Tag: muscle contractions

Contraction and expansion happen within a bigger picture

moe Leave a comment

How do I relate to contracted parts of me?

Do I get caught up in them? Do they fill my metaphorical field of vision?

Or do I recognize them as part of a bigger picture?

And what happens when I do?

THE ESSENCE: IT’S ALL HAPPENING WITHIN A BIGGER PICTURE

It’s all happening within a bigger picture.

Any sense of contractions – bodily and mental – happens within who I am, and who I am is much more than this and much more diverse than this.

Any sense of contractions or expansion happens within and as what I more fundamentally am. It happens within and as the consciousnes I am. It happens within and as consciousness, just like any other content of experience.

And when I notice that, there is a softening of identification with the contracted parts of me. My center of gravity shifts more into the whole of who I am as a human self. And it shifts more into what I am, as this field of consciousness any and all experience happens within and as.

CONTRACTED AND RELAXED PARTS OF ME

My muscles contract and relax, and there are some chronic contractions in some areas. (Mostly shoulders, and a bit in calves and jaw.)

My mind also contracts at times. Part of me takes stressful thoughts as true and are contracted. Other parts are more relaxed and expansive. And different situations trigger one or the other or a mix and bring them to the surface.

AT MY HUMAN LEVEL, IT’S HAPPENING WITHIN AND AS ME

At a human level, all of this is happening within me.

Some parts of my body are relaxed. Some are more tense and contracted.

Some parts of my psyche are relaxed. And some are more contracted and tense.

It’s all happening within a bigger picture.

AT A MORE FUNDAMENTAL LEVEL, IT’S HAPPENING WITHIN AND AS WHAT I AM

And more fundamentally, it’s all also happening within and as me.

At one level, I am this human self in the world. That’s how most others see me, what my passport tells me, and so on.

And more fundamentally, I find I am something else. In my first-person experience, I find I am more fundamentally capacity for all my experiences. I am capacity for this field of experience as it is now.

I am what the sense fields – sights, sounds, smell, taste, sensations, mental imaginations – happen within and as.

To myself, I am consciousness, and the world, as it appears to me, happens within and as this consciousness.

I am what any and all experience happens within and as.

I am what any sense of contraction, relaxation, or expansion happens within and as.

WHEN I DON’T NOTICE THIS

If I don’t notice this, it’s easy to get caught up in whatever happens to be most on the surface.

A physical contraction gets strong and comes to the foreground of experience, and it fills my experience.

A mental contraction gets triggered and comes to the foreground, and I get caught up in it.

I get lost in what’s most salient and miss the bigger picture. I get caught up in it and perceive and live as if it’s all there is.

WHEN I NOTICE THE BIGGER PICTURE

And when I notice the bigger picture, it’s different.

A contraction may be strong and in the foreground, and I notice it as part of a bigger field.

At my human level…

I notice it’s a part of my body, and other parts are more relaxed.

I notice it’s a part of my psyche, and other parts perceive things differently and are more relaxed.

I notice it happens as one of many parts of who I am as a human being.

This helps me not get so caught up in it. I notice it as an object within the content of experience. I can relate to it more intentionally.

As what I more fundamentally am…

I notice it’s happening within and as the consciousness I am.

I notice it’s happening within and as what I more fundamentally am.

I notice I am fundamentally capacity for it.

This too helps me not get so caught in it. It helps me recognize that its nature is the same as the nature of everything else in my field of experience. It helps soften and release identification out of it.

PSYCHOLOGY AND BEYOND

This is something we use in conventional psychology and therapy. It helps us when we are reminded of the bigger picture. When we notice that contracted parts of us are parts of us and not all of what we are. It gives us a mental distance to it, and it’s a little easier to not get caught up in it.

And it’s also something we explore when we investigate what we more fundamentally are. Here too, the bigger picture helps soften identification and shift our center of gravity into the bigger picture.

Exploring who we are (psychology) and what we are (spirituality) is not so different here. We find very similar dynamics.

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tagged: bodymind, contraction, essential topic, inquiry, muscle contractions, parts work, subpersonalities, who and what we are  

Why we feel lighter

moe Leave a comment

Why do we sometimes feel lighter? For instance, if something desirable happens, or we have a release through inquiry, Vortex Healing, TRE, or something else?

