I've been practising Mahasi Style (mostly at my local Thai Wat) for over three years. I've done quite a few 2-4 day retreats, and about one reasonably long (1-2 week) retreat about each year.

During a long retreat a year or so ago I started to be be able to consistently feel my foot vibrating (at maybe 5-10 hertz) during walking. It now usually takes a day or so to build up enough concentration to feel this essentially continuously. Once that happens I start feeling a kind of "buzzing" in the mind in synchrony with the "wobbling" of the foot. Kind of like pressing the button on a hand drill, feeling the vibration and hearing the sound.

I thought I was imagining it for a while, but my teachers assured me it was real. I sometimes play with it a little (as Daniel suggests in his book in the section about anicca in chapter 5, though I read that much more recently). I'll lift my foot half way and stop. The wobbling and the buzzing both stop. Then I start moving again and the buzzing starts again.

I don't have a problem with this, but I'm curious whether there is some aspect that it would be helpful to pay attention to.

Mike

The buzzing itself, all the little sensations that make it up, every little one, arising and vanishing, over and over, again and again, seeing these writes insight upon the mind, and more insight moves things along.

That is early second vipassana jhana: good stuff. Keep going: it gets more and more interesting. Speed, precision, consistency, and then breadth of the ability to do this: keep going.

can you access those vibrations in daily life (either during a practice session or just in daily life in general)? if not, try aiming for getting to it within a few hours, or an hour, or something. it might have taken you a day on retreat before, but you might be surprised what you're capable of if you just shoot straight for it (keeping your attention calm, light, and steady enough to open up to it).

tarin

Hi Mike from EnZed,

I second Daniel's response. See the impermanence and move on. It's all about increasing concentration abilities enough to contemplate the Dhamma, from which the real fruits of practice will develop.

Thanks everyone for the useful input. I'll experiment a little with my daily sessions (and the walking that I have to do to get places...) and see if I can get it to come up more consistently.

Mike