Meditation Foundational Skills

Most people come into meditation sideways without much foundational knowledge. Here's all the key building blocks I wish I had known starting out.

By James Semczuk

May 5, 2020

Purpose of This Article

Meditation is a vast subject, and most people come into it sideways without much foundational knowledge. They encounter a lot of roadblocks really fast, and then they become overwhelmed and don’t know what to do. This article attempts to tackle some of the key foundational concepts and skills you need to have a better grasp on starting a basic practice. These skills can be applied to any style. It also shows some of the basic roadblocks and how to avoid them. It’s everything I wish I had known starting out.

Table of Contents

A Basic Framework

Let’s make sure we’re on the same page with our definition of meditation and what it’s doing. There’s a ton of different styles of meditation, but most of them revolve around a few key things. You have a conscious awareness of some kind. And in front of that awareness, a theater of thoughts, emotions, sensations and visualizations are happening all the time. The real you is that awareness, not all the things appearing in the theater before it.

Thoughts vs. Thinking

Thoughts can come in the form of words, speech, images, or a myriad of other sensations which in turn are usually triggering emotions. In particular there is an endless bubbling of thoughts that occur all the time called the “inner dialogue”. Sometimes it’s a monologue and talking at you, other times you may be interacting back with it. The problem with the inner dialogue is 99.9% of the time it’s not useful. It is usually full of judgement, repetitive, and not adding anything positive or productive. Because your subconscious mind will automatically buy into and emotionally react to every piece of that constant chatter, it eats up an incredible amount of energy.

Most of the time “thinking” just involves us going round and round in pointless loops with the inner dialogue. We often aren’t aware how we’ve gotten lost and caught up in it and we have very little ability to stop it.

Other times we can deliberately “think” our way through something step by step rationally, like a math problem. There are many times in life where rational deliberate thinking is incredibly useful, especially when problems are very large, complex, and counterintuitive. This form of deliberate thinking, you can actually do without the inner dialogue and is actually more effective without it. Certain styles of meditation such as types of insight, “I am”, and contemplation based styles will actively use this part of the mind as part of their practice.

In many other styles of meditation it is better to drop all forms of thinking, but dropping the inner dialogue is much more important and the main thing this article is referring to when referencing the word “thoughts” and “thinking”.

The Many Styles of Meditation

It’s important to note that there are many different styles of meditation and they each produce different effects. The first one you try might not be a good fit for you at all, so be sure to try many different styles. Sometimes combining styles is even better. All too often the word “meditation” itself is used in a really broad way. It would be less confusing if we referred to a specific style whenever we used the word “meditation”. For the purposes of this article whenever I use the word meditation I’ll primarily be referring to a simple concentration based meditation, focusing on the breath, unless otherwise noted, as it’s probably one of the most common styles people have encountered.

What is Meditation Doing?

All meditation aims to change the state of consciousness from your default state to something else. Most (but not all) styles in one way or another are working towards accomplishing their goals by doing one or more of the following:

• Altering the inner dialogue itself
• Changing how you react to the inner dialogue
• Quieting the inner dialogue as much as possible
• Intending for something to happen

They do this primarily by using our attention and intent, but sometimes other methods like working with the body, energy, and more.

On Attention

First let’s talk about attention. There is a lot of power in attention. It is one of the key skills in nearly all styles of meditation to be able to put your attention wherever you want, without it being interrupted. Depending on where you put your attention, you can have wildly different results.

Most people’s attention tends to be on their thoughts without them realizing it. And at first it’s hard to know where your attention even is because you’ve never looked into it before. Ask yourself some questions…

Do you realize where your attention actually is most of the time? Do you notice how you can really only focus on one thing at a time? Do you notice how easily distracted your attention is and how it is quickly shifting amongst many different things? How often can you tell where it is moment to moment?

An Attention Awareness Game for the Senses:

Let’s play a little game that will help make you more aware of where your attention is.

Close your eyes and…

1. tell me 5 things you can hear right now
2. tell me 5 things you can touch
3. tell me 5 things you smell (maybe get up and smell things)
4. don’t worry about tasting :D

Now open your eyes. Do you see how you are basically “tuning” into different sensory sensations that are always there in the background? It feels a little bit different than what you are normally tuning into right?

Now put your attention onto your thoughts. What are you thinking about? What thoughts are you having?

Thought Awareness Exercise:

Write down whatever thoughts pop into your head for at least 2 minutes. No matter what they are. My favorite is to type them into a notepad on the computer, as typing is faster than writing by hand.

Okay so now you know what it feels like to tune into your senses, and tune into your thoughts.

Can you feel the difference between them?

Body Awareness Exercise:

Now let’s feel like what it’s like to tune into the body. Close your eyes again and hold your arms out in front of you. Can you feel the sensation of your arms being held out in the air in front of you, even though you can’t see them? That’s the sensation of your arms. That’s the body.

Okay so now you’ve felt your arms. Keep your eyes closed and move the different parts of your body. The legs, the head, torso. Whatever. Can you feel the sensations of those parts of the body?

Have you noticed when your attention shifts from a sensation back to your thoughts?

Most of the time, we can’t help but keep our attention on our thoughts.. It seems to be our default mode. We shift off for a little while to something else, but usually come right back. This is normal.

