I am not a native speaker of English. So please excuse clumsiness and mistakes.   

Here is my weird story (to borrow a nice expression from Jenny, with gratitude): I stumbled into Zen in the dark later nineties, when I was doing a therapy that was supposed to remove my suicidal tendencies (which it did, actually).

No real internet around then, no printed readings on practice available in the bookstores, so I trusted completely into what the next corner dojo Zen monk told me. Which was close to nothing.

At that time I supposed that it needed to be this way. Zen monks were supposed not to talk, so I did not ask either. I went to his dojo once a week to sit for an hour. He was an nice and scruffy old man, in an scruffy old dojo. I liked him because he was totally unesoteric and did not threaten to hug me, nor demand any kind of false harmony. During the sitting, I made up colorful stories, to get around the pain, while he read to us small stories about Zen monks, which I did not understand.

Half a year later I went to a 9 day Soto retreat, totally unprepared in terms of technique, and since I thought that enlightenment was somehow to do with severe pain, I sat through, always on the brink of screaming, tears and total desperation. That was one of the worst experiences in my entire life.

The master who lead the retreat, was surrounded by 200 practitioners. His entourage made clear that he was not available to beginners. So I remained silent.

On the last day, however, I decided to quit this shit. Before the monks in charge could pick me up in the dorm and drag me to the dojo (absence from sitting was not allowed), I went off and took a long, silent walk in the woods, watching the sunrise and listening to the awakening birds. Which, after this week of torment and pain, was heartbreakingly beautiful.

And this was the point when I had a kind of - I would have said experience, why not. A very profound experience. I understood completely how beautiful the world was, and that I was totally free, had always been. That was one of the best experiences in my entire life.

The best about it was that my body TOTALLY relaxed. For the first time in my life, I was physically free, and this made me emotionally and mentally free. I went home and thought “wow, now you´re enlightened!”. Obviously it had worked out: pain -> enlightenment. I no longer needed this shitty sitting practice, did I? So I dropped it.

I was free for six weeks in total, in which I put my life upside down, or better downside up. I started doing whatever was needed, no procrastination or depression any more, no more suicidal tendencies, no more social phobia. The positive consequences from these six weeks bear fruit until the present day.  

And then the cob webs of angst came back into my life.

I went back to the cushion, but did not talk about this, neither about my sudden freedom nor about my going back to body-and-mind-jail, neither to my Zen friends nor to the teacher. I sat once a week at the dojo, and went to more retreats to bring back “the experience”.  The main difference was that I now KNEW for sure that there was something in Zen that I could not get otherwise.

After four years of waiting and spinning away on the cushion, I gave up and stopped sitting.

I went about my life, depressed as ever, and spent the next six years getting into a job (which was, at that time with mass unemployment, not easy), and after a near physical breakdown, went to AA to get rid of my inclination with alcohol (and luckily, was able to get rid of it).

But still my life remained to be a mess, and in the back of my head, there was always this longing, for this experience I could not forget about. So one day in 2006, in a book store, I picked up a book by a Theravada nun about meditation techniques. And that was it. Finally I understood that there was something to be done on the cushion.

I walked straight to the next Soto Zen dojo, enrolled as a member and plunged into the practice. Which at that time meant 30 minutes sitting at home every day, three times a week sit one hour in the dojo, and three retreats per year, one of them for nine days, two for three days.

This time I made sure to ask whoever I met what exactly he was doing while sitting on the cushion. The answers remained very vague. The teachers I met were equally elusive. I could not make out if I was on the right trip. Now, having read my way through MCTB, I think they did not know what they were doing.

Still, I carried on and in 2008, had another experience which reminded me of what I was looking for: everything lightened up, the body relaxed, and a great joy welled up, and turned into love and compassion with everything and everybody. It lasted for two days, and then quickly faded.
I went to a Soto master and he asked if I knew how I had gotten there, and if I was able to reproduce this experience.  I did not know, except that there had been – again – a period of severe pain before the opening. So he told me to go home and practice until I knew. That was the teaching.
At least I gained from it that there obviously was a systematic way of achieving this state.

Well I tried to find out how to do this, but shortly after my talk to this teacher, my job life turned into a horror movie, and my focus went onto daily survival rather than onto the exploration of meditative techniques. At that time I came across the Soto precepts, and because it appealed to me intuitively, I started practicing very seriously to put a focus on “not criticize”.

