%402x%20(1).svg)
Dealing With Limb Movements And Pain In Mindfulness Meditation
Awareness into deeper unconscious energy with Mindfulness Meditation
An important rule in proper meditation is to relinquish control of one’s limbs, because the brain uses movements of arms and legs to express restlessness, discharge nervous energy and avoid the deeper awareness of painful subjective experiences. Without even noticing, we wiggle, jiggle, shake and scratch, not realizing how deeply we interfere through arm and leg movements with the penetration of our attention and awareness into deeper unconscious energy flows that drive our suffering. After we have properly stacked the spine, consciously relinquishing control of one’s limbs is a natural aspect of mindfulness meditation (both sitting and lying down), as we focus our intention on the exploration of energy flow without movement. This is why someone sitting in meditation seems motionless. I use the word ‘seems’, because the spine itself is always involved in slight adjustments of effortless posture as it moves like a hollow bamboo in the wind with the cycles of the breath, the pulsations of the cerebro-spinal fluid and the alignment process of noticing tensions in the inbreath, releasing them down into the earth in the outbreath and at the end of the outbreath realigning the spine within the effortless space of balanced sitting. Good sitting meditation posture never looks or feels like a telephone pole, but rather like a hollow bamboo in the wind. From this perspective, the limbs are kept still, but never stiff.
There are however exceptions to this rule. These pertain in formal practice to the two situations of meditators who have experienced psychological trauma and those with physical pain, in informal practice to the issue of gesticulation during communication.
With psychological trauma, being still and bringing intense attention to the body during formal practice can activate implicitly encoded painful memories, causing the meditator to experience intense somatic pain, emotional activations in the form of panic, or bodily movements in the form of shaking, convulsing or flailing. When the meditator is not overwhelmed by panic and therefore not in need of interrupting the meditation in order to get back into the window of tolerance, it can be useful and important to know how to allow the body to move in whatever way necessary, without interfering with these spontaneous movements. Although also possible during sitting meditations, this applies particularly to bodyscan meditations, during which the meditator is lying down, and therefore freer to allow the body to just let lose and take over with its spontaneous movement discharges.
These movements are spontaneous and not willfully activated by the meditator. The instruction in such a situation would be to allow ‘it’ (the body) to move without ‘you’ moving it. Physiologically these movements are part of the body’s self-healing processes as it reactivates and moves through the polyvagal stages of trauma recovery, from freeze to fight-flight to social engagement function. These spontaneous movements are the result of re-activation of freeze states into the fight-flight stage, as the body works its energy flow back to the more integrated energy flows of the healthy social engagement system, when the middle prefrontal cortex (MPC) comes back online. The hallmark of these movements is that they spontaneously move through the body like a storm through the landscape, coming and going, and that when allowed to flow, they do not engage the meditator into wanting to flee and interrupt the meditation. Often, but not always, emotional and cognitive content may arise, old unresolved narratives and memories may surface, which then have to be worked through in psychotherapy. While the movement discharge proceeds, it is therefore crucially important to continue the practice of meditation, including using all the appropriate tools of meditation, the intention to pay attention with kindness in certain learned and skillful ways. Blocking such movements in the mistaken belief that one has to remain still during meditation practice, would be a misguided and damaging way to practice. In mindfulness practice, stillness is not the absence of movement, but the meditator’s ability to not be reactive and interfere with the inevitable movements and energy flows of life. The deeper the ability to get out of your own way, the greater the stillness you will be able to access, and this stillness is exactly the wide open plane of almost infinite possibilities we learn to access through deep mindfulness.
The other exception to the rule of not moving one’s limbs during formal meditation pertains to the case of physical pain caused by physical problems. Indeed, during meditation all kinds of different functional pain experiences can arise, during which it is not advisable to move if one wants to deepen one’s practice. These functional pain experiences often seem to unexpectedly arise from nowhere, and they tend to decrease the more one works with that energy flow during meditation practice. If they don’t decrease during practice, they mostly tend to disappear the moment one changes the posture. There is however another kind of pain experience that is due to known physical conditions, such as a disc or joint problem. In these cases, trying to stay with the pain is futile. What usually happens is that the pain simply increases the longer we stay motionless with it, until we reach the point of entering the fight-flight red zone that is counterproductive to the work. Pushing through is the last thing one wants to do in this situation. Instead, the approach to such pain has to be much different. One explores it as long as possible without moving, as long as we can stay within the green and orange zone of the window of tolerance of energy flow, in other words, as long we don’t force or push through. Once it becomes clear that the body needs adjustment in order to avoid tensing up, we mindfully engage in a posture readjustment, so that the pain can diminish or disappear. This mindful adjustment is a skillful way to honor our organism’s need for healing in the case of known injuries and limitations.
