Dealing With Limb Movements And Pain In Mindfulness Meditation

Awareness into deeper unconscious energy with Mindfulness Meditation

An important rule in proper meditation is to relinquish control of one’s limbs, because the brain uses movements of arms and legs to express restlessness, discharge nervous energy and avoid the deeper awareness of painful subjective experiences. Without even noticing, we wiggle, jiggle, shake and scratch, not realizing how deeply we interfere through arm and leg movements with the penetration of our attention and awareness into deeper unconscious energy flows that drive our suffering. After we have properly stacked the spine, consciously relinquishing control of one’s limbs is a natural aspect of mindfulness meditation (both sitting and lying down), as we focus our intention on the exploration of energy flow without movement. This is why someone sitting in meditation seems motionless. I use the word ‘seems’, because the spine itself is always involved in slight adjustments of effortless posture as it moves like a hollow bamboo in the wind with the cycles of the breath, the pulsations of the cerebro-spinal fluid and the alignment process of noticing tensions in the inbreath, releasing them down into the earth in the outbreath and at the end of the outbreath realigning the spine within the effortless space of balanced sitting. Good sitting meditation posture never looks or feels like a telephone pole, but rather like a hollow bamboo in the wind. From this perspective, the limbs are kept still, but never stiff.

There are however exceptions to this rule. These pertain in formal practice to the two situations of meditators who have experienced psychological trauma and those with physical pain, in informal practice to the issue of gesticulation during communication.

With psychological trauma, being still and bringing intense attention to the body during formal practice can activate implicitly encoded painful memories, causing the meditator to experience intense somatic pain, emotional activations in the form of panic, or bodily movements in the form of shaking, convulsing or flailing. When the meditator is not overwhelmed by panic and therefore not in need of interrupting the meditation in order to get back into the window of tolerance, it can be useful and important to know how to allow the body to move in whatever way necessary, without interfering with these spontaneous movements. Although also possible during sitting meditations, this applies particularly to bodyscan meditations, during which the meditator is lying down, and therefore freer to allow the body to just let lose and take over with its spontaneous movement discharges.

These movements are spontaneous and not willfully activated by the meditator. The instruction in such a situation would be to allow ‘it’ (the body) to move without ‘you’ moving it. Physiologically these movements are part of the body’s self-healing processes as it reactivates and moves through the polyvagal stages of trauma recovery, from freeze to fight-flight to social engagement function. These spontaneous movements are the result of re-activation of freeze states into the fight-flight stage, as the body works its energy flow back to the more integrated energy flows of the healthy social engagement system, when the middle prefrontal cortex (MPC) comes back online. The hallmark of these movements is that they spontaneously move through the body like a storm through the landscape, coming and going, and that when allowed to flow, they do not engage the meditator into wanting to flee and interrupt the meditation. Often, but not always, emotional and cognitive content may arise, old unresolved narratives and memories may surface, which then have to be worked through in psychotherapy. While the movement discharge proceeds, it is therefore crucially important to continue the practice of meditation, including using all the appropriate tools of meditation, the intention to pay attention with kindness in certain learned and skillful ways. Blocking such movements in the mistaken belief that one has to remain still during meditation practice, would be a misguided and damaging way to practice. In mindfulness practice, stillness is not the absence of movement, but the meditator’s ability to not be reactive and interfere with the inevitable movements and energy flows of life. The deeper the ability to get out of your own way, the greater the stillness you will be able to access, and this stillness is exactly the wide open plane of almost infinite possibilities we learn to access through deep mindfulness.

The other exception to the rule of not moving one’s limbs during formal meditation pertains to the case of physical pain caused by physical problems. Indeed, during meditation all kinds of different functional pain experiences can arise, during which it is not advisable to move if one wants to deepen one’s practice. These functional pain experiences often seem to unexpectedly arise from nowhere, and they tend to decrease the more one works with that energy flow during meditation practice. If they don’t decrease during practice, they mostly tend to disappear the moment one changes the posture. There is however another kind of pain experience that is due to known physical conditions, such as a disc or joint problem. In these cases, trying to stay with the pain is futile. What usually happens is that the pain simply increases the longer we stay motionless with it, until we reach the point of entering the fight-flight red zone that is counterproductive to the work. Pushing through is the last thing one wants to do in this situation. Instead, the approach to such pain has to be much different. One explores it as long as possible without moving, as long as we can stay within the green and orange zone of the window of tolerance of energy flow, in other words, as long we don’t force or push through. Once it becomes clear that the body needs adjustment in order to avoid tensing up, we mindfully engage in a posture readjustment, so that the pain can diminish or disappear. This mindful adjustment is a skillful way to honor our organism’s need for healing in the case of known injuries and limitations.

