In vipassana meditation the meditator focuses on sensations on the body from head to toe, systematically moving down top to bottom and noticing the sensations i

In vipassana meditation the meditator focuses on sensations on the body from head to toe, systematically moving down top to bottom and noticing the sensations in each part - head, eyes, ears, nose, shoulders etc. when thoughts arise you notice the sensations they create and over time you develop a map of thoughts to sensations. as you meditate some past traumatic experiences may arise and you may start to mentally react to it, but you notice that thinking about that particular insult from the past may just be causing this discofmrting sensation in some part of the body and you are reacting to the discmfort/pain caused by that. by training your mind to maintain equanimity, you realize that all these thoughts are doing is creating a sensation and causing you to react, and over time you can become a little more detached to it. what is weird though about these sensations though is that there might be these knots tied up in your chest, and by focusing on the pain of these knots you start to release a lot of old memories that caused you some kind of pain in the past. the pain of those memories are stored as sensations in the body. if your in a bad situation in your life mentally and psychologically it will absolutely manifest itself in terms of physical symptoms. additionally I have found that the combination of meditation and any kind of drugs - marijuana or psychedelics can cause of a lot of that trauma to be released.