The Body Keeps The Score

In this session, we discuss the concept of our bodies holding onto the events of our past - and how through Vipassana meditation we can learn to process and release these feelings and then return ourselves to a place of equanimity and balance. We end this session with the practice of body scanning: the non-judgemental awareness of the sensations arising from the body, then noting their impermanence as they fall away. This track is taken from my course, ‘The Path Within: Lessons From A 10-Day Vipassana Retreat’, available now via my profile.

Transcript

Day four.

The body keeps the score.

For the first three days of the course we were practicing Anapana meditation.

The idea being that we were to focus our attention on the sensations of the breath at the nostrils.

Focusing on the breath going in and the breath going out,

The touch of the breath.

Or we were to feel the sensations that would naturally arise in the triangle that encaptured our nose and upper lip.

And then getting our awareness,

Our attention,

Our focus even sharper by focusing on the very center of the point just above the upper lip.

Noticing the small and subtle vibrations and sensations that were arising.

We were sitting like this in this focus for 10 hours each day for three days.

And in my mind I assumed we were practicing Vipassana meditation.

That the act of focusing on the breath was the technique.

It was challenging,

It was overwhelming,

It was confronting,

It was a lot.

Sitting for so long was causing a lot of physical pain and thoughts and things were arising.

The technique was,

At least I thought,

Working.

And it was.

But I was quite shocked to hear in the teacher discourses at the end of day three that all of what we were doing was not in fact Vipassana meditation.

For the last three days this deep focus on the breath,

This deep focus on subtle sensations at the point of the nose,

The point of the upper lip,

Was not Vipassana.

That tomorrow,

Day four,

We would be ready to begin the technique.

So just to reiterate,

30 hours more spent on a technique,

30 hours sitting in observation,

Focusing on the breath,

Noticing when our minds wandered and bringing it back to the sensation of the breath at the nose again and again and again.

Challenging work,

Deep work,

Hard work,

Things that I thought would be,

Well,

Were impossible to me prior,

I could now do with ease.

I started with not being able to go for more than 10 breaths without losing focus,

Being able to go for a whole minute to five minutes to 15 minutes to longer without losing my attention on the breath.

My mind would wander and I would catch it wandering very quickly and bring it back to the breath.

I was doing this non-judgmentally.

I felt like I was succeeding.

I'm like,

Yes,

I'm doing this Vipassana thing.

And then I need to be told,

None of this was the technique.

This was the prep work.

This was the preparation prior that tomorrow,

Tomorrow we would be ready to begin.

Oh,

I almost fell over.

It was,

It was a shock,

But,

Well,

We persist and the next day we were introduced to the technique of Vipassana meditation.

And the technique,

Well,

As I soon learned,

Does require such deep focus and clarity and control of the mind and awareness.

The basic technique of Vipassana is this.

You systematically scan each part of your body in turn and notice the feelings that are arising.

You look at your head,

The top of your head,

Then the back of your head,

And your ears,

And your face,

And your neck,

Down one arm,

Down the other arm,

Down the chest,

And the belly,

And below the belly,

And the upper back,

And the mid back,

And the lower back,

And your seat,

And your left leg,

And your right leg,

Looking at every single part of the skin and noticing the sensations that are arising.

Noticing the good feelings,

And the bad feelings,

And the spaces where there are no feelings,

And observing them with equanimity.

That means that the good feelings you are not craving for,

Or lusting for,

Or hoping that they continue,

You're just observing them.

And the bad feelings,

The pain,

The irritations,

Just observing them curiously,

Without pushing them away,

Without pushing them away,

Just seeing what is arising,

And any numb or blank spaces,

Not judging yourself for not being able to feel,

But just observing those blank spaces.

This is the practice,

The act of Vipassana meditation,

And there's more depth to it,

And we'll get into this in later sessions,

But fundamentally is the systematic,

Equanimous awareness of sensation in the body,

And it's inevitable impermanence,

It's passing away.

And in this way,

You scan your body from head to toe,

And then toe to head,

Going part by part,

Piece by piece.

If you are scanning your head,

And a big pain in your leg arises,

You acknowledge it,

But you return to the focus on what you're attending to.

