Heartbeating - Lost Focus

So I did some practicing at home with a DVD and most of it went well…Until the end.

At the end the “instructor” had us slowly work our way into savasana, or the corpse pose, and totally relax. This went pretty great for a few minutes but when I started to really get relaxed and started to really feel it all slipping away it was like a giant money was jumping on my chest for my heart beat. It didn’t hurt or anything, but it was as if my heartbeat / pulse was moving from my lower abs all they way to my upper chest and even my neck and that each beat was causing my body to move like (exaggerating here obviously) 10 inches. It was like the pounding of the biggest drum on earth. BOOM, DOOM…BOOM,DOOM…Of course that caused me to lose focus altogethers and wonder what the heck was going on.

Any thoughts on this? Is this just because I’m new to all this and my body isn’t really sure what’s going on?

When we are unfamiiar with quiet, solitude, peacefulness, what others might call “deep relaxation”, all sorts of things are there for the noticing.

What you experienced is not at all uncommon so do not panic.
Many students do not want to be still at all. In the stillness, the only thing there for us is us. And frankly some of us do not want to look at ourselves for fear we’ll actually have to see what we’ve been trying to not see for many years. The shadow can be very ugly and hard to take. Our behaviors, the scars we’ve taken, and the one’s we’ve dished out. Not pretty. But the light at the end of that tunnel is NOT New Jersey so keep going.

There is also a systemic element here. Depending on the practice you had, Savasana shifts the nervous system into para-sympathetic mode. It is common for you to feel cold (why some take a blanket, not because they are sleepy) and have physiological shifts with heart rate, pulse, pupils etcetera.

No worries.

When I am in Sivasana, I take that float-ey experience into observing my body sensations. If my body seems crampey or thumpey or twitchey I breathe into those places gently and think about unconditionally welcoming whatever sensation occurs. I embrace it and tell that part of my body “I am listening and paying attention to you, tell me more.” And then I breathe into that space. I perservere without flinching in loving attention.
Often, the act of loving attention to and consistent breathing into a sensation allows it to subside, like a child crying from a bump on the knee calms down in the comforting arms of its mother.

Other times, my heart beats loudly and thumpily because I am upset, afraid, or have managed to take in too much caffeine that morning (almost any caffeine in my case is too much !). In the case of caffeine, I just have to wait for it to dissipate in my system. In the case of emotion-related heart-thumpiness, asking the body what it wants to tell me can open me to awareness of hidden or repressed emotions that are keys to understanding myself better.

It’s all good.