Awareness tensing muscles?

[MarinM]

So many times when I meditate I try to be aware of my body and most of the time when I go to feel my upper legs or feet they tend to tense up while still being in the same place - not a single move, but the more I try to be aware of them the harder the tension becomes and it's raising near the line of pain. And all that time I thought by default that awareness causes that but today I got question if maybe there is always tension there but I'm just not aware of it which makes more sense to me now but I'm still not fully sure. Even when my mind is calm through the day I can feel tension when meditating.
So the question is: Is my focus building the "pain" in the legs or there is "pain" always but I'm not aware of it? I also tend to jerk my leg unconsciously when sitting, doing anything and sometimes it's kind of unstoppable and I just let it be but my mind is clear with no stress or anything, so is there something bigger being suppressed on a level it can't come in my mind?

[Markus]

Paying attention is culturally associated with tension. Which is actually bullcrap. You are probably just tensing your muscles because you're trying to forcefully become more aware, which is not only unfruitful but counterproductive.

Try this:

When you notice tension somewhere, consciously tense the area even more.

Now relax the added tension.

Now relax even more. You can imagine a feeling of expansion or melting in that area if that helps.

If you keep the relaxation up for a while, you should feel a buzzing or warm feeling in that area.


There's even a meditation where you could go through your entire body from the feet up, tensing and relaxing every area. The tensing helps you to get in touch with the feeling of relaxation when you later let go of that tension. Do one round of that, and then start again from the feet, but this time just relax further instead of tensing. You'll feel a warm/buzzing sensation in your toes and then you can let that slowly spread, taking as much time as you need, until it encompasses the entire body. 

This might retrain you and stop you associating attention with tension.