My first sensations with meditation

[thelastrich]

Well, maybe some of you know that I'm new here  Just started in meditation about a month ago, and I start having some sensations that I don't know exactly what means 

Almost from the very beginning I stop "feeling" my hands, starting from my thumbs (I have one hand like a spoon, the other hand resting on the first one, and thumbs touching). Some days later I felt like electricity going from one thumb to another, and this sensation continues now. Only one day I felt something like this too, at the sides of my head.

This "stop feeling" my hands, I think now is expanding to the arms, and maybe the legs, but in a much softer way, I still know they are there, but my hands are like disappeared.

The other thing: some days ago I built my seiza bench (It's ugly but very confortable  ) with some wood my mother wanted to throw away. In this bench I have my back straight in a natural position, without making any effort, but curiously, the first day I used It I felt like a "pain" in the spine, but It didn't hurt. Was strange. This first time, I got up and stretch my back a little, I felt my back a little strange, but nothing else. Next time, I let this to happen and don't get up, It was like changing to a feeling of "block my spine" so It can't move. Still a little strange, but since this happened I think my meditation sessions have become longer than before.

That is all for now  Advise are welcome 
Maybe I will make this thread like a little "blog" of my experience 

Thank you.

[budo]

The feeling you have with your hands is very common, it is a sign that you have built some concentration. I have this feeling, and when this feeling spreads throughout your whole body from toe to head, and you stop feeling your whole body, this develops a form of real equanimity. The first time it happened to me, I could feel the "no-feeling" going all the way up to my head, and then boom, my whole body felt transparent, gone. It was complete equanimity.

It's hard to have this happen to your whole body (to me anyways, only happened a 2-3 times with a year of meditation), but if you are able to do it to your whole body, I think it means you were able to be without the 5 hindrances (like,dislike,drowsiness,distraction,doubt) temporarily. When this happens, you feel like nothing can affect you, you have complete equanimity towards everything in the universe. It's a great feeling.

[Matthew]

Keep sitting. Cling to nothing, fabricate nothing, seek nothing, just see what is. Your experience is not uncommon nor to be worried about nor to be sought out. Meditation is about facing what is.

You are more than welcome to keep your practice blog here.

Warmly,

Matthew

[thelastrich]

Thank you 
I have continued with the practice, and in the last week I have "developed" the ability to see things I didn't see before inside my mind, but the problem is I don't know if this a step forward or if I'm trying so hard.

When I have a strong feeling now, like "I wish this to happen" or like something that makes me feel a clear anxiety... I can "see" how the mind is thinking and grieving for that, like there are two different minds, each one with their independent process. The Ego and the "reality", one wanting, desiring, grieving and creating the pain, and the other simply looking at the scene as It is.

This sounds good, but when some "not important" thinking comes to my mind, I can't see this unless I search for It, and this search sometimes is easy and sometimes is harder, depending on the feeling if it's stronger or softer.

I don't know if this is trying so hard, if I shouldn't see this, or if It will come alone with the practice just like at the beginning I couldn't realize when my mind was thinking for itself.

warmly from my little confusion 

[Morning Dew]

thelastrich my friend,
ego has 1000 faces and you have noticed two of them    the "Ego" face and the "real" face. There is also one you didn't see and that one is the one observing the two and writing on this forum the "Observer" face. Let them be without trying to name them or give them any identity. Let them be without clinging to them.
I know it is hard to differentiate one self from the self. One asks one self How to exist in tis world without identity. How to just observe the self and not be the self yet be present in the everyday to day interactions with one self and others?

Dont worry too much. There are 997 faces left to face, so keep sitting and keep letting go of all that springs from the mind.

You are doing great!

Friendly Che

[Matthew]

...
I don't know if this is trying so hard, if I shouldn't see this, or if It will come alone with the practice just like at the beginning I couldn't realize when my mind was thinking for itself.

warmly from my little confusion 

"... breathes in sensitive to and calming the whole body, breathes out sensitive to and calming the whole body".

