helping meditators feel good in their bodies
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Joined November 2019
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Many meditators have transformative experiences: things that completely rewire how they relate to the world. That same rewiring is possible in movement.
Personal Training for Mediators has been in private beta for ~4 months, and it’s been so much fun.
You can read more here: personaltrainingformeditator…
The twitterati may be interested in an experimental payment option I’m offering, inspired by @chrislakin
One of the most delightful things about standing meditation is the mundane delight it brings into your life
Waiting in line becomes very pleasurable: a chance to connect to the ground, for your body to soften and open. Practice starts to infect you everywhere. Showers kick even more ass, interpersonal nervousness can relax, resting between sets of barbell back squats feels like taking a bath
I do not need breaks. I am a hardcore person with bones of adamantium
This is (basically) what some people say when I ask them to take a break during standing meditation In many traditional contexts, standing practices are introduced as endurance challenges: you improve by “cooking” in the posture. Ease is what comes after you are thoroughly baked.
However, you can also approach from the direction of ease and sensitivity. Taking time to prioritize sensitivity over endurance is useful, because sensitivity makes endurance easier.
Think of a runner with beautiful, efficient form. For the elegant runner, running is full and rich -- like gliding. When running feels like gliding, choosing to run longer is natural. It feels good. On the other hand, a runner with clunky, inefficient form has to expend more energy to cover the same distance. For them, running does not feel as good.
When starting standing practice, it can be really helpful to find ease and efficiency first. It's usually more fun, more sustainable, and you get to taste the results of practice much sooner.
When aches and pains show up in meditation practice, a common response is to spam equanimity: just dissolve into unconditional acceptance bro
Equanimity is useful. But sometimes, spamming equanimity makes no sense, like when you find your hand on a hot stove. Just take your hand off the burner, sir.
However, to the aspiring hardcore-meditator, a hot stove may look like an opportunity to grow their capacity for extreme discomfort. Spam equanimity.
An extreme approach may be useful in rare cases, but not for most people. Sometimes, meditators can get so good at tolerating discomfort that they miss useful signals like, "please-move-your-hand-right-freaking-now" or "please-brother-adopt-a-new meditation-posture-soon."
Discomfort tolerance is important.
But maybe see if you can find comfort with life as-it-is before you start discomfort-maxxing on the cushion
When aches and pains show up in meditation practice, a common response is to spam equanimity: just dissolve into unconditional acceptance bro
Equanimity is useful. But sometimes, spamming equanimity makes no sense, like when you find your hand on a hot stove. Just take your hand off the burner, sir.
However, to the aspiring hardcore-meditator, a hot stove may look like an opportunity to grow their capacity for extreme discomfort. Spam equanimity.
An extreme approach may be useful in rare cases, but not for most people. Sometimes, meditators can get so good at tolerating discomfort that they miss useful signals like, "please-move-your-hand-right-freaking-now" or "please-brother-adopt-a-new meditation-posture-soon."
Discomfort tolerance is important.
But maybe see if you can find comfort with life as-it-is before you start discomfort-maxxing on the cushion
Tanner Holman retweeted
ཨ How the Dzogchen Sky Realm movement practice works, where it fits with other practices, and why @JaredJanes and @almostheir love it. They are leading a half-day introductory virtual Sky Realm retreat on August 30th. Links in reply tweet!
It’s probably a good time to mention that top-down control of autonomic processes can have serious negative consequences
(see: Wim Hof, Waitzkin drowning story, tummo stories)
The funniest thing I learned while hospitalized last year was that Meditation had given me significant(?) control over my heart rate
(This is not a superpower, and I wouldn’t recommend fiddling with your heart rate directly)
My slower RHR was probably a natural byproduct of high levels of fitness, some meditation, as well as a mundane thing most people can already do
Tanner Holman retweeted
From Abstract: "Attention is a central mechanism for prioritizing and shaping sensory information. For example, directing attention away from injury reduces perceived pain. Whether such cognitive modulation extends to downstream biological processes has remained unknown. Here, across three pre-registered within-subjects experiments using acute skin inflammation as a model system, we show that directing attention towards bodily sensations, compared to attentional distraction, produces markedly more regulated immune responses, with distinct temporal dynamics."
Did you know attention help regulates your immune response?
"Our findings therefore establish a causal
link between attention and immune regulation in vivo, suggesting that processes often considered autonomously regulated, such as inflammatory responses, are influenced by the voluntary allocation
of attentional resources."
nature.com/articles/s41562-0…
