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Meditation as Wakeful Relaxation: Unclenching Smooth Muscle
- ryandv 10mo agoYou must learn to sit perfectly still with every muscle tense for long periods. Various things will happen to you while you are practising these positions; they must be carefully analysed and described. Note down the duration of practice; the severity of the pain (if any) which accompanies it, the degree of rigidity attained, and any other pertinent matters. When you have progressed up to the point that a saucer filled to the brim with water and poised upon the head does not spill one drop during a whole hour, and when you can no longer perceive the slightest tremor in any muscle; when, in short, you are perfectly steady and easy, you will be admitted for examination; and, should you pass, you will be instructed in more complex and difficult practices. - Aleister Crowley, Liber E vel Exercitiorum, 1911. https://hermetic.com/crowley/equinox/i/i/eqi01005 https://hermetic.com/crowley/equinox/i/i/eqi01005
- mionhe 10mo agoI assumed this was referring to a simple seated position, but I was incorrect. He had people in some odd poses for meditation. Thank you for posting the source.
- zenon 10mo agoPossibly a non-Jungian explanation for John Sarno's hypothesis that chronic pain could be caused by emotional issues triggering interruption of blood supply to painful areas.
- PaulHoule 10mo agoBack in grad school I was riding my bike home in a thunderstorm after 1am and crashed into a parked car. The next day the people at the health center panicked when I told them my neck hurt and rushed me to get an X ray which found no fractures. For years afterwards I had pain that floated everywhere from my head to my upper back, neck, shoulders, etc, also had something like sciatia affecting one leg that I blamed from overdoing Yoga. It was definitely exacerbated by stress. In 2021 I had something that was half midlife crisis and half mental health crisis that had me on my back foot until quite recently. My dentist had long told me I ground my teeth and should get a bite guard but I didn't take any action until the summer of 2021. Within two days the pain focalized completely to my jaw and became agonizing. I definitely had the jaw clicking sign of TMJ disorder. For about six months I was on a strict regimen of eating very little solid food, instead I would throw random foods into a pot (like turnips, seaweed, beef, crazy stuff) and cook them like soup then grind them up with an immersion blenders. And I drank shakes from Burger King whenever I wanted. I had a lot of emotional growth in that time and the pervasive anxiety I had went away. There was a day when I looked back and realized I just hadn't thought about the pain in my jaw for a long time. Maybe one day every few months my jaw bugs me a little. I had another time when I was self-employed and not getting enough work and had terrible tendinitis in my hands which cleared up when I started doing push-ups. That's my model for chronic pain and getting over it.
- leobg 10mo agoThe issues get trapped in the tissues.
- svdr 10mo agoThe idea that there is much more computation (and intelligence/agency) going on in biological and other systems seems to be getting more popular. (The author writes: The whole body is a computer: it’d be wasteful for evolution to only use the brain for computation when other systems could take part too.). Michael Levin has some super interesting ideas about this.
- ceroxylon 10mo agoOne of the most cited papers of all time is Jerome Lettvin's "What the Frog's Eye Tells the Frog's Brain" (1959). https://web.archive.org/web/20110928024235/http://jerome.lettvin.info/lettvin/Jerome/WhatTheFrogsEyeTellsTheFrogsBrain.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20110928024235/http://jerome.let... (PDF)
- nprateem 10mo agoNot a new idea. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enteric_nervous_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enteric_nervous_system
- svdr 10mo agoMichael Levin has a lot of new ideas.
- gabennn 10mo agoGabeN mentions similar in a video with IGN a few years ago. Machine brain interfaces can reliably model thought to action of using ones arm, for example. But it cannot model "feeling". It's, as of that interview, an intractable problem to map all electrical activity in us given external stimuli. Every body "feels" a cold stimulus in a different part of their. This wasn't qualitative either; imaging technology shows activity unevenly occurs across every human body. Put an ice cube on someones hand, their left knee tissues may react. Put ice cube on another person's hand, back of their neck reacts not their left knee. Then there are stories of people missing the majority of their brain but only learned this medically after living a normal life; going to college, holding a career together for a couple decades. Brain-centrism was just as dumb as our other takes that attempt to demarcate a center to our center-less universe. Even just practically speaking, I know a lot of PhDs who cannot cook or rotate a tire. Where is the intelligence in letting oneself end up such a helpless, and thus codependent, tool?
