90 Days of Yoga and Meditation Unbroke my Back. Here's How.

"I need someone to wring my back out like Mr Incredible" girl YOU can wring it out

📸 this you?? 📸📸

Cuckfucius here—welcome back to the Cyber Ascetics Collective; the terminally-online gooner shitposter ex-gifted-kid’s one stop shop for half-chub spirituality and too-based-for-academia essays.

Does your back hurt?

Are you straight shrimped up rn?

You’re not alone. Between our sedentary lifestyles and computer work, most of our backs are completely f*cked.

Not to mention the neck craning required to slurp up a neverending flow of sweet yummy scrumptious delectable content from our majestic beautiful screens.

This essay is about the first step in my spine’s journey toward unf*ckedness amidst the screen-filled hellhole our world has turned into. Among other things.

📸📸📸

Part 1: Prologue

Here’s the thing:

I didn’t set out to unbreak my back. It just sort of.. happened along the way.

Let me start from the beginning—

In my journey to go from Shitposter to Spiritual, I attempt various challenges in an effort to change.

Last year, over the course of my long media fast, I changed.

Not in some poopy little baby diaper way; in a proper way. In the way that I and everyone in the Collective yearns for.

Put simply, that Change was the realest shit I’ve done in my nearly 30 years alive.

Having tasted the realness, I sought out new sources—

I got meditationpilled.

It happened during the fast. Not cognitively. Not in a thinkythink way. The entirety of my organism rotated around some axis, and finally “got” it. I even wrote an entire essay about the catalyst bodymindset shift that occurred.

But don’t worry—I’m not here to try to convince you to meditate or try yoga.

The fast ended after 77 days; my conviction toward meditation stayed, and grew. I’ve meditated at least once a day for the past ~200 days.

Three months ago in March of 2025 I felt compelled to bump my practice up a notch.

My YouTube Goat Harvard Psychiatrist ex-monk-in-training Dr. K recommends the following protocol for beginners wanting to take a “real” stab at meditation.

After years of knowing in a thinkythink way how dope sick awesome and cool meditation is (but never actually doing it), it was finally time to start. Like fr.

Little did I know I’d end the challenge with a fully erect spine—erect in ways it never has been before…

sit up straight rn mf, this is your one and only warning

Part 2: The Protocol

Total Length: 90 days, two ~1hr sessions per day, morning and evening.

Session breakdown:

1. 15 minutes of Asana (yoga/stretching/postures). Specifically Surya Namaskar (sun salutation)

2. 15 minutes of Pranayam (breathwork; nadi shodhana and/or kapal bhati)

3. 20-30 min of (attempted) Dhyana (meditative absorption)

Asana and Pranayam would stay the same for the whole 90 days, but the Dhyana would be split into three sections/techniques:

• First 30 days: Trāṭaka (candle gazing)

• Second 30 days: Ajna Chakra (third eye meditation)

• Third 30 days: Om chanting

~

The plan for today’s essay is simple:

1. Short exposition dump on my life for context

2. Surya Namaskar results

3. Pranayam results

4. Meditation results

5. Gripes, grievances, changes for next time

Along the way I’ll interweave the changes in my spine and throat in detail.

half the people in my DMs

Part 3: The Backdrop

I attempted this challenge during the most tumultuous time in my life. My pet theory is that a lot of the juice from the experience funneled directly into saving me from a massive crashout.

In late February, I left a very cushy life in the US to move to a tiny town in the Netherlands. To many, this might seem idyllic—especially given the current US political climate.

To me, it has been hell.

Let me explain:

Went through a generational descent from near the top of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs to near the bottom.

In a nutshell in my life before:

1. gainfully employed; costs low; saved $2 for every $1 spent

2. Best coworkers/employees possible; deeply fulfilling mentoring them

3. Lived with mother and brother; nicest house I’ll probably ever live in

4. Friends; more than I could see in a month; multiple groups/interests/vibes

5. Legitimate 3rd space; state-of-the-art gym with a rock climbing wall—I could show up and reliably run into friends

6. No-car-necessary lifestyle; mid-sized city with good-for-usa bike infrastructure and public transport. Enough activities to stay stimulated and growing

There’s much more and honestly it was idyllic. Predicated on a farce of course, inherently precarious and temporary, but beautiful. Ya boi was spoiled with life’s riches and wanted for nothing.