Meditation is not something that we do an hour/day, but a state of mind we cultivate 24/7 in order for it to eventually become a mindful trait we generally embody. This means that the issue of limb movement is not just relevant during formal practice, but also in everyday life as we act and express ourselves. The principles we just described with regards to trauma and pain also apply to everyday life, as we are called to pay attention to the way we sit and behave with regards to unnecessary limb movements caused by inner restlessness. Situations in which we wait in line, sit anywhere for any possible reason or have a coffee with someone, are perfect opportunities to continue to deepen one’s access to deeper energy flow in everyday life by watching our tendency to move unnecessarily, the way we did during formal practice. This being said, I now want to draw attention to another form of spontaneous limb movement that is connected to communication. These are the gesticulations during conversations and speeches, as well as the pacing around during presentations.

Mindfulness practice alerts us to these communication-related limb movements, which are the non-verbal companions to our words. These are partially defined by our genes, temperament and social customs, such as Italians for example are more vivid gesticulators than British people. Deeper examination will quickly reveal however, that these natural companions to communication are often mixed with non-intentional expressions of inner nervousness, which interfere with and diminish the power of non-verbal communication. Mindfulness practice will allow you to slowly shed the need to cover up anxiety, embarrassment, other emotions or inner restlessness through unnecessary movements, and allow the natural, more attuned spontaneous movements accompanying the content of your communication to shine. Your sense of being solidly grounded in yourself and your world, as well as your power of communication, will increase because your gesticulations become a more attuned expression of the content you try to convey through words.

Meditation practice is simple but complex, and it is not easy to become a skilled meditator. Cookie-cutter approaches to meditation practice are toxic. We always have to meet the whole organism that we are, not only those aspects that meditation directly addresses. It is therefore so important to know how our organism functions as a whole in order to become a skilled meditator.

Our unique approach to Mindfuless Meditation »

Share This Story, Choose Your Platform!

More Blog Posts

Searching Everywhere But Where It Counts

Forgetting that we have a mind.

...

October 12, 2024

Before you worry about symptoms such as depression and anxiety and how to improve or get rid of them, before you get your blood boiling arguing with people who can't deal with anything beyond their own viewpoint, before you develop and become ensconced in your own opinions, before you vilify who disagrees with you, before you shake your head wondering how seemingly obvious facts cannot be agreed upon, before you assume you have no blind spots, before you despair that crowds never learn from history, before you become bitter at humanity's collective stupidity, before you get passionate about religion, mythology, and archetypes, before all that, wouldn't it make sense to inquire into the source of all of it - these symptoms, views, opinions, thoughts, actions, distortions and, frankly, miseries?

While it does not take rocket science to realize that the source of it all is the embodied human mind, for most, embarking on its exploration is at best a big challenge, at worst insurmountable, non-sensical or incomprehensible. How many times have you heard nonsense like “I don’t believe in psychology”, as if the existence of the moon were a matter of belief? How often do patients enter their physician’s office complaining of being anxious or depressed, and are sent home with a prescription without one question that would try to understand how their mind creates such suffering? Many people, including professionals who should know better, live and act as if they had no mind.

The mind is the source of all subjective phenomena and experiences, and we are astoundingly unaware of it. Our mind’s task is to ensure survival and the propagation of our species, not to ensure we live our best life. To this end, it needs to be efficient, rather than concerned about maximizing its potential. Efficiency results by pairing down information processing to the bare minimum. Embedded in the way mind functions are mechanisms that cause reality distortions, delusions, wild beliefs, and a profound obliviousness of one’s own ignorance. Whether we like it or not, our mind drives our lives like our heart pumps blood through our veins. The universe's natural processes have caused us to evolve that way, and for better or worse, we are stuck with a mind that functions sub-optimally as it creates profound reality distortions that seem at first blush to have successfully allowed us to multiply and propagate towards earth dominance. In the long run, however, it turns out that humanity may end up stampeding dangerously close to extinction. To thrive both individually and as a species we must come to terms with our rather dangerous mind and train ourselves to use it beyond its basic survival mode by accessing its inherent potential evolution has graciously also built into it. That takes work, training, effort and patience.

Our human mind provides the capacity for reflection. The mirror reflects what’s in front of it, meaning that as reality beams itself onto the mirror’s surface, the mirror beams it back to us as an image we can then examine from the outside. Notice how what gets examined by looking at the mirror is not reality itself, but an image of it. Our brain provides a similar process in the form of consciousness, whereby it maps reality in a virtual form we then can observe and manipulate. However, while the mirror reflects reality exactly as it is, the virtual reality consciousness creates is not only a map of reality, but that map is modified into a new creation. The brain as mapper functions as our central relationship organ that enables us to reflexively develop a relationship to reality and ourselves by having access to a virtual, mapped and modified reality we can ponder and manipulate. This is how we are self-aware.

