The Hot Tub of Sensation
La Bañera de Hidromasaje de la Sensación
A student describes intense physical sensations during meditation, including feelings of skin breaking, and asks whether this process increases sensitivity. The teacher explains why such experiences arise naturally as the body-mind shifts away from thought-dominated numbness.
The Hot Tub of Sensation
A student describes intense physical sensations during meditation, including feelings of skin breaking, and asks whether this process increases sensitivity. The teacher explains why such experiences arise naturally as the body-mind shifts away from thought-dominated numbness.
I wanted to share something about the senses. When I'm sitting still or meditating (and by meditation I just mean sitting and relaxing), the sense experience becomes very, very intense. The physical feeling is like skin breaking, like something breaking through the skin. It's not causing harm, but it's a lot more intense than you might think.
That is very natural in this process. In a sense, we are getting into a hot tub of water in this work, because we are leaving the world of thought and moving toward the world of sensation and perception. We go into the world of thought in order to push out sensation and perception. As we undo that pattern, we are pulled back in. In the practice, you first go directly and intentionally into sensation and perception through the breath, but at some point it begins to happen on its own. You no longer have the habitual thought that tightens you away from experience. The body-mind starts becoming foreground, and with that come a lot of real changes in biochemistry and the brain.
Regulating intensity
Think of it like getting into a hot tub. You go in a little slowly. If it's too much, you ease back out. That's where you regulate. You give your body-mind the time to adjust. After a while, you can be in the hot water that burned at first. It felt like burning, but it wasn't actually burning. It was just your nervous system firing signals of pain when nothing was actually happening.
This is very well known. There are different kinds of triggers that can generate a sensation of pain, as though you're being cut, even though you're not being cut. It's just the mind getting triggered. An actual nerve cell fires and creates the experience of pain. That can happen from an actual cut, but it can also be triggered on its own. All kinds of sensations and all kinds of bodily experiences can arise. This is very natural, because you can also imagine that by putting all your energy into thought, you have been numbing the body. You have been reducing the experience of the body because the body has been too painful or scary.
Does this make a person more sensitive? I have become more sensitive. I just feel more sensitive overall.
Heightened sensitivity
Yes. This is different for everyone, but it is very common to develop, or get back in touch with, a natural sensitivity. There are certain kinds of abilities, and one of them you could call higher sensitivity. It becomes a more raw, direct experience of reality.
As for the experience of pain on the skin, I would say: sit with it, and regulate. If it's too much, go back and forth a bit. Your body-mind is changing, so you need to give it time to adjust. The biochemistry needs to realign. The nervous system, especially in the brain, is making new connections while old connections that are no longer needed are being undone.
The electrical and chemical shifts
The nervous system works through electrical energy, so it is both chemical and electrical. There is a certain intensity to how much electricity is moving through the system. As you do this work, you are in a sense increasing that energy. That is why you might have muscle spasms. Some people experience spasms because the muscles are releasing or tightening. The nervous system is shifting. The brain is shifting. Sensations of pain are very common.
Sometimes I've been just sitting, and afterward my muscles feel like I've been to the gym. But all I was doing was sitting there. It's very strange. I feel so tired, as if I had been working hard. It actually is very tiring. I was feeling a bit worried about how to live with this.
That is very natural when you are undergoing a transition. It is literally like going to a gym. Your body-mind is doing a lot of work. But it all stabilizes. It becomes so natural that you won't even notice it.