Three Types Of Muscle Tension During Sitting Meditation and The Proper Alignment-Muscle Relaxation Cycle
The Three Types Of Muscle Tension During Sitting Meditation Postural Muscle Tension The next two types of muscle tension are an interference during your time of sitting meditation. These two types of tension are distorting muscle tension and disturbing muscle tension. The less you have these two types of muscle tension, the better off you are. The more you have these two types of muscle tension, the more interference there is to your comfort. These two muscle tensions contribute to a restlessness in your body and in your mind. It’s harder for your mind to be still when you have distorting muscle tension and disturbing muscle tension. Distorting Muscle Tension When you leave a yoga class, many different muscles that have distorting muscle tension are temporarily relaxed/lengthened. On leaving the yoga class you have less distorting tension that when you began the class. This temporary relaxation/lengthening of distorting muscle tension can become more and more progressive over time. Repeated stretching of tense muscles leads to less and less distorting and disturbing muscle tension throughout your body. I will give two examples that are a subtle, or an under the radar, type of distorting muscle tension. Almost everyone has these two examples are distorting muscle tension; and they're completely unaware of these muscle tensions. These distorting muscle tensions constrict your body during your sitting meditation; and they can be lessened over time. With this lessening, comes more relaxation in your muscles and the ability for your body to move into a more proper alignment. An example of a distorting muscle tension that is subtle or under the radar has to do with your spine, the area across the top of your shoulders. Hopefully everyone has had a good massage for their back and shoulders. When the massage is over, doesn’t your back, neck, and shoulders feel more loose? This looseness may be unusual for you. And this looseness is closer to what is a normal/natural state for your muscles to be in. If you feel this change of the muscles being more relaxed, then your usual muscle state is overly tight. This is an example of distorting muscle tension. Everybody has overly tight (compared to what they need to be) back muscles. You may not feel your back muscles as being tight because you’re so used to that amount of muscle tension in your body. But after a massage, you notice how much looser your back and shoulder muscles are. You can notice a similar looseness after being in a jacuzzi or after a yoga class. This increased tension in your back and shoulder muscles has a compressive effect to your spine. This compressive muscle tension makes your spine tighter than it could be. This compressive muscle tension does not allow your spinal bones to have a normal, open relationship with each along your entire spine. This under the radar compressive muscle tension lays the groundwork for your spine to become troubled as you sit during longer meditations. You'll be given a way in the posture lesson to decrease this constant compressive muscle tension in your spine and shoulders. Another example of a distorting muscle tension is when a person's arms are turned in/internally rotated. Well over 90% of people have internally rotated arms. There are three postural problems that result when a person's arms are internally rotated. The first problem is that internally rotated/turned in arms cause your chest to close down in the front. The second problem is that internally rotated arms can influence your head to come in front of your shoulders. And the third problem is that this abnormal arm position can contribute to your hands sliding down your thighs when you sit with your hands palm up during meditation. The less you have distorting muscle tension in your body, the more you can be still in body and in mind. And almost all of the distorting tensions are under the radar (undetectable by you). The more that you're in proper alignment, the more the distorting muscle tensions in your body can release. The lesson is designed so that these habitual distorting muscle tensions are encouraged to release by being in proper alignment. This releasing of distorting muscle tension is more fully explained later on this page in the section called The Proper Alignment-Muscle Relaxation Cycle. In the next section, you'll be introduced to over the radar (obvious) muscle tension. The influence on the restlessness of your mind from distorting muscle tension can be hidden from you just as you're not aware of the distorting muscle tension in your body. It's usually only with the absence of the distorting muscle tension that you'll notice more ease physically and the corresponding ease in the restlessness of your mind. Disturbing Muscle Tension If you have no severe physical limitations, then disturbing muscle tensions exist for only one reason. That reason is that you're not sitting correctly. Your body gives you noticeable pain to let you know that something is wrong. The problem that many long time meditators have is that they don't know how to properly respond to the pain that their body is giving them. Therefore, many long time meditators can have pain keep reappearing in the same place(s) in their body for decades. The posture lesson for sitting meditation will help you to repsond to your body's signal of pain by teaching you why your body is having this pain. When you stop the cause/reason for the pain, the pain will not keep repeating. I could almost count on a left mid back pain to occur in every sitting that I did that was over forty minutes long. This pain was still occurring