I believe you are describing paraesthesiae from hyperventilation-induced respiratory alkalosis—ie you’re breathing in too much oxygen too quickly and breathing out too much CO2 too quickly, it’s turning your blood alkaline, and that’s screwing with your nervous system.
It’s not uncommon to mistake this for a spiritual result of breathing-related practices—I used to do so myself—but it isn’t, it’s not healthy, and you should try to avoid it by breathing at a more measured rate.
I believe you are describing paraesthesiae from hyperventilation-induced respiratory alkalosis—ie you’re breathing in too much oxygen too quickly and breathing out too much CO2 too quickly, it’s turning your blood alkaline, and that’s screwing with your nervous system.
This is part of the reason I always use focusing on (and minimization of) breathing as part of my meditation. It perhaps distracts a little from some aspects of the meditation but the adaptations sure come in handy when conserving energy while distance running. Cheaper than using expensive equipment to provide a low oxygen environment for training or sleeping.
It also enhances the one element of meditation that I have a particular interest in. Training the stress response. Breathing somewhat slower than feels natural prompts a mild panic response. I keep the standard letting go of active thoughts, being aware of them but not following them running along in the background. Multitasking isn’t exactly in the spirit of meditation but the process is integrated and complimentary enough that it works for me.
The process of letting that go over and over again and maintaining calm focus and balance despite the temptation to succumb to distress is exactly the mental technique I am trying to train myself in. Outside of meditation I do similar training with ice baths and painfully hot but not quite damaging showers. Applying ‘extinction’ to the flight or flight response in cases where stress response does more harm that good.
Neither my personal meditation variant nor the hot and cold stress response play is certainly not something I am recommending (at least without ironing out the details and collecting and confirming the credibility of some research). It’s just my idea of fun.
In regards to buzzing/tingling, I’ve found in tai chi that it can be a prelude to reliably increased sensation that that area of my body. Not a good thing in itself and not essential, but also not a problem.
Aha, I had a nagging feeling there might be something like that going on.
Any idea what the involuntary spasms are about? I did another hour of sitting, and while I didn’t have the tingling and such this time, the spasm came back as strong as ever. In fact, I’m inclined to discontinue things until I can figure out what the deal is with them.
Even laying down, breathing calmly, I’m just twitchy as hell. It stops as soon as I stop meditating.
EDIT: Here’s something from wikipedia.
Cortical reflex myoclonus is thought to be a type of epilepsy that originates in the cerebral cortex—the outer layer, or “gray matter,” of the brain, responsible for much of the information processing that takes place in the brain. In this type of myoclonus, jerks usually involve only a few muscles in one part of the body, but jerks involving many muscles also may occur. Cortical reflex myoclonus can be intensified when patients attempt to move in a certain way or perceive a particular sensation. [italics mine]
This seems like a pretty bizarre explanation, but I have yet to uncover anything better. Wait, that’s probably intended to be read “when patients perceive”, not “when patients attempt to perceive”.
I don’t have any hard knowledge about them but my wild guess is that they’re similar to hypnic jerks, basically your brain noticing it hasn’t heard from your body lately and pinging it to make sure it’s still there. The more serious twitches that get linked to kriyas are probably something more exotic, but what you’re talking about doesn’t sound like that.
If you’re tired, sleep better and they might go away. If not, see if you can make meditation less of a relaxing brink-of-sleep-inducing experience by some of the tips David mentioned above.
The exceptionally large amount of twitching you’re having now could also be linked to the previous hyperventilation. Note the part of the Wikipedia page that says alkalosis can cause “tetany”—that’s involuntary muscle contraction. See if it goes away after a while breathing normally. Note that breathing normally during meditation is hard, at least for me.
I believe you are describing paraesthesiae from hyperventilation-induced respiratory alkalosis—ie you’re breathing in too much oxygen too quickly and breathing out too much CO2 too quickly, it’s turning your blood alkaline, and that’s screwing with your nervous system.
It’s not uncommon to mistake this for a spiritual result of breathing-related practices—I used to do so myself—but it isn’t, it’s not healthy, and you should try to avoid it by breathing at a more measured rate.
This is part of the reason I always use focusing on (and minimization of) breathing as part of my meditation. It perhaps distracts a little from some aspects of the meditation but the adaptations sure come in handy when conserving energy while distance running. Cheaper than using expensive equipment to provide a low oxygen environment for training or sleeping.
It also enhances the one element of meditation that I have a particular interest in. Training the stress response. Breathing somewhat slower than feels natural prompts a mild panic response. I keep the standard letting go of active thoughts, being aware of them but not following them running along in the background. Multitasking isn’t exactly in the spirit of meditation but the process is integrated and complimentary enough that it works for me.
The process of letting that go over and over again and maintaining calm focus and balance despite the temptation to succumb to distress is exactly the mental technique I am trying to train myself in. Outside of meditation I do similar training with ice baths and painfully hot but not quite damaging showers. Applying ‘extinction’ to the flight or flight response in cases where stress response does more harm that good.
Neither my personal meditation variant nor the hot and cold stress response play is certainly not something I am recommending (at least without ironing out the details and collecting and confirming the credibility of some research). It’s just my idea of fun.
In regards to buzzing/tingling, I’ve found in tai chi that it can be a prelude to reliably increased sensation that that area of my body. Not a good thing in itself and not essential, but also not a problem.
Aha, I had a nagging feeling there might be something like that going on.
Any idea what the involuntary spasms are about? I did another hour of sitting, and while I didn’t have the tingling and such this time, the spasm came back as strong as ever. In fact, I’m inclined to discontinue things until I can figure out what the deal is with them.
Even laying down, breathing calmly, I’m just twitchy as hell. It stops as soon as I stop meditating.
EDIT: Here’s something from wikipedia.
Cortical reflex myoclonus is thought to be a type of epilepsy that originates in the cerebral cortex—the outer layer, or “gray matter,” of the brain, responsible for much of the information processing that takes place in the brain. In this type of myoclonus, jerks usually involve only a few muscles in one part of the body, but jerks involving many muscles also may occur. Cortical reflex myoclonus can be intensified when patients attempt to move in a certain way or perceive a particular sensation. [italics mine]
This seems like a pretty bizarre explanation, but I have yet to uncover anything better. Wait, that’s probably intended to be read “when patients perceive”, not “when patients attempt to perceive”.
You’re unlikely to have epilepsy. That’s serious stuff.
Meditators commonly report twitches (here is an annoying New Age page about them, because it was the first one I could find).
I don’t have any hard knowledge about them but my wild guess is that they’re similar to hypnic jerks, basically your brain noticing it hasn’t heard from your body lately and pinging it to make sure it’s still there. The more serious twitches that get linked to kriyas are probably something more exotic, but what you’re talking about doesn’t sound like that.
If you’re tired, sleep better and they might go away. If not, see if you can make meditation less of a relaxing brink-of-sleep-inducing experience by some of the tips David mentioned above.
The exceptionally large amount of twitching you’re having now could also be linked to the previous hyperventilation. Note the part of the Wikipedia page that says alkalosis can cause “tetany”—that’s involuntary muscle contraction. See if it goes away after a while breathing normally. Note that breathing normally during meditation is hard, at least for me.