RELEASE PHENOMENA
In meditation, as you begin to relax, it is quite common to experience what are called “release phenomena.” These may include jerking or quivering of the body as you are falling asleep, gurgling of the stomach, tingling feelings or numbness, memories, mental images, inner sounds, or other perceptual changes.
Release phenomena are common indicators that your practice of relaxation or meditation is becoming effective in dissolving deeply imbedded mental, emotional, and physical holding patterns. The best way to deal with these experiences is to simply allow them to arise, unfold, and dissolve without distracting your attention.
With practice, you will become aware of the subtle physical, emotional, and mental states that are the indicators of progressively deeper levels of relaxation and meditation. Eventually, your reservoirs of accumulated stress will be drained, allowing you to feel lighter, clearer, and better able to handle the challenges of daily life more effectively and with greater patience and understanding.
RELAXED YET ALERT
For most of us, our experience of deep relaxation lacks awareness and is at best dull and dreamlike. And at the very height of alertness we are the complete opposite of relaxed, experiencing physical tension and mental agitation. Both of these extremes are far from the relaxed yet alert, calm delight of meditative equipoise. A classical analogy talks of tuning a stringed musical instrument: If the strings are too tight or too loose the sound is not very pleasant. Similarly, to find the sweet notes in meditation, it is necessary to find a dynamic balance between being overly alert and overly relaxed. The first extreme creates physical and mental tightness and eventually leads to distraction. The other end of the continuum creates dullness and heaviness that usually leads to sleep.
Especially in the beginning, much of your session might be spent finding this balance, bringing the mind back from dazed distraction or dullness to a state of relaxed alertness. Eventually, you will become familiar with this state of being. During your meditation sessions you will be able to be deeply relaxed as well as extremely lucid, and in daily life you will find that your view of the way things are will be less conditioned and obstructed. With this deepening understanding, you will be better able to optimize your response to the challenges and opportunities of each moment with more creative and compassionate attitudes, words, and actions.
DYNAMIC RELAXATION: HAVE MERCY
As we were about to enter into a long meditation retreat, we visited one of our special teachers. With intense and tender concern, he took us by the hand, looked deeply into our eyes and said, “If you wish to be successful in your meditation practice, the most important thing is to remember to stay relaxed! If you get tense and try too hard, it will only create problems.” Dynamic relaxation is a first step in opening to our wholeness, our full potential, and to the world. As you learn to relax and to release unnecessary tension, the physical vitality, mental clarity, calm, centered strength, and emotional well-being which are fundamental to the human spirit, will naturally and effortlessly arise. The tensions we hold in our day to day lives are, in many cases, armoring reflective of our underlying anxieties and fears about not feeling safe or secure in the world. When we knot our muscles, clench our teeth, or tie our guts in knots, it does little for us but cause pain, raise blood pressure, and create more noise in the nervous system. While this bracing accomplishes the unconscious task of dulling our sensitivity and shielding us from the intensity of life, it also exhausts, depletes, and weakens us. Such survival skills are not sustainable and, over time, the accumulating stress and strain will lead to many problems.
Relaxation is a means of ceasing to create pain for ourselves. Often the first strategy we teach people to relax is to actually increase the level of their tension! Why? Because when we realize that we can increase the tension—say, take it from a “4” up to a “7”—we recognize that we really are in control of, or at least can influence, the situation and our response to it. No one can make us tense, no matter how much blame we may want to project onto others. If we can increase our tension, then it is also possible for us to release it, to relax from a “7” back down to a “4,” and with practice down to a “3,” “2,” or even “zero.” As we gradually learn to recognize and reduce the habits that create noise in our bodies and mind, we learn to relax and open our bodies, mind, hearts, and souls to commune with creation in all its many dimensions.
Dynamic relaxation—the state of optimal tension, free from unnecessary strain—is a gesture of mercy and compassion toward ourselves. To make this step again and again takes courage—the courage to look, listen, feel, and welcome life without running away, or constricting back into our shell of tension, or ignore-ance. At the sacred heart of the Islamic faith, the first words of worship are Bismillah Erachman, Erahim: “We begin in the name of Allah, the One who is Merciful and Compassionate.” Taking this prayerto heart, we come to realize that this is where our work on ourselves must begin: to begin to open our hearts with greater mercy and compassion toward ourselves and others.
THOUGHTS TO ENERGIZE YOUR MEDITATION
Consider the precious opportunity that this human existence gives us. By practicing meditation we can realize and express our enormous potential. This is a great gift.
Then consider impermanence. Whatever is born will die, whatever appears will disappear. Recognizing this, we understand that we really don't know how much time we have to realize our true nature and potential and to love and help those we care for.
Contemplating the laws of cause and effect, we understand that we have choice in our lives. What we experience today is largely the result of the choices we made previously, and what we choose to do, think, and say now will shape and determine our future.
Finally, consider why we should work with our minds. The long-term result, the experience of enlightenment, is more joyful, more intense, and complete than anything we have yet known, and once found can never be lost. Secondly, there is so much suffering in the world, and our ability to benefit others is very limited if we ourselves are confused.
So, for ourselves and others, we want to place our trust in those who can inspire and guide us in this inner work and in the traditions, teachings, and methods that help us to master our minds and to awaken genuine wisdom and compassion in our lives.
FAITH, SUPPORT, AND INSPIRATION
For all these reasons, then, we seek a refuge from the chaos and confusion within and around us. Like a child taking refuge in its mother, or hikers seeking shelter from a storm, we seek an oasis of sanity in a chaotic world.
Outwardly, we place our trust in the teachers who remind us through their example, their kindness, and their teachings that it is possible to become free from mental and emotional confusion and to become wise and kind as well. We find strength and guidance in the teachings that show us how to master our minds and find freedom and understanding in our lives. Likewise, we find refuge in the community of friends and companions who share our study, practice, and investigation of how meditation can be practically applied to meet the challenges and opportunities of daily life.
Inwardly, the teacher reflects the seed of our own potential for deep understanding and genuine kindness. Oral and written teachings point our minds toward the ineffable wisdom that shines like the sun and moves within our hearts, the real mystery that precedes life and endures beyond death. Our companions along the way remind us of the community of people who, from the beginning of time, strove to find the same understanding and who preserved and passed on the teachings.
Meditation—whether you are sitting alone in a cave, or in an office, or meditating in a group—does not happen in a vacuum, devoid of relationship and sharing with others. Affirming, trusting, and drawing strength and inspiration from your relationships with others and your connectedness with the universe will offer you protection and peace of mind, and will inspire your meditation practice.
PROPER MOTIVATION
As you begin each session, remind yourself of why you are sitting down to meditate. Why are you giving yourself this gift of time for centering, harmonizing, and