Hello all,
For the last several months my practice has been almost entirely focused on the body. There have been many big issues, psychological stuff, seeming split personalities and the like, but by staying with the breath in the body these things don't cause as much trouble. Slowly but surely I am feel like I am grounding myself with mindfulness and there is less bleed through.
One of the things I have noticed, as a 6'8" man, is that the upper and lower halves of my body are kind of out of sync a good deal of the time. I will wake up in every morning with nausea like symptoms and pain in the lower back. During the day I often have had a sense of a sharp air pocket that won't go away in the left lower side combined with a constant urge to belch something up. In other words, I have always assumed there was something that needed to come out of my body.
Well, today I got the idea to change up my approach. For a while now, whenever I have had the urge to pass gas down below, I have not been forceful with it, letting it do its own thing at its own pace. With belching, however, I have always for whatever reason forcefully tried to burp things up (with my mouth closed). Today I tried a different approach. Whenever I get the sense of wanting to burp, with mindfulness I watch it do its thing without reacting. This has had some interesting results.
What is happening is that there is a consistent transferring and settling of wind up and down the body, centering around my solar plexus. There seems to be a sort of vacuum trying to set up between my bowls, into my stomach, moving up trying to escape and then settling back down. Through this period, as in the past, I have had almost a constant urge to swallow, which I am obliging for the moment (went through hellish self-imposed austerity in the past on this latter matter and am trying to take a middle path approach).
Anyone else have something like this occur? I am guessing that as everyone's body/conditioning is different, these things might play out differently. I do remember Daniel comparing fundamental suffering to a kind of nausea.
Also, it just goes to show that the most seemingly insignificant assumptions can affect practice in big ways.
Edit - In hindsight, I think I the above report might have been flavored by a small dash of desire for deliverance, as shortly after I wrote this the "vacuum" became a bit unpleasant and I broke it. Not going to make myself miserable off a new idea. Still, an assumption has been seen in a new light and I will keep playing around with this.
