Appendices
Practices, Meditations, and Related Techniques
This appendix compiles practices, meditations, exercises, techniques, frameworks, and approaches referenced throughout The Path of the Dragon.
To guide you safely, the practices are organized into three primary levels based on their potential intensity and risk: Foundational, Intermediate, and Advanced/High-Risk. This structure is designed to help you build a stable container before engaging with more potent and potentially destabilizing work. Always begin with the Foundational practices and proceed with caution, humility, and profound self-awareness.
CRITICAL SAFETY & ETHICAL FOUNDATION (Preface): Powerful practices can disrupt familiar patterns and surface intense material. This appendix is a reference, not complete instruction. Your nervous system and history determine risk; move slowly, titrate intensity, and pendulate back to resources. Pause if you notice overwhelm, dissociation, panic, or compulsive drive. Obtain medical guidance for conditions affected by breath, temperature, movement, or altered states. For relational/erotic/power work, ethical clarity and explicit, ongoing consent are non-negotiable. When advised, work with licensed clinicians (e.g., trauma-informed therapists) or certified practitioners. Use sober, trained support for higher-risk states. Document intentions, limits, and aftercare; prioritize impact over intent. Your well-being—and the safety of others—is your responsibility.
| Contraindications | Required Supports |
|---|---|
| Foundational — Acute crisis (e.g., active psychosis, suicidality), current intoxication, uncontrolled medical conditions impacting gentle movement/breath, severe sleep deprivation. | Quiet space; self-pacing with a “stop” rule; hydration/food; simple resourcing (grounding, orienting); consent with self; option to switch to lighter practice. |
| Intermediate — Active suicidality or recent attempt; complex PTSD flare without support; pregnancy (caution for cold exposure/breath holds); cardiovascular/respiratory issues (for breathwork/cold); recent major loss (<30 days) for grief intensives. | Trauma-informed therapist/coach; co-regulation partner; written limits/safe-word; titration/pendulation plan; medical clearance when relevant; clear aftercare (sleep, food, nature, journaling). |
| Advanced/High-Risk — History of psychosis/mania; uncontrolled epilepsy; severe cardiovascular/respiratory disease; pregnancy (contraindicated for intense breathwork/psychedelics); unstable substance use; recent TBI; no reliable support. | Qualified facilitator/clinician; pre-screening and consent agreements; sober sitter/team; emergency plan and contact; legal/medical compliance; structured integration plan (72-hour aftercare, follow-ups). |
Level 1: Foundational Practices (Low Risk)
These are core practices for building the capacity for self-awareness, regulation, and presence. They are the essential groundwork for all deeper work on the Path.
Awareness & Regulation
Body Scan: Guiding mindful attention sequentially through different parts of the body, noticing sensations without judgment. Increases interoception, can release tension, enhances embodiment.
Grounding Exercises: Techniques for anchoring awareness firmly in the physical body and present environment (e.g., feeling feet on the ground, Rooting Cord visualization, Sensory 5-4-3-2-1). These help activate the body’s safety state (Ventral Vagal complex) and root you in the Now.
Meditation (General): Various practices aimed at cultivating stillness, focused awareness, presence, and insight. Includes multiple forms referenced throughout the book.
Mindful Breathing: Conscious awareness of the breath’s natural rhythm without manipulation. Used for grounding, centering, and returning to presence.
Mindfulness: Cultivating non-judgmental attention to the present moment – thoughts, feelings, sensations – as a foundation for presence and self-awareness.
Orienting: Intentionally scanning the environment using the senses (particularly peripheral vision) to signal safety to the nervous system, reducing hypervigilance and promoting calm.
Presence Cultivation: The overarching practice of being fully engaged, receptive, and aware in the present moment. Essential for navigating all aspects of the Path.
Progressive Muscle Relaxation (PMR): A technique involving systematically tensing and then releasing different muscle groups throughout the body. Helps reduce physical tension, increases body awareness, and can induce relaxation.
Self-Soothing Touch: Using gentle, comforting touch on one’s own body (e.g., placing a hand on the heart, gently stroking arms, hugging oneself) to activate the parasympathetic nervous system (via oxytocin release) and create a felt sense of safety and care.
Somatic Awareness: Consciously tuning into, tracking, and staying present with bodily sensations and the “felt sense.” Key for embodiment, emotional processing, and trauma integration.
Stillness Practice: Actively cultivating inner quietude and centeredness amidst internal or external activity; connecting to the Serene Center within.
Breathwork
Alternate Nostril Breathing (Nadi Shodhana): Yogic technique involving breathing alternately through the left and right nostrils. Believed to balance brain hemispheres, calm the nervous system, and enhance mental clarity.
