my favorite yoga teacher likes to say during the more difficult asana that "pain is a message your body sends to your mind", & you can choose what to do w/ that message; react instinctively, or dismiss it, reassuring your body you know what you're doing, that you're not in danger
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RT @michellehuang42
finally condensed some thoughts into a chart depicting one of my main learnings from my vipassana meditation practice: the ability…
https://twitter.com/michellehuang42/status/1430340537752571907

learning how to do this is one of the primary lessons of asana, and sets the stage for the next limb, pranayama, ie the breathing practice, as it is w/ control of your breath that you gain awareness of, and power over, the autonomic processes governing your instinctual responses

this teacher encourages you to "breathe" space into the gap between stimulus & response, to consciously harness your breathing to change the subjective experience of the message's urgency; when you do this, it feels exactly like your mind opens up to spaciousness, room to breathe

learning how to generate & access this place of stillness in your mind shows you how much control you have over your body, your perception, and your life; if this pain isn't going to kill you, mb the next won't either. over time, this leads to downregulation of reflexive response

eventually you find yourself being more equanimous in the face of your daily trials, no longer as triggered by events that previously would have set you off; you notice this stillness available to you in every moment, from the boardroom to the bedroom, there for you to access

eventually you get curious about the stillness itself, not just what it can offer you, and you try probing it, shifting your awareness into its bounds; you find that it helps to close your eyes & breathe as if you were practicing asana, to get in the right headspace, so to speak

you discover that the stillness is much busier than you expected! that its full of bouncing thought fragments, sensations clamoring for attention, typically drowned out by your conscious narrative, but when you tune it down, they all come out to play. you're surprised & confused!

you make a practice of closing your eyes, breathing, visiting this stillness regularly, as you try to understand what it is thats happening within the confines of your mind; one by one, you methodically you identity these threads & let them go, until eventually there is nothing

nothing, but that very same stillness you first found, only more pure, deeper, more peaceful than you imagined yourself capable of feeling

and when you come back out from the depths, you find some of that peace came back with you, keeping you balanced w/o any conscious efforts

you continue regularly visiting the peace within the stillness, finding it easier to dispell all the clamoring thoughts, deepening the well w/ each session; you find that more of it makes it back w/ you, feeding back into your practice. you become curious about what this peace is

with each visit you probe deeper, investigating various corners, finding new ways to access it, harness it. but eventually you hit a wall; there doesn't seem to be anything else left. it's just you in there; and then it hits you, that mb, mb that's the last thought to dispell

you think on this, ponder what it would mean to dispell the thought of "it's just me in there". how can that make any sense? you hem and haw, struggle with it. but eventually you try, the same way you did with all the others. you self-symbol, and... dispell it. and away it goes.

the next part is pretty difficult to describe with words, altho many a tradition has tried, with varying results. rather than become even more of a caricature here by earnestly typing out koans, I'll just encourage you to explore the massive existing canons if you're curious.

I've found great value in learning to dispell the self-symbol, but more generally, in meditation itself. the benefits are innumerable, and I'm sure you've heard others preach it's merits. my point here is, rather, to point out how breathwork enables you to transcend your limits.

I don't think a person truly awakens to the world until they reckon with the nature of pain, and hence, their relationship between reality and their perception. this is really a question of epistemics; how sure are you that the signal you're receiving is properly calibrated?