At that time, my mind was deeply inhabited by criticizing – myself and others. Looking back, I must have started doing an intuitive kind of noting technique on “criticizing thought”, combined with the practice of equanimity towards results, and a practice of consciously detecting and dissolving all negative somatic feelings that arose in combination with my numerous communicative failures.

The sitting faded at that time, I was not able at that time to maintain a daily sitting schedule. But the practice of “not criticize” changed my communicative behavior very deeply. On this basis, after four years or so, I managed to unravel my job difficulties, and my life settled a bit. Still, my depressive tendencies continued.

I started peeking around for teachers outside the Soto tradition I had been stuck with for all these years. I found a teacher who did secular Rinzai style retreats with a demanding amount of sitting hours, and went there.

After the second retreat with him, I knew that my previous style of practice was not going to work with this. I had to do much more sitting at home. Which I did. I turned to volume up to two hours per day. And something started changing, while I did not know exactly what. In October 2013, I lost my depression, and my panic attacks. They disappeared and never came back.

A few months after the depression went away, my body – which had always been very stiff – began to shake during sitting. This lead to a gradual relaxation of the body and to profound changes in posture, which at times were very painful, but in the end lead to a much better physical and emotional balance. I was able to drop the “not-criticize”-practice.

I also started experiencing strong kundalini symptoms, first trembling, then shaking, and after a few months, spasms. A few times I even woke up at nights and found my body shaking, literally jumping about in the bed. I was not frightened, because it was so relaxing. But I had no idea what this was. The Rinzai teacher was either unable or unwilling to help me with this, and so I searched the internet. During this search, I came across various kundalini theorists and practitioners, and also across Shinzen Young and the dharmaoverground platform.  

I am very glad to FINALLY have found a place where somebody is actually talking about meditation and what is happening in it, in plain language and not in a mystic tone. So I am now here, trying to figure out where I am, what is going on, and how to proceed.

The kundalini symptoms have faded, only during sitting I still experience a continual and regular shaking. However, while it used to be relaxing before, it has now become simply annoying. Suppressing it does not work, either. That results in periodic and painful spasms which just shatter my awareness, but do not change anything. I must practice in some other way, but I do not know exactly how.

The body has settled into a posture and pattern of muscle tension that is not bad, but also not totally satisfying, not totally grounded. There is still a lot of unnecessary tension around, which I cannot get rid of. Also there remain some very annoying habits in daily life, especially a procrastination that drives me crazy.

Currently, I am trying to settle with a conscious technique. I tried Mahasi style noting, but for me it seems to lead only to confusion. I have no idea what these vibrations might be Daniel is talking about. It seems better to me to stick with a simple focus out, and especially with somatic experience at a wide focus.

On the other hand, after the spectacular changes which have taken place during the past months, it is hard for me to stay with the subtler physical phenomena. I find it simply boring.

So at the moment, I feel a bit stuck, and maybe need some reflection.

Sorry for this long piece, there is one more newbie splashing her lengthy story out above the board, but I felt I needed this in order to explain it to myself, and to give me a foundation.

I will continue in much shorter pieces.
Any comments and thoughts are very welcome.

Hi Jo Jo, 

Thank you for such a clear explanation of how you got here. Wow. I personally don't think you need to be shorter; it was so clear and easy to read. 

Okay:Okay, about your shaking. Have you read the posts of a man named Mario Nistri here? Or contacted him? I don't know if you two will resonate well, but he's dealt a lot with such body shaking and has written somewhere on the forum of ways he's been working with that aspect.

Else, I can just say I relate to your zen start. I love it now, and needed it to "get the party started" twenty-plus years ago, but there was a long window in there where it did not apparently help me and I needed these clear path-type practices. I also want to say that I think the moral practices (similar to your not-criticize maybe), the "paramis" are essentially companions: generosity, ethical discipline, patience, joyous perseverance, meditative stabilization and their resultant understanding. Anyway, that's just me. It sounds like you find your way well.

Welcome to the forum and best wishes.

Thank you, katy, for the nice welcome. I tried to track Mario´s posts but did not find anything on shaking. I´ll send him a pm these days. 

The last three weeks were hard. I had a three weeks IT training on the job, each day 5 hours, plus the usual work load to do. Plus in the weekends, I supported a friend who had to move flats with no money. So I did not manage to sit my full share of 2 hours per day, and two days went without sitting altogether. This shows immediately.
 
I tried to replace the formal training by informal practice, but it´s simply not the same.

