Please know that this is written right after it happened so I may be a little...I don't know.

Today's session, did a half hour of yoga before to be a little better prepared. I have a lot of back tension/pain though it goes up and down and moves around. A lot of stored crap due to anxiety(GAD/health related).

Preliminary breathing exercise-4-7-8 breathing. Piti started right after. Focussed om my breathing until I more or less fell into jhana. I let it happen as it would, at some point I may or have not have gone on to 2nd jhana-still not too good at recognizing what's what. Whatever it was went on for a bit and then seemed to calm down a little and stabilize. This is the third day I tried a bit of insight meditation so I had a look at the pain between my shoulder blades and like yesterday I came to a point where it sort of disintegrated into little pieces of tingling sensation and some strong emotion that just emanated from there and just kept rising, rising and then filled all of me. I had convulsions or contractions or something in my solar plexus.
I wept. I curled into a little ball on my bed. I laughed a little. I ended the session because I felt an urge to get up and move around.


My hands are shaking. There's a buzz in the background. I feel very, very vulnerable.


And oddly, I remembered something similar I experienced doing rebirthing, in 1994. I'd forgotten.


I have a question. During meditation this pain between the shoulder blades spreads and it feels like someone put a foot on my sternum and leaned on it, or perhaps like an iron band around my chest. It feels like it's difficult to breathe but in reality it's not, I can draw deep breaths just fine(it occurred to me just now that I'm perhaps holding something back?). But I wonder if this investigation into it will eventually make it go away? Or should I try more conventional methods-some kind of bodywork? 

I am trying to understand your mind state.
It seems you experienced the kind of experience which is the very right direction but because it was related to pain it did feel a bit overwhelming. Is this correct?

Try to practice this kind of experience but with jhanic bliss.
If it is what I think it is then you should not worry about the apparent pressure. It might seem there is a lot of activity and it will be tiring but actually it is not that. There is a lot of connections active in these mind states / activities.

BTW. These jhanas can get kinda all over the place making them hard to identify if you do not consciously synchronize them to one concrete jhana. I never felt the need to do so except more formal practice where I would specifically work with given jhana.
It is however good to know though them by their name (number) though as it makes it easier to controll them when needed.

I was overwhelmed and now feel a bit over-aroused but I think the experience as such would have been the same regardless of what was the 'trigger'. I chose the painful area because it was simple, clear and easy to focus on.

I am not really worried about the pain but it's been appearing for while, 2-3 months perhaps. My uneducated guess is it's stored grief and fear.
 
Also, I was perfectly OK with whatever feelings came up, I just let them pass through.

Thank you for your reply!

Whether dealing with something painful, unpleasant, or even pleasant, everything really, it is good to look around mind space or even far beyond it for an experience that is related to the experience with which we are currently working. There just might be something interesting there.

My most immediate thought is this: the knot in my back appeared while hearing from my dad telling me phone he had been told his cancer had spread to the extent that all the hospital could do from there on out was to offer palliative care. Could feel the muscles seize up as we spoke. later I came across the term 'anticipatory grief', didn't know this was a thing at the time.

Thanks for taking the time to give me pointers. Really appreciated. =)