Forum

Limbics journal

Personal practice journals
6 posts • Page 1 of 1

Limbics journal

Postby limbic » Wed May 22, 2013 2:58 pm

Hey everyone

So recently I had a breakthrough in my practice on a 10 day retreat.

The insight was that when I slowed down with my noting, I became able to connect with a lair of really disruptive sensations in my abdomen and lower abdomen. Also I was able to disconnect from some sexual tendencies that in retrospect were really de-centering. Doing this was incredibly satisfying and conferred a whole new quality of experience: stillness, clarity, calmness, well-being and continuity.

This happened once a day for four days where I would deal with a complex of these negative sensations and around late afternoon the state of clarity and calmness would become evident.

There were a couple moments on the retreat, as well as the last couple hours in the morning time on the last day, when areas of my body such as my legs and hips became infused with an awareness: a sensitive, supple sense of the flesh. (and once this was accompanied by the same thing happening on my head, along with a strong and sudden awareness of smell and vision. It was pretty neat.)

On the last day with the last couple hours, these areas developed a pleasant spread of vibrations in them. And I had a head kriya moving my head to the back right, with a pleasant spread of these vibrations around my ear. At that point just listening through that ear was really interesting and pleasurable.

Then I got back to the house I'm staying, and I'm fortunate enough to decide to basically continue the retreat. For a couple days I just hung out and enjoyed myself going for walks and reading stuff on the internet, then I shot back into meditating.

For a couple days my sits were a bit like repeats of those few productive days on the retreat, but I was a little confused and thinking that maybe I was losing the insights, then after the last sit on maybe the third day of doing this, I went for a walking meditation and noticed a strong lump of anxiety in my gut and also that if I looked forward, or anywhere other than just down at the immediate ground in front of me, I would get distracted from this sensation. I think doing so, looking down the road or whatever, was concerning me with things from the external world, even if I wasn't entertaining thoughts or even had any explicit thoughts about them. A general anxiety pertaining to my social situation, even if I did not know nor had ever spoken to some of the people I was passing.

Then I had a couple days where I was encountering a lot of head kriyas: first moving from left to right very strongly, then less strongly, then moving from front to back strongly, and gradually lessening with that too, then moving in a clockwise circle, strongly again and lessening, becoming more fluid and gentle, then from there it started to do more unpredictable things, figure 8's, just bobbing, ect. And all of that was pretty gentle. There was one day where by the end I was experiencing pleasant tingling while all this was happening.

After that, I met with a teacher, and I started trying to be more attentive to just how it is that I was feeling in the particular moment, including judgments as to how my practice was going. The tingling was gone but the kriyas were still there, and they stopped eventually.

I went for more walking meditation, trying to be independent of "propitious meditative conditions" like sitting where my belief would be "I am progressing as fast as possible". It was harder to remain concentrated on the walks, there were a bunch of moments where I thought I was just letting myself get distracted, but I was also able to smoothly note this judgment, at least as much as I could have done at those times, I could at least just keep going even if there was a nagging sense that I was just a space cadet with a flimsy attention. So this Kosmonaut kept on.

At the end of that day I think I had a sit where things were very still, and my attention sat naturally right in the middle of my face, or in my head in an evenly balanced way, without much effort and without much else to distract it.

The next day I did a lot of walking meditation. This was comprised by mostly unpleasant sensations, or rather a lot of neutral sensations with a general difficulty, maybe slightly unpleasant. There wasn't ease in the body. The first couple walking meditations were awkward, thinking about it, but there were a few moments when some things about how I hold and move my body were noticed. Like my right hip being more forward than my left, and also a subtle awkward sensitivity to my upper arms.

My sitting meditations during this time were having sensations in my head present themselves and it was interesting how this corresponded to my thoughts. The quality of these sensations were pretty strong, although subtle. And closely linked to my thoughts. Strongly linked.

Later I had a walking meditation where I spent the whole time observing an aching in my lower back. By the end of the walk, it was a long walk maybe an hour and a half, this aching had gone and there was a tiny itch where it was located. I don't know if it directly proceeded the aching, if the aching turned into an itch, or if it disappeared and an itch came up later. Maybe it doesn't matter.

Then last sit of the day I was observing subtle sensations on my face, the feeling of my face really, and trying to be aware of thoughts at the same time, and mindstates, and it was pretty interesting. There was a sense that the feeling on my face was important in some way. My attention was experiencing it kind of intimately. It was like it had something to do with my self. And some time long into the sit, something funny vibrationally happened in that area when it was almost like a bug was wriggling around in my nostril. At the same time as that, my hands took on a pleasant, subtle vibratory quality, as well as my thighs, and my general process of noting became a little more fluid and easy.

The next day, it seemed like I was back to the place I was on the last day of my retreat. My thighs and hips were filled with a pleasant awareness, kind of ebbing with awareness in a healthy way. I was noticing a big tendency to tense and tighten my right quad quite a bit. Also went on a few walking meditations where I was noticing the movement of my pants on these areas quite a bit more than I usually would. It was like my ability to note was much better, much more fluid. There was a lot going on, so much that it was almost disorienting sometimes. But I could handle it. It seemed like a big progression from before where my attention would have been too narrow and in order to note anything at all I would have to be kind of prescriptive and intentional about it.

This whole time I was trying to note thoughts. My sitting meditations were getting to some moments where it was observing subtle spatial awarenesses in my face, concurrent with my mindstate and my thoughts. It was like I was really seeing the "place" where my self is all connected and operating from.

More of that experience happening today. Also, something really nice happened today on a walking meditation when, without concentrating, there was a sense of intimacy with my face, as if it was actually my face that was there that I was identifying with. This was really cool, I have never really felt that before. At least not much.

