Generally I am a tightly wound person. Recently I tried meditating where you inhale and tense, hold it, exhale and release a few times over to start the meditation. I meditated for 15 minutes on Saturday and then 15 minutes on Sunday morning. On Saturday evening I started feeling my left shoulder get tense. By Sunday evening I was in a lot of pain. In the middle of the night I woke up literally crying in pain and it continued into the morning. Even breathing in hurt my body. It was excruciating, frightening pain and I hadnt exercised or done anything strenuous. Its been a few days and its still tight. Could this be a result of meditiation? Perhaps repressed trauma, etc? It was my left shoulder and Ive never had any major accidents but I have had many surgeries on that hand from a birth defect.

This is a non-issue.

If you tense your muscles as tight as you can as part of your pre-meditation routine, there's a chance you might get cramp developing later on. Cramp can be painful. I don't know what to suggest. Open a window and get some fresh air and toughen up a bit.

Take a painkiller? Have a massage? Do some stretching?

Stop meditating? Meditate more? Meditate differently?

If it is meditation related, then sitting through the pain isn't likely do any damage, and it should, fingers crossed, eventually pass. So Dr. CCC's advice isn't half bad.

If you are talking about it possibly being "repressed trauma" then you probably have your own ideas about it. Some people do actually believe that.

What does the internet say?!

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=meditation+spasm

Your pain may or may not be related to the meditation in more ways than one. Sometimes, certain phases of insight may be associated with muscle spasms (I'm thinking 3 characteristics phase) which you can read about in Daniel Ingram's book MTCB.

Other times muscle spasms can be due to prolonged seated postures, especially if you are not in proper alignment while sitting. Another scenario may be that you had a preexisting problem there that just happened to present itself while meditating and it is not directly related. Sometimes there may be problems in our bodies where someone may not initially have symptoms.

The first scenario will work itself out with more meditation. The second 2 scenarios are ones where you should probably seek treatment. At the very least I think it wouldn't hurt to see a professional that you trust to rule out anything more serious and see if it indeed requires treatment.

Hope this was in some way helpful to you.

Don't meditate like this. Allow the inhalation and exhalation to occur naturally without effort or input in the same way you would breathe if you're not thinking about breathing.. Don't hold your breath for any reason. All kinds of weird energy imbalances could occur from doing this.

I experienced my share of muscles spams on this path so far. Sometimes my legs would start spasming incontrollably at work. I had spasms in my shoulders, my belly, etc. Once on a retreat when I was pushing really hard, I started to have violent spasms while falling asleep that almost hurt my back. All those years of accumulated stress as to be released someway. Sometimes, you can just gently focus on the tension and let it do it's thing.

Your hear that a lot as an explanation for "kriyas" but I have always being sceptical - in your own experience do you think that is true? So if weren't given that as a theory of why it was happening, do you think you have come to a similar view?

And TomTom, I would be interested to hear what your understanding of energy imbalances? Again it is something you hear about but I am curious to know what that means in your own experience, particularly due to your knowledge of manic depression - do you see depression and mania a form of energy imbalance?

thanks

My opinion is that talking about stress, muscles tension, spasms, etc, is much more concrete than the more fancy language used to describe experiences in the world of meditation. Lets take "energy imbalance". What does that mean? There is actual energy that circulate in the form of electricity in our body. It's the nervous system. Are we talking about that? "Energy imbalance" is somewhat of a pleonasm. Energy is either stored, then a form of potentiality, or circulating. Either way, it mean you have more at one place than at the other. I'm not doing this practice to achieve complete entropy. Life is a fight against entropy anyway.

We could talk about energy for more esotheric ideas but I think we should use a different word then, when we get beyond the world that science can see so far. There is many unexplained phenomenons in the world of meditation and language that underline the unknown nature of those phenomenon appears to me as useful. Still, each time we have the opportunity to map a phenomenon with something very concrete that everyone can understand, we should be grateful of that opportunity. The less obscure those practices are, the better everyone will be.