.

I moved to a tiny rural town with an average age of about 57 where I don’t (didn’t~!) speak the language.

No friends. Nothing to do. Nobody around. Unemployed. Isolated. A neutered dawg. Why won’t they let him bark, just let him bark.

But that’s what happened.

On the bright side, such an environment makes for a great opportunity to sit and stare at a f*cking wall for hours.

what if the REAL meditation was the spine we erected along the way??

Part 4: Nothing Happened

I’d love to sit here and claim that I hit each and every day of this challenge with unrivaled precision and an unshakeable will, but that would be like telling my wife’s boyfriend I don’t deeply respect his contribution to our family:

A bald-faced lie.

I missed some sessions, among those mostly morning ones. Sometimes I’d skimp on the yoga or cut the meditation short on late nights.

Part of me thought it was fine to half ass it some days, since the majority of days I was doing far more practice than I otherwise would. This can be a helpful frame, but I have issues with it. More on that later in the gripes and grievances part.

The point here is that my discipline was far from perfect. Though I always hit at least one session. I think this lackadaisical approach is partly to blame for the lack of more significant results.

At first part of me was a bit bummed out about this.

No crazy visions, no mystical experiences, no bright lights, no transcendence, no samadhi, no siddhis. Not even a little kundalini psychosis as a treat. I got absolutely robbed…

…Save for the juicy little spinal tweaks that I’ve come to deeply appreciate.

Part 5: Surya Namaskar

Finally, let’s get to the results of the challenge.

My goat Dr. K is on record calling Surya Namaskar “one of the greatest discoveries in human history”. People that know more than me on this topic have said things like “first you just do surya namaskar. Then you go deep into asana and learn to contort your body in every possible angle. Finally, you just do surya namaskar”

Good enough for me.

The yoga was extremely legit. Holy f. I learned so much about my body and movement patterns over these 90 days. Especially the jacked up shit.

A quick aside before we get to specifics:

The yoga was probably buffed big time by the awareness boost from the pranayam & meditation. These practices interwove into each other as they were quite literally designed to do; the yoga made the meditation deeper and the meditation made the yoga more powerful. I do think 90 days of just yoga twice a day would be cracked for literally anyone though.

I experienced the yoga in 3 distinct parts/phases:

1. Oof ouch owie f*ck this what the deuce

2. OmO WHAT is THIS

3. hhhhhhhhhh

The first 2-3 weeks of surya namaskar were complete ass. Calling this the “awareness phase”. Where I became acutely aware of all the bullshit my body was carrying from my hoe ass lifestyle.

Stuff started to hurt. My body became annoying and uncomfortable. All the shit I had been spending heaps of energy ignoring came up to the surface.

The path as a whole often feels like this—the long-ignored shit gets dredged up from the bottom, causing a whole lotta pain before it starts to feel good.

Specifically, my left scapula and thoracic spine felt just completely whack. Out of place. They’d pop in weird places. Shortly after, my neck felt way too far forward. Like wtf. Nothing had structurally changed in two short weeks—I’d just begun to bring awarenss to these mangled areas. I couldn’t breath right, couldn’t swallow right.

Left hip popped in next to say “f*ck you”. Hip flexor was tighter than my wife’s boyfriend’s b*tthole after ten thousand kegels.

Right buttcheek chimed in to say “I’m out bruh” and walked off with a bindle.

Whole ribcage twisted. Pelvis tilted. Mild scoliosis. News to me! Goddamn.

But before starting the yoga, I was just walking around with all this shit. Couldn’t even see it. It probably caused some sort of stress in the background. Who knows.

The first 3 weeks were like this. A new pain pops up here, a new annoyance there—I really hated doing the yoga.

But slowly, things began to change....

Perhaps the most emblematic thing I learned here was this:

I couldn’t even do a pushup.

The simplest, most quintessential strength movement. Couldn’t even do it.