after meditating for twenty four years and being a chiropractor for twenty five years. Now it's so easy to know why my body is in pain in that area. That pain does not stay in longer meditations. It may appear to tell me that I'm in an old improper posture. Then I properly correct the reason for this pain by attending to the lower manager, the upper manager, or to both managers. The pain goes away and now my attention returns to being more firmly focused inward. If you've read the testimonials, you'll know that many other long time meditators are also finally responding correctly to pain in their body; the signal that something is wrong. And these meditators are now having deeper meditations because pain doesn't keep pulling their attention outward for extended periods of time. The posture lesson for sitting meditation is designed so that you'll be able to correctly respond to your body's painful request for help. You'll reduce the amount and the duration of disturbing muscle tension during your time of sitting meditation. The less you have disturbing muscle tension, the more still you can be in body and in mind. I lead a review-practice lesson where you review the entire lesson in 30-45 minutes. Then you sit for 45 minutes. During these last 45 minutes, you can tell me any problems that arise, or that usually arise, during your sitting. You'll be able to listen to others. You're welcome to take this review lesson soon after the basic lesson or many, many months later. You're also welcome to repeat the lesson until you have best solved all problems of being uncomfortable for your individual body. To read more about this review-practice lesson, click here. When disturbing muscle tension is resolved there is a corresponding easing of the restlessness of the mind. The Proper Alignment-Muscle Relaxation Cycle The more you’re properly aligned, the more your muscles are encouraged to lessen the amount of distorting and disturbing muscle tension in your body. Distorting and disturbing muscle tension always cause trouble to being in proper alignment. The less you have these tensions, the more that proper alignment is supported. The more you're properly aligned, the more your muscles can have only postural muscle tension. The more your muscles have only postural muscle tension, the more your alignment can be proper. This cycle of proper alignment supporting muscles to release unneeded muscle tension is what I call the proper alignment-muscle relaxation cycle. The second part of this cycle is when the muscles relax distorting muscle tension, then the alignment (that was being distorted) can become even more proper. The foundation of the proper alignment-muscle relaxation cycle begins with proper alignment. Without proper alignment, your muscles will have to be more tight. This extra muscle tension is needed to because the bones are not doing their job of supporting the weight of your body by being in proper alignment, so extra muscle tension is needed to help maintain your alignment. With proper alignment, over time, your body will have progressively less and less distorting and disturbing muscle tension. The proper alignment-muscle relaxation cycle is when proper alignment encourages distorting and disturbing muscle tension to relax. This relaxation of muscle tension encourages even more proper alignment that encourages even more muscle relaxation that encourages even more proper alignment that ..... (you get the idea). Everybody I've worked with has an obvious (to them and to me) amount of distorting muscle tension (once we investigate if their body is holding distorting muscle tension). Many people also have disturbing muscle tension. By beginning with your sitting posture having a fairly good amount of proper alignment, the proper alignment-muscle relaxation cycle can continue throughout your meditation; with no direction from your mind. Oppositely, when you don't have proper alignment, a cycle, without any direction from your mind, can naturally happen during your sitting meditation where your alignment worsens and this makes your muscles tighten that makes your alignment further worsen that makes your muscles further tighten that makes your alignment further worsen ..... (you get the idea). Most of the people who have taken the posture lesson for sitting meditation now experience this alignment-relaxation cycle during their meditation. This is how they can sit with proper posture for one or more hours with only transitory discomforts. This transition to such ease during a longer sitting is sometimes instantaneous and sometimes the body will gradually have more ease during longer sittings. Over months your body can more and more fully embrace the proper alignment-muscle relaxation cycle. Many people have found that their posture improves during their sitting because of the positive influence from the alignment-relaxation cycle. This is opposite of what they were experiencing before taking the posture lesson. Before the lesson they often experienced more muscle tension and more posture problems as their meditation became longer. To read why my initial alignment/posture is not the best alignment of the sitting, click here. If you have not clicked on any links on this page, to go back to the page that you were just reading click the back button on your computer. To go back to the page titled Your Root Instructions and The Posture Lesson For Sitting Meditation, click here. To go back to the page titled A Brief Summary Of The Posture Lesson For Sitting Meditation, click here. To go back to the page titled About Posture and The Importance Of Proper Posture, click here. To go back to the main page about the posture lesson for sitting meditation, click here. |