So now you should have an idea of the difference between different sensations, the thoughts, and the body.

Tuning Into Emotional Sensations

So think of something that makes you afraid or gives you a negative emotion. Can you now “tune into” the sensation of that emotion? What about a positive emotion?

Where is it? Can you scan the body and maybe find a place where it feels like it is coming from a little bit?

A lot of times it feels like it is both coming from a place in the body and not in the body. Rest your attention onto whatever you can. And try to keep your attention there. Just “let it be”. Don’t try to do anything but keep tuning into the sensation of the emotion. Feel it fully. From another point of view you’re “listening” to what each emotion is trying to say. The emotion wants to be heard / listened to without an ulterior motive of trying to change it or make it go away. Another good way to frame it is to “accept” and “surrender” to the emotion.

Where Else Can You Put Your Attention?

The point of these exercises was to show you what it feels like to have your attention in different spots. Most of these would fall into the category of “concentration based” meditation, where you set your attention onto some object instead of your thoughts and rest it there. Whenever your attention goes to something else, gently let go of that thing and rest the attention back on the object. The most common object is the breath. But the object can be anything, inside or outside the body or even feelings or sensations you aren’t currently feeling.

On Acceptance

Another incredibly powerful tool is acceptance. With meditation you do not want to be in a fight or flight state. You’re not trying to fight against or run away from what’s happening. You have to fully accept the way things are and just exist within that. Whatever you resist persists. Paradoxically, accepting the situation as it is, without trying to change it, allows you to transcend it because you remove all the resistance. It is an antidote to aversion and judgment. (see the section on dealing with emotions for more applications.)

Acceptance Exercise:

Next time you feel like you want to fight or run away from something that bothers you…try to just sit with it and feel the discomfort. Don’t try and change it or control it in any way. Completely surrender to the discomfort and rest all of your attention onto it. Try it for at least 2 mins. See how long you can last after that.

Changing the Quality of Your Thoughts: Forgiveness & Gratitude

It’s very difficult to make thoughts go completely quiet. (Some say it might be impossible, but there are styles that try to accomplish this). It’s far easier to alter them. Many forms of meditation involve altering the inner dialogue in some way. One common way this comes up is to change the narrative from something negative to something positive. When you are beating yourself up or having a lot of judgemental thoughts, sometimes it’s useful to rewrite the thoughts. This technique is called “reframing”. It’s used heavily in stoicism.

Self Forgiveness:

A powerful reframing tool is “Self Forgiveness”. A good example of this would be… say you are really beating yourself up about something. For some reason subconsciously we believe the more we beat ourselves up the more likely we are to fix the problem, even though this almost never actually works. We know an overly judgemental parent will often cause more damage than a compassionate one. It is the same with how you treat yourself. Instead of berating yourself, forgive yourself.

Instead of your thoughts saying “Wow you’re a real piece of shit for not doing that correctly.”. Change it to “Wow that sucks that that didn’t go correctly. It’s okay. I forgive you. Let’s do better next time”. A good way to look at it is to change it to something you would say to a friend, loved one, or a child to be supportive. It’s strange how we are automatically so much harder on ourselves than our friends and loved ones. For more on this concept, read this

Gratitude

It works similarly with gratitude. Often our thoughts are so focused on highlighting all the negative aspects of our lives and what we don’t have we rarely stop to have thoughts about the good things or what we do have. This unfortunately is normal, and a byproduct of our evolution. It was more important to highlight the negative and spend more time and energy on things that might kill us.

Next time you feel overrun with negative thoughts about what’s going wrong, try highlighting some of the things that are going right, and things you are thankful for. Even if you don’t believe it. Somehow by going through the process of it even if you don’t fully believe it, it still manages to have a positive effect.

Trying these two techniques you may feel pangs of anger or “God this is so corny I’m not doing this”. Notice that emotion, accept it and do the process anyways. (See how these all work together?!)

Acceptance, Forgiveness and Gratitude all help dispel the power that judgement and aversion have over us by reducing resistance and they help make the process of meditation much more smooth. These are skills you can isolate and focus on to make the rest of your meditation practice more effective. It creates a positive feedback loop with your attention. The more you can focus your attention the more powerful your acceptance, forgiveness and gratitude become. The more powerful they become the more powerful your attention becomes and you can go deeper and deeper in meditation.

On Time (Being in the Present)

One other aspect in regards to awareness is where you are focused in time. Are you focused on something that happened in the past, something that is going to happen in the future, or something that is happening right now?

Usually if you are in the past or the future, your attention is actually on your thoughts. Come back to the present where the sensation is happening right now. Tune into that. This is “being” in the present. Thoughts can’t exist in the present, but the senses can.

Again it’s important to not force your way here. Let yourself let go and relax into the present by accepting, feeling and dropping anything that can be dropped until you get there.

Probably the quintessential work that explores this concept is Eckhart Tolle’s “Power of Now”.

How to Let Go, How to Drop

This one is tricky. Our mind and bodies have a tendency to desperately want to hold onto things even if they are negative. In the same way that your hand muscles tense up to hold onto a ball, your mind is holding on to a lot of things, particularly emotional pain. The main way I have learned to let go, is by doing various forms of progressive muscle relaxation, acupressure and massage. Either massaging yourself or having it done by a practitioner.

