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Observe and Relax

Observe and Relax
Answer
8/9/14 3:43 AM
Hello everyone,

after asking some questions over at the Dhama Diagnostic Clinic I found that it might be helpful to track my progress more thouroughly.

Where I come from

I started meditating about 10 years ago. Back in the days I did mostly zazen. Then I stumbled upon Shinzen Young, followed his method for 2-3 years. Then stumbled upon Ayya Khema and focused on awareness of the breath. Then I found Ajahn Brahm and through his advice I got deeper, less forceful meditation. Somewhere along the line I read Daniel's book and was fascinated but not yet hooked.

At about October last year I got kriyas while meditating and afterwards (mainly facial and upper body involuntary movements). I could even produce them deliberately by loosening the urge to control and tell some until then unknown part in me: 'I allow you to take over and do whatever needs to be done.' When I first experienced them there was a strong feeling of me being controlled or something else doing its thing through me. This felt not scary but rather interesting.
I also had an increased need for sleep and felt pretty tired during the day. Whereas I usually needed 7-8 hours of sleep and jumped out of bed in the morning, I now need 10. Sometimes never being able to shake off the tiredness during the day. There also was some crisis I went through. I was seriously considering to become a monk which was not very healthy for my marriage as you could imagine. This wish has weakened and I feel now that my spiritual goals can be achieved in a more mundane setting (kudos to Daniel and Yogani!). It also had a lot to do with running away from responsibilities and the fear to get too close to things and people.

This phase also coincided with some serious back pain,which I thought at the time came from wrong exercising, and some tension in the jaw. Now this all sounds a lot like what Daniel wrote about the 3rd nana (The Three Characteristics): "a sense of wanting to renounce the world... odd bodily twistings... painful tensions, particularly in the back, neck, jaw and shoulders..."

My current spiritual pracitce

At the start of my meditation sessions I do some spinal breathing (pranajama) as described on the AYPsite. Then I focus on present moment awareness and change over to breath awareness once my mind is calm and pretty stable. That's basically what Ajahn Brahm teaches. I seem now to be able to let go of the doing part and put most of my energy into the observing. Through this I find that the calming of the mind takes care of its own and by the end of my 20-30 minute meditation I'm usually very calm and focused. After all those years of trial & error I now seem to have come to the point where the meditative process is pretty reliable and becomes increasingly stable.
Now I will put also more focus on investigating the 3Cs after my breath meditation. I am very curious about what's to come next...

Aside from that I have an increased interest in (lucid) dreaming recently. Ideas seem to come up out of nowhere. Recently I put down a story for a children's book. Yesterday while lying in bed beautiful melodies struck mind and I even dreamed about flying through a church singing a wonderful anthem, which I could remember quite vividly after waking up. LOL.

Apart from the kriyas, which still happen at least once a week, there's sometimes an involuntary urge to breath out deeply. Sometimes to the point where breathing in becomes a slight burden.

I do psychotherapy and trauma release exercises (TRE). There are indications that some childhood trauma might surface in the weeks to come. And there's also a feeling of something "big" about to happen... hopefully with some bearable progress through the stages. Another thing I do which helps a lot to balance me out and get more calm and focused is fletcherizing/mindful eating.

Writing this it becomes more and more clear to me that I am probably somewhere at the end of the 3rd or beginning of the 4th nana. Which excites me, to be honest. Until two days ago I did not even consider myself to be anywhere on the map...

That's it. I hope that this log will help me to better identify and navigate through the stages. Comments are always welcome!

RE: Observe and Relax
Answer
7/23/14 4:08 AM as a reply to Andreas Thef.
Howdy Andreas,
nice to see you here.  your title / subject is great!  it sounds as though you have done and are doing "work" on yourself in a broad way.

i'm familiar with aypsite.org and of course Daniel and Shinzen etc. and find that they all have some excellent contributions.

my practice these days has a lot of similarity to what you describe in that i am in a phase where relaxing, noting subtleties and letting it all go is both very pleasant and feels as though i am moving deeper and deeper into simplicity and subtlety.

that said, this is your post..keep it coming!

tom

RE: Observe and Relax
Answer
7/23/14 6:46 AM as a reply to tom moylan.
Hello Tom,

thanks for the warm welcome. Yes, I found that relaxation was the missing link in my meditation. It was a huge discovery for me. Now I am trying to melt these two: concentration/observation and relaxation.

