alt Hacker NewsMeditation as Wakeful Relaxation: Unclenching Smooth Muscle
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> "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.
For 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_breat...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_muscle_relaxation
The author is looking for this: 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.
This 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.
Possibly 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.
Autogenic 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.
body scan is the first pillar of mindfulness
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
The 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.
Is there any evidence yet for this theory? Sounds falsifiable.
I 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.
Im 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.
This is known. https://www.energyarts.com/qigong-exercises/
I really love how Kosho Uchiyama describes meditation with the metaphor "opening the hand of thought"
I started with a relaxation method (shiatsu für personal use) more than 30 years ago. Today I realise that this was my Startingpoint with Meditation.
why is there a video of ordering room service in the middle of the post?
You 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.
> 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.