Box Breathing: Technique involving equal counts for inhale, hold, exhale, hold (e.g., 4-4-4-4 seconds). Cultivates focus, regulates the nervous system, induces calm.
Coherent Breathing: Breathing at a slow, regular rhythm (typically around 5-6 breaths per minute). Enhances heart rate variability (HRV), promoting physiological balance and calm focus.
Diaphragmatic Breathing / Belly Breathing: Deep breathing emphasizing the expansion of the diaphragm and belly on the inhale. Promotes relaxation, oxygen exchange, and grounding.
Soft Belly Breathing: A variation focusing on allowing the belly to soften and relax completely with the inhale, encouraging receptivity and ease.
Movement & Embodiment
Mindful Eating: Paying full sensory attention (sight, smell, sound, taste, texture) to the experience of eating and drinking, fostering appreciation, improving digestion, and enhancing presence.
Movement (General - Yoga, Tai Chi, Dance): Utilizing physical movement practices to release stagnant energy, increase body awareness and interoception, express emotions non-verbally, build strength and flexibility, and cultivate presence.
Self-Massage: Using one’s own hands or simple tools to apply pressure and touch to the body, increasing sensory awareness, releasing tension, and promoting relaxation.
Reflection & Contemplation
Journaling (General): Using writing as a tool for self-reflection, processing emotions and experiences, clarifying thoughts, tracking patterns, exploring dreams, and integrating insights. A core practice on the Path.
Nature Connection / Forest Bathing (Shinrin-Yoku): Mindfully immersing oneself in natural environments, engaging the senses fully, to reduce stress, enhance well-being, ground the nervous system, and cultivate a felt sense of interconnectedness with the living world.
Self-Reflection / Self-Inquiry: The ongoing, honest examination of one’s own thoughts, feelings, motivations, beliefs, assumptions, values, and behavioral patterns.
Mindset & Approach
Embracing Change & Impermanence: Cultivating psychological flexibility and acceptance towards life’s inevitable shifts, endings, and uncertainties.
Trusting the Process: Cultivating faith and patience in the unfolding of the transformative journey, even when navigating challenging or unclear phases of the Spiral Path.
Level 2: Intermediate Practices (Moderate Risk)
These practices may bring up challenging emotional or psychological material. They require a solid foundation in self-regulation and presence. Professional guidance is often beneficial or recommended.
Awareness & Regulation
- Vagus Nerve Stimulation (Gentle): Practices to gently stimulate the vagus nerve and encourage parasympathetic (rest-and-digest) states (e.g., slow/deep diaphragmatic breathing, humming, chanting, gargling, gentle cold exposure to face/wrists). Consult doctor if you have cardiovascular issues.
Breathwork
Breath-Sensation Link: Consciously directing the breath’s energy or awareness into areas of bodily tension, discomfort, or sensation to increase awareness and potentially facilitate release or integration.
Conscious/Somatic Breathwork: Using intentional breath awareness and patterns to influence physiological states, emotional processing, and nervous system regulation (e.g., calming fight-or-flight responses).
Ocean Breath (Ujjayi Pranayama): Creating a soft, audible constriction at the back of the throat during both inhale and exhale. Generates gentle internal heat, promotes focus, calming, and centering.
Emotional & Shadow Work
Active Imagination: (Jungian technique) Allowing the unconscious to express itself spontaneously through imagery, fantasy, dialogue, movement, or creative expression, then consciously engaging with the material. Can access deep unconscious content; therapeutic guidance is beneficial for navigating safely.
Dialogue with Self/Shadow/Archetypes: Engaging in written or spoken inner dialogue with different parts of the self (e.g., Inner Child, Critic), Shadow aspects, or archetypal energies to understand their perspectives, needs, and wisdom, fostering integration. Can bring up difficult material; therapeutic guidance is beneficial for navigating safely.
Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT/Tapping): Energy psychology technique involving tapping on specific meridian points on the body while focusing on an emotional issue, physical discomfort, or limiting belief. Aims to release energetic blockages and re-pattern responses. Professional guidance is beneficial for complex trauma.
Grief Work: Consciously engaging with the process of grieving losses of all kinds, allowing the associated emotions (sadness, anger, denial, etc.) to be felt and moved through. May involve using frameworks like Francis Weller’s Five Gates of Grief or specific rituals. Professional support is highly recommended for intense or unresolved grief.