BTW, do you have a log, too? I couldn't find any links on your profile.

Best,
Andreas

RE: Observe and Relax
Answer
7/23/14 8:29 AM as a reply to Andreas Thef.
oh man...
right out of the box and you call me out...  ;-)

no, i don't have a practice log here.  i have mostly posted after retreats and did have a log on another site which has since died.

i'm mostly pretty clear on where i am and what i need to do.  when i have specific questions or am in trouble though, this is always my first stop to help see over my limited horizon.  mostly i get really solid advice and input.

my advice to you though is to NOT follow my lead.  start a log, i'd love to read it.

tom

RE: Observe and Relax
Answer
7/23/14 8:41 AM as a reply to Andreas Thef.
Andreas Thef:
Now I am trying to melt these two: concentration/observation and relaxation.

This is really good stuff, and something that didn't click in my own practice for quite some time. Eventually what really took off for me was the slight shift in thinking of concentration as non-distraction, and relaxation as non-restraint. Somehow this conceptual shift from something to be done to something to allow to come undone has made a big difference. Most of my sits consist of tuning these two aspects against one another like a pair of guitar strings until something just kinda clicks and any sense of effort drops away entirely, allowing awareness to simply rest.

Dunno if that helps any, but I thought I'd pass it along just in case. Good luck in your practice!

RE: Observe and Relax
Answer
7/23/14 8:59 AM as a reply to John M..
John M.:
Andreas Thef:
Now I am trying to melt these two: concentration/observation and relaxation.

This is really good stuff, and something that didn't click in my own practice for quite some time. Eventually what really took off for me was the slight shift in thinking of concentration as non-distraction, and relaxation as non-restraint. Somehow this conceptual shift from something to be done to something to allow to come undone has made a big difference. Most of my sits consist of tuning these two aspects against one another like a pair of guitar strings until something just kinda clicks and any sense of effort drops away entirely, allowing awareness to simply rest.

Dunno if that helps any, but I thought I'd pass it along just in case. Good luck in your practice!

That's wonderfully said, John, and it describes pretty much what I experience lately. And funny that you mention strings. During my recent practice I sometimes think about the Buddha's simile he told a sitar player: not too tight, not too loose. For the first time in my life I can catch a glimpse of what he meant with that. I found that I can let go things and obstructions in my mind pretty much the same way that I can relax a tense muscle. That's probably what you mean by non-restraint.

One of my personal pitfalls was that I stressed the concentration part without relaxing. Ajahn Brahm straighten that out in me. There's a kind of concentration that does not come with force but with perseverance and trust in the process (i.e. that mind will calm down on its own).

Thanks for sharing, John!

RE: Observe and Relax
Answer
7/23/14 9:05 AM as a reply to tom moylan.
tom moylan:
my advice to you though is to NOT follow my lead.  start a log, i'd love to read it.

tom
emoticon Hope to see you arond, Tom!

RE: Observe and Relax
Answer
7/23/14 9:27 AM as a reply to Andreas Thef.
I found that I can let go things and obstructions in my mind pretty much the same way that I can relax a tense muscle. That's probably what you mean by non-restraint.

Not exactly, though that too is excellent stuff. What I mean by non-restraint is that one gives up on directing attention and experience altogether, recognizing this as a kind of subtle stress and distraction. Again, not a doing so much as an undoing.

Hopefully that sounds less pretentious in your head than it does in mine!

RE: Observe and Relax
Answer
7/23/14 10:00 AM as a reply to John M..
John M.:
I found that I can let go things and obstructions in my mind pretty much the same way that I can relax a tense muscle. That's probably what you mean by non-restraint.

Not exactly, though that too is excellent stuff. What I mean by non-restraint is that one gives up on directing attention and experience altogether, recognizing this as a kind of subtle stress and distraction. Again, not a doing so much as an undoing.

Hopefully that sounds less pretentious in your head than it does in mine!

Not at all, John. It again very well resonates with what I experience lately: let the doer do and put all you energy into the observer. Then the mind calms down almost inevitably.

Very nice to meet some people around with similar experiences.