Meditation is not something that we do an hour/day, but a state of mind we cultivate 24/7 in order for it to eventually become a mindful trait we generally embody. This means that the issue of limb movement is not just relevant during formal practice, but also in everyday life as we act and express ourselves. The principles we just described with regards to trauma and pain also apply to everyday life, as we are called to pay attention to the way we sit and behave with regards to unnecessary limb movements caused by inner restlessness. Situations in which we wait in line, sit anywhere for any possible reason or have a coffee with someone, are perfect opportunities to continue to deepen one’s access to deeper energy flow in everyday life by watching our tendency to move unnecessarily, the way we did during formal practice. This being said, I now want to draw attention to another form of spontaneous limb movement that is connected to communication. These are the gesticulations during conversations and speeches, as well as the pacing around during presentations.
Mindfulness practice alerts us to these communication-related limb movements, which are the non-verbal companions to our words. These are partially defined by our genes, temperament and social customs, such as Italians for example are more vivid gesticulators than British people. Deeper examination will quickly reveal however, that these natural companions to communication are often mixed with non-intentional expressions of inner nervousness, which interfere with and diminish the power of non-verbal communication. Mindfulness practice will allow you to slowly shed the need to cover up anxiety, embarrassment, other emotions or inner restlessness through unnecessary movements, and allow the natural, more attuned spontaneous movements accompanying the content of your communication to shine. Your sense of being solidly grounded in yourself and your world, as well as your power of communication, will increase because your gesticulations become a more attuned expression of the content you try to convey through words.
Meditation practice is simple but complex, and it is not easy to become a skilled meditator. Cookie-cutter approaches to meditation practice are toxic. We always have to meet the whole organism that we are, not only those aspects that meditation directly addresses. It is therefore so important to know how our organism functions as a whole in order to become a skilled meditator.
Copyright © 2019 by Dr. Stéphane Treyvaud. All rights reserved.
Our unique approach to Mindfuless Meditation »
.svg)
.svg)
.svg)
More Blog Posts
Human function, action, cognition and behavior under the lens of automaticity
Every novice meditator must understand the mind’s inherent automaticity, forged over eons of evolution to secure survival. The brain, the most intricate structure in the known universe, gives rise to the mind, whose elaborate workings unfold as the most profound phenomenon we can encounter. This complexity reveals our vast potential for self-deception, emphasizing the urgent need to avoid harmful habits early in practice. Cultivating a precise and resilient technical foundation is vital for navigating the mind’s labyrinthine depths. Let us briefly explore the scope of this automaticity, a formidable force we confront as we seek to understand our lives.
Estimating the exact percentage of human action and functioning that is automatic and not conscious is tricky, as it depends on how we define "action," "functioning," and "conscious." However, research in psychology and neuroscience suggests that a significant portion of human behavior and physiological processes operates outside conscious awareness.
1. Physiological Functions: Most bodily processes—like heart rate, breathing, digestion, and reflexes—are automatic and controlled by the autonomic nervous system. These account for the vast majority of "functioning" in terms of rawprocesses. If we consider all bodily functions (including cellular processes),conscious control might apply to less than 1% of total activity, as most biological operations are involuntary.
2. Behavioral and Cognitive Actions: When it comes to behavior, decision-making, and cognition, studies suggest that a large portion is driven by automatic processes:
- Psychologist Daniel Kahneman, in his work on System 1 (fast, automatic) and System 2 (slow, deliberate) thinking, suggeststhat System 1 dominates much of our daily behavior. Estimates vary, but someresearchers propose that 95% or more of cognitive processes (e.g., snapjudgments, habits, and intuitive reactions) are automatic.