Ho’oponopono: Traditional Hawaiian practice of reconciliation and forgiveness, often simplified to the mantra “I’m sorry, Please forgive me, Thank you, I love you.” Used for self-forgiveness, healing inner child wounds, and releasing interpersonal resentment or energetic cords.
Polarity Journaling: Tracking one’s predominant energetic state (e.g., receptive/feminine vs. directive/masculine) throughout the day or in specific situations to build awareness of inner polarities and balance.
Shadow Work (General): The ongoing practice of exploring, understanding, and integrating the unconscious, disowned parts of the psyche – the Shadow. Includes various sub-techniques. Guidance from a therapist, trauma-informed coach, or experienced mentor is recommended when dealing with deep wounds or trauma.
Specific Journaling Prompts: Utilizing targeted questions (provided throughout the book) to guide reflection on specific themes like triggers, grief portals, polarities (masculine/feminine), integration challenges, ethical dilemmas, etc.
Tears as Cleansing: Consciously allowing and honoring the physical release of crying as a natural and valid way to process grief, sadness, release tension, and cleanse the emotional body.
Tree vs. Graph Journaling: Method for analyzing a situation or concept by first mapping it hierarchically (Tree) and then interconnectedly (Graph) to gain a more holistic, systems-level understanding.
Somatic & Trauma-Informed Principles
Pendulation: A technique used in somatic therapies involving gently shifting awareness back and forth between a state of resourcefulness/safety/calm and a small amount of activation/discomfort related to a traumatic memory or trigger. Builds nervous system capacity and resilience. Essential for safely working with trauma; best learned within a therapeutic context.
Titration: A core principle in trauma work involving approaching intense sensations, emotions, or memories in small, manageable increments, allowing the nervous system to process activation without becoming overwhelmed. Essential for safely working with trauma; apply this principle to all practices that might evoke intensity.
Movement, Energy & Embodiment
Acupressure: Applying firm pressure with fingers or thumbs to specific points on the body (acupoints along meridians) to influence energy flow, release muscular tension, or alleviate certain symptoms.
Cold Exposure (Therapeutic): Brief, intentional exposure to cold (e.g., cold showers, facial immersion in cold water) potentially stimulating the vagus nerve, reducing inflammation, and building mental/physical resilience. Start gradually; consult doctor if you have cardiovascular issues.
Embodiment Practices (General): Any activity intentionally designed to bring awareness deeply into the physical body, cultivating a felt sense of presence, vitality, and connection to physical sensations and experiences.
Energy Work (General): Practices focused on perceiving, clearing, balancing, or directing subtle energy within the body’s energy systems (e.g., chakras, meridians). Includes various modalities. Discernment is advised when seeking practitioners.
Extended Chakra Exploration/Meditation: Focusing awareness on the subtle energy centers (chakras), potentially including models with more than the standard seven (e.g., 12 chakras), during meditation or energy practices.
Power Posing: Consciously adopting expansive, open physical postures (e.g., hands on hips, arms raised) potentially influencing internal states like confidence and feelings of power (based on social psychology research).
Qi Gong: A Chinese system integrating coordinated body postures, movement, breathing techniques, and meditation used for health, spirituality, and martial arts training; focuses on cultivating and balancing Qi (life force energy). Qualified instruction is recommended.
Sound Healing / Mantra / Chanting: Using vocal tones, instruments (like singing bowls or drums), specific vibrational frequencies, or the repetition of sacred syllables/phrases (mantras, e.g., Nam-myoho-renge-kyo mentioned contextually) to shift consciousness, calm the nervous system, clear energetic stagnation, or invoke specific qualities or energies.
Relational & Ethical Practices
Accountability Practices: Processes for taking responsibility for one’s actions and their impact, acknowledging harm caused (intentionally or unintentionally), making amends where appropriate, and learning from mistakes.
Active Listening: Fully concentrating on, understanding, responding to, and remembering what is being said, often involving reflecting back content and feelings to ensure understanding and validation.
Community Agreements / Group Norms: Co-creating explicit guidelines for communication, behavior, and interaction within a group setting to foster safety, respect, and mutual understanding.
Cultural Sensitivity & Humility Practices: Engaging in ongoing self-reflection, education, active listening, and seeking feedback to understand and mitigate personal biases, power dynamics, and potential harm when engaging across cultural differences.
Feedback Mechanisms (for Facilitators/Practitioners): Intentionally creating clear, safe, and accessible ways for participants or clients to offer feedback (positive and critical) about their experience. Essential for ethical practice.
Metta (Loving-Kindness) Meditation: A formal meditation practice cultivating feelings of unconditional love, kindness, compassion, and goodwill towards oneself and others, progressively expanding the circle of care.