As an aside, the mind is more than the creator of a virtual adaptation of reality we can reflexively relate to and have a relationship with. It can transcend self-awareness, and knowingly experience reality and awareness without the detour of mapped mirroring duality. That is the shift from observation to being, from knowing we exist in a universe to realizing we are the universe. More about that in another context.

The eye has a blind spot where the optic nerve enters the retina, but you don’t see it. You have the impression of enjoying a seamless field of vision without two black holes in the middle, even though the holes are there. The brain manages to fill in the missing information to make the field seem seamless. Extrapolate that to the whole brain to realize that to function effectively for everyday survival our brain adapts our field of consciousness in two ways: It fills what’s missing to provide a sense of continuity and simplifies available information to not overwhelm you. It hides blind spots from you to provide continuity and withholds information to ensure efficiency. Both these mechanisms distort reality to ensure survival, while simultaneously laying the foundations for ignorance and suffering.

We each have many blind spots, but the core blind spot affecting us all is the proclivity to live as if we had no mind. We use our minds without realizing the extent to which our experience of reality is created by our mind. Without our conscious knowledge our brain creates the reality we experience. We don’t notice that the reality we experience is our brain’s creation. We mistake our brain’s constructions for reality. This results in a dangerous situation, in which we ignore the fact that our experience is subjectively constructed. We mistakenly believe that what we see and experience is automatically true, and because it seems true it seems real, and because it seems real it cannot be changed. Our primordial blind spot towards the brain’s constructions robs us of freedom of choice, of the power of clear view, wise discernment, and respectfully compassionate mutual understanding.

Our mind’s constructions seem so real that we hold on to them for dear life and want to shove them down other people’s throats without exploring their veracity. We get strongly identified with what we believe we know, emotions take over, and the capacity to hear each other vanishes. Identification with mind processes is the single most destructive problem in the way humans use their minds. Emotions suffocate the mind’s spaciousness to freely consider, question, doubt and explore, and before we know it, we are in conflict. If we cannot agree on facts, emotions drive us to use force to impose our views instead of inquiring more deeply into the divergent realities, and if necessary, compromising to try to resolve complexities. Force can take the form of yelling and screaming at each other, or legal and physical action.

The reality our mind constructs and we can have a relationship with, is in fact threefold. We first have objective reality, which is what happens in the universe independent of whether we know about it or there is anyone around to witness it. This reality consists of energy flow that is independent of how our brains and minds construct reality, and therefore as far from information as energy flow can get. The black death virus killed thousands of people without them knowing what viruses are or being able to see them. Although this is the easiest reality to agree upon, like in the case of flat-earthers, emotions still manage to cause distortions of objective facts.

Subjective reality is our own private experience nobody else has access to. This energy flow is entirely within as a construction by our own brain and mind. Although it is largely independent of objective reality, it is profoundly shaped by interactions with others. Even if everyone denies that I am in pain, if I experience pain, it is totally real for me. That is a difficult reality to agree upon, because seeing it from the outside requires trust and our capacity for empathy.

Then there is intersubjective reality, which is the reality of stories. This energy flow is deeply symbolic in the sense that language and stories are symbolic, therefore experienced as information flow, and a mutual co-creation with others. It is the reality that emerges through mutual narrative construction and is neither objective, nor subjective. It only exists in the interpersonal realm containing people who are willing to participate in it by accepting the shared reality. One such reality is money, but there are many others such as all collective ideas we can share. Money means nothing and has no reality unless it is shared in the interpersonal space. This is also a difficult reality to deal with, because it depends on the mutual capacity to regulate the multilayered energy flow between our intuition, our emotions and our intellect. When that occurs, empathy and clear insight become possible, allowing a degree of harmony within the intersubjective dance of energy and information flow to emerge. Any dance couple may dance a Tango, but those in conflict will not be able to present a harmonious dance.

To manage these three realities we each have a relationship with, requires a good deal of self-awareness and emotional regulation many people don’t have. Much of the time, the mind remains transparent like air to our eyes, invisible or not known, yet profoundly determining how we relate to real reality and live our lives. Like children playing in a house on fire, we remain oblivious to the many ways our ignorance of mind causes suffering and destruction all around.

The Basic Human Right to Stupidity

Silence and stupidity are the foundations of mental health.

...

