Weird jaw tension/cramping during meditation

[Federico del pueblo]

12 hours ago, flowboy said:

I'm not very familiar with the tapping. Does it make you cry a lot?

Not for me, I rarely ever cry. I'm more likely to cry when watching a cute kitten or puppies video. Though in some demonstration videos I've seen that some people do cry a lot when they use the technique while thinking about events in their childhood. I might get watery eyes when I think back to a few incidents in the past, but usually not more.

It's more like during the tapping I feel the exact emotion I want to work on, mostly anxiety, feelings of inadequacy, anger, stress and similar things. But then it also feels like this emotion gets defused, so it doesn't bother me anymore and overall the entire pattern is weakened in the long-term and at some point gone.

Especially anger is an interesting example. You know it when something triggered you and then you could rage about it? It's so addictive to think aggressive thoughts. If I'm experiencing this I simply think my rage thoughts while using the tapping technique and then I can let go of it.

[Federico del pueblo]

5 hours ago, WelcometoReality said:

It can be overcome by stretching the neck and back daily.

From my experience these tensions is built up during normal day to day life. Meditation simply makes you conscious of them.

Interesting! 

 

5 hours ago, WelcometoReality said:

Just out of curiosity, since we are talking about areas around the throat chakra, how are you when you're in conversations with others? Do you feel relaxed and there's a natural flow of conversation or are you feeling like you need to force yourself in any way?

Generally,  I'm not shy and can even be quite charismatic with people and be very talkative. Though, I also am dealing with some shame and guilt due to specific life circumstances. This means that I'd rather like to avoid certain topics of conversation and I can also hold myself back from talking to specific people when I think it's likely these conversation topics will come up.

[flowboy]

38 minutes ago, Federico del pueblo said:

Not for me, I rarely ever cry. I'm more likely to cry when watching a cute kitten or puppies video. Though in some demonstration videos I've seen that some people do cry a lot when they use the technique while thinking about events in their childhood. I might get watery eyes when I think back to a few incidents in the past, but usually not more.

It's more like during the tapping I feel the exact emotion I want to work on, mostly anxiety, feelings of inadequacy, anger, stress and similar things. But then it also feels like this emotion gets defused, so it doesn't bother me anymore and overall the entire pattern is weakened in the long-term and at some point gone.

That's interesting! Thank you for sharing.

I'm in the middle of a deep research rampage concerning everything shadow work, therapy and healing. So that helps to put it into a category in my mental model. Also I've been doing different modalities of it for years.

I feel a bit conflicted now because on the one hand, you seem to have a process that works for you and that's great and I don't want to invalidate that. And on the other hand, also reading about the body tensions and the experience that there's always more and it's a never-ending process, I can probably explain why that is and how you can make your practice more effective in the long term. If you're interested.

Edited January 19, 2023 by flowboy

[Federico del pueblo]

8 minutes ago, flowboy said:

I feel a bit conflicted now because on the one hand, you seem to have a process that works for you and that's great and I don't want to invalidate that. And on the other hand, also reading about the body tensions and the experience that there's always more and it's a never-ending process, I can probably explain why that is and how you can make your practice more effective. If you're interested.

Yeah, I understand, this can be difficult to understand. 

I can only add a little bit more context that might make it understandable, but of course I'm also interested in what you think.

So you have to consider that my overall condition is just very challenging and complex in many ways.

I'm chronically ill with chronic fatigue syndrome. It is medically proven that my autonomic nervous system and my brain in general have a dysfunction. 

This dysfunction for me has the effect that any trigger I have is about 10x more stubborn, more deeply rooted in the brain or however you want to call it. I mean, just imagine if your nervous system is so sensitive (due to a condition), that every fight or flight reaction is now 10x stronger. How would that affect you?

Now, interestingly the heightened levels of stress I have due to this condition is also what contributes a lot to the perpetuation of the central dysfunction.

Now add to that, that I've lost my ability to work, can't make a living anymore and depend on payments of the government. How do you think has that affected my already existing self-esteem and anxiety problems? 

So all of this did not only exacerbate my emotional problems with myself, it also introduced completely new stresses. E.g. in order to receive my payments I must every once in a while be "medically examined" by doctors in some agency. There they have absolutely no clue of my health condition. So now I have to think about how to convince them, which more medical reports could I gather etc. All of this brought so much stress into my life.

At the worst times I was so stressed that after making myself breakfast I needed to take 30 minutes of rest before I could eat, I was completely exhausted just from cutting some fruit and putting the oats in some bowl etc.

But also I just had such an enormous amount of anxieties and insecurities, it really wasn't funny at all.

I feel like now I've overcome maybe 80-90 % of my emotional baggage, so there's still some work to be done, but an end is in sight.

But anyway what do you think?

[Giulio Bevilacqua]

Have you ever "tried" to allow your body free movement expression? 

