The principle of this meditation is based on the fact, we recall once more: human’s psyche, his consciousness and subconsciousness are projected on his physical body, that’s why all mental disorders have their physical embodiment. However unlike the subconsciousness, protected from the consciousness by the mechanism of censorship, the physical body is open to study and can be used as a bridge to enter the world of subconsciousness.
Usually the most of psychological problems lead to muscle contractions and to the distortion and inhibition of different reflexes. In our case muscle contractions will be used as a clue to introspection.
Basic technique of meditation #
First step #
Take a comfortable and stable position (at this stage it’s better to lie down on your back). Try to relax in the following order: toes, feet, ankles, shanks, knees, hips, fingers, hands, wrists, elbows, forearms, shoulders, shoulder girdle, abdomens, back, neck, face, head. After ending this cycle of relaxation, come back to your physical body and let your thought pass through the same zones, thoroughly checking, if these muscles are really relaxed.
If you find a not relaxed muscle, try to relax it by the power of your will. If you fail, concentrate your consciousness on this muscle, focus on it, watching all appearing images and emotional states. You have found some non-reacted emotions. Try to understand and to feel the situation or the emotion you’re seeing as deep as possible, but remaining calm as an inside observer. After this try again to relax this muscle. If you succeed, continue the examination of your body, repeating the cycle of eliciting with every not relaxed muscle. You can help yourself, asking questions like «what prevents me from relaxing» or «what emotion is blocking this muscle» and so on. If after understanding the situation you still can’t relax the muscle, try one of the techniques given below or pass to the next muscle, consciously noting that you have an unsolved situation.
Pay special attention to those parts of your body that your mind tries to skip or «not to notice». It’s the true sign that the most serious problems lie there and you see the defensive mechanism in action. Another most frequent defensive mechanism is a sudden irritation, anger, a wish to stop the meditation immediately or at least to change the pose. Actualise this feeling and note, when it appeared — the corresponding part of your body also has big problems.
The first step is done when you succeeded in relaxing all muscles. Usually muscle contractions reflect rather shallow levels of our subcon-sciousness and contain emotions and feelings we have without realizing it in. That’s why a good way to relieve them is to actualise the respec-tive feelings (see the previous chapter), which results in liberation of the energy of this feeling.
People usually have typical projections. For example, a tension in the knees is related to some hurry, extruded for the time of yoga session; in abdominal muscles — to a fear, in the neck — to some respon-sibilities not fulfilled or oppressed and so on.
NOTE. During meditation after having achieved a deep relaxation, you can experience some abrupt convulsive movements of the body, scaring both practitioners and their teachers. 2-5 seconds after they are over, new muscle contractions appear. It’s nothing bad, in this moment there is just an «opening» of a deeper still not cleansed level of subconsciousness and its projec-tion on the body. Start meditation from the beginning.
Second step #
Face relaxation. This step is harder than the previous one, because up to 70% of emotions are projected on our face, moreover these emotions are much more defined than those controlled by our body. The principle of this meditation is the same: one by one relax your facial muscles, actualise your emotions, feelings and situations, hindering it. You should also understand that at each effort of your will your forehead muscles strain, so at a certain point you should switch off your will. Approximate correlation is this: set jaw — anger, tension in upper part of cheeks — non-acceptance, in the throat — non-realised wishes to say something etc.
Third step #
Viscera relaxation. You should pass to this step only after you mastered previous ones, because here you’ll deal not with physical relaxation, but with the feeling of relaxation of every internal, tracing sit-uations, hindering it. This meditation leads us to some even deeper layers of subconsciousness and often opens some situations, which were the reasons of our physical diseases of respective organs.
NOTE. Different parts of the same organ often correspond to different situations.
Forth step #
Bones relaxation can lead us to a subpersonal experience, that’s why, if you are a beginner in meditation, you’d better skip it. Of course, in our bones there are no muscles, but there are etheric and astral planes, so some energy can also be stocked there, as well as the feeling of tension and relaxation.
Fifth step #
Chakras and petals relaxation can be used to open respective chakras and to trace blocks.
Meditating in asana #
If you reached the third step, try to complicate your meditation, doing it in one of asanas. In this case the weight is redistributed and some muscles you weren’t even noticing while lying on the back, suddenly show themselves. Your goal is to learn to relax all muscles, not engaged in doing asana. For example, if you are in Bhujangasana, pay attention to your fingers. If you have problems with Anahata, they huddle up. In Paschimotanasana usually contract abdominal muscles and the groin and so on.
Meditation is considered mastered, if you can relax all idle muscles in any yoga posture.
If these techniques help you to study what is in your subcon-sciousness, or esoterically speaking, once you feel your astral body, find situations, bothering you, your nonreacted emotions and complexes, you can start its «cleansing». Methods of work with subconsciousness can be divided in two categories: analytical and catharsis.
Analytical methods are based on becoming aware of different subconscious objects, using their indirect demonstration (dreams, emotional stresses etc.). Realization liberates and restructures energy, «frozen» in deep (unconscious) layers of the aura, which makes it possible to use this energy. The oldest and, whatever paradoxical it may seem, the most worked over technique is the Buddhist vippasana. Most of modern analytical methods go back to different schools of psychoanalysis.
Catharsis methods are based on the direct reacting of the feelings and emotions that bother us, with no need to realise them. Most of dy-namic meditations are used as catharsis.
Примітки #
1. See «Religious psychopractics in the history of culture».↑