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Still having trouble transcending itches and pains
buddhistok
Veteran
I've been meditating a long time now but am still having a lot of trouble not letting itches and pains get to me to the point where I have to scratch or otherwise adjust my meditation posture. Can anyone give some helpful suggestions?
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I would advise being mindful of the itch for about 10 seconds. And then mindfully and slowly scratching it. For pain just note it is there and return to the breath. If you are worried about injuring yourself take that seriously and maybe try another posture.
If having thought arisings one returns to the attention/awareness. No trouble at all . . .
If I need to itch...I do.
Will these impulses go away?
I don't know. I just get back to business when
I'm done doing it...
I never promised anyone I could ignore my
body stuff while trying to clear my mind, hahaha
Who's gonna check you?
I'm guessing this has become a bigger deal simply because you've made it so. If you try not to scratch itches or adjust posture then doing these things take on a larger scale than they normally would. Maybe try scratching and adjusting freely and see what happens.
(FTR, my first post was a joke, but there's something to be said for preventative measures. :P)
Itches, as @fivebells said, can be a really good teacher during meditation. They have all sorts of sensations and mental formations that come with them... great for insight.
I do this from time to time.
Keep looking for itches before they arise. Give them a few seconds to arise, to settle. Scratch, return to the scanning. At the same time or alternately look for pains, bring the awareness/attention to the pain, give a few seconds to arise and settle. Adjust your posture and continue.
Are you in pain normally, scratching yourself all the time? If so drink more water, improve diet and do yoga. If not consider it an arising . . . expect the form to change . . .
At the beginning of the meditation take some minutes to find a good posture by focusing on the body and relaxing every part. Don't just sit down and expect the posture to be ok. This will take care pains are not likely to arise.
Then focus on your meditation object. For me it is the breath. If your mind is relaxed enough, attention of the body will drop away and pains and itches will not be noticeable anymore, or only at the edge of awareness where they don't bother you. (So far Ajahn Brahm's instructions)
If the above does not happen, another way is to investigate the feelings. They change all the time, pains can even flow from one place to another. Their intensity chance etc. Seeing this will make them have less grip on you.
And then there is the scratching and moving, with which I see no problem.
Now, when we sit in meditation, since we force ourselves to stay in a single position over an extended period of time, the true nature of the body as a source of suffering comes into full view. This is itself beneficial for the practice. Additionally, we are also given the chance to explore the impermanence and not-self nature of pain and unpleasant sensations.
So before adjusting our posture, we purposely remain still and be aware of the pain for a period of time and then we can start contemplating the nature of that pain. Does the pain feel the same all the time or does it feel increasingly more intense at times and at other times the intensity lessens a bit. Here we try to examine whether pain or the unpleasant sensation is permanent or in constant state of flux.
We can also contemplate how much control we have over this pain. Does pain listen to our wishes? Can we just command the pain to disappear according to our wishes? Here, we try to contemplate whether this pain is part of the "self", or in other words is this really "our" pain
Then we can explore why this pain makes us suffer. If it is not "our" pain then why do we suffer from it? Here we try to see that it is our attachment to the idea that this pain is "our pain" which causes us to suffer. Through this kind of attachment, we end up with aversion, ie. the desire to be rid of the pain. And what if it doesn't go away? Then we become agitated, restless, far from peace. In this way, we see how identifying the pain as "our" pain is a source of suffering because such wrong view transforms what is merely a bodily pain into one of mental anguish as well. So we end up suffering in two ways, bodily and mentally. This kind of contemplation also helps us to realize more and more the need to develop right view with respect to the not-self nature of feelings.
Verses from Suttas under the discourses in the Vedanā-Samyutta grouping: ---------
We can't know your body and how it feels, so even if you end up lying on your side - if that works - do it.
Some meditation stools are slightly inclined to support the sacrum.
I'm not sure what would work for you, but the point is not to be in the right position.
The point is to 'be' - and meditate.
Don't be concerned that it may not be ';right'.
If it's right for you - then it's right.
I think we do what we can. I might try walking meditation and corpse position meditate @DrusillaFaith. Or try sitting but if it hurts you then go for the back support.
Like @Jeffrey said, I find that doing Savasana (Corpse Pose) on a yoga mat really helps my back and I will sometimes meditate that way at home.
I think sitting on a mattress (no matter how firm) may not be good for the back. It would probably be better to sit on the floor, even if you do prop up your back. I find that sitting on a flat pillow or folded blanket helps.
Thanks very much. This is something you have been very kind and patient enough to put into words for me, but, isn't it true that I have to realize this myself through meditation? This is the impression I get.
Did you make some of your own videos?
Most very heavy folk choose to use a chair or the corpse pose for back pain with formal meditation. Have you tryed either of these two?
Does the itching still occur if you are just sitting normally in a chair?
Does it only occur when you are meditating?