Now listen, ol’ Cuckfucius is a hulking, 190cm adonis of a man. A generational specimen. I can do many pushups. But I wasn’t really doing pushups.

Every rep, I learned that my left shoulder would rotate forward. It would shift the leftside pushing motion from my pec to my front delt. Completely imbalanced, completely under the radar.

I’m so grateful for this part alone. Without the yoga, I wouldn’t have learned how out of whack so many of my movement patterns are.

As an aside, if your shoulders are rounding forward during pushups like mine were, something to try is getting into the pushup position and attempting to rotate your hands outward (right hand clockwise, left had counter clockwise, but not actually twisting them just trying to) before starting the descent. This creates external rotation in the shoulder, and in theory aligns that hoe licketty split yurr. I can do pushups like this now, though they’re still a bit hit or miss. It is not easy to regain control of muscles you didn’t even know/realize were functioning improperly by yourself.

So that was the first phase of the yoga: a lotta discomfort.

Now listen,

Hearing the words “have you tried yoga?” would make anyone want to blow their brains out, that much is clear. But this experience got me wonderin’

There’s some sort of semantics gap here. Because to even “try” yoga, you’d have to do it every day for like 6-8 weeks. That’s what “try” means for it. But people hear this and (reasonably) think “trying” means trying it once for maybe 15 minutes. Or even 3 times! But I did it ~twice a day for 3 whole weeks and it was absolute shit. Just made me feel worse. If I had stopped there, I never would’ve reached the Juice.

We’ll get to the Juice in just a second.

Real quick, you know what I hatE?

One of my biggest hobbies is watching instagram reels about dance, movement, and mobility without actually doing jack shit with that information.

It pisses me tf off. All these Westoids yappin ad nauseum about the psoas, the tibialis anterior, the glute medius and rectus femoris. Don’t even get me started on the fkn thoracic spine. F*ck the thoracic spine bro for real.

“Do these 8 simple things to fix your pelvic rotation!”

“Follow this 5 minute routine to fix forward head posture!”

“Sack hanging too low? Try these 12 maneuvers to snatch that hoe right up”

Bro. If I listened to all the mobility influencers, I’d be doing granular mobility routines from dawn to dusk.

((obv targeted work for glaring issues can be invaluable))

It’s overwhelming. Just shut the frog up, and give me the one perfect routine that will do it all in 15 minutes.

Surya Namaskar is that routine.

~

Let’s get into the details:

For me, the left hip and left shoulderblade were main pain points. Over the course of the 90 days, I saw these more clearly and painfully, but they started to loosen up.

They’re not fixed, mind you—just a little better. But a little better with a clear path to even better is just temporarily embarrassed perfection.

Another effect of Surya Namaskar is that existing in my body just feels way easier and more smooth. Words don’t really do it justice. Over the 90 days I was more sedentary than normal due to adjusting to life in a new country, but felt better in my body overall. Supple. Lubricated even.

I learned that I have a bit of a *posterior* pelvic tilt (not to be confused with the possibly more common “anterior” pelvic tilt). Through the yoga and on the meditation cushion I learned that tilting the pelvis just so would allow me to breath down into the b*tthole/pelvic floor/root chakra much more reliably and with much less force.

One thing fascinated me:

I sometimes get random stuffy noses. There are parts during SN where if I have a clogged nose, moving through the poses will just unclog it. I don’t have an explanation for why this is—perhaps a musculoskeletal alignment thing, or a fascial release thing. It would also happen with my eustacian tubes.

Before this challenge, I had no idea that it’s even possible for body alignment to affect something like nasal congestion.

The biggest changes though were in spinal alignment.

My head and neck is completely jacked up. Throat game in the gutters. But through this process I found a literal game-changer in the way my thoracic spine integrates with the cervical and jaw/throat.

Part 5.1: Throat goat

For a long time, I had a sort of “lump in my throat” feeling while swallowing. Pills and my wife’s boyfriends vital Jing would sometimes get stuck.. Somewhere... back there. Idk. As a computer enthousiast my forward head posture would go absolutely shrimp mode. Crazy work.

hyoid bone went from my biggest opp to my ride or die

The pills would get “stuck” right above my sternal manubrium. But that was separate from the “lump” sensation during swallowing which was higher up in the throat.

