The Price of Bottling it Up

I am 3 weeks out of a Vipassana meditation course AKA 10 day spiritual prison. It was so life changing that I now need to use BV and AV (before and after Vipassana) when referring to events in my life. I will never be the same. I’m pretty sure I mentally wrote half a book in there but unfortunately I couldn’t write anything down at the time. So many themes and topics that are so interrelated came up in the 10 days and it’s hard to know where to start. I’ll try to stick with one theme at a time for ease of reading. But so you know, there is more so so so so so much more, I’ll probably be writing about mind-body connection for the rest of my life.

When the Vipassana finished, I felt like a baby giraffe just fallen 10ft from the safety of a warm giraffe vagina onto the hard ground, not quite sure how to use my new body. The 10 days of silence and hardcore meditation was like living through the whole Harry Potter series as Harry. Highs, lows and battling against a dark lord for my survival, all with my eyes closed. Though the enemy wasn’t dark wizards in cloaks, or even people I knew at all. I kind of expected all these memories to come up and I would either have to confront or forgive certain people in my life or from my past when I got out. But it didn’t happen that way, all the pain I held within was of my own doing, no one external was at fault. I had tied myself in all these knots and only I could undo them. No massage, acupuncture, energy healing, yoga, or boyfriend can fix me. Relying on these things to fix me is like having a garden full of weeds and going around cutting all the stems off, in the short term the garden looks weed free but the roots are still there so eventually the weeds grow back. It was time I took my power back and went to the root of suffering myself- the rotten seeds I had planted deep in my mind. It was not easy, but it was necessary.

Mid way through the course, I had settled into the routine and technique. With such heightened awareness and focus, I was able to feel flows of vibration and tingling all over my body. I have had glimpses of these feelings in the past but nowhere close to this intensity. I know what I was experiencing was the awareness of my being as pure consciousness. We are so much more than just our physical body, we are all vibrating energy! But unfortunately most of us are just too distracted and disconnected to feel it. I’ve been on the metaphysical path for a couple years so, I have known all this in theory, but actually experiencing it took me to another level. These experiences over a couple days were amazing, blissful and brought me greater appreciation for the power and mystery my mind and the universe. However, I would snap out of this state of peace and walk out of the meditation still with all my aches, pains and tension. As great as all the vibrating and tingling felt, I didn’t come for tingles, I came to sort out my pain. It was time to stick my finger in some wounds.

I took a mental note on all my main complaints. Temple, jaw, neck, shoulders, chest. What do all these things have in common, I thought? So I have had this twitch going on for the last year and a half. If you have spent any time with me during this period, you may have noticed. It kind of looked like I had terrets. My muscles would get real tense, so I would move my jaw sideway, tense up one side of my neck and upper chest to, then I would crack my neck sideway and roll my shoulder back and down. Throw in an aggressive eyebrow raise and I had a pretty funky face dance going on. It was voluntary but so habitual that I hardly noticed I did it and felt I couldn’t help it. Mitch showed concern and wanted me to go see a doctor about it as he didn’t find it of the norm. My explanation for it was that energy was trying to move through me but I had too many blocks in that area I had to do the twitch for it to move. Which ended up being partly true, I was very blocked up. So what all these body areas had in common, was the bloody twitch. I realised that I had still been doing the twitch while meditating. Lucky everyone else had their eyes closed because I would have look possessed. So I decided to do an experiment, what would happen if I just didn’t do the twitch again, like ever?

I sat down in the next meditation with my new mission- overcome the twitch. It didn’t take long for my shoulders, neck, jaw to tense up so tight like they were screaming at me “Do the twitch! Do the fucking twitch”. I was determined not to react, just observe. I was in so much pain and discomfort but I sat through it all. It got scary, I felt all the tension rise up over me like a big heavy cloud pushing down on me trying to pressure me into giving in. Still I just sat with an inner smile as I watched this habit pattern chuck a massive tantrum on it’s way out. It must have been at-least 40 minutes or more of this intense pressure before the heavy energy started rising further away from me and fizzling out. Finally it was gone, the tension in my shoulders had disappeared and I felt light and at peace. I watched as it felt like a little bug was crawling first to the back of my skull, undoing a screw, jaw, neck, different points on my shoulder, all undoing screws along the way. If you were to find someone camping on your property and you tell them to fuck off and then watch in satisfaction while they pack up camp, that’s what it felt like. I felt such relief and empowerment that I was able to overcome the twitch as I didn’t really enjoy looking like junkie fanging for another fix. After that meditation I walked around so chuffed at myself. I had fixed my problem, I thought, the rest of the course was going to be a breeze now, all love, light and vibrations. Little did I know the twitch was just the band-aid holding all the pain in. I had a storm coming.

From then on pain poured out of me like a tap from every part of my body possible. I sat and observed as deep pain came to the surface of all my muscles, joints, organs, skin, bones, hair, teeth, I shit you not I felt it all. I felt knives in my back, a boulder on my shoulders, deep throbbing and stabbing pain from all organs with head splitting migraines. This was no relaxation retreat. When a big pain would release, I would have maybe 30 seconds of peace, thinking it was all over, then the next layer would come up and boom back at it. My pain tolerance in now through the roof. After each meditation I felt lighter and lighter, I kind of got addicted to the pain as I knew it was a chance to release some heavy baggage. I got really serious in the last couple days as the finish line was in sight. I rushed through meals and went back to my room in the break to keep working on bringing up pain. I couldn’t believe the amount of pain I had stored in my body and that’s only 25years-worth of it! Now I get why older people refuse to do the inner work and just resort to numbing, looking inside is just too painful. I’m glad I caught on early.

Part of me wanted to be fully liberated from all my pain by the end of the 10 days, which was unrealistic. I’ve been meditating 2 hours a day since and there is still so much pain. Every day I find I go deeper and deeper which is scary but worth it as I know what underneath, good vibes! I feel I am re-writing my whole nervous system in the process. The pattern I have noticed is that the worst of the pain and tension surrounds my heart and throat. Surprise, surprise. The reason why all this pain has been stored in my body is unexpressed emotion. If you don’t say it, you store it. Simple as that. The price of bottling up your feelings. My price was a whole heaps of muscle tension and pain, which makes sense as I would often use physical activity as a way of avoiding emotions. For someone as athletic as me, this was devastating at first as I was forced to stop all my sports and frankly my way of life. Now looking back I am grateful for the pain as it also forced me to wake up to my bullshit and start going easier on myself. Through my pain I haveopened up in ways I could have never imagined, become more authentically myself and developed a deep relationship with the wisdom of my body. Pain has been my greatest teacher.

I’m improving in the department of expressing emotions, this blog is a testament to that, but I know I still have a long way to go. At least now I am no longer the passenger in my body, I am the pilot. The pilot can’t control the weather, only their reaction to it.

Jess xx

16/02/22