Return to the breath.

Matthew

[Lokuttara]

Relaxing... out of the head, into the body. Leaving the mind behind, and into a gentle, compassionate awareness of body.

[Matthew]

Relaxing... out of the head, into the body. Leaving the mind behind, and into a gentle, compassionate awareness of body.

That is quite poetic.

[thelastrich]

...
I don't know if this is trying so hard, if I shouldn't see this, or if It will come alone with the practice just like at the beginning I couldn't realize when my mind was thinking for itself.

warmly from my little confusion 

"... breathes in sensitive to and calming the whole body, breathes out sensitive to and calming the whole body".

Return to the breath.

Matthew

Im thinking seriously to paste a post-it in my door with basics:
breath in feeling and relaxing the hole body, breath out feeling and relaxing the hole body, don't pull, don't push, just watch, let it go, etc. 

[Morning Dew]

Thelastrich, that sounds as a good idea. You could read through it just before meditating as a reminder.
I remind my restless self very often during the actual sitting as soon i feel i have wondered away or start tensing the muscles to calm the body with each in and outbreath sensitive to the body. I dont repeat this. One is not to become rigid but soft and relaxed. If its not perfect who cares (well, the ego does).

Good man! You are on your way i see

Friendly Che

[thelastrich]

Since 2 days I feel like I'm meditating better, it helped me to hear: "mindfulness is bare attention, not thinking, not verbalize".
This doesn't mean I was doing wrong, but I do much better now 

But still, there is something I can't handle very well, this is my mandible.
If my mandible remains closed, I swallow less and do it very comfortable, but my mandible-muscles aren't relaxed.
If my mandible remains open, I swallow more and do it less comfortable, but my mandible is more relaxed.

I try to let the mandible open (being relaxed is the most important I think) and my tongue up-forward, just before the upper teeth.
I know swallowing is not a big deal, I let it go, but sometimes I swallow so much that it becomes a big distraction.
Maybe I'm placing the tongue in a wrong position, maybe there is some trick that can do it...
If there isn't: "it is ok" 

[Morning Dew]

maybe there is some trick that can do it...

Yes there is, you can try drooling instead 

[Matthew]

Indeed, drooling is not a bad option, though I recommend a bib or fresh T shirt.... It is not uncommon to find you have issues with exactly this when starting practice. You'll work it out.

[thelastrich]

I will just let it be and swallow when needed   

This time I'm glad that I don't have any issue at all  Just realized, for the first time, that in my last 2 sitting I was looking at my breath with ¿real? mindfulness.
I use ¿real? because I had though it was real mindfulness before, so I'm wrong for sure now too 
I observed my breath and felt like it wasn't mine, just breathing unpersonalized, a situation where that just happens. Is a little hard to explain in words.
The second time I didn't see this until near the end of my session, like the first time. Maybe because of the level of relax or something, I don't know, just happened and "let it be" 

[Matthew]

You are cultivating "the watcher" - a mode of consciousness in which you are aware of yourself from a little distance. This is a normal step. Keep relaxing into the practice. The watcher will be with you for some time - and the main vehicle of your meditation.

[thelastrich]

I was away of the forum for some days, that was to calm my intellectual thinking about meditation. Just when I read that I was in the good way (thanks Matthew) I had read something in another post about being mindful all the time, and suddenly my meditation gone wrong.
I noticed that I was doing wrong, unconscious, but I couldn't realize why or how, so I continued telling myself "this too shall pass" and continue sitting as always. It was like I couldn't look at the mind itself.

After a week or so, I came back at the right path and suddenly I realized what, how and why I was doing wrong. ¿Why I was so blind and so easy? Don't know and don't care, just happened and now I can continue 

Also I think I have make some progress in these last days    I started to see my body and my feelings like a box where I'm inside, looking at it and the things that happen. I can feel sometimes like that body and mind are like of another person, and sometimes I can feel pity for the clinging of that poor mind.

I feel I'm going in the right way now 
Thank you!