And just before writing this, I was doing a sit where I was experiencing a lot of face-kriyas, particularly with my eyelids. A bunch of very subtle tensing and cringing going on. Kind of like other times when one of my feet would feel like its going to bounce around a lot. Then I thought, hey, I should make a practice log.
User avatar
limbic
 
Posts: 20
Joined: Thu Mar 14, 2013 6:23 am

Re: Limbics journal

Postby limbic » Sun Jul 28, 2013 5:33 pm

I'm back again to do more regular logging, at least possibly.

Since that report, I continued getting face kriyas, and also had some intense anxiety, including one or two anxiety attacks, which is a first for me in my whole life.

Then I did another retreat at a center, and experienced for the first 8 days things having to do with the left side of my face being blind, and a fair bit of anxiety which changed my breathing, making it hard to calm down at times. Hard to sit out; it was unpredictable and could possibly have gone on for hours and hours, or the whole retreat.

But then on the 9th day, I realized my jaw was slightly tensed all the time. It wasn't done strongly at all, and was so still that I barely noticed. And my tongue was pushed up to the left against my teeth, but again it was very very gentle that it was hard to notice. Through one or maybe two sits I made sure to release my jaw and move my tongue back to the middle of my mouth every three to five minutes, and from there just tried to let them hang doing nothing. It was pretty hard, at times my jaw would tremble, and sometimes there was a sensation of anger trembling in it, seemingly just waiting to be charged by something.

After a couple sits of that, my jaw relaxed, and from there the blindness and tension on the left side of my face began to stop being so dull and entropic, and my awareness started to explore other areas/networks of tension on my face, over to the right side, and eventually percolating all over my head. That was the last day of the retreat.

Since the retreat, I've been dealing with tension in the left side of my face (and my head and neck too - on the left side), and in the last week have been intentionally approaching it with a broader spatial perspective, trying to give the tensions area to dissolve into. Trying not to zone too close in to the tensions, thereby exacerbating them. I have also been getting to places where I'm noticing small tensions clouting up my mouth, like tension in my cheeks, the front and back of my tongue, the backs of my cheeks (on the inside), and how these tensions seem to contribute to a sense of confusion and the impression of things being physically laborious and slightly unpleasant, demanding change
User avatar
limbic
 
Posts: 20
Joined: Thu Mar 14, 2013 6:23 am

Re: Limbics journal

Postby limbic » Sun Jul 28, 2013 5:44 pm

I just had a very interesting sit where I tried something I haven't done before, which seemed to highlight an aspect of experience to a level of remarkable clarity. I've had Holosync binural beats on my computer for a long time and they've been in the back of my mind, and tried sitting while listening to the one designed to promote alpha waves.

Immediately upon putting the earbuds in and starting, I noticed that the sound coming into my left ear was rather unpleasant, although it was a serene, relaxing track. This wasn't the case with the sound from my right ear. And as I kept going, I was noticing tensions in the left side of my head around my ear, connected to my neck and into my face, were twitching on and off - and it seemed to have something to do with the sense of hearing. Also, the sense of space with which the music was coming into my head was way different than my right ear. With my right ear, it was evenly distributed and calm. But with my left, it was sort of like the music was coming into my head in a disorienting way, like it was just pushed in there via a syringe and then moving around from the inside or something along those lines. There was a disorienting spatial quality to the listening that was very interesting and challenging to sit with.

As for the effectiveness of the binural part of the sound, I'm not positive if it was a factor or not. After getting up, I was very sensitive to myself, I was quite calm and my senses seemed to be very opened to my surroundings. But this could have been due to having the sound highlight that area of spatial existence throughout the whole sit since it was an effect I noticed within one second of starting.

Also I had gone on a walking meditation for about 40 minutes beforehand
User avatar
limbic
 
Posts: 20
Joined: Thu Mar 14, 2013 6:23 am

Re: Giulio B. pre-practice journal

Postby limbic » Thu Aug 01, 2013 12:43 pm

I did water yoga yesterday and I found it gave me some interesting feedback. Part of it it drew attention to my breath in a really assertive way; we were using tube floaty things, putting one under the upper back both ends under the armpits and the other under the knees, and the exercise was to curl the torso inwards when exhaling and spread it long when inhaling, and when I did it, it was very very obvious how shallow my breath was because I kept sinking - part of what was supposed to keep you floating was a full breath. It was a good way to get close to the process of breathing and any tightness in the abdomen associated with it.

Then in the ending meditation part, floating on my back with a kickboard, although I was relaxing I was noticing my shoulder being incredibly tense, although it didn't feel like this during other meditations that day where I felt pretty much the same way I was feeling in the pool. It was like floating in water eliminated any interference with tensions that were in the body, allowing things that would usually be very subtle to manifest themselves
User avatar
limbic
 
Posts: 20
Joined: Thu Mar 14, 2013 6:23 am

Re: Limbics journal

Postby Ona » Thu Aug 01, 2013 1:31 pm

Interesting. Never heard of water yoga! I love swimming but never thought about connecting it with a meditation practice. Sounds fun.

(Oh, just thought too - singing has that in common with swimming in that it also makes you very aware of the breath.)
User avatar
Ona
 
Posts: 33
Joined: Thu Mar 14, 2013 6:23 am

Re: Limbics journal

Postby Antero » Fri Aug 02, 2013 10:14 pm

Water yoga sound really cool!
User avatar
Antero
 
Posts: 41
Joined: Thu Mar 14, 2013 6:23 am


6 posts • Page 1 of 1

Return to Practice Journals

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 1 guest

cron