- Studies on priming and implicit bias (e.g., by John Bargh) show that many decisions, from simple motor actions to complex social behaviors, are influenced by unconscious cues.
- Habitual behaviors, like driving a familiarroute or typing, often occur with minimal conscious input once learned.
3. Conscious vs. Unconscious Balance: While no precise percentage is universally agreed upon, some neuroscientists estimate that 90–95% of brain activity is unconscious, based on the volume of neural processes handling sensory input, motor control, and background cognition. Conscious actions—like deliberateproblem-solving or focused attention—make up a smaller fraction, perhaps 5–10%of mental activity.
Rough General Estimate: If we combine physiologicaland behavioral aspects, roughly 90–95% of human "action and functioning" (broadly defined) is likely automatic and not conscious. Thisvaries by context—routine tasks lean more automatic, while novel or complex tasksrequire more conscious effort.
Copyright © 2025 by Dr. Stéphane Treyvaud. All rights reserved.
.png)
An everyday journey from existential nihility to radiant emptiness.
I am drawing upon an instance from my everyday life to illuminate for my students how mindfulness practice in general, and the Mindsight Intensive curriculum in particular—which traces the trajectory of human existence through being and nihility towards absolute nothingness and emptiness—invites us to expand awareness in a very practical way as real, lived reality.
A substantial aspect of this undertaking entails familiarizing oneself with the differences between the realities shaped by the left and right hemispheres of the brain—most notably, the profound insight that the right hemisphere directly presents and reveals reality, whereas the left merely re-presents it as a simplified map of what truly exists.
With this understanding, I explored two contrasting linguistic approaches to articulate the experience: the descriptive, technical language of the left brain, rooted in an 'objective' yet inherently limited perspective, and the imaginative, vivid, and richly contextual language of the right brain, grounded in an embodied, more open-ended viewpoint. The single quotation marks around 'objective' highlight a neurophysiological truth: the brain never perceives reality impartially. Instead, its perceptions are shaped by a drive for certainty, manifested through value judgments that prioritize survival.
My hope is that this exploration may deepen my students’ understanding of the intricate human journey toward wholeness.
1. Left brain perspective
For several consecutive early spring days, a single, distinctive fly appeared to relish the bright sunlight illuminating my bathroom. We have grown familiar, coexisting as two entities engaged in our respective routines. I designate her as "she"—perhaps influenced by the feminine grammatical gender of la mouche (French), la mosca (Italian), and die Fliege (German)—an intuitive attribution rather than a biological assertion. She occasionally positions herself on the curtain railing above my bathtub, observing as I shower. More frequently, she rests on the windowsill, tracking my movements as I shave, and at times briefly alights on my hair for a few seconds. I have been aware of her presence throughout, akin to an inquisitive cohabitant sharing this confined space, but today I intentionally sought a deeper engagement.
She was once again stationed on the windowsill, basking in the sunlight, as I shaved. I approached closely, examining her large, compound eyes, and posed the question, “What is it like to be a fly?” Initially, my cognition activated a predictable analytical response, retrieving stored knowledge about her physiology: a head encasing a compact brain; expansive, multifaceted eyes affording a broad visual field; antennae functioning as olfactory and gustatory sensors; specialized mouthparts adapted for sponging or piercing-sucking; a thorax anchoring six articulated legs, rapid wings, and club-shaped halteres for flight stabilization; and an abdomen housing digestive and reproductive systems, concealed from view. Her exoskeleton, black with muted grey striations, bore a subtle, fur-like texture, as though she had ornamented herself for this encounter—a sizable specimen, impossible to ignore.
Yet, I deliberately suspended this intellectual framework, opting instead to engage her in a silent, receptive state. My question became more personal and changed to “what is it like to be you”? I consciously down-regulated the default mode network—the neural substrate of self-referential thought—relinquishing the ego’s persistent drive to assert its permanence. This ego, in its dualistic framework, projects constructed identities onto the external ‘other’, rendering her so alien that I might, without reflection, swat her away, extinguishing a life deemed insignificant, irritating, or even repellent by that limited perspective.