Scientists studying enlightenment focus quite a bit on the brain. I'm not very advanced on this path but it's my belief that if we were able to scan the body of enligthened people and compared is to other people, we would find knots of tension in the general population that cannot be found in elightened people. By this, I mean actual muscles that are contracted. It would be interesting to have people at 3th path and beyond comment on this.

Another belief that I have, for which I have absolutely no proof, is that the nervous connection between the lower motor neuron (at the base of the spinal cord) and the brain is of high importance in enlightement. Energy flow (actual nerve connection) between those could results in some of the mystical experiences. There would be an actual physical relaxation necessary for this to happen. It's appear that for the A&P, not so much relaxation is required, as concentration is really the key for it. Still, the spams people experience at this stage suggest some relaxation is required. For moving from one path to another, my belief is that the degree of relaxation needed is much higher, hence the dark night, hence, equanimity. This process of relaxation starts with at the periphery (limbs) and the last stand is along the spine.

Thanks Simon.

As a scientifically minded sceptical sort, I tend to think that there is unlikely to be any form of physical stuff that can interact with "us" (i.e. our brains and the conscious experience caused by our brains) that we haven't so far measured. So the utility of the term energy here is a description of mental phenomenon, which ultimately is going to relate to physical stuff that we can measure happening in our brains.

The thing about talking about muscle spasms and tension and is that it can suggest that this is something happening or caused in the muscles, when it seems to me (and this partly due to my own experience) that it all comes to down to stuff happening in the brains. So, for example, when people start shaking around A&P it seems to be due to over excitability of the motor cortex. And when you have crazy stuff happening around your 3rd eye, it isn't happening at the 3rd eye, but rather in the brain's representation of that part of the body. So in my opinion, this may be a way of relating what "energy" is - just abnormal levels of neurotransmitters causing your brain to go a bit haywire. Though seeing it this way doesn't help to explain some of the systematicity we see (say, stuff happening around your 3rd eye, or limbs to spine shifts)

So lots of meditation teachers also claim that enlightenment is linked to energy flow along the lines of your intuition. Kenneth Folk, for example, talks about psycho-energtic awakening. The fact that so many people talk about it such a way suggests that they are onto something, but I never really get the impression that they what they are talking about, partly due to inadequacies in the frameworks they are using. Which is why I am interested in people's perspective on this.

I am willing to believe that 4th pather etc.. may have measurably less muscular tension. But I think this is another way of saying that 4th pathers are more relaxed - their nervous systems are less fight and flighty, and hence less prepared for action, and hence less tense.

But I like your point about different levels of the path involving a transitioning or increased management of the holding and release of muscular tension. Muscular tension (and your awareness of it) is a big thing in some Western Zen teachers, for example.

Dear JH,

To answer your question directly: yes, meditation can cause muscles to spasm. It doesn't mean you're doing something wrong, it's just one of the many possible manifestations of mentation in the sense fields.

The best academic research on the negative side effect of meditation that I know of is Dr. Willoughby Britton of Brown University.

Here is an interview with her on Buddhist Geeks where she talks about musculoskeletal and involuntary muscle contractions as possible side effects of meditation (among others).

In my own practice, I've had lots of muscle pain from meditation, and not just from sitting for a long time but from involuntary contractions and releases. The plus side is that in the long run I've become much less restricted in my range of motion, and much more fluid in my movements as well. It has helped with a lot of long standing chronic pain issues as well.

One thing you can try to lie on a soft mattress and just let your whole body shake for as long as it needs to. This really tends to reduce the built up tension (however, if you're already feeling like your muscle is injured/strained then taking a pain killer might be a better option). You could also try resolving in meditation to transfer the mental agitation that is expressing itself through your muscles into another sense field, such as the visual field. Here's a detailed post about how to do that.

Best of luck and let us know how it turns out.

Avi
Meditation Teaching

Sawfoot:


Simon T:


"Controlling"/holding and manipulating the breath can be useful in some meditative systems such as kundalini yoga. However, it can be dangerous to practice similar to this thread where the person was engaging in tantric sex without proper guidance. The difference here is the person was practicing holding seminal fluid rather than the breath. To say that these patterns of sensation and their relation to the particular nexus points (chakras) is map-able to brain or nerve function is not always correct as people with various meditative problems often are checked out by doctors who, after extensive testing, say there is nothing physically wrong with them. Therefore we are talking about patterns in direct sensate/phenomenological experience (at all 6 doors) and not patterns arising from concepts inferred from sensations such as the body's nervous or electric systems. In this manner meditative energy is actually even more concrete than talking about nerve/brain/electrical function.

