Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is designed by the brain to give relief from stress by restoring a feeling of safety. People controlled by OCD can feel like it is keeping them healthy. On a rational level, sufferers of OCD can know that it’s all in their head, but on a deeper level, the disorder is inexorably intertwined with fear: Fear of things going wrong. I was trapped for decades by multitudinous symptoms of OCD. I cured myself three years ago, and have come to realize that my OCD was blocking the healthy flow of the universal life force, qi.
When qi is blocked, it results in disharmony and illness. You know that brief feeling you get, as an OCD sufferer, when you have correctly completed a ritual and the anxiety that had built up dissipates? You can have that feeling all the time when you are free of OCD. OCD isn’t keeping you safe; that’s a difficult truth to accept. Instead, it’s seriously interfering with the flow of qi through your body and energy fields, which keeps you from attaining your true potential as an essential part of the universe.
I am fully aware that for people who haven’t embraced qigong, yoga, meditation or other energy-based health-enhancing practices, this all sounds just as fanciful and full of gibberish as OCD sounds to the non-sufferer. But I am writing this for people who are unhappy with the interference of OCD in their lives and who may have some familiarity with, or openness to, energy-based practices.
How OCD Blocks Qi
OCD creates a knot that binds qi. In the fit of obsessively repeating a compulsion, qi is stuck in your root chakra. This is where irrational thought, anxiety, and fear of death and doom reside. OCD is suppressing the flow of your qi, and over-activating your root chakra.
The opposite state of being, where qi flows naturally throughout your chakras is the ideal, balanced state. It is going with the flow. It is Bamboo in the Wind, where we loose the rigidity and move with the flow of life’s energy instead of resisting it. Have you ever tried to stand up to an ocean wave? You’ll just get toppled, maybe drown. But you can choose to ride the wave; then you are part of the energy of the ocean, and you can enjoy the ride.
How to Free Your Qi
In my experience, the key to alleviating the qi-binding symptoms of OCD is to engage in daily practices that combine slow, deep breathing and movement. Best practices include qigong and yoga. You can enhance their OCD-melting effects through the following two exercises:
The Remembering Breath
This one is from Qigong master Roger Jahnke. Periodically, throughout the day, take in a very deep, slow breath. I modify the technique, based on yogic practices, by holding the full breath for a few seconds and then releasing it, even slower than you took it in. But the key is just to breath in deeply and fully, whenever you remember to (thus the name, remembering breath.)
The Mantra
This mantra comes from the Master Key System, a book on manifestation and self-realization from the early 20th century: “I can be what I will to be.” Repeat this mantra often. Repetition like this should be easy for you OCD sufferers! The point is to repeat it until you believe it subconsciously. You can be whatever you want to be — after all, you are the intelligence of the universe, through which the universe manifests itself. Think about the second “I” in I can be what I will to be. That I is your true self, not this life’s ego. Meditate on it.
Combine the two
Since you’re doing the Remembering Breath all the time, why not combine it with the Mantra? Breath in deeply, thinking “I can be what I will to be.” Hold it for a couple of beats and think the same thing as you breath out.
So, you ask, does it take all this magic mumbo-jumbo to cure OCD? Yes, I think it does. Let’s face it. Behavioral therapy may help, but even the doctors will tell you there’s no cure. Current medication have mixed effectiveness and can have unpleasant side-effects. I can only speak for myself: I tried it & none of that Western crap worked for me. Only freeing the flow of qi freed me from 50 years of OCD.
Other Stuff!
I encourage you to experiment and find the right combinations of healthy practices that work best for you. Some possibilities are reiki, Tai chi, qigong, various forms of yoga, chakra cleansing, cranial sacral therapy, acupuncture & acupressure, reflexology, Buddhist, Hindu and Jainist meditations. You might want to supplement your practice by listening to binaural music based on solfeggio frequencies.
The secret to happiness is living in the flow of life energy, free of obsessive blocking thoughts and behaviors. It’s a process. There will be setbacks. But it’s all within your control when you truly believe that you can be what you will to be.
Write to me at ocdfree [at] comcast [dot] net. I’ll send you a more comprehensive list of techniques that I found beneficial in my journey.