Slowly, over the course of the 90 days, I learned that the muscles under my chin were pretty chronically tight. The Digestric and mylohyoid muscles. Them jawns were pullin my hyoid bone forward, and that was causing the “lump while swallowing” sensation. The yoga and meditation brought awareness to that area, and with the awareness I could begin to experiment, stretch, and massage that area. These days I can feel with my fingers if my hyoid bone is too far forward.

If this sounds familiar, try massaging the area under your chin a bit, and feel for if the hyoid bone is sticking forward just above your adam’s apple.

The Taoists were lowkey obsessed with swallowing (one more reason why spitters are quitters). They believed swallowing saliva (“jade fluid”) would nourish the body’s fluids, regulate digestion, and promote the smooth flow of qi.

On the flip side, the action of swallowing involves about 50 muscles in the mouth, pharynx, and esophagus. It’s a complicated action. Before this, I had absolutely no clue that I had issues with it.

I still can’t get the perfect swallow with hyoid bone awareness alone. There are other pieces down the chain.

First piece: core engagement. But not the normal kind of just like flexing my abs.

This type of core engagement I first feel muscles on the front contracting up and puffing my ribcage out, like I’m trying to hit a superman pose or go gorilla mode.

After this phase, full exhale while keeping the chest up. Stomach comes in, the rest of the front core engages to pull the ribs down, and I feel a strong contraction in my back, also around the sternum area. I have no idea what exact muscles these would be:

I think this involves a contraction in the spinalis thoracis, not totally sure.

The contraction subtly flows upward, and I think it might be engagement of the spinalis thoracis. That’s my best guess. Lower traps and rhomboids feel different.

Put simply—

Shrimp mode = weird lumpy swallow, pill get stuck

Core fully engaged = throat goat. It also feels like the swallow happens “further back” in the throat.

OH—another clear indicator is that when I’m in Primo Swallow Mode, my breathing expands my ribcage backwards and to the sides—NOT forwards. The belly stays almost sucked-in, and the breath goes down and to the back/sides. Then i can swallow. Also, my shoulders have to be back and mildly back + externally rotated. They can’t be rounded forward, or the swallowing doesn’t work.

This is so acoustically granular but they all play into each other.

So, over the 90 days I learned how to do a pushup and how to swallow properly. Doing these things gave me some sort of control over some previously dormant muscles in my back, that help straighten that shit right out. Fascinating.

I’ve also been able to take these changes off the mat/cushion, and into daily life. I am erect while typing this very sentence even. Spinally.

The yogis were the original Throat Goats, they literally invented mewing thousands of years ago. They’ve been mogging for millenia. Getting into Prime Swallow Posture during meditation also helped smooth out the breath a ton

Part 6: Pranayam

Okay so my biggest L during this whole thing is that I don’t understand pranayam, I don’t know what prana feels like and the whole alternate nostril breathing thing would always feel like a waste of time keeping me from getting to the SWEET JUICE of the Real Shit faster.

Many many sessions I’d just do like 5min and call it good. Made up for it with extra meditation, but yeah. I gotta actually try and respect the pranayam during the next challenge because I neglected that shiiii

When I WAS doing it, I was doing two techniques: nadi shodhana (alternate nostril) and kapalbhati (forceful exhales). Kapalbhati was pretty chill. I understood it better. With each exhale, the stomach flexes into position.

Like with the yoga, I think I got frustrated with pranayam due to being in the “this is annoying” phase. Doing it would just make me feel like my nostrils were too plugged and my spine wasn’t straight enough.

So, I have a lot of work to do with pranayam. Might take a few weeks to grind out just pranayam and report back with the findings.

Part 7: Meditation

Finally, the good stuff.

The regimen was split into 3 chunks of 30 days each:

1. Trataka (Object Fixation)

2. 3rd Eye Meditation (Objectless Anchoring)

3. Aum Chanting (Synthesis)

My understanding of this structure was that the first two phases were to build necessary skills, and then tie everything together in the third phase.