Your body is very intelligent and knows how to heal your tensions and stress. That happens when you let go control. The body might shake or dance or sit in a normal yoga position.

Could be a valid option.

Most of the times sitting meditation is not the best thing because maybe your body just needs to dance to exhaustion or performing gentle movements like Taichi. The important thing is allowing and not performing with will and effort !

 

[flowboy]

1 hour ago, Federico del pueblo said:

Yeah, I understand, this can be difficult to understand. 

I can only add a little bit more context that might make it understandable, but of course I'm also interested in what you think.

So you have to consider that my overall condition is just very challenging and complex in many ways.

I'm chronically ill with chronic fatigue syndrome. It is medically proven that my autonomic nervous system and my brain in general have a dysfunction. 

This dysfunction for me has the effect that any trigger I have is about 10x more stubborn, more deeply rooted in the brain or however you want to call it. I mean, just imagine if your nervous system is so sensitive (due to a condition), that every fight or flight reaction is now 10x stronger. How would that affect you?

Now, interestingly the heightened levels of stress I have due to this condition is also what contributes a lot to the perpetuation of the central dysfunction.

Now add to that, that I've lost my ability to work, can't make a living anymore and depend on payments of the government. How do you think has that affected my already existing self-esteem and anxiety problems? 

So all of this did not only exacerbate my emotional problems with myself, it also introduced completely new stresses. E.g. in order to receive my payments I must every once in a while be "medically examined" by doctors in some agency. There they have absolutely no clue of my health condition. So now I have to think about how to convince them, which more medical reports could I gather etc. All of this brought so much stress into my life.

At the worst times I was so stressed that after making myself breakfast I needed to take 30 minutes of rest before I could eat, I was completely exhausted just from cutting some fruit and putting the oats in some bowl etc.

But also I just had such an enormous amount of anxieties and insecurities, it really wasn't funny at all.

I feel like now I've overcome maybe 80-90 % of my emotional baggage, so there's still some work to be done, but an end is in sight.

But anyway what do you think?

Thanks for sharing more context, I now have more insight on your challenging and complex condition.

What I think is this: the chronic fatigue and the anxieties and insecurities could be two legs of the same tree (rooted in trauma).

That's not for me to say, but it's an assumption that you could make.

If you make that assumption, then there's a path that opens up to verify that hypothesis and also improve both things.

Here's a distinction:

1. There's shadow work that purely works with the unhelpful thoughts, beliefs, attitudes, and feelings and either helps you let them go or turn them into better ones. You've found one that works for you, EFT, and there's many more.
   This works, but only on that layer (thoughts, beliefs, emotions about the present)
2. There's also modalities that work on a deeper layer. Those have the potential to also rewire psychosomatic problems (the physical side effects of trauma)
   An example is the decrease in brain fog, fatigue and ADHD-related body tension that I've experienced, and also the countless examples I've read about of people regaining their physical energy and getting rid of unexplained pain.

If you would want more of the second type, and not only benefit mentally but also physically, then a tweak would be needed.

2 hours ago, Federico del pueblo said:

I might get watery eyes when I think back to a few incidents in the past, but usually not more.

You're already finding some past memories that have repressed pain attached to them.

Instead of letting them go, you could try to intensify them and put yourself back into that scenario, whatever it is.

- See what you saw, all details you can remember

- Feel what you felt. If you don't know, ask yourself: what could I have been feeling?

- Express what you couldn't express. Out loud. Say what you couldn't say, ask what you couldn't ask back then.

This will lead to remembering more pain and feeling more of it. In the past context, not the present. Very important. And first person, no "inner child" third person stuff.

The more of that past pain you spend time feeling, the more you drain it. Forever.

A couple of sessions can already have profound results in physical energy and otherwise.

That's how you eventually end up at younger and younger stuff, birth memories.

But you don't have to go that far even.

People who spend time draining off their most important childhood pains, tend to experience a 70% permanent improvement in neurotic symptoms, this includes psychosomatic symptoms. This is based on data from Imprints, so people under professional guidance, but I do it on myself and it's working for me.

[flowboy]

Tears in their original, old context discharge the electrical energy that is twisting the body and also the mind of someone with repressed trauma (which is almost everyone).

The more crying the better.

Don't confuse it with tears about the present, those are relieving but not curative.

[Federico del pueblo]

2 hours ago, Giulio Bevilacqua said:

Have you ever "tried" to allow your body free movement expression? 

Your body is very intelligent and knows how to heal your tensions and stress. That happens when you let go control. The body might shake or dance or sit in a normal yoga position.

Could be a valid option.

Most of the times sitting meditation is not the best thing because maybe your body just needs to dance to exhaustion or performing gentle movements like Taichi. The important thing is allowing and not performing with will and effort !