Nonviolent Communication (NVC): A specific communication framework developed by Marshall Rosenberg, focusing on expressing Observations, Feelings, Needs, and Requests clearly and empathically to foster connection and resolve conflict peacefully. Guided study can deepen skill for complex dynamics.
Peer Supervision / Consultation (for Facilitators/Practitioners): Seeking regular feedback, reflection, and support from trusted peers or mentors regarding one’s work with others. Essential for ethical practice.
Setting Boundaries: The ongoing practice of identifying personal limits (physical, emotional, energetic, temporal) and clearly, respectfully communicating them to others. May require support if past experiences make this difficult.
Social Media Ethics Check: Consciously reviewing one’s online communication, sharing, and engagement through the lens of integrity, impact, accuracy, and ethical responsibility.
Trust Inventory Exercise: A reflective tool or guided process to assess the different components and levels of trust (e.g., reliability, competence, integrity, care) within specific relationships.
Wheel of Consent Practices: Exercises based on Betty Martin’s model exploring the distinct dynamics of Serving, Taking, Allowing, and Accepting in touch and interaction, designed to clarify boundaries, desires, and relational dynamics with greater nuance. Learning from certified facilitators is highly recommended for subtle applications.
Creative & Contemplative Practices
Contemplation: Deep, sustained, reflective thinking or meditation on a specific theme, concept, paradox, question, or symbol (e.g., Contemplating the Infinite, Contemplating Interconnectedness).
Creative Expression (Art, Music, Writing, Dance, etc.): Utilizing various creative mediums as outlets for processing emotions, expressing insights, exploring the subconscious, integrating experiences, and giving form to the formless.
Dreamwork: Paying attention to dreams, recording them, and exploring their symbolic language and narratives to gain insight into the unconscious mind, process unresolved issues, or receive guidance. Working with a therapist trained in dream analysis can deepen interpretation, especially with disturbing dreams.
Graph Visualization Meditation: A specific visualization practice focusing on the interconnected nature of reality, potentially drawing on concepts like the Entangled Firmament or Ruliad.
Mind Mapping Reality / Systems Mapping: Visually diagramming the connections, relationships, feedback loops, and influences between different elements of one’s life, a project, or a complex system.
Play & Reconnection: Intentionally engaging in activities that are spontaneous, joyful, non-goal-oriented, and fun, often to reconnect with the Inner Child, spark creativity, and relieve stress.
Ritual: Creating and performing symbolic actions, gestures, or ceremonies, often with focused intention, to mark significant transitions, set intentions, process emotions (like grief), invoke specific energies, honor cycles, or connect with the sacred. Includes specific rituals mentioned (e.g., Wielding Flame, Sacred Flame, Reclamation, using Ho’oponopono ritually, creating personalized rituals). Guidance may be helpful for complex or group rituals.
Visualization: Using mental imagery intentionally to explore possibilities, rehearse desired outcomes, embody archetypal energies, connect with inner resources, or facilitate healing. Apply titration/pendulation if visualizing traumatic material.
Mindset & Approach
Art of Not-Knowing / Sitting with Uncertainty: Consciously cultivating the capacity to remain present and open within ambiguity, paradox, or the limits of one’s knowledge, without needing immediate closure or resolution. Resisting premature certainty.
Focused Immersion / Deep Work: Deliberately committing focused time and energy within defined boundaries (temporal, spatial, relational) to explore a subject, practice, or project with depth and intensity.
Harm Reduction: A pragmatic approach prioritizing safety, informed choice, and minimizing potential negative consequences, especially when engaging with potentially risky practices, substances, or intense states of consciousness. Crucial ethical principle.
Holding Paradox: Developing the cognitive and emotional capacity to hold seemingly contradictory truths, energies, or perspectives simultaneously without splitting, dissociation, or forcing a simplistic resolution. A key skill for navigating complexity.
Reframing Limits as Portals: Shifting perspective to view perceived constraints, obstacles, or boundaries not merely as barriers but as potential catalysts for creativity, innovation, and deeper self-discovery.
Releasing Attachments: Practicing non-attachment (not detachment or indifference) to specific outcomes, identities, beliefs, possessions, or experiences, fostering inner freedom.
Systems Thinking: Developing the ability to perceive reality in terms of interconnectedness, patterns, feedback loops, emergence, and leverage points within complex systems (inner and outer).
Level 3: Advanced & High-Risk Practices
These practices carry a significant risk of psychological destabilization, re-traumatization, or harm if undertaken without extensive preparation, a stable nervous system, rigorous ethical grounding, and often, expert, trauma-informed guidance. Do not attempt these practices lightly or prematurely.