Stressful beliefs (identifications, trauma) come with muscle contractions. In order to believe a thought, the thought has to be associated with sensations, and these sensations give the thought a sense of substance and reality. The thought feels true. The easiest way to have these sensations readily available is through muscle contractions. So when the mind needs to believe a thought, it contracts associated muscles to provide sensations, and these in turn give the thoughts a sense of solidity and reality. These muscle contractions feel dense and heavy. We – almost literally – feel the weight of our stressful beliefs or identifications.

So when we are either distracted from these stressful beliefs, or they are released, there is a sense of lightness. The muscle contractions lighten up or go away, so we feel lighter.

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tagged: beliefs, contraction, identification, muscle contractions, sensations, velcro  

Let it run its course

moe Leave a comment

When I rest with an energy or body contraction, I sometimes remind myself let it run its course.

Here are some things I notice subtly happening.

It invites patience.

It’s a reminder that it’s temporary. It will pass as any experience does.

It’s a reminder that it may just need to run its course. If it has been shunned in the past, what it needs is partly to be rested with in presence and with patience.

Sometimes, a gentle pointer like this invites a small shift, and that’s all that’s needed to support me in resting more wholeheartedly with the energy or body contraction.

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tagged: inquiry, living inquiries / kiloby inquiries, muscle contractions, resting with  

Inquiry with a bodywork emphasis

moe Leave a comment

I had a session earlier today where we combined bodywork and inquiry. This client is familiar with inquiry and is aware of a chronic contraction in his solar plexus/belly that’s connected to some long-standing issues, so we decided to start working on it from the body side and then see what came up.

Any psychological issue – whether it’s anxiety, depression, trauma, cravings, deficiency stories, or more generally beliefs and identifications – has a body side and a mind side. They are two sides of the same coin. So it makes sense to work on them from both of those sides.

When I first heard of the body-mind connection, it was partly from the new age world where it made intuitive sense but seemed a bit fuzzy and mysterious, and it was partly from science where I explored psychoimmunology and similar connections.

We can also explore this body-mind connection in a more simple and immediate way in our own experience, for instance through inquiry.

Body contractions give charge to any psychological issue, whether it’s anxiety, depression, trauma, cravings, deficiency stories, or anything else. These issues are unable to exist or have any sense of reality or charge unless they are associated with body contractions. It seems that for the mind to create these issues for itself, it needs to connect them with sensations, and the easiest way to do that is to create body contractions which provide these sensations. Chronic issues then come with chronic body contractions. These may not be obvious all the time, but they resurface whenever the issue is triggered. And sometimes they are obvious and present all the time, as with my shoulder tension.

The other side of this is that imaginations and stories (mental images and words) give meaning to sensations and body contractions, and any emotionally related body contraction will have imaginations and stories connected with it. If it’s chronic and long lasting, it may have a great deal of meaning – in the form of images and words – connected with it.

So if I am working with a client and we have done one or two sessions together, and we have identified a recurrent body contraction, we may do a bodywork session. A session where we focus on the body contraction, work on it physically, and then explore the mental images and words that come up through that work.

In this session, I massaged the belly contraction by leaning in, holding for a while, and then moving over slightly. The client rested with the sensations while noticing the (boundless) space they happened within. He also noticed and reported images and words, and rested with these as they came up. Occasionally, I would ask inqiry or mining questions such as is it a threat?, what is your first memory of feeling this contraction? 

During silent periods, I did run some Vortex energy to help heal the issue behind the contraction, and also bring up images and words related to it.

The client trembled (therapeutic tremoring, TRE) at times, and I used Breema principles and moves when I worked on his belly (hara), so we got to use Natural Rest, Living Inquiries, Breema, Tension and Trauma Releasing Exercises, and Vortex Healing in this session. They all came in naturally and seamlessly.

For both the client and me, the session felt grounded and real. That’s one of the benefits of working more intentionally from the body side of the issue.

I am not quite sure what to call it. Somatic inquiry? Bodywork inquiry? Mind-body inquiry? Inquiry with bodywork emphasis?

There is nothing new here. I believe there are many traditions and practitioners doing similar work. And it’s also an integral part of the Living Inquiries. One way to do it is to have the client massage the contraction themselves. And the other way, which I often prefer since it can go deeper, is for the facilitator to do it while guiding natural rest and simple restful inquiry.