First came Trataka. Trataka is fixed point gazing, often on a small flame.

I’ve talked about the goal of meditation elsewhere, but in the abstract the goal is to achieve a one-pointed state of mind, where the mind is focused only on the object of concentration.

To achieve this state, there are two skills that need to be built. There are many ways to build these skills.

Skill 1: be able to resist moving focus away from something.

Skill 2: be able to keep focus on something

The difference between the two here are subtle and intertwined, while still distinct.

The way I like to think about this is like a strongman with ADHD that loves colors. He’s got all these big rocks of all sorts of colors, shapes, and size that he like to pick up and hold.

He picks up his blue boulder, then thinks “mmm, actually I’d like to hold the green one”, then throws the blue boulder to pick up the green. After five seconds he sees the pink one from the corner of his eye and drops the green to go pick up the pink. This is a Skill 1 issue. He can’t resist going to the next rock to pick it up—which keeps him from holding any single rock for a long time.

His mom locks him in a room with just the green boulder. He picks it up, and can only hold it for about 8 seconds. That’s because he’s used to putting down rocks quickly to pick up the next one. He could easily hold the rock for a minute or more with some training. This is a Skill 2 issue.

To cultivate skill 1, he needs to not be swept away by his fancy for the other rocks.

To cultivate skill 2, he needs to sit and hold a rock for as long as possible.

Anchoring + Fixation. Stay in the spot (don’t waver) + Fixate on the spot (go deep)

In this meditation framework, Trataka was the skill 2 grind. Object fixation—the ability to hold focus on something.

Third eye meditation was skill 1; the ability to resist movement away from things.

Another way of explaining this is that in Trataka, the object of meditation is external and fixed—it is not going anywhere. It is easy to hold attention on such an object, because it has a concrete presence in the external world. All you have to do is *stay on the flame* for as long as possible, and come back to it if you drop concentration.

However, in 3rd eye meditation the object of meditation // area of focus is the space between your eyebrows. More specifically, the feeling at that space. This space is internal, unfixed, a bit nebulous. It’s a different type of practice. By staying at that place, you train the ability to not wander.

Trataka trains staying and going deep; 3rd eye trains anti-distraction. Both are necessary for full absorption. They feed each other because the less distracted you are, the deeper you can potentially go—but being undistracted by itself doesn’t automatically mean you’re able to go deep.

Perhaps this is belaboring the point, but just imagine you have a target painted at the bottom of the deep end of a pool. First, you must position yourself above it and tread water in that spot and only that spot; then when you can hold yourself in that spot you can practice sinking down further and further until you reach the target.

That’s the internal logic behind this setup. Align the physical body with surya namaskar, align the energy / breath pathway / idk wtf with pranayam, then grind the skill of staying, then grind the skill of not wandering, then put it all together in the final Om chanting section to eventually, hopefully, enter a state of consciousness called Dhyana (meditative absorption).

Make no mistake; though this regimen frames Trataka and 3rd eye meditation techniques as subservient // entry-level // secondary to the “main” technique, they are all the same “level” of potency. They all have the ability to take you or me to where we need to be. Simple as bruv. A lot of this depends on the individual and their predispositions.

So let’s talk about how it went with Trataka.

Part 7.1: Trataka

I really enjoyed this one. I’ve always enjoyed staring into campfires for hours and hours at a time.

There are a couple different ways to do trataka, and here’s how i did it:

I stared at the diya until my eyes began to hurt or water after a few minutes. If my mind wandered, I returned my focus to the flame. When my eyes began to hurt, I closed my eyes, and focused on the afterimage of the candle in my mind’s eye. I’d try and hold my focus on that until it eventually faded, then I’d open my eyes and restart the process.

Here’s a nice guided version you can follow if you’d like.

Historically, I’ve really disliked “focus on the breath” meditation, and this felt way way more accessible and genuinely nice rather than completely aggravating.

I was less plagued with thoughts of “am i even doing this right?” or “holy f i’m having so many thoughts” or “am i enlightened yet”. It was really easy to just catch myself in the middle of the thought and just go back to staring into the light.