Intense Breathwork & Altered States
Holotropic Breathwork: Specific modality developed by Stanislav Grof, involving rapid, deep, connected breathing, typically accompanied by evocative music in a group setting, designed to induce profound non-ordinary states of consciousness for healing and exploration. HIGH RISK: Designed to access intense non-ordinary states; requires certified facilitator and strict protocols.
Transformational Breathwork: Various practices often involving connected, circular breathing (no pause between inhale and exhale), sometimes combined with bodywork or sound, aimed at releasing deep-seated emotional blockages, accessing subconscious material, and potentially inducing altered states. HIGH RISK: Can evoke intense emotions and altered states; requires skilled, trauma-informed facilitator and safe setting.
Core Path Contemplations
Void Meditation: A core contemplative practice unique to this path, involving guided steps to dissolve the sense of separate self into formless awareness, connecting with the silent source of infinite potential. It is strongly recommended to build strong foundational grounding, presence, self-awareness, and somatic regulation practices before engaging.
Working with the Ruliad: Advanced intention-setting, visualization, or contemplative engagement within the framework of the Entangled Firmament and the concept of the Ruliad, often practiced during or after Void Meditation. Requires solid grounding and understanding of core concepts; may be disorienting if grounding is insufficient.
Shadow, Power & Relational Dynamics
Conscious Transgression (Potential Left-Hand Path Element): Ethically and intentionally engaging with personal or societal taboos, limitations, or shadow aspects in a controlled manner to break through perceived constraints and integrate power. EXTREMELY HIGH RISK: Potentially destabilizing; requires exceptional discernment, psychological stability, rigorous ethics, strong grounding, and ideally experienced guidance. High potential for self-deception, inflation, and harm.
Kink Practices (Consensual & Ethical): The conscious, consensual exploration of specific BDSM dynamics, archetypes, or fetishes, potentially used transformationally for shadow work, exploring power, or accessing altered states. HIGH RISK: Requires rigorous practice of enthusiastic consent, negotiation, risk awareness, explicit safety protocols, clear boundaries, and dedicated aftercare. Experienced, ethical guidance or community support strongly recommended. High potential for harm if consent/safety compromised.
Psychedelic Use (Intentional): Utilizing psychedelic substances within a carefully prepared framework (intention, safe setting, support/guidance, integration) for therapeutic insight, spiritual exploration, or consciousness expansion. HIGH RISK: Can induce powerful, challenging non-ordinary states. Requires extensive research, thorough preparation, strict harm reduction, skilled guidance (ideally clinical/therapeutic), and dedicated integration. Assess legality. Potential for adverse psychological reactions.
Sacred Sexuality Practices: Conscious, intentional engagement with erotic energy for purposes beyond physical release, such as healing, intimacy, power exploration, or spiritual awakening. HIGH RISK: Deeply intimate and powerful; requires profound commitment to enthusiastic consent, clear communication, explicit boundaries, rigorous safety protocols, emotional maturity, and often ethical guidance. High potential for harm if ethics, consent, and safety are not the absolute priority.
Tantric Practices (Specific): May include specific applications of Asana, Mantra, Yantra/Mandala, Pranayama, Meditation, Ritual, and potentially Sacred Sexuality practices, aimed at harnessing life force energy for spiritual awakening and integration. HIGH RISK: Intense but risky; potential for misapplication of energy, ego inflation, destabilization, or harm. Requires highly experienced, ethical, trauma-informed teachers/guides with impeccable boundaries and clear lineage/understanding of safety.
Therapeutic Modalities (Requiring a Trained Professional)
The following are established therapeutic modalities mentioned in the book. They are not self-study practices. Engaging with these requires working directly with an appropriately licensed and trained mental health professional or certified practitioner. They are listed here as potential support resources on the Path.
Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) [Requires Licensed Mental Health Professional trained in DBT]
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) [Requires Licensed EMDR Therapist]
Mentalization-Based Therapy (MBT) [Requires Licensed Mental Health Professional trained in MBT]
Neurofeedback [Requires Qualified and Certified Neurofeedback Practitioner]
Schema Therapy [Requires Licensed Mental Health Professional trained in Schema Therapy]
Somatic Experiencing (SE™) [Requires Certified Somatic Experiencing Practitioner (SEP)]
Transference-Focused Psychotherapy (TFP) [Requires Licensed Mental Health Professional trained in TFP]
Trauma Release Exercises (TRE®) [Learn initial exercises from a Certified TRE Provider]