RE: Observe and Relax
Answer
7/23/14 1:57 PM as a reply to Andreas Thef.
My evening meditation was quiet interesting. At first I had to recollect myself as it seemed for some minutes that I had forgotten how to meditate properly. Then it took its normal course. At the end of the session the kriyas started again. At first my mouth moved from left to right, then sprung wide open doing some chewing movements that from the outside must have looked like a furious animal. Then the movements got faster and it felt like my mouth wanted to babble like crazy.

After a few minutes my head shook from side to side pretty hefty and I suddenly pressed my chin down on my breast. I deliberately raised it and got back to the present moment awareness. This was not the first time that I experienced such movement pattern. But then right before my inner eyes I saw a somewhat beautiful orange light or cloud. Kind of organic and sometimes pulsating at the periphery. And I think it had a slightly darker spot in the middle. It also got a bit stronger as I focused on its center.

I'm not sure if it was just the light coming through my eye lids or an after-effect of my wild head shaking or maybe even somekind of nimmita. Whatever it was, it was interesting and I feel there's definitely something going on. It seems like starting to post here coincides with some major change inside.

RE: Observe and Relax
Answer
7/25/14 1:50 AM as a reply to Andreas Thef.
The kriyas get stronger. Yesterday in my evening meditation session I was silently barking like a dog and howling like a wolf (just the movement with no sound). Later my lower jaw was moving from left to right like crazy and my head was spinning slowly.

After a while I got into pretty deep meditation and started to investigate my sense of self. At first I simply tried to narrow it down while I was trying to focus on the present moment. Of course the sense of self was only very weak. Then I deliberately brought in thinking about how I move through the world or some emotional situations in my life. And the sense of self got stronger of course.

It did not convince me of anything and left no major insight (like 'the self is an illusion'). I mean just because you don't look at something does not mean it's not there. However the feeling of switching back and forth between thinking and present moment awareness was interesting. I could literally feel the sense of self diminish while doing that. And I could feel the contraction that comes with a stronger sense of self.

I think I can work with that in my next sessions...

RE: Observe and Relax
Answer
7/25/14 2:23 AM as a reply to Andreas Thef.
I started with TRE (Trauma Release Exercises) about a month ago. I read about it on some internet forum. It was depicted there as a valuable method to work with trauma without the need to work it out intellectually or through other therapeutic methods. I bought the book and the DVD and started to do TREs almost everyday for about 30-40 minutes.

The theory goes like this: All animals quiver when experiencing severe stress and trauma (think of a gazelle getting away from a tiger). Children do it in their early years. But our culture and society does not look at tremoring as something useful, it usually sees it as a sign of fear and weakness and hence tends to suppress it. David Berceli, the inventor of TRE, lived and worked in crisis areas for many years. One day, sitting in  a shelter during a bombing raid he had two small children on his lap and felt them tremoring. The adults in the shelter however did not tremor, though some of them clearly had the urge to do so. Berceli also observed that humans tend to move their bodies in certain patterns while under severe stress and fear (i.e. contract the body at the pelvis area to get into more secure fetal position). TREs are exercise to deliberately loosen those muscles and produce tremor in the legs and pelvis area that subsequently may spread into other areas of the body and thereby work through trauma and stress that is stored and held in those parts of the body. So far the theory...

The method works great for me and I got the tremor in my legs and pelvis in every single session. Still, after one month of doing TRE almost everyday and feeling a slow expansion into other body parts, I was still sceptical. I thought, well, maybe it's just the fatigue and loosening of the muscles through the preliminary exercises that leads to the tremor. It must not necessarily have something to do with trauma. But I gave it a shot and now after about 5 weeks the TREs seem to unfold and go to the next level.

In the beginning it was mostly my legs and lower pelvis quivering,  sometimes my arms and sometimes the quivering triggered my facial kriyas. I had no emotions, no rememberance of trauma and no signs of breakthrough. But since yesterday the quivering changes. It starts earlier while I do the preliminary fatiguing exercises and it moves up to the upper abdomen accompanied by some mild cold feeling. In yesterday's session I also had pretty intense quivering in my arms for several minutes, especially both triceps and the right lower arm. While that happened there was no tremor in my legs which is a sign that it's not simply some fatiguing that leads to it but obviously some kind of discharge.

I feel that the combination of meditation, TREs, spinal breathing and some other things I practice are really powerful catalysts for my psychological and spiritual progress.