Yet, since I have stumbled into DhO, informal practice has become much more relevant to me. Interesting, that while on the cushion noting does not seem to work for me, during the day it has become my favorite tool. I do not aim at high-speed, though. I just keep noting which sense door is engaged in the given moment. That gives me a good clue when I am going off into thinking. I can do this when walking or waiting. On the job, I get lost in what I am doing. 

Today, we and a few friends did a five hours sitting sunday (8 periods x 35 minutes, in between walking and lunch, all in silence). We do this once a month. It went well today. Had a lot of pain during the first 4 periods, but the shaking was less than usual. I could keep my concentration and achieved equanimity in a few stretches of time. After a few minutes of equanimity, the pain coming and going in waves, the body relaxed and the pain lost its bite. During the last two sitting periods, the shaking returned, and I was back at waiting for the bell. 

Wow. I read the whole text and my first thought was "Wow. That reads like the saddest story ever."

I recommend that you learn to practice Metta. There is so much hurt in your story. Metta (and Mudita, and Karuna!) helps a lot. It may be exactly what you need. Daniel doesn't talk much about it in MCTB, but it is extremely valuable for people who've lost their balance.

Metta isn't Vipassana, so it won't get you insight. So maybe it seems a bit boring to you now. But in my experience it's... necessary.

Hi Jo Jo,

Welcome to the forum. That was a very impressive story. A lot of strength and courage and perseverence in there. You're truly on the Hero's Journey, as Joseph Campbell describes it (Rob Preece gives a must-read explanation of how it applies to the spiritual path in Wisdom of Imperfection: The Challenge of Individuation in Buddhist Life), and I'm sure there can yet be a happy ending. You've certainly found a wonderful oasis in this place.

A lot of it sounds like you were repeatedly going from 3C's into A&P territory while your baseline was probably in the DN. But then this makes me think you've subsequently become more established in it: 

Here be dragons! Battle on brave knight! 

You seem to be basically on the right track, so really all I'd like to do is give my warmest encouragement, and reiterate Daniel's advice to not stop practicing.

Also, you mention not knowing what Daniel means by "vibrations". In my experience at least, the vibrations can be difficult to discern in the DN, and for a while I saw that as indicative of poor perception and a weak practice, which lead me to think I hadn't crossed the A&P when in fact I had. Eventually, the recurring periods of EQ amidst the DN made it obvious.

I hope the practice log is beneficial for you.

Thanks for the nice replies.  It´s good to see that someone is interested in reading such stuff.

Yes, I agree, it is a sad story. And it might have been even sadder, considering the circumstances. I consider myself lucky. There is a path, at least, even if blurred and obstructed, and there is some progress, even if slow.

I simply continue my sitting practice. Mind shattered as usual, and my main practice seems to be to stay on the cushion, not run away, and watch the mind find its way back to the body sensations.

Some parts of the body seem to be totally inaccessible to my awareness, even when I manage to stabilize awareness in their direction. Following some advice by Daniel elsewhere, I now pay attention to small shifts and changes that occur on the fringes of such body areas. 

I noticed that it is not good to keep the focus forcefully in a place. When I see force arise, I allow the focus to open up and spread over the body as a whole. 

The shaking continues. I enroled for a Chan weekend retreat in Great Britain in the beginning of December. Small community, no more than 20 persons. I am very mucch looking forward to this, as well as to the 2-3 days I´ll spend at the British seaside afterwards. This teacher is scrupulous about methods, and pays much attention to the body. Hope he´ll be able to give some useful advice. A weekend is literally no time.

I've been having intense shaking and jerking every day for a couple months now. Shinzen Young explains it here. I prefer the Reichian/Bioenergetic model: As children we learn to cut off our emotions by tightening our muscles and restricting our breathing. Over time, the tightening becomes unconscious and the tensions become chronic. As we meditate, this 'character armor' is seen clearly, and so the body shakes and jerks to remove the chronic tension.

Try to passively yet precisely observe your feelings while you allow your body to shake and jerk as much as it likes. After it's done (at a given time) your body will feel more relaxed and whole.

Good luck with your path!

Thanks again for taking an interest.
@ Bernd the Broter: metta drives me mad. To me it feels a bit like suppression, like putting positive thinking stuff on top of a pot of brewing shit.

On the other hand, it is true that I tend to practice in a one-sided way. When sitting down I automatically start tracking down tensions and pains. I do not look for pleasurable or neutral body sensations. I do *expect* them, and I notice their *absence* (both of which is wandering mind of course, not being present), but I do not check if there actually *are* any desirable body sensations present. I might pay more attention to that and to neutral sensations, in the future.