Because the body and mind are a two way street,when the mind clings and creates tension, it also creates tension somewhere in the body. By learning to let go of the body by doing progressive muscle relaxation, you can start to feel the sensation of what it is like to let go of tension in both the body and the mind. You can also learn to feel the emotions and where they are in the body, and drop those as well.

Body Scan Exercise:

Try putting your attention in different parts of the body, say starting with the foot. Put all of your awareness there, into the present and into the sensations of the foot. Feel the sensations of the foot. Firmly tense the muscles in the foot for about 3-4 seconds then let go. Repeat a few times. Pay particular attention to the sensation of letting go and what it feels like. Keep working through different parts of the body and see how many parts you can let go. Eventually you won’t need the tensing part and you can just command your muscles to relax. Just put your awareness as deeply into them as possible, and feel them relaxing. Another way to think about it is just to intend for them to relax, and then just “listen”. Put your awareness there and just listen and feel. Even if only releases 1% that’s ok. It takes a long time to develop this skill. Feel and drop any judgment, expectations or doubt that you have about it and just keep working on it. Eventually you can apply this same command to relax and let go to thoughts and emotions.

Standing meditations can also work really well here, as they give you more feedback as to when your body is actually relaxing. You can feel the muscles getting heavier and how it changes gravity’s pull on your body. Discovertaiji.com also has some good standing meditations in the first few weeks of their course. (1st month is currently free due to corona).

If you are having trouble with that, get yourself a massage and pay attention to how you feel before and after. After will give you a better perspective on what it feels like to let go of a lot of negative junk and it will be easier to tune into that sensation again. Sometimes you cannot release your muscles unless you have them massaged, because of “trigger points”. (See my article on back pain here)

Acupressure is also quite good at releasing tension.

Common Roadblocks

The Five Hindrances

I was really surprised to learn there were already some ancient writings on roadblocks you’ll encounter and how to overcome them. When I first started nobody told me anything about common roadblocks or how to deal with them. In Buddhism, you have the Five Hindrances. I think they are useful but perhaps a little too broad for beginners, but still good to be aware of as you grow your practice.

Below I’ve listed some of the more common specific roadblocks I see people having and how to approach them.

Feeling the Emotions that Pop Up, Not Repressing

It’s normal to have negative emotions pop up when we are meditating. In order for emotions to process properly, we have to feel them and not run away from them or fight them. Sometimes if you try to concentrate on something, emotions you have not processed with will creep in. Other times they are the very things that are there before you start your session and they are keeping you from being able to concentrate.

If you try to force your attention away from feeling the emotions, you may encourage aversion to the emotions by running away, repressing them, or dissociating from them.

The key is instead of trying to force your attention on something else, put all of your attention onto the feeling, and don’t try to change it at all. Drop any expectations that it will change. Completely surrender to the feeling and be with it in the present with no hope or expectation that it will ever change.

Paradoxically, this allows for the feeling to properly work it’s way out. Eventually it will subside enough for you to feel like you can more easily put your attention back onto whatever object you were focusing on. But don’t be afraid to leave it on there as long as necessary.

Eventually you can get to a point where you can quickly accept an emotion and let it go and return the attention back onto your object. But at first when people try to do this it can easily lead to suppression. It’s better to put your attention fully on the feelings and let all the junk you have process and work it’s way out.

Exercise:

Start noticing any feelings of discomfort you may have from doing your meditation. Maybe you are feeling fear. Feel the fear. Maybe you just feel bored or restless. Feel the boredom, feel the restlessness. Put your attention on the sensation of the boredom or restlessness in the present. Breathe into it. Do the same thing with anger. Don’t try to control it. Drop any expectation of ever changing it or that it will go away. (this is key). Feel it fully. Surrender. Accept it. Feel the frustration. Cry if you have to. Even scream. Throw a tantrum. Let it all out.

As long as the feeling is “interrupting” continue to put your awareness on the feelings that come up until they work themselves out and it feels easy to go back to your object such as breathing.

Too Much Judgement

It’s best to drop any judgments. But at first it’s usually easier to deal with the emotions that judgements trigger. If you start to feel like you are beating yourself up or getting angry that you can’t do it. That’s really another emotion. Feel the feelings that judgment creates in the same way as the last section. You can also use self forgiveness and gratitude to reframe the thoughts, but eventually it’s best to move beyond having to use thinking altogether.

Exercise 1:

If you start to beat yourself up about your meditation, stop and put your awareness on the emotions it brings up. Perhaps you feel anger towards yourself, or disappointment, or worthlessness. Same as the last exercise. Feel the sensation of the emotion, breath into it and don’t try to run away from it or change it or control it any way.

If you don’t understand what you are feeling that’s okay. That’s confusion. Feel confused. If you don’t feel like it’s going to work, that’s doubt. Feel doubt. Continue to put your awareness on the feelings that come up until they work themselves out and it feels easy to go back to an object.

Exercise 2:

(Another approach is to reframe the judgments. refer back to the section on acceptance, gratitude and forgiveness to see how to do this). Eventually you can just accept and drop the judgements altogether.

Too Many Expectations

Expectations are really the same as judgements. You’re judging the session that something should happen a certain way and have a particular outcome. You can’t accept how things are.