- eternauta3k 10mo agoIs there any evidence yet for this theory? Sounds falsifiable.
- ryandv 10mo agoExperiment for yourself. The Buddhists have kept a tradition that makes falsifiable claims and provides steps for reproduction. I have reproduced some of these claims myself. What differentiates this practice from the natural science is its study of subjective phenomena, as opposed to objective physicalities. https://firekasina.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/the-fire-kasina.pdf https://firekasina.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/the-fire-k...
- vjerancrnjak 10mo agoI find it interesting how meditation eventually becomes an anxiety reduction method, or general emotion management. What should it be if there is no burden of stress or negative impression of any emotion? Why rid of stress? It comes and goes, it is as fleeting as relaxation. I guess meditation is a insight into there being no problem to solve, once that insight is clear, there is no need for meditation.
- HPsquared 10mo agoFor me a big factor is the way you become aware of the stress when it is absent for a short while. I felt a similar thing returning to work after the Christmas break. It's good to know about how you are feeling.
- rdcooper 10mo agoI notice I often have very strong knee-jerk reactions to these kind of comments. It's usually from some person that has not spent very much time meditating at all or invested much time around the various cultures which treasure and pride themselves in their meditative practices. It usually goes something like: "[Some kind of reasoning], therefore, there is no need to meditate." I'd like to provide an analogy which I think fits: We use our muscles every day. If you just use your muscles well, there's no need for strength training! And sure, I mean, that KIND of works. But like... There's a LOT of research around the benefits of strength training. And there's a multitude of reasons why someone might want to get involved in strength training. Very few people aspire to become powerlifters, etc. IMHO, it's a dangerous view to take, as it can lead to dismissal of a lot of fantastic use cases, and it leads to people dismissing meditation outright ("No doctor, my friend said that if I just move correctly, I don't need strength training!"). And yes, similar to strength, there's no upper limit on training for things like focus, concentration, mindfulness. There's no 'need' for meditation sure, but by that logic there's no 'need' for most things. What seems to be true to me is that it's absolutely fantastic in terms of technologies available to us for self (and also society)-improvement.
- vjerancrnjak 10mo agoI am doubtful of the scientific validity and am definitively not dismissive of cultures that use meditations for inquiry into Self. Strength training is a good example because it is an immensley stressful activity with adaptations that sometimes go into tics. I believe I’ve read accounts of experienced meditators also stressing themselves to the verge of lunacy. Some even deal with panic attacks , unannounced, despite lecturing on inner peace.
- noitamroftuo 10mo agowhy is there a video of ordering room service in the middle of the post?
- rambambram 10mo agoIt's to make a point more visible. It's explained in the paragraph below it.
- evtothedev 10mo agoThis makes anecdotal sense to me. When I first started mediating (~10 years ago), my wife said to me that my face looked younger. I think it was from releasing all the startup-CTO stress that had tangled everything.
- cknoxrun 10mo agoComing from another stressed out startup CTO, I'm curious what your daily meditation routine look like now?
- evtothedev 10mo ago10-20m minutes every morning. Back when Headspace was strictly a meditation app, I went through the entire "pro" sequence, and now I feel good about going it alone. Genuinely, and very positively, life changing.
- dloss 10mo ago> "simply taking time to feel your body and put your attention into latched tissues can release them." That has been my experience as well. I have developed my own little technique around this idea, where you invite tight areas of your body to soften and spontaneously make tiny stretching or unwinding movements - without forcing, bracing, or following a scripted routine. I call it Intuitive Release. https://dirk-loss.de/intuitive-release/ https://dirk-loss.de/intuitive-release/
- andai 10mo agoThis is remarkable! I arrived at a very similar place in the last few days. I've been working with painful negative beliefs and memories. This evolved from my meditation practice, I simply observe sensations in my body. (I tried meditating "normally" (focus on breath) but all this pain kept coming up!) One of the techniques I arrived on through trial and error is simply asking the energy if it wants/needs to release itself. And then just allowing it to do so. Giving it permission as you say! So far in every case I have tested, every bundle of pain in my body, the answer has been yes. The hardest part is just being willing to let it do whatever it needs to do, which can be very odd and a little overwhelming sometimes. But you get used to it very quickly!