In this shift, a different entity began to emerge within my awareness—not a mere object, but a presence actively relating to me, exhibiting a form of consciousness distinct yet perceptible. Her curiosity, perhaps reciprocal, prompted her to take flight and settle briefly on my hair. I remained immobile, registering the faint tactile sensation of her tentative exploration of my surface—an interaction probing my identity as much as I sought hers. The contact was transient; she soon returned to the windowsill, fixing her gaze upon me. I speculated that she might, in her own unknowable way, ponder a parallel question: “What is it like to be this massive, terrestrial organism, incapable of flight, beyond my capacity to name?” The perceived separation—me here, her there—dissolved into a unified ‘we’, marked by a tangible exchange of vitality through our shared, living awareness. Though our modes of consciousness diverge, they intersect intimately, each of us enacting existence according to our inherent capacities. Together, we participated in a dynamic interplay, a microcosm of the universe’s unfolding, so affecting that tears briefly surfaced, reflecting regret for the countless instances of inattentiveness lost to automaticity.
This encounter with such a remarkable organism illuminated a progression of awareness. Initially, I had navigated the ‘dark night of the soul’—a dualistic state of nihility, a relative nothingness characterized by existential desolation and the collapse of meaning within a self-other framework. Beyond this, I accessed a non-dual absolute nothingness, a broader mode of awareness where subject-object distinctions dissolve into a unified field of being, devoid of relational constructs. Yet, this was not the terminus; it opened into emptiness—the ultimate awareness mode, a boundless, vibrant expanse where the extraordinary manifests within the ordinary flux of daily existence. This state, achieved through direct presence with this fly, surpasses any chemically induced psychedelic experience in its clarity and depth, revealing a profound interconnectedness inherent in the fabric of life, the extraordinariness of ordinary existence. No answer could ever come close to the tantalizing peace of timeless questions.
2. Right brain vantage point
For several radiant spring mornings, a singular, remarkable fly has basked in the golden sunlight flooding my bathroom. We have become familiar companions, each merrily tending to our daily rites. At times, she—yes, she, anointed feminine by the lilting echoes of la mouche, la mosca, die Fliege, a soft intuition humming through language—perches atop the curtain railing above my bathtub, a silent witness to my shower’s misty veil. More often, she lingers on the windowsill, her gaze fixed upon me as I shave, now and then darting to alight for a fleeting instant upon my hair. I’ve felt her presence all along—a curious housemate in this shared sanctuary—but today, I vowed to bridge the chasm between us.
There she rested once more, cradled in the sun’s warm embrace upon the windowsill, watching me wield my razor with quiet intent. I leaned closer, peering into her vast, prismatic eyes—kaleidoscopes of a secret world—and murmured, “What is it like to be a fly?” At first, my mind thrummed with the familiar pulse of knowledge: her head, a miniature cathedral of instinct; those grand, jeweled eyes unveiling a boundless vista; antennae, fragile wands of scent and savor; mouthparts sculpted for sipping or piercing; her thorax, a delicate frame bearing six crooked legs, wings that shimmer with thunderous speed, and halteres, poised like a dancer’s plumb line; her abdomen, a veiled chamber of life’s mysteries. She gleamed, black as night with faint grey stripes, her form cloaked in a gossamer sheen, as though she’d adorned herself for this tender rendezvous.
This time, like as many other times as I can possibly honour in daily life, I let this torrent of facts dissolve, beckoning her to meet me in the hush of silence. The question changed to become more personal: “What is it like to be you?” I stilled the restless clamor of my mind, loosening the ego’s tenacious hold—that brittle self, desperate to cling to its mirage of eternity, casting endless conceptual shadows upon the being before me. So remote she might appear, I could, in a careless flicker, swat her away, deeming her life a trifling annoyance, a speck of disdain. But no—a different essence began to bloom within my consciousness.