Two days ago I had a very nice experience when a big horrible knot opened up and my body came to a deep rest, hips, legs and spine opening up. No more shaking, even the mind stopped talking, and focused on this wonderful rest. This continued even when I got up from the cushion. I stood awhile in wonderment and then took a walk in the night, just to enjoy the body. On the next morning, this nice body perception ws gone. Since then the mind keeps clinging to this and checking my body continually and like mad for any obstacles preventing me from the return to this state.

Hi Jo jo ;

If i may suggest anything, after reading your last post about your last 2 days and that nice body feeling lost .. 

Try , all the day around, to be attentive to any negative feeling/thinking when it arises, and when noticed, seize that attention you have at that moment and turn it on to your 5 senses, litterally, don't try to analyse anything, don't hesitate, just suddenly turn and focus that attention you just gained on the maximum of your 5 senses , all of them best.  There/This is the real "you". (i think) 

Now stay there listening only to your senses at your best, and watch in the background that negative feeling/thinking fade away in a minute if not few seconds. 

Now if it worked, and you did find  and understand what triggered the bad feelings/toughts, you can now leave that incorrect view that triggered all this erase itself

i bet you will get that nice relaxed body (and mind) feeling soon, and long lasting


ps : i recently feel i got unstuck from where you seem stuck  after listening to this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vaaJP6fpJ0 and reading this thread : http://www.dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/discussion/-/message_boards/message/5615595 

After having experimented a bit with noting, Mahasi and Shinzen Young style, I´m now back to my usual practice. Labeling seems to involve too much effort, I am too slow, I have no idea what these vibrations might be, and the whole process makes me restless and unaware (I cannot get away from the question if I am labeling correctly). 

By these experiments, though, I got much more clarity about what my "usual practice" actually consists of. It actually seems to be a way of noting without labeling. I aim at "doing nothing", but in my sittings, my body sensations present themselves as a natural object which I cannot let go of at the moment. Whenever I sit down, the mind automatically starts commenting on the body sensations like a sports reporter on TV - especially on the painful ones (recently I included positive and neutral sensations as well). I used to consider this ongoing inner comment as a huge distraction, to be avoided. Now I let it happen. I turn a bit attention to the question: where does the flow of comment contain judgements, where is it simply descriptive.

Thanks to Droll Dedekind for the Shinzen Young video. I will also check the Reichian Therapy Thread in detail (lots of stuff there!). This body stuff has first priority to me. I experience every single day how massively perceptions, emotions, and the ability to act are influenced by the level and patterns of muscular tension. Two days ago, a huge lump dissolved which had affected the complete right half of my body. The change is not yet permanent, the knot re-tightens during the day, but whenever it dissolves, a total and sudden change in mood - and range of perception - follows automatically.

Last night I woke up because my body wanted to shake.

I had that in summer, a few times. In summer, the shaking "fits" took up to one hour, the complete body was thoroughly shaken through, and was left in a well relaxed state. Last night the "practice" took only 10 minutes. Besides some irregular shaking in the right half of the body, the body repeatedly and decidedly moved into two positions which I now found to be yoga asanas: salabhasana and setu bandhasana. It was actually very refreshing and relaxing, I´d prefer however not to have to wake up for this in the middle of the night.

I continue to sit 2 hours per day, being aware of body sensations while the mind comments away on them in the background. During the day, awareness on body sensations arises frequently. Right half of body continues to be tense. Some desperation there.

Today, I experienced two huge disappointments within less than 18 hours.
I was glad that I could "escape" into turning my awareness to the bodily sensations.

I continued doing this the whole day. Now the worst storms are over, but there is still a lot of physical tension and pain-like feelings that were not there before. 

In the real world, nothing had changed. I had a talk and received two e-mails. The only thing that changed (twice, very radically), was my notion of what my personal future might look like.

Currently I am in fear and aversion. This affects the body in a surprisingly strong way.

I cannot say that it is easy for me to practice with that situation.

I continue sitting for two hours per day. The tension release speed had increased during the last week, boredom had disappeared, inner physical sensations had become much more clear. Now I´m back to being a stone in pain. Hope it does not last too long, this time.

The day before yesterday I returned from a retreat at which something significant had happened. I do not know how to label it; it might be an A & P or even an SE. I read MCTB more than a year ago, therefore I haven´t got the map vocabulary on my mind right now. I´ll try my best to describe it in my own words.

