Stress stored in the body

[StonedApe]

I have had fairly chronic pain in two spots(my shoulder and lower back) in my body for a few years now. I notice that this is mostly(at least with the shoulder) caused by bad posture and stress/overactivity(the stress also causes the bad posture). What I mean by overactivity is exerting more force than is necessary to do things(usually things that require a very small amount of force, like playing guitar or writing) and causing myself very low level pain in the process. The pain is so slight that I hardly notice it while it's happening, it doesn't bother me until it has built up throughout the day(Maybe chronic is the wrong word, it really only bothers me in the evening, but even in the morning I can tell that I'm not as healthy as I could be). When you do things this way it seems like the body stores stress in places like the shoulders and the feet. Does anyone have advice for become more aware of unconscious tendancies like these, avoiding them and sort of reseting the way you do things? I think that the key may lie in becoming completely aware of my relationship to these activities and finding a new way of seeing them that holds more respect for the actual activity itself. Does anyone know what I'm talking about, or am I making no sense? I posted this here because it seems like what I;m looking for is similar to the practice of kinhin in zen, also known as walking meditation. Where you do something gently with your attention completely on the activity itself. I;m also looking for different techniques and approachs.

[juroara]

Yoga! Don't know if you tried yoga before. I use Yoga Today - Practice For Life. It's not free, its like a $10 monthly membership or you can buy hour long sessions for about $3. But they do have free videos on youtube, YouTube - yogatoday's Channel. They've got one featured on their youtube page right now that focuses on the spine. I like Sarah Kline and her kundalini yoga videos. Because kundalini yoga focuses on raising the kundalini coiled at the base of the spine, a lot of kundalini yoga focuses on the spine, all the way up to the shoulders and neck. Can't say much about feet though. Where are you sore in the feet, is it the soles? A free intro to kundalini yoga YouTube - yogatoday's Channel Yoga also focuses a lot on the breath and deep breathing, which is always good for relieving physical tension

[DrunkenArse]

From a pragmatic perspective, I happen to be of the opinion that the breath is the key to things like this. I say this because I find it so easy to relax on the exhale. We can essentially divide the breath up into four parts. the inhale, the exhale and two pauses. The inhale should be through the "top" of the nose and the exhale should be out of the "bottom" of your nose. This isn't literal but is describing where you should feel the air moving.Roughly speaking, the pauses seem to settle down to about half the duration of the inhale and exhale. Exhale until you would have to force any more air out. Pause until you would have to force yourself not to inhale. Inhale until your lungs are full. Pause until you have to force yourself not to exhale. Repeat. The belly should not be moving in and out. This is a sign that you are breathing too forcefully. You should be able to place a hand on your belly and a hand on your chest (under your breasts if you have them) and not feel outward pressure. I know that when I am able to breathe like this, I feel calm, relaxed, at one with myself and the world, and all that other new-age bullshit. When I don't, I am much more susceptible to irritability and things like that. There are sitting exercises, exercises laying on your back, and standing exercises. The for your particular problem, they should all focus on not using any more effort to maintain your posture than is necessary. I would start with the laying exercise. When doing so, lay on your back with your legs elevated by placing a stack of pillows or rolled up blankets under your knees. Your arms should be to your side and not touching your body. The elbows should not have pressure on them: It can help to place the hands on a pillow or other soft object. Then get into the breathing which I described earlier. You should essentially feel your body melt away but don't focus on it. Focus on your breathing. Any portions of your body that come to your attention can be relaxed by visualizing tension leaving it during your exhale and relaxed energy (in the form of whatever color of light, or frequency of vibration, or little helper elves, or whatever else comes to mind) flowing into it on the inhale. This could be called "visualization" but that places an emphasis on "seeing". It is more about sensing with whatever sense comes most naturally to you. With enough of this, it can get pretty intense. I haven't actually worked on it as much as I should in the past few years but it can very easily transition into WILD like phenomenon if you get good at it. For the sitting exercise, sit in a comfortable chair that allows you to keep your back straight and your feet squarely on the ground. Feel your body melting. Notice which parts of your body have to stay in an non-relaxed mode for your body to stay upright and relax them as much as you can using the same technique as above. For the standing exercises, you can practice various poses with the same intent as the sitting exercise. I find that the most natural one is legs spread shoulder-width with your arms hanging at your side and your knees slightly bent. The most important time to practice the breathing is in daily life. If you get cramped when you play your guitar, then focus on breathing when you play. The same for writing. The point is to practice in a meditative setting enough to get a feel for it and so that you can effectively focus on other things while you work on your breathing at the same time. Eventually, this should become your default breathing pattern. It was mine for a while and I was calmer, better at math, better at talking to people and better at everything else. I really don't know why I stopped. Hope that helps. And remember: If this stuff is effective, it can feel like there is Chi or Kundalini or whatever in action. It is just your "visualizations" being effective. We live in a mechanistic universe and your feelings and sensations count for jack-shit against that The other way lays confusion.