- AlecSchueler 10mo agoCould you describe what it might "need to do" and why or how it becomes overwhelming?
- nikhilsimha 10mo agousually when a sharp sensation arises in an area, there is a habitual tendency to counteract - unconsciously tense surrounding muscles or antagonistic muscles or switch posture etc. the idea is to observe with clarity the counteraction and let the sharp sensation arise and pass without the counteraction/resistance.
- andai 10mo agoSure, so my experience is... It feels like something solid is dissolving. That's the most common experience. It goes from the sharp heavy sensation into a diffuse watery pleasant sensation. There could be many other effects as well. There can be sharp pain. There could be dull throbbing. It can feel like stuff is moving around (especially in the gut area, which seems to respond to such a process with actual physical movement). Basically it's pretty weird if you're not used to it. But in my experience, the fear of what we might experience is almost always greater than what we actually do experience. Which I think applies to life in general as well.
- throwforfeds 10mo ago> If this works, there must be some way to tune our meditation methods specifically for relaxing smooth muscle.... using awareness to track exactly how and where the body grips and lets go. It's great that westerners are exploring these things, but I can't help but think the strong aversion people have for things not being "proven" by western science is holding everyone back. This is literally yoga and meditation practice and has been studied for at least a couple thousand years. Even if we exclude the modern invention of yoga as exercise in the 20th century, there are seated practices of releasing these tensions in the body. It's not even framed in mystical terms, it's literally just opening the body and getting rid of discomfort, pain, and stress in the body so that you can sit and focus for longer periods of time in your formal meditation practice. Even in the author's teacher's capital V Vipassana tradition, invented in the 20th century, it is known that the piti that arises even in the first stages of meditation can be directed. That weak piti is just the piloerection response, which is an autonomic response, and if you can control it it would seem to imply we of course have facility over things science assumes we have no control over.
- wubrr 10mo agoMany things have been practiced/studied for thousands of years - that alone isn't interesting or valuable imo. What are the objective benefits of meditation - what is the exact/specific process and what specifically does it accomplish? I can see how being in a silent reflective state and similar practices could have various effects and benefits (not that I know specifically what those are) - but what separates me zoning out in the shower/on the bus from actual meditation? How is 'guided' meditation when you're actively listening to someone else even the same thing? Whenever I ask my meditating/'spiritual' friends about these things the response is basically vague undecipherable gibberish and allusions that it is unexplainable to someone like me who is not ready to accept the truths lol.
- cyberpunk 10mo agoIt’s very subtle and to be honest if you need to be sold on it it’s probably not going to help you much. It can be as simple as having half an hour where you can put everything (including yourself) down and stop poking at it, compounded over time there are some benefits, but yeah i don’t think it’s something that needs to be sold or gamified etc.
- wendgeabos 10mo agopain when meditating? huh?
- froh 10mo agowhat do you mean?
- shnock 10mo agoThis is known. https://www.energyarts.com/qigong-exercises/ https://www.energyarts.com/qigong-exercises/
- maxkfranz 10mo agoFor those interested in learning more about meditation related to muscle tension (as in the author's article), body scans [1] and progressive muscle relaxation [2] are often-used techniques. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mindfulness#Watching_the_breath,_body-scan_and_other_techniques https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mindfulness#Watching_the_breat... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_muscle_relaxation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_muscle_relaxation
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- holowoodman 10mo agoThe author is looking for this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autogenic_training https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autogenic_training Tried it, works, does exactly what the author wants. And while it is a meditation technique, it skips all the religious nonsense and focuses on the relevant.