Maybe I need to mention that I had my first A & P experience back in 1997, six months after I had started meditating (just-sitting), and in the end of my first nine-day-retreat. At that time, it was all fireworks, a sudden and totally unexpected release of all physical and mental tensions, a significant expansion in perception, deep inner rest and joy, mental clarity. I needed much less sleep, had a lot of free unhindered energy at my disposal, and my habit of procrastination was totally gone.

I remained six weeks in this state and got the hell of a lot of stuff done in this time. Then it slowly faded, and I was back to my depressed self. At that time, I couldn´t have described it in this way, it was just like "simply everything has suddenly changed" and "I´m incredibly powerful now and can do what I like". I thought I was enlightened, and had "done it".

My 2nd A & P experience was in 2008. Before, I had dropped the sitting for about six or seven years, and then had resumed it at a rather low level (30 minutes formal sitting per day, focusing on the breath, but not strictly. Occasionally I took a few days or weeks off, and I did no practice off the cushion).

Two years after this restart, I experienced during a retreat an intense stretch of pain, followed by an upwelling of deep compassion with myself, and then a sudden release in my body. As in 1997, I experienced an opening in my perception, joy and mental clarity, and the feeling of being very powerful. This time, the state was not so totally unknown to me, so I was less excited about it, but I still got really conceited about my new abilities. This time, the state lasted only for two days.

In both cases, I had had no idea what had happened. These states crashed down upon me like from outer space. I did neither increase the amount of sitting in the following, nor did I change anything else in my practice. Roughly one year ago, then, I started doing 2 hrs per day, and slowly worked my way into developing a kind of systematic technique. In the end of 2014, I lost my depressive states, and anxiety reduced very much.

On this retreat now, we sat 11 hrs per day, and I did my DIY technique: focusing on body sensations (in Shinzen Young terminology: feel out). In the beginning, I usually keep the focus wide and then let it wander to where it wants to go, usually to some spot of pain, without zooming in too much, and from time to time widening the focus back to the body as a whole. At the same time, I am alert if in my thinking occur any expectations or projections "how I want the situation to change", and I take great care to let go of these. The other thinking I let go on as it pleases.

If all goes well this ends in sitting with the pain as it is, not enforcing anything, not projecting any solution. Usually, after some time the body comes up with its own solution, and most times this is an unexpected and unprojected one. The shaking, jerking and turning, by the way, is going on all the while.

This time I was busy with the spots underneath my sitting bones. The left one was a problem; there was a blockage over the left hip that hindered it to open up, and so the body was unbalanced, which led to constrictions in my breathing. This went on for some hours. At the same time the torso was rattling continually, and from time to time my legs went into convulsions that nearly sent me off the cushion. I was really sick of all this, fed up to the max.

Then finally I managed to place a wide focus around this hip/sitting bone area and be really kind with it; allowed the blockage to be, allowed the shaking to be. Everything went really quiet, even the shaking quietened, and I sat there patiently in the middle of this sea of pain with my shitty left hip. And then slowly slowly the hip started opening up - not the blockage above it, but the hip joint itself opened up, and the pain slowly went away. The whole body came to complete balance on both sitting bones equally for the first time I can ever remember, the breathing deepened, and then I sat there like Queen of Kings in total rest and quietude.

There was still some pain, and there was not this deep joy I had experienced in my first two A & P, but there was this quietude. I do not remember if there were any thoughts; I believe there weren´t.

A few minutes later I had to get up and go to my teacher. This time I did not think about what to tell him; I just walked into the room and sat down in front of him. He said something like "There it is". Unfortunately I did not ask him what the heck he meant by "it": Samadhi, or what? So I do not know. We just had a nice talk about what had happened, my first talk to him in total ease and without any haste or misunderstandings.

I knew that there was nothing magical in this whole process, I knew exactly how I had done it, and I knew now how I could deepen this. From this point on, it got easier with each sitting. However, I was still happy when the retreat was over.

When the silence was broken in the end of the retreat, there came real joy, but it was not this "I´m the Greatest and Can Do Anything"-joy. I clearly watched the energies welling up in my body and felt that I was going out of balance. There is also quite some tension left in the body, and it is clear to me that there is a lot of work yet to be done.

What changed in everyday matters (for two days now, so this needs more testing): procrastination disappeared again, I simply get up in the morning and do things, I am in a good mood all the time, my body wants to move (I hate sports), my craving for chocolate seems to be reduced, I seem to not care so much in the moment as I used to, about what others think of me, and in the moment I am a bit short of real understanding for relationship issues. Would be nice if that might stay like this, it makes life much nicer and easier.