The key is realizing your practice is not actually about achieving a particular outcome… your practice is really about growing your ability to accept the circumstances you are in and to let go of the expectations and carry on anyways. This paradoxically creates the results you seek. The outcomes come the more you can drop and let go of anything that can be dropped. Drop the judgements, accept the situation and feel the frustration that comes with things not going the way you want. The less attached to the outcome you are, paradoxically the more things will go your way.

Don’t Force or Chase. Just Drop and Let Go. Let Things Come to You.

Another important aspect is do not try to force your attention to be some place. Do not chase a state or an outcome. Gently place your awareness in the present on your object and let it “rest” there. Relax and let go into the present.

Imagine as if your awareness was a person who was sitting on the couch. And the thoughts are constantly coming over and trying to make that person get up and look at things. Don’t get up and just stay on the couch!

Don’t chase after a particular state of mind. It will come on it’s own the more you accept and let go without any expectations. A good analogy is gardening. You sow the seeds and wait for the plants to grow. You do not keep digging into the soil to disturb the plant, pulling on it to try to make it grow faster. This just makes things worse. Focus on the causes and the effects will come on their own.

Treating Negative Thoughts or Emotions as Enemies

If you frame your thoughts or your emotions as enemies this is just another form of aversion. It’s simply another idea or concept that you’ve created that causes more struggle. More resistance. Learn to accept them and forgive them and even love them, then drop them. Again, trying to force dropping without acceptance can create repression. Accept first then drop. This creates much less resistance and stirs up less emotions.

Fear That Meditation Will Leave You Emotionless

I have found this to be quite the contrary! As long as you aren’t suppressing or running away from feelings the techniques in this article seem to only increase the depth of emotions. BUT, at the same time you have more skill in working with them so the suffering is less even though the sensations are more. HOWEVER, meditation can and will probably make you feel things you don’t want to feel and can dig up past trauma. (see the Caveats section below) Sometimes certain styles such as mindfulness, or concentration based styles can actually leave you feeling detached and hollow. When this happens a good antidote is to switch gears into Metta meditation (see the ‘where should I start section?’ below).

Not Asking Questions When Stuck

It surprises me just how little people seem to realize they can ask questions about roadblocks they are having. There are many people out there further down the path. If you are getting stuck in meditation and can’t make progress, most likely someone else has gone through the same thing and found a way to overcome it. Ask on forums or even find a good teacher locally or online. I tend to use /r/meditation or /r/streamentry but there are many more as well as local teachers or meetup groups in your area.

Passive vs. Active Meditation

All this being said, there are forms of meditation where you actively try to accomplish things. IMO it’s much better to develop a foundation in being passive first because it’s only in that state of mind where you are unattached to the outcome, in non judgement, not doubting, and your attention is not distracted that you can make more active methods effective. Otherwise you tend to force and become too attached to the outcome. It needs to be a type of doing without any kind of resistance or forcing.

However a good example of an active meditation that is fantastic for beginners is Metta. In Metta meditation you actively try to tune into the sensation of love and hold your awareness there, and then send it to yourself and others. It’s incredible for self healing and balancing some of the feelings of hollow detachment that concentration meditation can sometimes cause. (See the “Where should I start?” section).

Intent

Intent is your ability to command something to happen. It’s also a type of doing without any internal resistance or forcing. It simply happens and that’s it. The more you develop dropping doubt, expectations, accepting discomfort, and unwavering attention, and spend more and more time with inner silence (your thoughts as quiet as possible) the more energy you will accrue. The more energy and ability to focus your attention the more powerful your intent becomes. From there the more you are able to command your mind to do what you want. It’s more of an advanced topic but it’s something to be aware of, and can be harnessed later on.

Some forms of meditation focus on building intent too early without first building the foundational skills.

A good example of this is using affirmations. Try usings affirmations when you are in your everyday stay of mind vs. when you are a deep meditative state. What difference do you feel?

Ego vs. Self Importance

The concept of the Ego can be confusing because of conflicting definitions. Many forms of meditation aim to eventually dissolve your ego as well as dissolving your sense of self. While this is a giant topic on it’s own, a big takeaway is to instead strive get rid of your sense of self importance. It’s less important in the beginning stages to worry about getting rid of your sense of self than it is to start getting rid of your sense of self importance.

We spend an extraordinary amount of time and energy feeding our identity and sense of self importance. There are many exercises you can get into to do work on this but it’s beyond the scope of this article. In general, just know the less you are attached to your need for self importance, the more free you are from suffering. The more freedom you have to be whatever you need to be in the present moment to be effective because you’re not worried how people view you or that you might look strange.

Not developing this area is how someone can be an advanced meditator and yet still be a guru who exploits people.

Flow States

Sometimes if you find proper meditation too difficult, try getting into a flow state. A flow state is when you are doing something and become so immersed in it, you just seem to get lost in it. It’s the same thing as being “in the zone”. You may notice your thoughts have really slowed down and you are fully in the moment. Usually this is an activity you find really engrossing, or challenging in a good way. It can be a sport, a creative activity, or even cleaning.

The more time you can spend in flow states, usually the better you feel. Meditation is more powerful but flow states can give you a good chunk of the benefits without having to do as much work. The more time you spend in flow states the easier it is to transition into meditation proper. Here is a good book on this topic.

