I.26 is about meditation.
Look up "relaxation response" "Herbert Benson"
1.
Sit quietly in a comfortable position.
2.
Close your eyes.
3.
Deeply relax all your muscles,
beginning at your feet and progressing up to your face.
Keep them relaxed.
...{etc}
-
http://www.relaxationresponse.org/steps/
Or look up "Progressive Muscle Relaxation" "Edmund Jacobson"
Sit in a comfortable chair – reclining arm chairs are ideal. Bed is okay too.
Get as comfortable as possible – no tight clothes or shoes
and don't cross your legs.
Take a deep breath; let it out slowly. Again.
What you'll be doing is alternately tensing and relaxing specific groups of muscles.
After tension, a muscle will be more relaxed than prior to the tensing.
Concentrate on the feel of the muscles, specifically the contrast between
tension and relaxation. In time, you will recognize tension in any specific muscle
and be able to reduce that tension.
...{etc}
-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobson%2 ... Relaxation
Or look up "transcendental meditation".
Or any kind of "meditation".
All these things, and everything else like them,
have as their main objective, or as an indirect consequence
of their objectives, the reduction of excessive muscle tone caused by stress.
And they all do it, effectively, in exactly the same way.
By simply making us aware of it.
...Tensing and releasing various muscle groups throughout the body
produces a deep state of relaxation,
...
In his original book, 'Progressive Relaxation' , Dr. Jacobson
developed a series of 200 different muscle relaxation exercises and a
training program that took months to complete. More recently the system
has been abbreviated to 15-20 basic exercises, which have been found
to be just as effective,
http://www.hypnos.co.uk/hypnomag/jacobson.htm
TM is still the simplest.
And it' is sometimes helpful to start out a TM meditation by directing
the attention, sequentially, to every part of the body. Then, as soon
as any tensions are noticed, they tend to dissolve spontaneously.
But forcibly directing the attention this way is counter to the TM principle
- the one thing it's got going for it - its simplicity.
And it isn't necessary. As the mind clears during meditation,
all kinds of distractions inevitably invade it. And the technique
is to simply gently brush them all aside, without prejudice,
and return to the mantra (-and, eventually, to nothing).
It just so happens that among the distractions that will naturally
pop into the mind are all the little bodily discomforts, and tensions,
that had been prevented from reaching consciousness before
the meditation began. And, once again, by simply becoming aware of them,
they tend to dissolve. (The most common instance of this is when you
suddenly become aware that you have been sitting in an extremely
uncomfortable position. Then you spontaneously sit more upright,
and more comfortably.)
~~
A dancer is in constant motion.
(- not excepting the cases in ballet when the motion comes to a complete stop.
In these cases the energy hasn't dissipated. It's just become
potential instead of kinetic.)
So, "dancer" is the ideal metaphor for the totality of
all the hustle and bustle and harry and hassle
of day to day living.
And, therefore, during meditation, you may easily hallucinate
that each little release of muscle tension is a step in sending
your personal dancer away from your chair
-- body part by body part, --until he has completely
disentangled himself from you, and just leaves.
Leaving you in peace.
~~
"Muscle tone" is when opposing flexor and tensor muscle pairs
are both in contraction, resulting in zero motion.
And it's absolutely necessary, or we'd collapse like jelly fish.
And it protects against injury (- the point in "warming up".)
When we anticipate that we will have to act,
then our muscle tone increases. And when we anticipate
a "fight-or-flight" situation, it sky-rockets. Even simply
watching sports on tv raises it.
The problem is, of course, that too few people know how
to stop it from increasing. So it just accretes all day long.
Causing head aches, and high blood pressure, etc etc.
When he fails, send him again from your chair.
That is to say, when your day-to-day (ie, your dancer)
winds you up too much, and makes you start to stumble,
then it's time to meditate again and send the dancer away,
for 15 or 20 minutes.
By such an exercise, even a bitter man can praise Creation,
even a heavy man can swoon, and a man of high responsibility
soften his heart.
That's neophyte talk.
Check out the claims they used to make (and still do)
that transcendental meditation would save the world.
It was only slightly more plausible back when I learnt it,
since it didn't cost anything back then, unless you happened
to feel like donating 10 or 50 dollars. But to buy exactly the same
TM party line today will cost over 100 times that, and not optionally.
So, unfortunately, TM today is a pure scam.
("But that don't make it junk." Just over priced and over hyped.)