I felt my focus increase during these 30 days for sure, in all aspects of life. But the change was subtle, nothing crazy.

The biggest thing for me with Trataka is that it’s actually enjoyable. Turns out meditation is supposed to be enjoyable! If you have found yourself staring into campfires for a long time AND have trouble meditating consistently, definitely give it a try. Light a candle, place it an arm’s length away at eye level, and just stare at that bint for 15 minutes.

Not much to say here—simply enjoyable, made my focus a little better, nothing crazy.

Spunch Bobhisattva and Patrenunciant Star enjoying a moment of SamadhSea, while Mr. Tentacles remains trapped in Squidsara

Part 7.2: Ajna Chakra

This technique boils down to focusing on the spot between your eyebrows. I’ll save you the details—a short guided meditation can be found here for those interested.

This one was truly novel. Even just the first time trying it, I could feel a tingle in between my eyebrows that I’ve never felt before. As if there was something there.

The real meat and potatoes with this technique came with the second part:

Breathing into the tingle, into the space between & behind my eyebrows. It’s gonna be hard to put words to this experience.

But by focusing all of my attention there, and watching/sending the air up my nostrils and into that space, I would feel my spine realigning itself in real time.

I guess the third eye is known as the control center of the body, and I am starting to see why that is.

Specifically, there were joints/vertebrae in my spine up by my throat that would snap crackle and pop.

Joints and vertebrae that I didn’t even know existed.

After about 15 days of this practice, I started expecting and wanting these pops and alignments. I knew the feeling, and I had the half-baked idea of being able to “force” myself back into those positions, to crack those forbidden black spots that I’d never felt before.

But it never worked.

I simply could not consciously access those regions. I tried and tried to straighten my back by my own volition, to subtly contort in such a way that I could get those ohh so juicy forbidden pops. Like cracking fingers I never knew I had.

I relished them. They were rare. I could feel when they were close. And I wanted to get them. You know the feeling I’m sure. Like wanting to sneeze on command.

But I couldn’t. I couldn’t do it no matter how hard I tried.

At the end of the 30 days, I finally gave up trying so hard to force it, and just poured all my attention and energy into breathing into that third eye spot.

When I did that, the pops came back. The breath moved smoothly down my throat and into my pelvic floor. As if passing through nothing on the way down. As if it started in my nose, went up to the third eye area, and then instantly teleported to my b*tthole, passing nothing in between.

This section of the challenge was the most “mystical”. Nothing really happened other than feeling tingling/pressure between my eyebrows, and the straightening of places in my neck and spine that i didn’t even know existed. And forbidden juicy sweet pops, the kind only a quack hack chiropractor could do.

And palpably, importantly, distinctly—the experiential knowledge that i could not will or force this exact type of straightening on my own. Somehow, drawing the breath up to the third eye activated a reflex to lift and straighten things at the back of my throat down toward my sternum.

If you’ve ever had PT you might be able to relate to this experience; the physical therapist will sometimes have you do certain movements or press on certain muscles in order to help them to “activate” when they were previously dormant. I believe this is more or less a similar mechanism, just with small muscles in the spine and neck, with the cue of drawing the breath upwards.

It’s just a small thing, but really highlighted just how alienated I am from my own body. It’s my own damn spine, and I can’t even activate certain muscles or crack certain areas of my own volition.

This fed into the ultimate notion that this body is nothing of mine—I do not own it, hell I hardly even know what’s going on in there. I’m truly just borrowing it for the time being. And when breathing up into that space between the brows, some grace grants the spine some relieving pops. Sure as hell ain’t “me” making that happen.

That was cool. These 30 days felt like getting a sip of “the real shit” especially the tingly feeling, the experience of surrendering to the breath and letting it wring out my upper spine like a dirty old towel.

Part 7.3: Om Chanting

The third and final 30 day period was taking the skills built during the first two sections and blending them together. The skill of staying plus the skill of not wandering.

All wrapped up in the most legitimately enjoyable technique I’ve ever tried.

While we call it “Om” it’s not really “Om”. A more accurate spelling would be “Aum”.

