energy centers, as well as for projection techniques. You will soon learn how to use them over larger areas and in many other practical energetic ways.

Awareness hands are, in practice, simply extensions of body awareness. You have a left and a right awareness hand. Each hand is to be felt as being attached to an imaginary awareness arm coming from each of your shoulders, although the awareness arms themselves are not important. With practice, you will feel that each awareness hand is attached to a different side of your energy body. Each hand is attached to a different side of the brain, and one awareness hand is usually slightly weaker than the other, depending on which side of your brain is dominant.

 

The more you use awareness hands, the stronger they become and the easier they are to use.
 

Awareness Hands Exercise
Close your eyes and relax, while sitting or lying comfortably. Using your body awareness alone (without actually moving), take both your awareness hands down to your left foot, as if you were grabbing hold of it. Scratch or rub the top of your left foot and wiggle it a bit to highlight it and make this exercise easier. Feel the whole of that foot. Draw your awareness hands through your left foot, from toes to heel, back and forth several times.

After this, draw your awareness hands through your foot to your ankle, and then slowly take them on up through your whole leg. Feel the whole of your leg as you move your awareness hands upward through it. Draw your awareness hands all the way up your shin, past your knee, up your thigh, and on up to your hip. When you get to your hip, flick your awareness instantly back down to your toes again and repeat the upward-stroking, energy-raising action. Do not stroke your awareness back down your leg. Repeat this action over and over, taking several seconds per stroke, feeling the whole of your leg each time.

This action forces energy to flow into your foot and draws it up through your leg. You may feel some peculiar sensations as you do this, like tingling, buzzing, warmth, cold, pressure, heaviness, or even bone-deep tickling sensations.

 

Repeat the entire exercise with your right leg.
 

Splitting Awareness Exercise
Splitting body-awareness is very simple and easy to do. It feels quite natural in practice, just like using both your real hands at the same time. As an example exercise, split your awareness and feel both your feet at the same time, after targeting them, feeling one in each of your awareness hands. Draw energy up both legs at the same time, exactly as you did with the previous exercise, over and over. With a little practice you'll be able to do this effortlessly. If you have trouble splitting awareness, stick to using one at a time until you feel more comfortable with splitting them.

When you have had some practice at splitting your awareness hands, increase the speed of the upward stroking action until you can draw your awareness up through your legs at the same time, taking two or three seconds for each upward sweep, from feet to hips.

To add to the above, imagine and feel as if you were sweeping water up through the whole of your legs with your awareness hands. Imagine your awareness hands are each holding a large sponge and you are sponging water upward through the whole of your legs. The water keeps trying to run back down your leg, so focused awareness effort is used to force the water to rise. This action provides more energetic resistance and gives your awareness hands something to grip onto, so to speak.

 

This increases the effectiveness of any whole-of-limb energy-raising action.
 

Visibly Detecting Awareness Hands
After a little practice with using your awareness hands, you may start detecting them when they move past your closed eyes. This is especially so if you have been meditating at the same time.

 

You may see vague shadows and indistinct moving shapes. It does not matter, though, if you never see anything, as it is not necessary to see anything for these techniques to work effectively. Watch for this side effect for interest's sake only: many people have reported this phenomenon.

I always see my awareness hands when they move past my eyes, but I've had a lot of practice at this, so am not really a fair test subject. I rely on my volunteers to provide me with more realistic feedback.

As an experiment, relax and close your eyes. Concentrate on feeling your awareness hands. Slowly raise your awareness hands past your face and eyes and on up over your head several times (don't actually move your real hands), stroking your awareness hands over your face and head. Try to sense this from behind your closed eyes. See if you can detect shadowy movements, or if you can see the shape of your awareness hands as they move past your eyes. If you succeed at this, you are using a type of energy sight similar to real-time or astral sight, as discussed earlier.

 

This experiment is most effective if done immediately after meditation.

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