Because there's a temptation to jump between different parts of the body.

If something big is arising,

You want to jump there.

But if you do so,

You'll be missing the subtlety and the nuance,

You'll get blinded by the intensity of the thought.

So the very practice,

The very systematic cycling itself is teaching equanimity,

Is itself helping you to develop awareness.

But of course,

As we began this practice,

We started to sit,

And we were given the practice of strong determination,

That is to not open the legs,

Not open the hands,

And not open the eyes,

For an hour,

Three hours each day,

Morning,

Noon,

And night,

To sit for an hour in strong determination.

There was pain,

There was intense thoughts,

It was one of the hardest things that I've ever done.

And very quickly,

We started to learn that the body keeps the score.

There's an idea in Western psychology,

This idea that if you've faced challenges and traumas,

Your body holds on,

Your mind can't deal with it,

You process it,

You dissociate from it,

But your body holds on to those traumas.

And if something arises to trigger it,

It sort of comes back.

And there's deep psychology in this.

But the Vipassana,

The Buddhist-based approach,

Sort of also looks at it,

But not just for big significant events,

But rather for every event.

Every time that you've been craving something,

Every time that you've been averted to something,

Every time something has happened,

You're storing this in the body.

And when you practice,

When you,

For lack of a better expression,

Develop good karma,

When you stop adding more to this body keeping the score,

The things that have previously happened start to arise,

And the practice of Vipassana helps you to process them.

What this means practically is that when you are sitting,

Deep pain comes.

I distinctly,

Vividly remembering tremendous amounts of pain arising in my lower back.

One of the practices was when you notice such a point of tension to just try and deconstruct the pain.

Where is it?

Where is it?

What does it consist of?

What are the feelings that are arising?

Where does it end?

Where does it start?

What are the points of most intensity?

Look into it.

Delve into it.

Explore it.

Be curious about it.

And in this way,

Eventually,

You'll notice that those feelings of intense pain pass.

They fall away.

They are impermanent.

And this is the deep lesson that you get from Vipassana.

Everything that arises falls away.

But of course,

During that arising and falling away,

You have to practice equanimity,

Observation,

And just watching what is arising.

And for me,

I found that when this process was happening,

I was also getting deep insights into some of the score that my body was keeping.

This pain in my back,

For example,

Came along with a vivid image,

Almost like a deep electron microscope was into my back.

This was like a vivid,

Not hallucination,

But vivid imagery along with the pain as my mind probed the pain.

These images came to my mind.

Deep,

Red,

Raw imagery of effectively bugs crawling over my back,

Almost like it was under an electron microscope,

Sort of zoomed in.

And I just sat with it and felt it and just attempted to just be with it.

These are the things that were arising.

And quickly,

I realized that this pain,

These feelings,

This imagery,

Was in fact feelings about my father and my stepfathers and the legacy of,

Well,

Their inadequate parenting.

The legacy that they've left on me,

It was like I felt like I was finally seeing the weight that I was carrying from them and then sort of being transformed or transmutated or sort of transference to myself as a father for my kids.

I sat with this vivid imagery,

This vivid pain,

And just explored it and just allowed it to arise and come to a crescendo.

And then,

As the hour was ending,

Fall away.

And I was left with this deep understanding of the legacy that the father figures in my life had left me.

The pain,

The mental pain that had been left.

And it taught me a few things.

Number one,

It gave me some direct life lessons of how to be a better father,

Of how to ensure that my kids are getting the most from me,

How I can best ensure their peace and safety and calm and clarity and all of that sort of stuff.

And these sort of lessons upon different days,

Different sittings of strong determination arose.

Issues and things relating to other aspects of my life and my personality and my past.

But more importantly,

There was a meta-lesson.

And the meta-lesson was that my body really does keep the score.

Big and small,

If I allow myself to sit,

My body will start to just release.

Because I and everyone really do hold on to things,

Big and small.

And those things are impacting us under the surface.

These weight of my father,

The imagery,

This red raw imagery of bugs crawling across my back representing the influence of my father was always there.

And in this moment of release,

I realized the impact that was having upon me and upon my life and upon my own role as a parent and upon my kids.