- mxmilkiib 10mo agoEarly Buddhist Texts (EBT) are fairly non-religious, e.g. see the Thai forest tradition/BSWA talks this school of thought even often ignores a fair portion of the abhidama texts ("about dhamma", the meta commentaries) that started to form a number of years after the death of the Buddha if anyone wants a seriously good deep deep deconstruction of the main mindfulness sutta/sutra from this perspective, podcast kinda form, see https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL70fWqztn7OXdbGqWEOvhOVqf5oEDJCFV https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL70fWqztn7OXdbGqWEOvhOVqf...
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- patrickscoleman 10mo agoI really love how Kosho Uchiyama describes meditation with the metaphor "opening the hand of thought" https://wisdomexperience.org/product/opening-hand-thought/ https://wisdomexperience.org/product/opening-hand-thought/
- mapontosevenths 10mo agoIm suprised that nobody else has mentioned it, but back in the 90's "self-hypnosis" was briefly popular and it sounds like that's what the author is rediscovering. Its basically guided meditation with visualization, but you guide yourself. It does exactly this, but faster, once you master it. It also allows you to fall asleep quickly. Search "stair step induction" for a quick example to try out.
- oerb 10mo agoI started with a relaxation method (shiatsu für personal use) more than 30 years ago. Today I realise that this was my Startingpoint with Meditation.
- rene_d 10mo agoAutogenic training [1] is exactly a relaxation technique focussing on the progressive relaxation of body regions. It is very easy to learn and a body-first approch to approach meditative states, which can then be used for auto-suggestion. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autogenic_training https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autogenic_training
- mxmilkiib 10mo agobody scan is the first pillar of mindfulness https://suttacentral.net/mn10/en/sujato https://suttacentral.net/mn10/en/sujato anecdotally, I had a late PoTS (postural static tachycardia syndrome, blood vessels don't autonomically constrict correctly depending on posture) diagnosis, then hypermobile EDS (tissue that's more floppy) I realised on body scan relaxations that a) a pain arose in most body parts as I tried to gently allow a letting go of tension in that part, like something I had to shake off, kinda like DOMS though also similar to the body tension pain I get as a certain kind of autistic person repeatedly failing a task, n b) that any however much relaxed part very quickly subconsciously tensed up once again within seconds of my focus moving to a new part. chronic tension from 1) needing to tense for blood to better flow, n 2) trauma. I've had masseurs tell me my muscles fight back, n fwiw prolapse op from the EDS, n I get pregabalin for the tension pain
- vagab0nd 10mo agoDoes meditation really work for everyone? I tried it pretty seriously for 2 months, and my mind just wouldn't stop. I'd think of nothing for 10 seconds and then get extremely bored, so essentially every 10 seconds I'd force myself back. It didn't really have any calming effect.
- Nevermark 10mo agoLearning to calmly reset over and over, is normal. The less reactive we are to the need to reset, the less the distractions control us. And, the more reseating our mind becomes an instinctive habit, the more wind is lost for distractions. And the more likely the distraction cycle fades or lengthens. The goal isn’t to never have to reseat our minds. Just be better at holding our minds. On what we choose. Something simple at first, like breathing. Wider focused awareness as we get meditation muscle, like listening to our physical body, then our feelings, then our day, then the trajectory of our life, our values, etc. Whatever is important to visit regularly with the whole focus of our mind. The ability to meditate spills into our days. We get better at choosing and maintaining our focus on what is important. We can view the distractions as the workout of a steep hike. Not the problem at all, but the terrain, chosen precisely to require adaptation to overcome. But everyone is different, and our minds and nervous systems are complex, so that’s just one take.
- erelong 10mo ago> People often treat relaxation and wakefulness as two opposites: relaxation as a drowsy and dull, wakefullnes as sharp and jittery. But the two can co-exist. I've discovered recently the two indeed are opposites and meditation is considered to be a kind of wakefulness, that I personally find no benefit in. People who are in need of relaxation I therefore find do not want or need meditation as it enforces a moderate kind of wakefulness. They either should in this alternative view, rest (which is an unfocused and unforced state whereas meditation maintains some kind of focus and attention) or engage in something "wakeful" which might naturally involve having attention.
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- pricedown 10mo ago“Enlightenment is a posture”