Also of note is that activities that are often flow states for you are also ones that are in your strengths. The more you can be in your strengths the more likely you’ll be in some sort of flow.

Things That Make Meditation Easier

There are so many little things that make meditation easier that I wish I had known starting out. Try adding these things if you are having trouble / getting stuck or better yet start with these things from the beginning.

Exercise and Body Movement

Your ability to focus goes way up after exercise. It has a way of burning off emotions and calming you down. There’s also something about the movements in yoga, qi gong and many martial arts that have a way of centering the mind. Try meditating after exercise for increased concentration.

Being In Nature

Something about being outside, makes it much easier to concentrate. Nature has a way of filling up your mind and quieting the thoughts, without being super distracting. Try meditating outside especially where there is running water or big rocks / mountains. The beach is another big one.

Massage

Massage gets out a lot of muscular body tension, and therefore also emotional and mental tension making it way easier to concentrate.

Energy Arts

Some of the energy arts particularly acupressure makes going into a meditative state much easier. Other examples include qi gong, acupuncture, reiki, yoga, singing bowls etc.

Breathing Techniques

There’s quite a few breathing techniques out there that after you do them for a few minutes, makes slipping into a meditative state way easier. A few that I like are the ones from the Wim Hoff Method and this article.

Vocalizations and Sounds

Something about making sounds makes it way easier to focus. A simple technique is to just chant “Om” , or just hum over and over again out loud. But there are many sounds, mantras, poems and even singing songs that can help.

Start with Qigong

I really can’t say enough good things about Qigong. It’s sort of a form of moving yoga, but much more potent and powerful. It combines body movement, breathing, being in nature, muscle relaxation, a bit of metta, and sometimes sounds and emotional releasing. It’s much easier than going straight into sitting meditation and you get tangible results way faster. I highly recommend that beginners start with qigong before sitting meditation. A lot of the skills you learned in this article will be developed further doing qigong which you can then take into sitting meditation proper.

Because of the body movement and the way it builds your energy, it’s much much easier to get positive shifts in mood and well being with qigong quickly. This in turn creates a postivie feedback loop giving you more energy to go further. With sitting meditation it can take a really long time before you see any big benefits and changes in stress levels, mood and energy. (see the where to start section for more).

Caveats - Meditation isn’t Always Positive

While I think learning meditation properly is a skillset that is so massively useful for personal development and self actualization it also can be incredibly brutal, harrowing, and make you feel crazy. Meditation is often painted as this ultra positive thing that can do no wrong and we tout the positive benefits, but originally day to day happiness and stress relief was not the intended purpose. It was considered difficult spiritual work that you were doing to attain extraordinary mental and spiritual states. Eventually the end result might be you create a mental state that is devoid of suffering, but the process of getting there could push you to the edge.

To develop yourself to an elite level of consciousness, you end up having to confront all your traumas and fears. (Although some paths have ways of making this smoother than others and it also depends on the person.) Sometimes doing meditation with certain medical / mental health conditions will make your mental state way worse.

But at the end of the day It really depends. I encourage everyone to try it, but also buyer beware. Do not be afraid to back off meditation and seek out advice from qualified teachers, as well as therapy and medical treatment if things become too intense.

Okay I Read All of This, What Do I Do Next?

Now that you’ve read this article and got all the foundational concepts…what should you do next? I’d recommend these three things.

1. Start with Qigong. Flowing Zen is the best place for it, they have a free class right now due to the coronavirus. Later if you can do the 101 class. Try to build up to 15 mins twice a day.

2. Try the beginners guide in this subreddit - Stream Entry. They have a lot of links to great books and resources. Many of the practitioners there have tons of experience and it’s a good place to ask questions and find quality answers or even teachers. The guide recommends starting out with doing a couple forms of meditation together that I particularly find useful. Muscle relaxing, concentration and metta. Metta is a really important complement to concentration if you want emotional benefits. Sometimes concentration can leave you feeling too detached. Metta helps you feel human again and is incredible for self healing by focusing on feelings of love for yourself and others. (If this sounds corny to you then that’s a sign you need to try it even more). These three are great to pair together because they compliment each other and fill in so many gaps. From there you can get into more advanced stuff. Try to get up to 15 mins twice a day.

3. Also explore your own path. Despite my attempts with this article, in meditation there is no one size fits all solution. The better you get at it the more you realize it’s a lot of trial and error, and it’s really up to you to find the path that is is most effective for you.

In Summary

We covered a lot today, let’s review!

The Basic framework

• Thoughts vs Thinking - you are not your thoughts.
• What meditation is doing - it’s usually doing something with the inner dialogue.

Attention

• Learn how to put attention on your senses
• Learn how to put attention on your body
• Learn how to put attention on your emotions

Acceptance

• You have to accept things as they are to transcend the situation.

Changing the Quality of your Thoughts: Forgiveness and Gratitude

• When reframing thoughts, forgiveness and gratitude are two important building blocks.

Being in the Present

• If you’re in the past or the future, you’re probably thinking.

How to Drop and Let Go

• Learn to drop by releasing in the body.

Common Roadblocks

• Five Hindrances.
• Dealing with emotions that pop up. Not suppressing.
• Judging too Much.
• Too many expectations.
• Don’t Force or Chase.
• Treating Negative Thoughts or Emotions as Enemies.
• Fear that meditation will leave you emotionless.
• Not asking questions when stuck.
  

