How do you experience your body?
Jeroen
Luminous beings are we, not this crude matterNetherlands Veteran
Lately I have been experimenting with a technique I found in Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now. In it he describes a method he calls “feeling the body from within”. It seems fairly straightforward, you just feel the sensations of your body. But what I found was that there were various tinglings which force themselves on my attention when I do this, and then I come to focus more on the tingling, which seems to exist in various clouds around the body. It’s like having a second skin, which is being continually touched.
If I focus carefully, I can explore the sensations of the real body: I can feel my trousers against my legs, I can feel my shirt against my shoulders, I can feel the touches of my tongue against the roof of my mouth, I can feel my lips, I can feel the cool air against my arms. These things give me rest, a peaceful feeling. The tinglings persist as a kind of tinnitus, something that is both heard and felt, but it is continually moving.
How do you experience your body?
Comments
What you are experiencing @Jeroen, sounds a lot like what in Buddhism is called a body scan ...It's used for bringing the sense of self phenomena back into the physical body when it starts to wander up the garden path. A form of mindfulness practice.
I use shamata/vipassana
I’m familiar with the body scan, and it isn’t exactly the same. Instead of visiting parts of the body with attention in a regular order, as you do with the body scan, I see which parts of the body are requesting the most attention and visit those first.
My meditation practice tends to be very body oriented. As such my everyday instinct to reconnect and gather myself when becoming unbalanced is to connect with bodily sensations.
I think for the large part I feel the body as its weight being pulled down by gravity and a sense of pressure. My emotional state seems to be felt in my body as well, if I'm anxious or angry there will be a kind of tingling like a heat, craving is a sort of sickly feeling in the gut. I guess I hadn't really tried to categorize or label them so much until you asked the question here.
Joseph Goldstein talks about the feeling of hand. That there really is no feeling called hand, there is a bodily feeling located in that part of the body, but its the mind that turns those feelings into the concept of hand.
I have a body? And it's mine? Wow!
Are you sure it's mine?
Anyways, very grateful for anything...
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Shorter_Prajñāpāramitā_Hṛdaya_Sūtra
It’s interesting, coming back to this comment. I think on further reflection you were a lot closer to the purpose behind what I was doing than I thought, even if I wasn’t doing the exact sequence of the Buddhist body scan.
In specific poses, like while stretched out on my bed, my touch sensation fluctuates pretty wildly, and it takes some concentration to stay close to feeling the body. My hands are the steadiest part of my touch experience. Interestingly, when I stand up this all vanishes and I can feel my body fine.
This morning I had an interesting experience with “looking for peace and silence within the body.” This was a pointer given by Eckhart Tolle on his meditation on ‘feeling the inner body’ and I found it quite helpful.
Usually my body sense can be very diffuse, with a lot of noise. But according to Eckhart, the first stage of feeling the inner body is to arrive at a point of peace and silence. So this morning I instructed my body to go to a place of peace and silence, and to my great surprise it did so. Most of the noise-like elements cleared away.
It was a pleasant meditation.
I’ve noticed that when I meditate, my left shoulder rises. Uff... what a release it is when I become aware and simply let it relax. These days, I sometimes allow the tension to stay. When you pay attention to it, it tends to soften on its own. So much unnecessary suffering—poor posture most of the time, right? Others aren’t always as fortunate to be able to quickly bring relief to it.
Exercise is my way to listen to the body. I have found an interest in Tai Chi and Qi Qong. But I find myself a bit too shy to practice with others... haha
@Kotishka
The initial part of my meditation is becoming aware of tension and relaxing, letting go. Exactly right, becoming aware, helps the softening.
In a sense, the mind/emotions too can tighten around ideas, feelings and chatter. Again by being attentive, we also find the process of leaving them to be, is part of acceptance and releasing...
I still sweat and find my posture rigid. It takes me around 10minutes before I settle down.
Today I had a small intensive zazen retreat and I noticed that during the first two sessions of zazen I was representing the role of a muscle knot embodied as Kotishka.
When I want to do that I begin with Shamatha, to calm the mind, followed by Vipassana.
I still my breathing; I gently relax my whole body, and release tension. I have noticed often, that I seem to experience a sensation of tingling between my skull and brain.. very subtle, almost imperceptible... and my palms also tingle, a little bit like pins and needles, and I can palpate energy between them, as if pressing on an inflated balloon...
I have become aware of the head sensation, since experiencing the car accident last year.☆
Less welcome sensations involve pain to my left eye, manifesting in different ways; and I have experienced 4 severe migraines since.
I am alive. I can't complain. I am grateful for the fact I still exist!
☆see update in this thread:
https://newbuddhist.com/discussion/27257/up-and-down-in-and-out-knocked-sideways#latest
@Kotishka
'Muscle knot' is not unusual
You might benefit from Yoga Nidra...
https://insighttimer.com/stevewolf/guided-meditations/yoga-nidra-maximum-body-scan
I have practiced yoga nidra a lot, in many ways. In RL (Real Life) Virtual led meditations and my own modifications.