Hi,everyone.
I am from China. I went to at least one 10-day retreat alomst every year since 2011, but I barely meditate when off retreats. So I am still a novice yogi.
There is few sukha in my meditation. I usually suffered from pain or uncomfortable senses, likeirregular movements in the abdomen, energy (or Qi) stuck at my back side of head which causes pain, sometimes i can feel the bone in my nose or upper jaw.
But here is the most strange one which almost made me quit the practice.I am not good at English, but I will try my best to describe it. It may be a little wordy.
I use the Mahasi method. In the sitting meditation, I find that the body is divided into two parts-the left side and the right side.They have different feels.
At the beginning ,when I put my attention to one side,the sense of this side is obvious and clear,but i can hardly find any sense from the other side,or the sense from the other side is usually crude,vague.There is a clear boundary in the middle of the body. I can not feel the whole(left&right side) abdomen very clear at the same time. If one side is clear,the other side is vague.When I force to put the attention at the middle to feel the whole abdomen,then the mind will  switch very quickly between the two sides, or the sense of the whole abdomen just become dark and vague at the same time.
So I give up to feel the whole abdomen and just observe the most obvious side. Since I am a little left-handed,th obvious side is usually the left side.
After several days, I found the lfet side sense begin to go across the boundary to feel the right side.Now when the left side is obvious, I can feel 2/3 of the body, the boundary seems to be pushed right. but when it switch to the right side,the boundary is still at the middle.
At the beginning, when I put my attention to one side,then this side just become the obvious side.But when i found that the left and right is different. this "trick" doesn't always work. Sometimes, I found that even my attention is at the left side, the body sense didn't follow my attention to make the left side obvious, it still stayed at the right side. so my feel of the left side just become very uncomfortabel,vague,dark,unclear.The switch is out of my control.

This situation puzzled me. Because I have a deep bias that my mind should easily feel the whole body and the left side and right side should be symmetrical alough I know in my rationality that the body is naturally not symmetrical.

I can not find exactly explanation in Buddhism. My guess is that maybe sometimes my left/right  brain just takes care of the body consciousness so it will chooses its major side as the obvious side,and my left brain and right brain just can not cooperate well at meditation state so I can not feel the whole abdomen well.

When I leave the retreat and back to daily life I can not feel the difference between the two sides. It only happens in the meditation. but I think it is still existing and my mindfulness is weaker in daily life so I don't notice it.

My confusion is that should I just ignore this leftside-rightside thing and always observe the obvious sense?Will it hinder my liberation?What should I do with it?
Dose any body have the same or similar situation?


Again,sorry for my strange English , I am not so good at it.

你好！I understand mandarin so you may reply in Chinese if it is too hard to explain and it isn't an issue with the moderators. Do you mean piti (raptures - sensations that are out of the ordinary, like those mentioned above and those of left/right occurrences)? Irregular movements in abdomen - they probably occur all the time, you just weren't mindful at those times to notice. Pain in head area and your left/right stuff are raptures and/or intense focus. I cannot advise definitely on the L/R stuff, but try not letting the off-balance bother you and simply observe them without trying to control until they end or for an hour and let us know? Having raptures are a good sign of progress, so keep practising!

Yilun,thanks for the reply
Since it's a English forum, I think using English is a better choice.
I don't think such things are piti. Because I dont feel happiness or sukha. Maybe just a little calmness. I am far away from A&P.
Actually at the last days of the retreat I just ignore the L/R stuff and put my attention to the obvious object no matter which side it is.
But I am curious about it.

Angra Mainyu
Thanks for your detailed reply.
You must be at a high level that I am far away from.Yes, I really find some difference when meditate using different hemisphere,but my discovery is still very crude.I have searched some science essays about the cognitive neuroscience but they are too academic. I prefer some explanations from the meditator.
With your advice, I try to notice my hands at once. As expected, I can't do it. My mind just try to focus on either the right hand or the left hand as a kind of habit.If I force to do it,then my mind just get nervous.The only way I can feel the two hands at once is just to lost the focus point.Just like you look straight and your eyes dont focus at anything then you can get the whole vision.You dont look at anything then you can see the whole thing.
But I still think it‘s one awareness.I dont quite understand your #2 separated mind medthod.
Can you describe how you do it?

Also, by no offense, I dont think your 'multi-threading' theory quite matches the buddhism.As all I know, the buddhism theory says that there is only one awareness (or citta) at a time. It's like a single-core CPU,not multi-core CPU.Multi-threading in single-core CPU is surface, in the underlying it still handle one threading at a time.But I think you must be familiar with the buddhist theory. So can you give more detail about your experience?

I only meditate the vipassana in the theravada way, dont know much about other meditation way. What is 'vajra-like meditative stabiliation' and chakra?

Again, thanks for the detailed reply