And I realized that this practice,

This Vipassana meditation,

This allowing of the body and the sensations to arise and observing them without judgment,

Just seeing them as they are for what they are in that moment is deeply therapeutic.

And to be clear,

There is the Vipassana or Buddhist spirituality or mythology that goes with it.

But reading between the lines and applying it to Western psychology and studies,

You see that they're sort of talking about the same thing.

If you turn and face and allow yourself to feel without judgment and aversion,

Without craving,

What is arising,

You start to process the pains of the past and the pleasures of the past.

And start to heal and sort of start to reintegrate with it.

Because everything we do,

Everything we experience,

Every instant of our life,

We are absorbing consciously or unconsciously.

And if we can sit and just observe it without running from it,

Without judging it,

Just seeing what is arising,

No matter how confronting,

Pleasurable it is,

We start to heal and become more solid in the moment.

And the wisdom that you will get from such a practice is life-changing.

Because like I said,

This imagery,

This feelings of my father and the stepfather and all of these things that have arisen,

It happened again and again and again over the 10 days and keeps happening even now when I'm meditating at home.

I allow myself to feel.

And whatever I feel,

I see it pass.

And the act of allowing it to arise,

Mindfully,

Observing it,

Systematically going through each part of my body,

Allows those things of the past to reveal themselves and then to gently fall away.

And the lessons that I'm learning that I'm bringing to my life are profound and life-changing.

And I want you to have this,

I want you to have this tool for your life.

So I encourage you to take a seat,

Get comfortable,

Sit upright,

And just for the next one minute,

Sit with a strong determination to not move,

To not open the eyes,

To not unclench the hands,

To not unclench the legs,

To not unclench the legs,

And just be with your body,

To feel what is arising without judgment,

Without filter,

With the curiosity of a scientist exploring sensations as they are arising,

Impartial,

Non-judgmental,

Just observation,

Just allowing it to arise,

Just to accepting it if it does,

And just watching whatever arises fall away in its own time.

We'll sit for one minute,

But if you feel so inclined,

Continue sitting for a longer period of time,

With a strong determination to not open the eyes,

Or the hands,

Or the legs,

To just be with whatever arises,

Good or bad.

Let's sit.

So,

Today we looked at the idea of the body keeping the score,

The idea that all of the experiences we've ever had in our lives are getting stored in the body,

Big and small,

Good and bad,

We're holding on to these feelings,

And if we simply sit and allow those feelings to arise without judgment,

Without filter,

Without craving,

Without aversion,

Just simply sitting and observing those sensations,

Without a desire for them to stay or go,

We're allowing ourselves to process and integrate,

And perhaps learn from these deep,

Long-lasting feelings that we've stored in the body.

We practiced for one minute together today,

But my experience has shown that the longer you can sit in this space,

The better.

Start with one minute,

But in your own time I encourage you to extend this practice to five minutes,

To ten minutes,

And beyond.

Sit for a time that you think you can,

But add another 25% to it,

Because it's that last 25% of time where the real lesson starts,

Where the real pain starts.

It shouldn't be torturous,

But cleansing and purification of the mind and the body won't necessarily be only peaceful.

Take your time,

Go slowly,

And of course you can stop at any time,

But if you can sit with it,

The results will be there for you.

And as always,

I encourage you to sit with any thoughts,

Feelings,

And insights that have arisen,

And to take some time to explore the practice.

If you have any questions about the practice,

Or about this session,

Would like some further clarification,

Or have an insight you wish to share,

Please do so in the classroom.

There I'll be able to give you a voice response,

And you'll be able to read the questions and answers from other students.

This is an opportunity for deep learning,

Further introspection,

And insight,

So please don't miss out.

I look forward to seeing you in the next session.

Thank you.

This track was taken from the course The Path Within.

Lessons from a 10-day Vipassana Retreat.

It's out now on Insight Timer,

And available through my profile.

I invite you to check it out.

Reviews

It's more a talk than a guided meditation but I enjoyed it. Thank you.

Sometimes it is more difficult to be still than others. Your story of sitting still for 10 hours a day gave me encouragement to sit for a short while at a time.