Why Do My Shoulders Hurt Only During Evening Meditation?

[With English interpretation] Ven. Pomnyun Sunim's (법륜스님) Answer to “Why do my shoulders hurt only during evening meditation?”
A question chosen from the weekly Sunday meditation with Ven. Pomnyun Sunim(법륜스님).

Peace of mind is only one step away.

Transcript

Why does my shoulder hurt during the Sunday meditation after work?

It does not hurt during meditation early in the morning.

I don't think that's something that I know.

I think it's something that you should know.

I suspect that it's not due to meditation.

It's just that something that you do during the day affects your shoulder somewhat.

Because I do a lot of physical labor,

My arms hurt a lot.

Once you do meditation for a long time,

Your legs do hurt.

And your sides hurt just because you're sitting in a position and your back is straight.

And there's some pain in your neck and along the shoulders because you're keeping your head up straight.

I think this pain occurs because we don't usually have good posture during our everyday lives.

We kind of hunch over.

And since we're straightening up during meditation,

It kind of goes against this habit.

So in a way,

You could look at the pain as a resistance of your body against kind of fixing your bad posture.

Next week,

We start week-long meditation in which you meditate every single day for the whole day.

We do about 12 times every day of 30 to 40 minute meditation sessions.

Then our legs will hurt a lot.

There will be different types of pain throughout the body.

But after three or four days,

Especially after five,

Fifth day,

A lot of the pain goes away automatically because your body is kind of fixing itself.

So if you're okay in the morning meditation,

But you still have pain in the afternoon,

But you still have the shoulder pain in the evening meditation,

My best guess would be it's due to some activity you've done during the day.

So I want you to take this opportunity to really investigate your own body.

And the same shoulder pain,

If it persists,

Then maybe go see a doctor.