RE: Observe and Relax
Answer
7/25/14 3:48 AM as a reply to Andreas Thef.
As I said I will now put more focus on investigating the 3Cs at the end of my meditation sessions. I wondered how I should go about that and found the MCTB section of impermanence very helpful. Unfortunately I'm not able to copy and paste any of it here. So I will just post the link as a reminder for myself: MCTB Impermanence. Starting with "Each one of these arises and vanishes completely..."

RE: Observe and Relax
Answer
7/25/14 4:24 AM as a reply to Andreas Thef.
Hey,
noticing the 3Cs is not complicated and dramatic.  for example, decide to notice the impermanent nature of everything that pops up on your screen for the next X minutes.  and keep doing it.  that pulse...where is the permanance there, what is permanent about it, this touch of breath, what about it has the nature of permanance...etc. over and over and over. same with dukka.  is this cramp satisfying?  is this wonderful energetic rush reallly ultimately satisfying or will i be dissapointed when it is gone.  for anatta i tend toward the advaita question..who is seeing? where is this "I" that is feeling this..who am "I"...

another suggestion.  a short while ago in a post here i read a (for me) very practical method to sense and promote "calming". it is to acknowledge a sensation as 'concentrated' in a particular place and then to generalize your attention to the entire sphere of experience.  eg: you may not energetic sensations "inside your skull" , you then spread your attention to include that sense sphere to your entire body so that the "touch" of this energy is spread to the "touch" of all of your skin.

my description is awkward but i hope i have conveyed the concept a little.  it is a pleasant and powerful excercise for me.

tom

RE: Observe and Relax
Answer
7/25/14 7:17 AM as a reply to tom moylan.
tom moylan:
Hey,
noticing the 3Cs is not complicated and dramatic.  for example, decide to notice the impermanent nature of everything that pops up on your screen for the next X minutes.  and keep doing it.  that pulse...where is the permanance there, what is permanent about it, this touch of breath, what about it has the nature of permanance...etc. over and over and over. same with dukka.  is this cramp satisfying?  is this wonderful energetic rush reallly ultimately satisfying or will i be dissapointed when it is gone.  for anatta i tend toward the advaita question..who is seeing? where is this "I" that is feeling this..who am "I"...

Thanks for the helpful suggestions, Tom. I will try that.

I wondered if there's thinking involved in the investigation of the 3Cs or if I should just intent to investigate them and leave the rest to moment to moment awareness. According to Daniel's writings it's the latter. The thinking and pondering about it happens off the cushion as far as I understand now.

As for the "I", when I observe it, I feel there's a self. But I've not yet seen this as an illusion or as a mere process without any substantiality. But I'm sure this comes with practice...


another suggestion.  a short while ago in a post here i read a (for me) very practical method to sense and promote "calming". it is to acknowledge a sensation as 'concentrated' in a particular place and then to generalize your attention to the entire sphere of experience.  eg: you may not energetic sensations "inside your skull" , you then spread your attention to include that sense sphere to your entire body so that the "touch" of this energy is spread to the "touch" of all of your skin.

That's a good advice. I feel this kind of concentration as a narrowing of the sphere in which mind moves in all directions. Ajahn Brahm compares it to training a little puppy to stay in its basket. In the beginning it will get up often and walk around very fast. Whenever you notice that you just patiently and compassionately pick it up and put it back into its basket. After a while it stays there for longer and longer periods. That's how this concentration feels like. It's like a small but very potent space where the awareness begins to rest quite naturally after I while. I will experiment with that and try to broaden that space.

Thanks for your help!

RE: Observe and Relax
Answer
7/26/14 11:04 AM as a reply to Andreas Thef.
When I had my first Kriyas and read about them I did not really buy into that energy blockage loosening thing. Then a few weeks ago I discovered TREs and, boy, they do exactly what they say they do. In todays session the quivering started with the preliminary exercises again. While doing the wall-sitting (one of the exercises to fatigue the legs and pevlis muscles) my pelvis, legs and right arm tremored. Then during the main exercise I felt a slight fear and then sadness accompanied by one of those facial kriyas I have that looks like I'm bitterly crying. The strange thing with these kriyas accompanied by emotions is that they seem kind of distant. The neutral observer part in me still dominates but seems to soften. I suspect it to be a process of getting accustomed and step by step opening up to deeper levels, bringing body and mind together until the organism is ready for the real thing. That's what it feels like.