By spacious I mean that the urgency of the itch pervades everything you associate with. You can't forget the itch. So if it is spacious you can just notice your mind. And then scratch the itch.
Feel that everything. And then scratch the itch
If I have pains, headaches or itches it's a bit harder, but I can do the same: it's possible to not feel these pains and itches when body awareness drops. In fact, for me it is the case that the body starts to always hurt after a while (30 min or so) if I don't. This dropping of body awareness is not something special in itself. Think about when you are watching a movie - you probably don't notice how your body is sitting and can stay in one position for a long time. Although in meditation the object of course is not a movie, something similar can happen.
It's not a simple choice, though. It requires practice. It's the hindrance of sense desire that can make this hard to do. If the mind is attached to the body and doesn't detach, it will keep getting back to the pain and itches. The quote below is a beautiful example of this in the suttas, which was also quoted before: If the dropping of the body is a bit too far-fetched for you now, it's also interesting and insightful to see how much of the pain is mind created, how much we add to the pain, making it stronger. It's like fear. By avoiding it, it becomes stronger. By looking directly at it kindly, it gets weaker. I think some people here are pointing at the same things. Some people use a technique of breathing through the pains, which in my mind achieves just that: it takes the mental part away.
I have developed a similar way to take itches away without scratching. Itches become stronger if you don't allow them, if you get annoyed and want them to go away. They become less itchy if you take this mental force away.
In this thread I gave some more advice with some links to documents of teachers speaking about the dropping of body consciousness also:
http://newbuddhist.com/discussion/18853/how-do-i-see-that-feeling-is-not-the-self#latest
This dropping of awareness of the body is not just an escape from painful feelings, in my experience it is a natural progression of meditation. So don't see it as a kind of way around things, or a useless state. It'll create its own little insights. If you can do this you learn more about what sense desire means, about what attachment means.
With metta,
Sabre
In many people, the sight of someone scatching brings out a primal urge to reciprocate. Until now, psychologists have believed that the desire to join in comes from an innate sense of empathy.. But Professor Jamie Ward says his research proves otherwise. SOUNDBITE (English) PROFESSOR OF PSYCHOLOGY AT UNIVERSITY OF SUSSEX, JAMIE WARD, SAYING: "We've found that that wasn't the case, actually, that those people who were more empathic were perhaps less likely to do this and it suggests that they have a mechanism for switching off the sharing of feelings when those feelings might be quite negative or hurtful and what we find is that people who are more neurotic, which is defined as a tendency to experience more negative emotions were more likely to have contagious itching." The University of Sussex Professor co-led a study into the so-called 'itch matrix' and says his team found three regions of the brain linked to subjective itching. After filling in a questionnaire volunteers were filmed watching videos of others scratching. The results surprised Ward. SOUNDBITE (English) PROFESSOR OF PSYCHOLOGY AT UNIVERSITY OF SUSSEX, JAMIE WARD, SAYING: "You might imagine that when you see scratching that you would just activate the parts of the brain involved in producing the motor actions, that the thing that's contagious is the actual act of itching. What our research shows is that it isn't just the action of scratching that's contagious, it's the actual feeling of scratching or the feeling of itchiness so we activate parts of the brain that are involved in representing the body and also involved in the emotional parts of the brain." The team think the findings could help treat people suffering from chronic itching where there's no underlying dermatological cause. Ward says more research is needed but believes that one day psychological solutions could be applied to problems that are no more than skin deep.
http://www.reuters.com/video/2013/02/12/psychologists-seek-clues-to-scratching-c?videoId=241073161&feedType=VideoRSS&feedName=Technology&videoChannel=6&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+reuters/USVideoTechnology+(Video+/+US+/+Technology)
Itch awareness, acknowledgement, searching for its underlying nature is possible. You can do this with any mind arising. You can sing mantras to it. You can send Buddha visualisations to soothe it. In essence it is no different to a mind arising.
That is why it is important and nothing of any import . . .
Someone once told me her most important understanding to do with arisings was, 'hello arising, goodby arising.' In other words . . . we acknowledge its arrival, we experience its being, we allow its passing . . . :wave:
As we begin to develop awareness of bodily processes we sometimes become hyper aware and hyper vigilant about these processes.
It will pass. Keep returning to the object of contemplation..the breath or whatever..
Its not easy. And our minds have a unconscious resistance..the mind is a good servant but poor master and it sees different states as threatening. Be gentle with yourself.
I always meditate in a chair. The itch does occur, but itches at least seem to occur much more frequently when I meditate.
Do you think that the random itchiness is just normal for you but becomes more noticeable when your immobile in sitting meditation and limited from scratching them.
However that might not be helpful.
Maybe you could scratch its opposite? So for example, head itches - scratch big toe.
Belly itches, scratch inside of mouth.
Itch yoga . . now available.
For best results, develop these skills before the arrival of pain, illness and death. Itches are a great context for practicing with them.