I have been meditating since 1979. I can’t say i praticed it religiously. But i’m reasonably serious about it. I practice at least 5 days a weeks (even on holidays). I started it when i was 16 years old.
Many interesting physical sensations occured during my medittation sesion. But i would confine to the ones happened in the last few years.
Some minutes after i had gone into meditation, a rippling sensation filled my upper body (as i sit in lotus position), i found myself swaying back and forth like a rocking chair for a few minutes, involuntary. Sometimes, my head shook from left to right vigorously for a few minutes. These vibrations and shakings would stop just as suddenly as it started. My head then proceeded to do what i could only describe as ‘stretching exercise’. May i remind you once again that any movements at all are all involuntary. My aim is to stay still. My head may tilt backward and to the left, my back may arch forward. I may stay in this strange contorted posture for a while, few minutes at a time. And then my body would eventually returned to its natural lotus position, and stay still for the rest of the meditation session, which usually last from half to an hour.
By the way, none of these disturbed me in the slightest. It also didn’t require any effort on my part. Anyone who never seen this would find it either utterly hirlalious or freaked out with terror because i look as if i was under a spastic seisure. But i’m totally at ease with whatever happened with my body during meditation (However, i was quite unsettled by occurence far less strange than this when i begun it some 20 years ago).
I have frozen shoulders and neck lately. I was diagnosed to have fibromyalgia (FMS). I believe all these strange automatic stretch excercises during meditation was my body’s way of healing itself. My shoulder and neck certainly felt a lot less stiff after these contortion during the meditation. In fact, these neck and head stretches aren’t very different from from diagrams in books on stretching for tired neck and shoulders. It seems that the body has an innate wisdom and ability that releases the muscular tension during meditation.
It makes sense that i link these involuntary vibrations and ‘stretchings’ with FMS because these phenomena only occured lately, which more or less co-incided with my diagnose of FMS.
I just wonder are there any FMS sufferers here who also experience these sort of thing? Please share them with me.
Francis