 

I haven't tried these things yet, but thanks for making me aware they exist and can help. ???

[Federico del pueblo]

@flowboy wow man. All this stuff is extremely intriguing! 

I also watched the video you linked in your signature, in which you talk about all the things we discussed here.

54 minutes ago, flowboy said:

What I think is this: the chronic fatigue and the anxieties and insecurities could be two legs of the same tree (rooted in trauma).

That resonates a lot with me!

 

55 minutes ago, flowboy said:

Here's a distinction:

1. There's shadow work that purely works with the unhelpful thoughts, beliefs, attitudes, and feelings and either helps you let them go or turn them into better ones. You've found one that works for you, EFT, and there's many more.
   This works, but only on that layer (thoughts, beliefs, emotions about the present)
2. There's also modalities that work on a deeper layer. Those have the potential to also rewire psychosomatic problems (the physical side effects of trauma)
   An example is the decrease in brain fog, fatigue and ADHD-related body tension that I've experienced, and also the countless examples I've read about of people regaining their physical energy and getting rid of unexplained pain.

If you would want more of the second type, and not only benefit mentally but also physically, then a tweak would be needed.

That's very insightful!

And it's kinda interesting, because I felt like I had tried to do something akin to what you describe in point 2, but not a lot happened.

Now I'm wondering if I simply lacked skill or proper guidance. 

E.g. I actually proposed doing this to my therapist who does hypnotherapy and he then said that we could give it a try and he called it something like "regression therapy". So then he hypnotised me and I tried to go back in my childhood and become aware of whether I had experienced certain traumatic things that I'm not even aware of nowadays. Maybe we also looked at things I can still remember, but I'm not sure anymore. 

What I do know is that I never had any of these strong emotional reactions where you start to cry and really sort of immersed in the past experience. 

But again, this might be due to lack of skill or guidance. It also wasn't the specialty of the therapist, more of a "ok, we can try that out if you want to", but then we didn't do it another time.

Btw,  I'm starting to feel like I might be taking up a lot of your time. Don't feel forced to keep responding, feel free to disengaged, as I'm sure you're a busy person too ?

I'm not opposed to the idea of finding someone who focuses on such an approach, not sure if I can afford it though, which is why I'm also contemplating doing it by myself. 

Also I'm wondering if that process of reliving and feeling these past experiences could be facilitated by a moderate dose of a psychedelic. I just recently had some first experiences and it seemed like the drug induced stats makes it easier to connect to your emotions.

What do you think?

[WelcometoReality]

3 hours ago, Federico del pueblo said:

Interesting! 

 

Generally,  I'm not shy and can even be quite charismatic with people and be very talkative. Though, I also am dealing with some shame and guilt due to specific life circumstances. This means that I'd rather like to avoid certain topics of conversation and I can also hold myself back from talking to specific people when I think it's likely these conversation topics will come up.

Ok thx for sharing. ? Could you "focus in" on these areas of your jaw when such a topic comes up to see if you feel any tension building up? You could also do this throughout the day and just relax the jaw or massage the muscles to prevent these tensions from building up.

I would appreceite any feedback if it helped or not. 

[LastThursday]

I must say this is a great example of how threads should be on the forum. It's like a breath of fresh air. Anyway, ignore me, carry on...

[Thought Art]

Please, consider Qigong as well as meditate so the Qi can flow..

 

Edited January 19, 2023 by Thought Art

[Federico del pueblo]

3 minutes ago, WelcometoReality said:

Could you "focus in" on these areas of your jaw when such a topic comes up to see if you feel any tension building up? You could also do this throughout the day and just relax the jaw or massage the muscles to prevent these tensions from building up.

I will try and let you know ?

3 minutes ago, LastThursday said:

I must say this is a great example of how threads should be on the forum. It's like a breath of fresh air. Anyway, ignore me, carry on...

I'm glad you're enjoying it! There's no need to ignore you, it's all good.

[WelcometoReality]

38 minutes ago, Federico del pueblo said:

I will try and let you know ?

I'm glad you're enjoying it! There's no need to ignore you, it's all good.

Thank you! ?

[ZenAlex]

Have you ever been diagnosed with ADHD?

[Federico del pueblo]

3 minutes ago, ZenAlex said:

Have you ever been diagnosed with ADHD?

No.

[flowboy]

1 hour ago, Federico del pueblo said:

@flowboy wow man. All this stuff is extremely intriguing! 

I also watched the video you linked in your signature, in which you talk about all the things we discussed here.

That resonates a lot with me!

 

That's very insightful!

And it's kinda interesting, because I felt like I had tried to do something akin to what you describe in point 2, but not a lot happened.

Now I'm wondering if I simply lacked skill or proper guidance. 

