Sensations in head on and off-meditation

[MaasD]

Dear friends,

I have this experience and since I am practicing quite isolated and have no one to share them with, I thought maybe it's worthwhile to share them here.

I am practicing Vipassana, have been on two courses and currently practice twice an hour daily. During retreats I had experiences of gross solidified and sometimes irritating sensations throughout the body, these tended to come in waves and would vanish part by part if I remained equanimous.

Off retreats in my daily practice, I feel some gross solidified sensations too, but merely in the region of my head. They tend to manifest on my face and entire skull and have the characteristics of worm-like structures moving around, sometimes made of water, sometimes made of ice.

As I try to always be aware of the sensations of the body when not meditating, I experience these solidified sensations in and on my head almost during the whole day. I try to be as equanimous as possible and mostly do not react to them. At times these sensations become more gross and solidified and this results in me feeling not in tune with myself, I become less clear-minded and feel like my brain is freezing and I can't access some parts of it. For instance, sometimes I can't come up with words that I want to say. Another funny things is that often when I scan through and past these sensations, my head or my body tends to move or jerk in the direction I am scanning.

These experiences are occuring for a month or three now.

If someone here has had these experiences or has knowledge of these experiences I would very much love to hear from you.

Love,

Maasd

[Matthew]

Maasd,

This post may help you understand the arising of this phenomena: http://www.vipassanaforum.net/forum/index.php/topic,638.msg4992.html#msg4992

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Wherever your focus, though particularly at the nostrils, my answer will be the same and the same as advice I have often repeated. I think you may be trying too hard to concentrate without having first established a calm base of Shamatha meditation practice. Meditation begins as relaxing into your bodymind and reconnecting body and mind through total awareness of breath.

Awareness occurs throughout the body and mind through the distributed nervous system, though is of course centred in the brain - as the final organ of cognition of all perceptions.

There is a particular issue with Anapana at the nose. By focussing one's attention on the nose one is primarily using the 5th Cranial nerve, the Trigeminal nerve, as the  conduit of sensation to the brain. This means that most of the meditative activity is taking place entirely in your head because the Trigeminal nerve directly enters the brain stem and does not pass through the spinal cord.

The Buddha did not teach to focus breathing on the nose. For westerners who are often "head heavy" in their general way of living - and to some extent disembodied because of our cultural preference and conditioning towards rationality - this can be a particular and significant problem.

....

Kindly,

Matthew