[StonedApe]

Very good advice, I will bookmark this page for when I have time to do these exercises. I do zazen in the mornings and evenings, which is pretty much exactly the seated one, but rather than feel myself melting I try to notice the difference in the way I feel with each breath, which is generally warmer and calmer. I also sit in the lotus posture and hold my hands in a mudra. All of this helps, but there's still some stress usually at the end of the day I can feel. Sometimes I do a few yoga stretches and it will relieve this, but I'm looking to prevent the stress from coming into being in the first place. I think maybe I just need to calm down a little, I'm taking a break from smoking weed for a few months and have been making an effort to be really productive. I used to do something similar to the laying exercise too, with this super cheesy new age video on pranayama. The music was terrible and the guys voice was almost as bad, but the exercises worked wonders. It isn't exactly what I was looking for but I was exhausted and not thinking straight when I posted this, I think the kind of advice I was looking for might be hard to put into words other than pay attention to what your doing. And remember: If this stuff is effective, it can feel like there is Chi or Kundalini or whatever in action. It is just your "visualizations" being effective. We live in a mechanistic universe and your feelings and sensations count for jack-shit against that I agree. I will sometimes use the word chi, but I just use it as a word to describe a certain kind of consciousness of the energy involved in a process, mostly a feeling that is very difficult to convey with words. Even then it can be a bit confusing, but I think the word has it's place so long as you recognize that it is a word talking about real things and not some kind of spiritual force from another dimension.

[DrunkenArse]

Very good advice, I will bookmark this page for when I have time to do these exercises. I do zazen in the mornings and evenings, which is pretty much exactly the seated one, but rather than feel myself melting I try to notice the difference in the way I feel with each breath, which is generally warmer and calmer. Zazen is a little different in the posture. The torso is straight though so would be amenable to the breathing pattern I described. Normally though, AFAIK, the zazen teaching focuses on fully emptying the lungs every fourth breath. and uses a different breathing pattern. The breathing pattern is definitely the most important thing. Also, the body melting part is just what I happen to feel. I might have made a mistake in putting it like that. The idea is that points of stress differentiate themselves from the rest of your body. How you feel that is how you feel it and it's really quite irrelevant. . It isn't exactly what I was looking for but I was exhausted and not thinking straight when I posted this, I think the kind of advice I was looking for might be hard to put into words other than pay attention to what your doing. That's very good advice. The breathing helps with that a lot. I have no idea what the mechanism is but I think it has something to do with oxygen in the brain. It really is meant as a sort of all day long breathing pattern and not as something solely for meditation.

[StonedApe]

The breath pattern I practice in zazen is supposed to be continued throughout the day, but who knows if it's the one and only true way of breathing. We have a zen buddhism club at school and when we do meditation there we sit in a chair basically as you described but there is a slight curve to the spine. My teacher seems to have his shit together, he doesn't follow a rigid tradition, just teaches what has worked for him. He's also my guitar teacher so I'm going to ask him about keeping it going while playing in my lesson Monday. That would be very interesting to find out what mechanism keeps you more attentive when breathing deeply. Might have something to do with alpha waves and slower thoughts that you are able to fully see, just talking out my ass here.

[DrunkenArse]

I wasn't clear in saying that the torso is straight. I meant the front of the torso. For this to be the case, the spine will be in its natural curve.

[StonedApe]

That's kind of what I figured, just wasn;t sure