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tagged: bodywork, living inquiries / kiloby inquiries, muscle contractions, natural rest, restful inquiry, somatic inquiry  

Three ways to mine body contractions

moe Leave a comment

Most body contractions are associated with certain imaginations, certain stories. The two go together.

They are held in place by certain stories, and they also make these stories seem real and charged.

There are three main ways of finding stories connected to a body contraction.

One is to rest with the sensations. Notice and allow them as they are. Feel the physical sensations. Take time. And notice what images and words surface, and then look at these.

Another is to ask mining questions. What does it mean? What is my earliest memory of feeling this?

A third is to explore it through bodywork. Massage the contraction. Tap on it. Use vibration. See if any images or words come up, and then write them down to look at them later, or explore them here and now.

When these stories surface, we can look at them and explore them through inquiry questions. And these may bring us back to sensations again – whether it’s the same contraction or something else, which in turn may bring up more images and words. It’s helpful to keep going until no more images or words surface, until the images and words have little or no charge to them, and the body contraction doesn’t seem to mean anything anymore. This

It’s helpful to keep going until no more images or words surface, until the images and words have little or no charge to them, and the body contraction doesn’t seem to mean anything anymore. This may not happen within one session, but it will happen if we keep exploring it.

I should also mention that I find Vortex Healing very helpful in exploring body contractions. It can help soften and dissolve the contraction. It can help heal the underlying issues. And it can help bring images and words to the surface so we are aware of them and – if we wish – so we can explore them in inquiry.

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tagged: living inquiries / kiloby inquiries, muscle contractions  

Muscle relaxants and painkillers, and what we feel

moe Leave a comment

Their conclusion: Acetaminophen, the most common drug ingredient in the United States, can reduce a person’s capacity to empathise with another person’s pain, whether that pain is physical or emotional.

– Popular painkiller ingredient can reduce empathy, study finds, The Independent, May 12 2016

Recent research shows that common painkillers reduce empathy. Having worked with clients who are on different types of medication aimed at reducing emotional or physical pain, I am not surprised. It seems that reducing our ability to feel physical sensations reduces our ability to feel emotions as well. And that’s what we would expect knowing that sensations are an essential component of emotions and any experience that we experience as having a charge.

As I have mentioned in other posts, sensations lend charge and a sense of reality and solidity to imaginations. They make the content of stories seem real, true, and charged, whether these stories are just a label (sadness, anger, happiness, pain), or a more elaborate story about the world, others, or oneself.

I assume something similar is happening with muscle relaxants. Body contractions are a part of anxiety, depression, trauma, and addictions, so when the body contractions soften, the intensity of these emotions and cravings are likely to soften as well.

No wonder people get addicted to painkillers and even muscle relaxants. They help us not feel feelings we would rather not feel.

Painkillers and muscle relaxants numb us. There is nothing wrong in that. For some of us, it may be the best solution in the situation we are in. And it’s also not a lasting solution. It doesn’t solve the underlying issues which is that we take our experience as real and solid, we take our painful stories as true, and we fight and struggle with our painful stories and how they make us feel. For that, we need to address these underlying issues more directly. For instance through inquiry.

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tagged: emotions, empathy, living inquiries / kiloby inquiries, medications, muscle contractions, pain  

Vortex Healing & Inquiry

moe Leave a comment

Here are some simple ways of combining Vortex Healing (VH) and inquiry.

Use VH to settle the mind, center, nurture, find peace. This is a good starting point for inquiry.

Use VH on an issue and then follow up with inquiry. VH tends to break down the density of the issue, making inquiry easier.

Use VH on a body contraction to help dissolve it and bring the issues related to it to the surface. This can then be explored further with inquiry.

Any of these can be done during a session. I did an inquiry session today where I used VH to help settle the mind, and then on the particular issue and body contraction that came up during inquiry. There are often periods of resting with what comes up, and especially sensations and body contractions, and that’s where it’s relatively easy to bring in VH.

As I continue to explore Vortex Healing, I am sure I’ll find more ways the two go hand in hand.

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tagged: living inquiries / kiloby inquiries, muscle contractions, vortex healing