I'm not sure I really understand what you are doing here, although it sounds appealing.
When you say you let focus go in your body where it wants and it's usually a spot of pain, do you mean an actual physical pain, or any feeling resonating in the body which doesn't feel quite 'right' or 'complete' or 'solved' yet?

What do you mean with 'the hip joint opened up'? That it released unnecessary tension? How does this relate to the pain in your hip?

Reread MCTB (the relevant chapters) and its clear - no SE.
May have been a glimpse of EQ, or I´m still stuck in the 3C. Ofc I would rather not.

Bernd, sorry for coming back to you late. I was a bit busy last week.

Bernd wrote: "I'm not sure I really understand what you are doing here, although it sounds appealing.
When you say you let focus go in your body where it wants and it's usually a spot of pain, do you mean an actual physical pain, or any feeling resonating in the body which doesn't feel quite 'right' or 'complete' or 'solved' yet?"

I mean actual physical pain, in places where dysfunctional muscular patterns have established themselves over the years. Takes quite a bit of practice to get aware of them and let go of them.

Bernd wrote: "What do you mean with 'the hip joint opened up'? That it released unnecessary tension? How does this relate to the pain in your hip?"

Around the hip joint, spreading into the torso and into the thigh, there was/is a whole cluster of dysfunctional tensions/tightening of muscles, keeping the joint tight. There was/is a pain that seemed to originate from the place where the hip bone rotates in its socket. In fact it didn´t; it originated from quite complicated tensions patterns around the joint. The most difficult thing is to get aware of how things really ARE, as opposed to how I am used to see them. Once I´ve found out I can work on them.

Thank you for taking an interest. All comments are greatly appreciated.

I carry on with the practice, just sitting, one hour in the morning, and one at night.
The body continues shaking and jerking.
very slowly, the relaxation goes deeper. Its like peeling an onion.
There is no pain anymore, just VERY unpleasant sensations. Some days ago, a new kind of sensation appeared.
While usually I can attribute sensations to certain muscles or tensions, this seems to be at cellular level and pervades whole parts of the body, e.g. the legs. It has a slightly burning quality, like a very slow combustion process.

I carry on with my practice, two hours per day "just sitting", one  hour in the morning and one hour in the evening.
"Just sitting" is an euphemism, of course, there is lot of stuff going on in body and mind. Mostly energy flows, jerking, shaking, turns to the left and right, sometimes pain, but the pain is not in the least as bad as it used to be for years.

Relaxation continues to reach "deeper" levels. I wonder how many levels there are going to appear. When  I started sitting intensely, each level was a miracle to me. I used to think that a+p was just round the corner, but there keep coming up new levels of physical tension that have to combust and dissolve.

A very large blockage in the right half of the body persists. I continue sitting with that. I found that I have to appreciate and respect these blockages, even if this sounds paradoxical. They are the body´s attempts to protect and defend me, gone unconscious over the years and frozen into the muscles. When I evoke gratitude and respect for this, when I neither try to actively dissolve anything nor even mentally project any solutions, this somehow seems to open up a mental space which enables me to better see what´s exactly going on. And it seems that the body needs this for letting go.

After the sittings the body feels deeply relaxed. This carries on to off cushion activities. The posture has changed significantly during the past months, also my general baseline of well-being.

What surprises me most is that now I can easily get up in the mornings. i sleep five to six hours per night, get up when the alarm goes off, and feel ok after a three to four minutes of adaptation. all my life I had to fight in the mornings, and it took me hours in the mornings to become a mensch.

Continued to sit two hours per day, recently 3 hours.
Attended one 5-day-retreat, one 2,5 day retreat (each 10 hours cushion-time per day), one 3-day-retreat and two day long retreats (each 6 hours cushion-time) in the past six weeks.
The big lump in the right side of the body finally dissolved, and this lead to a big change in the left hand hip/pelvis area, cracking noises in the place where the spine meets the pelvis bones involved, and a huge relief in the whole torso! Breath is still shallow, the shaking goes on, new lumps and tightnesses appear and dissolve, but they are less severe. Sometimes I even enjoy the sitting, legs do no longer go numb.
Currently the body feels more awkward during the day. I can not yet really figure out how to stand and walk with ease. All movements are clumsy. Sometimes, in the office, when I do not watch out, the body begins to shake.
I take all this as a good sign.

On the cushion: As long I can keep the required minimum awareness on the physical sensations, I do not mind what the mind does. I let the awareness go wherever it wants, just avoid zooming in too intensely onto one point.