E.g. I actually proposed doing this to my therapist who does hypnotherapy and he then said that we could give it a try and he called it something like "regression therapy". So then he hypnotised me and I tried to go back in my childhood and become aware of whether I had experienced certain traumatic things that I'm not even aware of nowadays. Maybe we also looked at things I can still remember, but I'm not sure anymore. 

What I do know is that I never had any of these strong emotional reactions where you start to cry and really sort of immersed in the past experience. 

But again, this might be due to lack of skill or guidance. It also wasn't the specialty of the therapist, more of a "ok, we can try that out if you want to", but then we didn't do it another time.

Btw,  I'm starting to feel like I might be taking up a lot of your time. Don't feel forced to keep responding, feel free to disengaged, as I'm sure you're a busy person too ?

I'm not opposed to the idea of finding someone who focuses on such an approach, not sure if I can afford it though, which is why I'm also contemplating doing it by myself. 

Also I'm wondering if that process of reliving and feeling these past experiences could be facilitated by a moderate dose of a psychedelic. I just recently had some first experiences and it seemed like the drug induced stats makes it easier to connect to your emotions.

What do you think?

@Federico del pueblo I can't help but respond, I'm very passionate about this topic and I spend a lot of time researching and practicing.

Yes, what I left out - because I wanted to warm you up to the concept - is that it takes some effort and patience to dig out these unprocessed pains.

I've heard of people taking 10 sessions or more to even find some real tears - but once they flow, they flow and then you're off to the races.

The reason for this is that you have a self-protective system - the repressive system - which is working very hard during your waking time to keep the pain unconscious. It does that by 'gating' - neurons that fire inhibitory signals towards the affective part of the memory (facts and feelings are stored in different parts of the brain, so you can remember one but not the other), and by constantly releasing endorphins. People with a high level of unprocessed pain need a higher level of endorphins to be constantly produced, so that they can walk around thinking they're sortof fine.

These processes zap a lot of energy and can lead to disease in the long term, because endorphins unfortunately suppress the immune system.

Anyways, that's the repressive system. Everyone has one. The harder it has to work, the more side effects there will be (neurotic and psychosomatic symptoms).

To start draining off this pain, the repression needs to be opened up so that the feelings can flow.

Some people break through easily, others' repression systems take longer to crack.

There's lots of ways to help this process, but the important thing to remember is that if you set a strong intention for your subconscious to let you feel some unfelt stuff, and you make repeated efforts, you'll get it flowing.

Some tricks that could help you get there faster:

• Journaling with these questions (thinking about a past event where you suspect repressed pain)
  • What happened?
  • Who was there? What details do I remember?
  • What was I feeling?
  • What could I have been feeling?
  • What else could I have been feeling?
  • What would I have wanted to say, that I couldn't?
  • What would I have wanted to do, that I couldn't?
  • What could I have wanted to ask, that I couldn't?
  • What else, what else, what else...
    
    You could do that exercise for some days until you get the hang of it and things start to bubble up.
    Don't even have to start with the childhood events that you know about, you can start with something more recent where you were irritated, and then use the process to discover what other feelings are behind that irritation.
• Then if you get to a feeling, express it out loud, while picturing in your mind the original scenario, that helps to get deeper into it
• Intentionally depriving yourself that day of your favourite painkilling habits, whether it be:
  • sugar
  • coffee
  • your phone
  • social media
  • looking up information/going down rabbit holes
  • reading, even
  • nicotine
  • socializing (including approval seeking behavior)
  • even meditating, if you tend to use it to feel better

I'll be making videos about this in the future.

I've also guided people through this in sessions quite a lot so I have some experience of helping others get into it, I'm happy to do one with you for free because you're so enthusiastic and it makes me want to, pm me in that case, that's not an offer to everyone who reads this lol

 

And here's someone's background story - super nice guy, he guided me a couple times as well, and just an enjoyable voice to listen to.

Edited January 19, 2023 by flowboy

[Federico del pueblo]

@flowboy

Thanks so much for responding!!

It all makes a lot of sense now.

I had given myself something like a "deadline", a date until which I wanted to continue with my current approach to then reevaluate the results.

I will definitely contemplate the things you mentioned as a new therapy option, so thanks a lot for sharing! 

16 minutes ago, flowboy said:

I can't help but respond, I'm very passionate about this topic and I spend a lot of time researching and practicing.

I guess that's how you know you've found your life's purpose! ?

[flowboy]

Updated my post to include more tips.

4 minutes ago, Federico del pueblo said:

I guess that's how you know you've found your life's purpose! ?

@Federico del pueblo I guess so

[ZenAlex]

7 hours ago, Federico del pueblo said:

No.

I experienced something similar in my jaw, but also in my nose and my brain as a whole. I caused myself some discomfort that lasted months and stopped focusing too hard during meditation.

If you have ADHD or naturally weak attention span, you're having to put a lot of strain on maintaining that level of attention, be careful.