October 1, 2024

As biological beings we function in analog mode, shifting from one physical and mental state to another, using intelligence to solve problems and consciousness to guide our intuition to make the best possible choices. In contrast to intelligence, which we also find in AI (artificial intelligence), consciousness involves both feelings and the capacity to self-reflect, resulting in the ability to resist reality and by extension suffer. Our biological organism functions naturally as a continuous energy and information flow changing with time through an infinite number of states (like the grandfather clock that shows the whole flow of time), while AI is digital, based only on two discreet states, 0 and 1, from which it organizes information (like your digital watch that only shows the exact time it is now). AI as an information processing system is completely alien to our organic nature. AI is an algorithm that like a table has no feelings and never sleeps, never needs a rest, never feels anything, and is incapable of ethical consideration (if it seems to have ethical reflections it is because it has been programmed to imitate ethical views, not because it feels anything). In social media it is programmed to make money by eliciting user engagement through emphasis on information that activates feelings in human beings, such as anger, awe, attraction, joy etc. The AI algorithm just chugs along as a soulless, emotionless information process like robots or zombies if you prefer the world of fantasy.

Humans, in turn, need rest, sleep, and the cultivation of various mental states through play, intimacy, physical activity, problem-solving, daydreaming and meditation. Within that richness of mental states lies creativity, and at the core of creativity is silence and stupidity. The cultivation of silence, and by extension unknowing, is paramount for the discovery of contexts within which all knowing is embedded. Stupidity relates to the fact that a majority of thoughts we have are crazy, non-sensical, false, deluded, unintelligible, and mysterious. Like a tree spreading millions of seeds, only a few of which will thrive into a new tree, our mind spews out millions of thoughts and fantasies, only a few of which are reflective of truth and conducive to living the good life. Nevertheless, that prolific productivity is the bedrock of creativity and requires skillful management. If we want to be healthy, we need to create a safe, private space for those thoughts to live, evolve, and be processed within the entirety of the mind. That space is the silence of contemplation and the safety of intimacy. Under the incessant barrage of the AI algorithm through social media we have been robbed of such a space, because we are swept away into the algorithmic stream of likes, dislikes, approvals, disapprovals, comparisons, competitions etc. The energy of stupidity then, is used to feed our narcissistic nature and flow unchecked into the public domain of the internet, with really nefarious results.

We are far from having developed the full potential of mind. More often than not we succumb to our internal algorithm of conditioned reflexes, behaviors, reactions and mindless activities that cause untold suffering. If mind has a choice between easy and difficult, it will always choose easy. Easy is what can be manipulated in the concrete world; it is easier to control the body and fast, for example, than to practice mind concentration. We have a certain command over the body and the external world, but not over our mind. Faced with the challenge of mind exploration, we must engage in a rigorous mind training and learn to observe it without judgment.

Most importantly, non-judgmental inquiry requires the privacy of our own intimate space with ourselves and a few chosen people we trust, where stupidity can have full latitude of manifestation. Caring for stupidity requires free private and intimate time, which should be a basic human right. Stupidity and silence are gold mines guaranteeing mental integration and expansion of awareness towards larger contexts. Once we have incorporated such mind hygiene into our lives, we are better equipped to meet the demands and responsibilities of reality, including social reality, and wisely chose what we responsibly allow into the public domain. The non-judgmental attitude of intimate and private investigation needs to give way to the discerning attitude of social manifestation and public expression. In the public domain it has catastrophic social consequences if anything goes and the first thought that enters one's mind is spewed out. Social authenticity in the public domain has nothing to do with spontaneously spewing out whatever stupidities and unformed thoughts fly through one’s mind. It is rather based on one’s capacity to cogently and responsibly express what is relevant to the demands of any life situation after having sifted through the chaos of one's thoughts. In that sense, opinions must be carefully crafted if we want a society that functions wisely.

This dialectic between internal freedom for stupidity and silence and external responsibility for wisdom and perspective requires a difficult ingredient – the capacity to face the truth. Information and truth are not the same, and most information is not truth. We are flooded daily with plenty of information, but truth is a rare and costly kind of information integration process that requires hard work and time to be discovered. Truth is costly because it demands research and investment. Fiction and fantasy (not as literary genres) are cheap and don't require any investment; they can be made as attractive as you would like them to be. They are simplistic, deluded and disconnected from reality. Truth on the other hand is complicated and complex, often painful and unattractive, and the hallmark of our mind’s connection with reality.

‍

Important Changes to the Mindsight Intensive Program 2024-25

Important changes to the Mindsight Intensive program 2024-25

...

Novel ideas and information on what’s coming straight to your inbox! Subscribe to my newsletter now.

SUBSCRIBE!