First time posting, though I've been lurking for quite a while.
My formal practice consists of 1-2 hours daily breath meditation, and I generally follow this structure:
- Count breaths (descending from 10 to 1) until focus feels solid.
- Keep awareness on the breath and try to expand the breath awareness to the whole body.
- When thoughts/sensations arise, note them and then return to the breath.
- End with some metta
There has been marked progress in being able to stay on 2 and expand the awareness, and lately some things have been happening that I've found confusing.
Over the past few days, by the time I'm in a fairly pleasant concentrated state, I start to notice what feel like tight knots of energy, first at the navel and then also in the chest, and sometimes at the throat.
The first time I noticed this, I decided to move my attention to my navel to see what was going on, and when the attention arrived there, a strange thing happened: my breathing just stopped. It felt almost like a primal fight-or-flight response: the throat constricted, the pulse quickened, and there was a frisson of tingliness throughout the body. If I wasn't so surprised, I might have been terrified. Over the course of that sit, I would back off then return my attention to the navel. Eventually I was able to relax with my attention there and slowly that 'knot' sort of unwound (while kind of shifting around a little) and then dissipated.
The same thing happened yesterday with the knot in my chest (except for the dissipation). The same fight-or-flight response, completely stopping breathing, constricted throat, quickened heartbeat, energy pulses. This time, it almost felt like I was drowning. And the energy pulses were shooting up into my head. I was eventually able to keep my attention there without the breath stopping, but even then the breath became quick and choppy (instead of smooth and shallow, where it was before).
Has anybody had similar experiences? My instinct is to just keep watching and see what happens, but I'm really curious as to what this might be, as it doesn't feel like it matches the typical 'your breath just naturally slows down and stops when you get to X jhana' description of breath stopping.