It cannot be denied that there are particular nexus points in the body (which become increasingly subdued/tamed/irrelevant as one approaches completion of all paths or "full enlightenment" or completely eliminated in the absence of attention - "PCEs") generally referred to in Indian yogic systems as "chakras." The scientific use of the term energy (the ability to do work) and the meditative term "energy" (patterns extrapolated from the bodymind's direct sensate experience at all 6 doors) are not completely synonymous. The meditative process can also be described in terms of chakra activation and energy flow though this approach is generally not done in Theravada Buddhism as the focus is to emphasize jhanas instead of chakras (though jhanas and chakras arise from the activities of attention with the stable jhanas being certain areas of resting attention at chakra areas).

This is usually described as certain vibrations in certain body parts such as describing vibrations in the lower spine, the groin, the chest area, third eye, top of the head, etc. However, it is important to note that the body parts are being inferred from sensate experience and not the other way around.

Mental illness definitely involves some sort of extreme activation or blockage at/to certain chakra areas. However, I cannot say that this phenomenon alone is responsible for mental illness, but rather it is a response that can be observed to occur during episodes of mental illness. For example, "sexual energy" which is being conceptually inferred from strong sensations in the groin area is present in some types of mania/A&P activity as well as pathologically strong sensations which would be attributed to the third eye area and the crown area in states of hallucinatory activity. Remember the "third eye" and the "crown" are mere concepts that are being inferred from strong sensate activity in these regions (generally labeled as "chakras"). However, I cannot say that this kind of activity occurs in all states of hallucination or mania.

Thanks TomTom. I can get my head around (intepret into my frameworks) most of what you are saying. In my perspective, talking about energy versus brain function are two ways or levels of description about aspects of the same thing, so what is more or less concrete depends on how concreteness is defined relative to those levels of description (i.e. it is hard to say one is more concrete than another, as each has a claim to being "concrete".).

While I can understand terms like activation and attention in your framework, I still am struggling to understand what is meant by blockage - which would relate to the "holding" of energy. One way to think about it is using the terminology of nonlinear dynamic systems (which is a good way to think about neural dynamics), in which stable states (e.g., jhanas) are "attractors". So in this sense, maybe you could see a blockage as being stuck in a particular attractor, and that part of the process of "enlightenment" is learning how to skillfully enter and exit these attractors (and not get stuck in them).

Hi J H,

I had spasms too but they were kind of mild and not painful. And they were more like what's called Kriyas (i.e. involuntary movements mainly of my facial and upper body musculature). At first I thought this was a Kundalini awakening. Maybe it is but it also turns out to be some repressed traumatic stuff that is finally beginning to surface. So I would not rule that out. I'm currently reading a book on child abuse and neglect. There's the case of a lady being hospitalized with muscle spasms. Later during the psychotherapeutic process these movements and cramps began to take form and look like acted childhood scenes.

First of all I would check back with your doctor to rule out any serious health issues. If that is done, then whatever it is (pure kundalini stuff, trauma, both, etc.) try to see it as a good sign and as the beginning of a journey to wholeness and integration. If there are body movements let the happen and try to stay mindful. Enjoy the ride, so to speak.
It helps a lot to read about experiences of other people and see that it can be a quite interesting and fascinating journey - no matter if it is kundalini, trauma or both. If you expect it to be related to trauma I would hight recommend doing psychotherapy. It can greatly help to integrate this stuff and make the ride less bumpy.

BTW, there's a thing called TRE (Trauma Release Exercises). It seems to help a lot of people with your kind of spasms/cramps and traumatic experiences. Google it and see if it can help. If you are interested I would either purchase David Bercelis book or DVD by the same name (the DVD contains a more thorough and the book a more concise exercise explanation).

All the best,
Andreas