A presence unfurled, no longer separate but alive with me, awake in her own cryptic grace, her curiosity a mirror to my own. Suddenly, she soared, settling upon my hair. I stood statue-still, captivated by the faint tickle of her pilgrimage across my scalp, a gentle quest into the enigma of my existence. The moment was ephemeral; she soon returned to her sun-gilded throne, gazing back at me. Perhaps she mused, too: “What is it like to be this lumbering, wingless colossus, a riddle beyond my silent tongue?” The gulf between us—me here, her there—dissolved into a luminous we, tethered by a pulsing filament of shared aliveness. Our ways of knowing diverged, yet entwined, each of us threading life’s arc with singular devotion. Together, we spun a strand in the vast loom of the cosmos, a dance so piercing that tears brimmed in my eyes, lamenting a lifetime’s moments lost to the fog of unawareness.
In that tranquil void, beside this astonishing fly, I brushed against an abyss beyond sorrow—a stillness forged in the crucible of the soul’s dark night, rising into the infinite embrace of nothingness. From there, it was but a tender plunge into the world’s embrace, a surrender that let peaceful nothingness blossom into vibrant emptiness—a radiant field teeming with the miraculous veiled in the everyday. This quiet epiphany, outshining the wildest psychedelic odyssey imaginable, unveiled life’s timeless poetry: unspoken, extraordinary, woven into the ordinary cadence of days. The nameless question remains.
Copyright © 2025 by Dr. Stéphane Treyvaud. All rights reserved.
Forgetting that we have a mind.
Before you worry about symptoms such as depression and anxiety and how to improve or get rid of them, before you get your blood boiling arguing with people who can't deal with anything beyond their own viewpoint, before you develop and become ensconced in your own opinions, before you vilify who disagrees with you, before you shake your head wondering how seemingly obvious facts cannot be agreed upon, before you assume you have no blind spots, before you despair that crowds never learn from history, before you become bitter at humanity's collective stupidity, before you get passionate about religion, mythology, and archetypes, before all that, wouldn't it make sense to inquire into the source of all of it - these symptoms, views, opinions, thoughts, actions, distortions and, frankly, miseries?
While it does not take rocket science to realize that the source of it all is the embodied human mind, for most, embarking on its exploration is at best a big challenge, at worst insurmountable, non-sensical or incomprehensible. How many times have you heard nonsense like “I don’t believe in psychology”, as if the existence of the moon were a matter of belief? How often do patients enter their physician’s office complaining of being anxious or depressed, and are sent home with a prescription without one question that would try to understand how their mind creates such suffering? Many people, including professionals who should know better, live and act as if they had no mind.
The mind is the source of all subjective phenomena and experiences, and we are astoundingly unaware of it. Our mind’s task is to ensure survival and the propagation of our species, not to ensure we live our best life. To this end, it needs to be efficient, rather than concerned about maximizing its potential. Efficiency results by pairing down information processing to the bare minimum. Embedded in the way mind functions are mechanisms that cause reality distortions, delusions, wild beliefs, and a profound obliviousness of one’s own ignorance. Whether we like it or not, our mind drives our lives like our heart pumps blood through our veins. The universe's natural processes have caused us to evolve that way, and for better or worse, we are stuck with a mind that functions sub-optimally as it creates profound reality distortions that seem at first blush to have successfully allowed us to multiply and propagate towards earth dominance. In the long run, however, it turns out that humanity may end up stampeding dangerously close to extinction. To thrive both individually and as a species we must come to terms with our rather dangerous mind and train ourselves to use it beyond its basic survival mode by accessing its inherent potential evolution has graciously also built into it. That takes work, training, effort and patience.
Our human mind provides the capacity for reflection. The mirror reflects what’s in front of it, meaning that as reality beams itself onto the mirror’s surface, the mirror beams it back to us as an image we can then examine from the outside. Notice how what gets examined by looking at the mirror is not reality itself, but an image of it. Our brain provides a similar process in the form of consciousness, whereby it maps reality in a virtual form we then can observe and manipulate. However, while the mirror reflects reality exactly as it is, the virtual reality consciousness creates is not only a map of reality, but that map is modified into a new creation. The brain as mapper functions as our central relationship organ that enables us to reflexively develop a relationship to reality and ourselves by having access to a virtual, mapped and modified reality we can ponder and manipulate. This is how we are self-aware.
