Samskara
Everything we experience is recorded in the body.
Pattabhi Jois used to say: "Every time you blink, you think a new thought." We blink around 15-20,000 times a day. Many of our thoughts are simply repetitions of previous thoughts, but nonetheless, we clearly have many, many thoughts and feelings in a lifetime - probably millions and millions.
And these are all recorded in the body. When you sit to meditate, the body starts to remind you of all the unfinished business you have not taken care of - these manifest as tensions and pains in the body that stimulate thoughts and cause distraction.
There are ways to temporarily transcend these bodily messages - asana and pranayama can lift our awareness out of the denseness of the physical body into the prana. From here we can enjoy brief glimpses of meditation states. But these are dependent on the preceding practices.
And no real progress can be made without neutralising the effect of afflictive memories. Patanjali suggests that a practitioner should meditate on thoughts/feelings that cause pain and should trace subtle causes of affliction to their source.
In this way, smaskaras are reduced to the status of "burnt seed" - a memory which has no power to cause distress and no longer acts as obstacle to samadhi.
Muscle Memory
We all experience tension and pain in our bodies. It moves around but there are usually areas where it is more concentrated. You often become aware of these tensions only when you come to sit still.
The 206 bones of the human body are not a rigid structure, they rest in soft tissue - muscle, skin, tendons, ligaments and fascia which holds the bones in place and gives the body integrity. But that posture is always in a dynamic tension.
Because of this dynamic tension, as long as the body keeps moving, the stresses continuously shift from place to place, so we can continuously move on from discomort. That is why movement feels good.
But when you come to sit, those tensions become obvious.
A system under stress is always trying to find balance, is always trying to release, and those sites that we become aware of as the locations of greatest stress intensity, are also the places where the body is most ready or desiring to let go.
Something stands in its place: something maintains the tension in spite of biological and mechanical forces that are operating to release. That something is the mind and its operation through the nervous system that continuously maintains the tension.
Muscle Twitch
Did you know that the fibres which make up muscles are in a constant dance between contraction and release?
In fact, muscle fibres spend more time in relaxed mode than under contraction. The reason we do not feel this is because the 1000s of fibres which make up a muscle do not all act at the same time: motor neurons that innervate bundles of fibres fire asynchronously, giving us the impression that muscle tone remains constant.
There are "slow" and "fast" twitch muscle fibres. Slow twitch fibres maintain static positions/posture while fast twitch fibres are recruited for spontaneous action. Muscles are typically a combination of both types.
A slow twitch fibre takes 10-20 mili seconds to reach full contraction and then spends 70-80 mili seconds relaxing - it only contracts 20% of the time and spends 80% of the time relaxing!
When we feel muscle tension we are only aware of the contraction that is taking place, but each fibre of the muscle is actually relaxing 80% of the time!
Since the muscle fibres are only firing 20% of the time could we attune the mind to the release phase instead of the stimulation (contraction) phase of the muscle fibre?
Introspection, Interoception and Proprioception
INTEROCEPTION
"Interoception refers to the body's ability to sense and perceive internal physiological states and processes, including sensations related to visceral organs, autonomic nervous system activity, and emotional responses.
It plays a crucial role in maintaining homeostasis, regulating bodily functions, and providing feedback to the brain about the internal state of the body." - Chat GPT
PROPRIOCEPTION
"Proprioception is the body's innate ability to sense and perceive its position, movement, and orientation in space. It is a fundamental aspect of human sensory processing that provides continuous feedback to the brain about the body's internal state and external environment.
Proprioceptive information is derived from specialized sensory receptors called proprioceptors, which are located in muscles, tendons, ligaments, joints, and the inner ear." - Chat GPT
These two types of perception are slightly different - the first refers more to internal feedback systems while the second is related more to position in space. Where tension and pain exist, these two types of perception overlap.
Most of the time these feedback loops are operating automatically, on the borderline of our awareness, but we can also become conscious of the process and participate in it.
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The body is constantly trying to release stress and tension. But when we experience tension or pain, our tendency is usually go in the opposite direction - we run from pain and discomfort (in many ways), and hence we stand in the way of our own release. But if we bring our attention to the location where this is happening, we can facilitate and deepen the process.
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Meditations for Tension and Pain Release
Sundays 4PM Israel Time - 9AM New York Time
March 3/10/17/24