Passive vs. Active Meditation

• Passive forms of meditation can help build skills towards active forms.
• Intent - build foundational skills first will increase power of intent.

Ego vs Self Importance

Worry first about reducing your self importance, rather than dissolving your sense of self.

Flow States

If you can’t do regular meditation, do flow state activities.

Things That Make Meditation Easier

• Exercise / Body Movement
• Being in Nature
• Energy Arts
• Massage
• Breathing Techniques
• Sounds and Vocalizations

Start with Qigong

• Starting with qigong is better than going directly into sitting meditation.

Caveats - Meditation isn’t Always Positive

• Meditation can bring up a lot of junk. Be prepared.

Where to Start?

• Do qigong, start with subreddits, and explore find your own path!

Solutions for Back Pain, Tension and Other Pain

A guide to what is effective in regards to back pain and tension. Compiled from years of research and first hand experience.

By James Semczuk

May 5, 2020

Purpose of This Article

I’ve seen so many people just resign themselves to living with pain (“I guess I’m just old now!”), or worse chase their tails trying ineffective and often expensive solutions only to end up right back where they started. I’ve been researching it for a long time and I wanted to put together this condensed guide for others to easily get to some of the more effective (and cost effective) solutions, without having to wade through all the misinformation out there. Unfortunately there’s not really a pre-defined universally agreed process that someone can go through who has back pain. So this article will attempt to put together a practical working solution until we find out something better.

Table of Contents

Disclaimer

Although I use the word ‘Back’ Pain… I’m going to be using it as an umbrella term for muscle, neck, and shoulder pain as well. For years now I’ve struggled with a lot of pain and tension largely from not moving enough. And so have a lot of you. Nearly everyone I’ve talked to who works a desk job at some point has been troubled with back, neck, shoulder, wrist pain, or just felt crappy from being immobile for long periods.

The solutions in this article are primarily intended for people who have NOT suffered an injury. Basically if you were otherwise healthy, and then started to get aches and pain and muscle tension and you are doing very little body movement each day, this article is for you. Your pain and tension is probably caused by lack of movement and a few other related things. If you suffered an injury like a car accident or sports injury and are getting pain, you may require a different approach with a professional. (But some of these approaches may complement and overlap with your treatment!)

Forget Everything You Currently Know About Back Pain!

One of the most frustrating things about the topic is the wealth of misinformation out there. Society tends to act like there’s one true solution for back pain, but in reality it’s a lot more like cancer treatment. We really don’t have a good understanding of how it works and there’s not one solution that works for everyone. There’s a lot of hearsay …and many things that don’t work at all. There’s also a ton of stuff that only partially works.

So much of what’s out there is straight up false information that I encourage everyone to just throw out everything they think they know about back pain and start over from scratch (Yes really!) .

Otherwise people will tend to fixate on common things they’ve heard repeated throughout our culture that don’t actually work and it just gets in the way. It really is that bad.

And what’s even worse than that, many medical professionals don’t know what works either! They often don’t keep up with the science, are also just as prone to the cultural hearsay as all humans are, and have vested interests in you staying with their (often expensive) approach. You may go to a host of professionals such as chiropractors or physical therapists that all tell you different and contradictory information. Where can you turn?

Painscience.com Might be the Best Overall Site on the Internet About Pain There Is

As far as the internet goes, it’s an absolutely terrible resource for information on pain and muscle tension. It’s full of contradictory and straight up false information. But, If I had to turn to one site for information, http://www.painscience.com would be the one. Here is a good overall guide to the site.

The man who runs the site’s sole job now is full time research into the topic of pain. His tutorials go into extreme depth into what works and what doesn’t. He is on the front lines of this topic and his solutions have been much more effective and cheaper than others. The only problem I’d say is he tends to throw out any approaches that haven’t yet been tested yet. So he’s not fully comprehensive. Not all approaches have been tested equally, or at all. But of the stuff that has been, he is a great resource.

Best Overall Solutions that Have Worked For Me

Disclaimer: I have no affiliation with any of these sites or methods and receive no payment, but I have used each and every one and can personally vouch for it.

Painscience.com’s model (free)

Painscience.com’s primary approach revolves around 3 separate things that come together.

1. Massaging Out Trigger Points - trigger points are basically these areas of tension in muscles that need to get massaged out for at least 30 seconds in order for the muscle to really loosen. You often cannot fully relax tight muscles without doing this every so often. You can get at them yourself, or have someone else do it (A knowledgeable massage therapist can also help a lot here, but they won’t be able to be with you day to day).

   • Here’s a list of common trigger points to massage - (don’t need to do all of them, but focus on ones that contribute to your own problem areas).
   • Here’s a link to a good massage ball that gets at the points better than your hands. It’s great to do it against a wall or in a door frame.

2. Use Mobilizations - (repeated simple body movements) - to keep future tension at bay and to calm down currently agitated muscles. The trigger points reset the muscles, but to maintain the looseness from there, you need body movement. You basically do high reps of very simple low intensity movements to loosen a muscle. The high reps are key. You need anywhere from 30 - 70 reps depending on the person. 40 is probably a good number to shoot for until you get a feel for how much you need.