Om chanting is broken down into 4 sections:

First the AHhhhhhhh

Then the UUUUUuuuu

Then the MMMmmmmm

Then finally the silence that follows.

This is called the “vibration of the universe” in that the AHHhhhh represents creation, the UUUuuuuu represents sustaining, and the MMmmmmm represents dissolution.

Here’s a guide to Aum chanting ft POKIMANE

Honestly? I don’t have much to say about Aum chanting. It feels good as, mate.

On a scientific/physiological level, humming activates the vagus nerve leading to relaxation and stress relief.

As expected, this part was the most relaxing. I did feel some of the similar spine straightening effects that I felt in the 3rd eye section. But mostly chanting Aum for ~20 minutes felt good. This really sent home that meditation can be good for me while also feeling good to do.

It was easy to focus on the vibrations in my body.

At some point, I noticed the transition between the AAaaa, UUuuu, and MMmmm start to smooth out. Again, in the back of my throat. I think it had to do with my soft palette raising or some shii.

I almost forgot—

A handful of times during Aum chanting I began to feel a decoupling from my physical body. I’d just be chanting there eyes closed, and have the palpable sensation that “I” was “floaty” and leaning about 45 degrees to the left. Of course, when I opened my eyes, my actual spine was erect.

From what I understand, proprioception & bodily awareness starts to get wacky like this with a decent degree of “pratyahara” or “sense withdrawal”. I’m just taking this as a sign that I’m on the right track.

someday you will understand this meme, Shaktimaxxers RISE UP

Part 8: Gripes, Moving Forward

Over the course of this time I:

1. Avoided crashing out and had lots of stress due to moving countries, unemployment, and isolation. I think these things were much more manageable due to all the meditating I was doing. But, cannot know for sure.

2. Felt supple even given my relatively sedentary lifestyle during this time period.

3. Learned about a lot of the nonsense in my musculoskeletal structure.

4. Experienced deep structural postural improvements && awareness of my sternum to throat area.

5. Learned how to swallow properly and do an actual pushup.

Here’s the main problem with this challenge:

I completely half-assed it.

Don’t get me wrong, i did more meditating during this time than ever before in life. But I did not fully stick to the structure. In my essay on Shakti, I talk in depth about the importance of not poking a bunch of fuckin holes in the cup. I spilled everywhere.

I’ve heard from many a trusted source that this Spirituality stuff is serious bidness. And I didn’t take it seriously. The whole point of this was to cultivate “tapas” (तपस्) or “spiritual effort”.

That’s really the whole point of all this shi. Whole assing every lil damn thing. Meditation is wholeassing your concentration onto an object of focus. “De” in Taoism is wholeassing your intention and integrity, doing what you say and saying what you mean. There’s one word to sum up the path: sincerity.

That’s my main grievance with how I handled this experience.

So we’re going to up the ante a little bit for next time. Here’s the parameters:

1. Same session setup—yoga into pranayam into meditation

2. Much shorter time period: 9 days

3. Meditating through dawn (~5am) and dusk (~10pm)

4. Diet of rice, mung beans, fresh local inseason fruit, fresh local inseason veggies

5. No media consumption (videos, socials, books, music, etc)

6. Most importantly: no half-assing, no misses.

Editor ‘Fucius here—I finished these 9 days recently and some very interesting things happened. Still making heads and tails of the experience. If anything in this essay resonated, definitely make sure to subscribe for when that reflection drops.

Also, needless to say that writing a long ass Substack reflection on these things reduces their potency quite a bit. Real Gs move in silence like lasagna. So I’ll continue to do Spiritual Challenges and write about them, but will also be interweaving some that are completely secret.

And for those in the know, I’m not gonna go too much more ham than this without a decent teacher/tradition. That being said, if you know of anyone good in Netherlands/EU, I’m all ears.

Either way, I’ll keep writing here. If you found this interesting, please leave a comment so I know to do more reflections like this. Otherwise, other things happening at the CAC (rhymes with caulk) are History of The Schizo/Psycho War: The Enlightenment && 9 days meditating at dawn and dusk.

Love you,

Cuckfucius

literally you, thank you for reading