Muscle spasm

John #3,

This is a very old physical problem, one that has not been resolved even though you have seen chiropractors, acupuncturists, etc.

The pain gets worse as your body begins to dissolve the stress, so naturally you worry. But you should know that this kind of experience is not the "ruin" of meditation, rather, it is its finest flower: stress release in its purest and most efficient form.

But sometimes stress release works like this. Sometimes we just have to put up with the annoyance (which is still very minor compared to the accident or whatever strain or overload was originally placed on your body that caused the stress).

If we don't put up with the pain and annoyance, the stress will be quite happy to stay in our body, limiting its function, year after year.

The advice is: in each meditation session, when the pain starts, allow the attention to continue naturally focussing on the pain. Don't distract yourself. Experience the pain fully, knowing that this is the best way to release it forever.

It may take one session, it may take a hundred. But this simple procedure is enough to allow your body to throw off the burden of this block to progress for good.

Please continue to check in here and report your experiences as the stress release first appears to get "worse" and then finally resolves and gets "better". "Better" and "worse" are both illusions stemming from the process of stress release. But just because we know intellectually that they are illusions doesn't mean that they don't feel very, very real while they are happening.

You are used to taking this apparent reality seriously, and avoiding the pain. But now we are going to do the opposite. We are going to embrace the pain as though it were our friend. And when it goes away (whether in a few minutes or a few days, doesn't matter), we will know it for the stress release that it was.

Search in this forum for "cosmic chiropractor" for further information about physical stress release of this type.

Please keep us informed of how your experience changes in future meditation sessions. Keeping us informed will be helpful to you and will help others who have similar complaints.

David Spector
NSR Meditation/USA