   • Here’s an In depth article on mobilizations and how to do them.
   • A DVD routine of mobilizations (about $40) .This one is one of the best routines I’ve found for loosening the whole body, and you get a lot of bonus information on acupressure which feels awesome.
   • More Mobilizations from Tai chi. The 1st video you get in their 1 month Free Trial has some really great ones you won’t get elsewhere.
     

3. Mobilize at a certain frequency for them to stay effective -. You need a 20:1 ratio. Basically if you are in a static (non moving position) for 20 mins, you need at least 1 minute of mobilization to ward off tension and pain.

   • Here’s an in depth article on how often you should mobilize.

You want to keep the cycle of all three things going. If I don’t do one of the three usually the cycle breaks down and stops working, especially if I’m not working on the trigger points.

What a routine might look like.

So the overall approach would look like this. I’ve been sitting for about 30 mins. I get up and use a massage ball to work on 1- 2 trigger points near my most aggravated areas for about 30 seconds each. Then I’ll pick a problem area to do about 40 reps of a mobilization on each (while doing breathing and going into a meditative state from qigong). Then back to work. Repeat at least once every 30 mins for best results. When really jacked up do every 20 mins. You don’t need to repeatedly work trigger points each time. I’ve found 1-3 times per day seems to be sufficient. (I now also include some progressive muscle relaxation in this routine for my hips / neck / jaw as well. See below)

Don’t Just Sit There ($40)

https://www.primalblueprint.com/dont-just-sit-there

This program tries to find a solution to the problem of how to integrate movement into your daily life instead of having to always take breaks to do it. You are doing it all the time. Adding in breaks on top of though only makes it more powerful. They are one of the only people I’ve seen try to address this issue in an office environment.

How it Works

Their basic approach is to switch positions as often as possible. Ideally you would have a laptop and some space and furniture to sit and stand. Every time you begin to get tense you switch positions. You cycle through as many positions as possible including but not limited to sitting on the floor with legs out, kneeling, cross legged, laying down, sitting, standing, etc.I’ve tried it at home and it seems to be an improvement over simply sitting or standing in one position for long periods. I was cycling through about 5-6 positions over the course of an hour and I never really got the chance to tense up. If you couple this approach with the PainScience model, I see it is a really really powerful system. The problems come in in how to fully do it in an office environment unless you have the right space and equipment. Despite this, there are so many useful and sneaky and subtle tips to work in movement (especially at standing desks) I still recommend it. Especially since in the future we will have more mobility with laptops.

Alignment and Ergonomics

Along with making sure you move, it’s good to make sure that when you are not moving you aren’t putting yourself in positions that aggravate pain. Alignment and ergonomics is important, but usually not as important as moving enough. Postural alignment is a pretty deep subject and beyond the scope of this article… but in general if you align yourself and your workstation similar to the following images, it should take care of a lot of the biggest offenders in terms of posture related pain problems. The numbers aren’t so important as having the actual lines line up with the points on your body.

The Greatest Alignment Cue: Hanging from a Thread at the Top of your Head

By far the greatest postural tip I’ve come across is to let your head feel as if it’s suspended from a thread at the top of your crown. Let your tailbone relax and release away from the top of your head, loosening and elongating your spine. Next let your shoulders, arms, and legs hang off of your spine.

Normally we try to tense ourselves into standing up straight, forcing our shoulders back and chest out. But that approach just tires you out and is ineffective. This gets you much straighter and by doing the opposite, relaxing. So it’s infinitely sustainable. It also manages to take the pressure off and align you better.

If you want to take postural alignment to the extreme, I would suggest getting into Tai Ji Chuan. They take postural alignment to depths that few others dare.

Fixing Muscle Imbalances

It seems like in addition to the movement, sometimes strengthening certain muscle groups can give additional added benefits. For any given task, your body will recruit muscles to get it done. It doesn’t really try to make sure you are using the best ones for the job though, and over time it can develop bad habits and the recruitment can snowball to where you are overworking muscles you don’t need to use to make up for weaker ones.

The common recommendation is to work with some sort of physical therapist. Most types of physical therapy did not work for me, and would fix one thing but increase pain and tension somewhere else.

But If I was going to recommend one type of physical therapist, it would be MAT (Muscle Activation Technique) practitioners. They seem to be the best at understanding and working with muscle imbalances. Here’s a decent overview of what it’s all about. They’ve helped me cut my pain down by at least 50%. Where the other physical therapists weren’t as effective and didn’t really know what to do about the tension increasing, the MAT guys already accounted for that and had a plan. At the end of the day they were the most effective of all the physical therapy based methods I tried.

The main con for them is that they are expensive. But most treatment is. But if you are going to pay for something in regards to strengthening, this is probably your best bet in terms of a permanent solution. And you’ll need less sessions the longer you do it.

Combine it All Together with Qigong

Doing all of these movements will help, but I’ve found they tend to plateau over time unless you add breathing ,meditative states and you are feeling and releasing your feelings. The tension in your body is partially caused by external factors like lack of movement, posture and repetitions of bad movement. But another huge portion is that it’s a reflection of your mental and emotional state. Unless you are confronting these things as well, you will probably never fully be able to get rid of your pain and tension.

With qigong, often, 10% of your results will be from the movement, 30% will be from the breathing, and 60% will be the meditative state you can get in while you are doing it. This relaxes you much much more deeply and on a much more fundamental level than other methods.