The tremoring pattern changes dramatically. I now tremor up to my lower left costal arch. Then at about 30-35 minutes into the session there suddenly was a pretty solid and localised tension in my lower right back right next to the spine. This tension slowly moved up during the session and stood still for a while in the middle of the back. There it was accompanied by the same kind of tension on the left side of the spine and some mild warm feeling. At the end of the session it moved up even further until a few inches below the scapulas. I ended the session about 15 minutes ago and still have a slight tension up there (not uncomfortable) which slightly raises my shoulders.

I attached some videos of TRE below. As you can see some of the movements look pretty much like kriyas.

Trauma & Tension Releasing Exercises - TRE - David Berceli
David Berceli TRE Training in Bogata Columbia
Myofascial Unwinding

RE: Observe and Relax
Answer
7/27/14 3:42 AM as a reply to Andreas Thef.
If I needed any more prove that I'm currently in the beginning stages of A&P then I got it yesterday. During my evening meditation session there was a short but obvious episode of fast almost hectic breathing. Furthermore during the whole sit there was tension in my calves (I am currently sitting on a chair due to lack of a cushion and some back issues I had).

Then tonight I had two lucid dreams. I tried lucid dreaming multiple times in my life. There were episodes when I read a lot of books on (lucid) dreaming, did reality checks all day and made this effort a full-time job. Now, probably with the beginning of A&P my interest in this topic has rekindled and it seems to come almost effortlessly.

As an aside here are two nice quotes about patience I found today:

"Patience is the calm acceptance that things can happen in a different order than the one you have in mind." - David G. Allen

"Patience is the training in abiding with the restlessness of our energy and letting things evolve at their own speed." - Pema Chödron

RE: Observe and Relax
Answer
7/27/14 2:23 PM as a reply to Andreas Thef.
Howdy,
excellent..things are shaking up!  change is progress.

i remember hearing about "chakras" for years and scoffing at the Birkenstock crowd and their detachment from reality.  then, years later on a luxury trip to india, i went to a yoga class to relieve my boredom in the hotel i was staying at.  the teacher's name was Vishnu.  i thought we were there to do yoga but he said, today we will do a chackra meditation because a couple of people here need it."

i thought, shit.  until the practice allowed me to feel and influence others directly.  CHACKRAS ARE REAL!!!

i rushed back to my room and showed my wife that chackras are real...and my daughters...

so just a crazy story.  enjoy your kriyas.  i particularly like the face stretching grimace grin myself.  have fun with it and when you DO get to the A&P event...try to stay with it all the way through. ;-)

RE: Observe and Relax
Answer
7/28/14 1:47 AM as a reply to tom moylan.
tom moylan:
Howdy,
excellent..things are shaking up!  change is progress.

i remember hearing about "chakras" for years and scoffing at the Birkenstock crowd and their detachment from reality.  then, years later on a luxury trip to india, i went to a yoga class to relieve my boredom in the hotel i was staying at.  the teacher's name was Vishnu.  i thought we were there to do yoga but he said, today we will do a chackra meditation because a couple of people here need it."

i thought, shit.  until the practice allowed me to feel and influence others directly.  CHACKRAS ARE REAL!!!

i rushed back to my room and showed my wife that chackras are real...and my daughters...

so just a crazy story.  enjoy your kriyas.  i particularly like the face stretching grimace grin myself.  have fun with it and when you DO get to the A&P event...try to stay with it all the way through. ;-)

Thanks, Tom. That sounds like a very interesting story.

Yes, I am trying to enjoy every moment of it. And I try to keep that perspective even for the darker times to come.

One question: could you elaborate what you mean by "stay with it all the way through"? I think I have to reread the whole MCTB. There's so much I have forgotten.

RE: Observe and Relax
Answer
7/28/14 2:21 AM as a reply to Andreas Thef.
...yeah..what does that mean?  for me the A&P presents as a whirling energetic upward rush which makes 'seeing it all the way through' (staying mindful) difficult. its no secret weapon or anything you might even experience so better think of it as "always stay mindful"..that's better advice.

cheers

tom