As an aside, the mind is more than the creator of a virtual adaptation of reality we can reflexively relate to and have a relationship with. It can transcend self-awareness, and knowingly experience reality and awareness without the detour of mapped mirroring duality. That is the shift from observation to being, from knowing we exist in a universe to realizing we are the universe. More about that in another context.
The eye has a blind spot where the optic nerve enters the retina, but you don’t see it. You have the impression of enjoying a seamless field of vision without two black holes in the middle, even though the holes are there. The brain manages to fill in the missing information to make the field seem seamless. Extrapolate that to the whole brain to realize that to function effectively for everyday survival our brain adapts our field of consciousness in two ways: It fills what’s missing to provide a sense of continuity and simplifies available information to not overwhelm you. It hides blind spots from you to provide continuity and withholds information to ensure efficiency. Both these mechanisms distort reality to ensure survival, while simultaneously laying the foundations for ignorance and suffering.
We each have many blind spots, but the core blind spot affecting us all is the proclivity to live as if we had no mind. We use our minds without realizing the extent to which our experience of reality is created by our mind. Without our conscious knowledge our brain creates the reality we experience. We don’t notice that the reality we experience is our brain’s creation. We mistake our brain’s constructions for reality. This results in a dangerous situation, in which we ignore the fact that our experience is subjectively constructed. We mistakenly believe that what we see and experience is automatically true, and because it seems true it seems real, and because it seems real it cannot be changed. Our primordial blind spot towards the brain’s constructions robs us of freedom of choice, of the power of clear view, wise discernment, and respectfully compassionate mutual understanding.
Our mind’s constructions seem so real that we hold on to them for dear life and want to shove them down other people’s throats without exploring their veracity. We get strongly identified with what we believe we know, emotions take over, and the capacity to hear each other vanishes. Identification with mind processes is the single most destructive problem in the way humans use their minds. Emotions suffocate the mind’s spaciousness to freely consider, question, doubt and explore, and before we know it, we are in conflict. If we cannot agree on facts, emotions drive us to use force to impose our views instead of inquiring more deeply into the divergent realities, and if necessary, compromising to try to resolve complexities. Force can take the form of yelling and screaming at each other, or legal and physical action.
The reality our mind constructs and we can have a relationship with, is in fact threefold. We first have objective reality, which is what happens in the universe independent of whether we know about it or there is anyone around to witness it. This reality consists of energy flow that is independent of how our brains and minds construct reality, and therefore as far from information as energy flow can get. The black death virus killed thousands of people without them knowing what viruses are or being able to see them. Although this is the easiest reality to agree upon, like in the case of flat-earthers, emotions still manage to cause distortions of objective facts.
Subjective reality is our own private experience nobody else has access to. This energy flow is entirely within as a construction by our own brain and mind. Although it is largely independent of objective reality, it is profoundly shaped by interactions with others. Even if everyone denies that I am in pain, if I experience pain, it is totally real for me. That is a difficult reality to agree upon, because seeing it from the outside requires trust and our capacity for empathy.
Then there is intersubjective reality, which is the reality of stories. This energy flow is deeply symbolic in the sense that language and stories are symbolic, therefore experienced as information flow, and a mutual co-creation with others. It is the reality that emerges through mutual narrative construction and is neither objective, nor subjective. It only exists in the interpersonal realm containing people who are willing to participate in it by accepting the shared reality. One such reality is money, but there are many others such as all collective ideas we can share. Money means nothing and has no reality unless it is shared in the interpersonal space. This is also a difficult reality to deal with, because it depends on the mutual capacity to regulate the multilayered energy flow between our intuition, our emotions and our intellect. When that occurs, empathy and clear insight become possible, allowing a degree of harmony within the intersubjective dance of energy and information flow to emerge. Any dance couple may dance a Tango, but those in conflict will not be able to present a harmonious dance.
To manage these three realities we each have a relationship with, requires a good deal of self-awareness and emotional regulation many people don’t have. Much of the time, the mind remains transparent like air to our eyes, invisible or not known, yet profoundly determining how we relate to real reality and live our lives. Like children playing in a house on fire, we remain oblivious to the many ways our ignorance of mind causes suffering and destruction all around.
Copyright © 2024 by Dr. Stéphane Treyvaud. All rights reserved.
.svg)
.svg)