What is Qigong and Why is it Effective?

It turns out there is already a system that focuses on mobilizing the body to get rid of pain and tension…while also incorporating breathing, meditations and emotions. It’s called Qigong. Qigong seems to be the root of nearly all body based systems like yoga. But is significantly more powerful and comprehensive than many common systems.

Why is this? It’s because it takes a really holistic approach to the process. With gigong you get all of these in one place:

• Mobilizations
• Breathing
• Meditative States (including a form of loving kindness / gratitude)
• Progressive muscle relaxation
• Strengthening
• Clearing emotional blockages

Perhaps one of the only things you don’t get are the trigger point massages.

For the best resource on this, check out https://www.flowingzen.com. I tried several systems before this, and this was by far the most comprehensive and effective. Start with their blog posts to get more general information, and from there I would try their Quiet Mind Healthy Body intro class and then the more comprehensive 101.

One of the added benefits is that it helps build up your energy and vitality over time, which creates a positive feedback loop this in turn makes it easier and easier to relax, go into meditative states, which makes it easier to build up more energy which makes everything deeper.

The things that truly make it powerful though, are the sections on standing meditations (a.k.a. Warrior postures) and a section called Five Animal Play where you learn to release your emotions through spontaneous movement. The warrior postures really help you build up a lot of energy and bring emotions to the surface which have been buried, and the Five animal play gives you a process for letting them out. This is a vital missing ingredient from many other methods.

The Vital Importance of Muscle Relaxation

Progressive muscle relaxation is an actual specific technique for trying to relax your muscles using your conscious mind and intent. I am referring to it in a more general sense and not the specific technique from the wiki article. I’ve found over time that it’s important to be deliberate in telling your body to relax, and this can be a key component in overcoming certain issues. Scanning through your body, feeling all the different areas, intending for them to let go… It might be one of the most important skills you can ever develop. We acquire so much tension over the course of our lives and we do little to actually release it. Going deeply into this technique is a huge vehicle for dramatic changes, mentally and physically.

QiGong Tai Chi Chuan and Standing Meditations

There are a series of standing meditations in Qigong and Tai Chi called ‘standing post’ or Zhan Zhuang, or ‘warrior postures’.. Many in qigong and internal martial arts have been doing these for centuries. You maintain a certain posture and try to relax any non essential muscles by scanning the body and intending for each section to relax. The more you relax the heavier you can feel yourself become and the more weight goes into your thighs. The added benefit is that you also strengthen postural muscles. Basically you learn to let go of what you don’t need and strengthen what you do. It also helps to correct muscle imbalances. It creates a positive feedback loop that allows you to relax further and further and increases your energy levels as well as the flow of the energy. The less tension, the less blockage to your energy. The less baggage you have to carry.

Feeling Your Feelings

There’s no getting around your feelings. Whatever you resist persists. One of the best things about qigong is that in the advanced stages, it gives you a framework for preparing the body to emotionally release. Qigong will help build up and circulate your energy and bring emotions to the surface, and then a specific section called ‘Five Animal Play’ teaches you how to express them.. In the same way pressure must be in a hose before you can turn on the spigot and water will come out, qigong helps build up the pressure as well as release. In other systems I’ve tried, usually they have one or the other but not both.

Diet

Look into Anti inflammatories such as Spirulina, Tumeric w/ Black Pepper to reduce pain now. Additionally you want to check for any food sensitivities, vitamin deficiencies (particularly magnesium) or genetic mutations that could be contributing. For food sensitivities, the easiest DIY approach is to do an exclusionary diet for a month and see if anything improves.

Sleep apnea or poor sleep in general can also cause high levels of inflammation that can increase pain.

Experimental Research

Kinetix- is a newer form of therapy that has the practitioner pin your muscle where a trigger point is and then have you move at the same time. It’s supposed to get dramatic results and break up tension more comprehensively than just trigger point massage. I haven’t got to try it yet though, and they are currently only in Colorado. Link to her foundational technique -https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JrBlCfsWJY&t=206s

To Sum Up

So we’ve covered quite a bit of material in this post. Here’s a recap of what we went over.

• Forget What You Know About Back and Other Pains
• Painscience.com - Is a good way to find out what works and what doesn’t

• Top Methods that Work For Me

  • Pain Science Model - trigger points, mobilizations, and frequency
  • Don’t Just Sit There - change your set up so you can change positions frequently
  • Alignment and Ergonomics - make sure you are avoiding postures that aggravate pain. Be sure to try “hanging from a thread”
  • Fix Muscle Imbalances - find a MAT practitioner to help suss them out and correct them

  • Combine it all together with QiGong- to help with extra upper body tensions and stress.

  • Muscle Relaxation - learn to be more aware of your muscle tension and consciously control it.

  • Feeling your feelings- the tension in your body is directly related to your emotional and mental tensions.

• Diet - try seeing if you are deficient in any nutrients, or have any food sensitivities to help with tension.

• Experimental Research - try kinetix if you have the opportunity

There’s so much more to say on each one of these topics, but so little space. We’ve reached the end of this article and hopefully this has provided you with some good tangible resources to tackle pain and muscle tension problems. If anyone has questions or wants to know more feel free to reach out.