1) Why does the arm feel light when focusing on the spine?
The arm feels light because the muscles aren’t holding it. When you are holding the arm up, or when you are holding any of the limbs up – arm or leg, against gravity, your using, when the muscles tighten up to hold it, you start to feel the localized muscle groups are holding the limb. Therefore you feel the heaviness. Like if you hold a dumbbell out with full extension for a minute, your shoulders will probably burn out even if it’s a one kg dumbbell. Because the muscles are tight and they basically, there’s a sense of heaviness, in that way. So when the muscles relax, they become light.
2) What does progress feel like? I felt I was improving when focusing on the spine. The more I could focus on it, the more everything felt stable. Nowadays, I feel I am not getting anywhere “beyond” this focusing. I sing, I rise. Any guideposts along the way?
Progress just feels like your using less effort. That’s all. You’re using less effort until, at your level, that’s what it should feel your body starts to feel lighter. And truly if you start to feel, not just in your imagination, but you actually start to feel the joints, you can start to feel your, how the joint connects to the capsule, how the, you know, for example for your spine you start to feel the different vertebras and you’ll be able to – just like when I can hold my arm out and I can relax my bicep, then, you should be able to do that with the muscles in your body. And it’s a tangible thing, it’s not just in your imagination.
3) So when you stop using muscles to hold [the arm], can you hold a 1kg dumbbell for longer periods of time
Yup.
4) Are you the only one able to relax the bicep?
For now yes.
5) So, I get the limbs feeling lighter. Does the spine get that same feeling as well?
Yes, the entire body. As I mentioned, it’s just the feelings of muscles letting go and not holding up your body. Right now, as your standing, sitting, even lying down, the muscles are still holding onto the spine or trunk, trying to support it against gravity. When you can learn to replace that, the muscles with the engine, from the muscles to the mind, then the body feels open and light – that’s what I mean.
6) How does it feel? Seb said that for me, right now, it would feel as though the spine is straightening. Could you add more to that? What is the difference between your rising and mine? Is it a matter of you having “more energy” to rise with? Or is it more finer? ex. We are both rising through the spine. Both starting and ending points are the same. The difference would be in either the fluidity or the amount.
It’s a decompression (localized separation of joints) feeling man. The spine feels decompressed. Along a very straight line from tailbone to the crown of the head. Decompression is the only way I can explain it at the moment. Pressure comes off the vertebras, everything feels light and it’s all [a straight line] from the tailbone to the crown of the head. How is yours different to mine? You can’t, at the moment, decompress the spine, you can’t relax it yet.
7) I had a question for you regarding the rising, more a clarification actually. Firstly, when we talk about the compression of the spine, are we talking about the muscles in the spine being compressed? That’s first thing. And second thing, when, say at your level, when your able to decompress the spine, adequately or enough or well then are you rising more or are you rising more finely? Meaning you’re rising the same amount as you were, you know, 5 years ago, 9 years ago but you’re doing it much more finely. So it’s going up but it’s not being wasted, going through the compression. It’s just something I was wondering about.
Yeah, so the compression is, it is the muscles but also the way the muscles hold the spine together. Meaning they, for example, imagine if the spine is a pencil and you hold the pencil in your fist. If you slightly clench your fist, that’s what the muscles are sort of, the feeling is that the muscles are doing that to the spine. And as a result of that, so it’s a sort of holding of the muscles, contraction of the muscles, which are holding the spine like a grip. And then also, because its like that, gravity can have its way with your spine. Meaning, that’s why they say you strengthen your core muscles. So the core is holding your body up. But actually what we’re doing here is beyond the core. With our mind we’re holding the body up. So we’re thinking up through the spine. So the compression is, basically think about the grip part, and because of the grip part, the gravity can have its way with you. Whereas when you can relax, then, muscles sort of relax themselves and they feel like they release their grip on the spine, on the joints so its no longer like a clench. As a result of that, they let go and then we can think of up in the spine. And because we’re thinking up in the spine, we get a further decompression so vertically let’s say or joint to joint, because [it] seems like gravity doesn’t, isn’t really compressing it cause you have an sort of an antidote to gravitational downwardness. And that’s the sing, that’s the rising up. So you sort of cancel out what gravity would normally do to a spine which is pull it, pull the joints against each other. Make sure the joints have, you know, they’re putting pressure on the joint beneath them, you counter that by thinking up.
So are you singing more? No, you are actually rising more and finely. So its both your rising more, more energy is going through. Your not trying harder to rise more, but you are just rising more because there’s less compression in the spine. And because you can rise more, you can control it better. So you can make it more fine. For example, meaning, you can make the line that rises up, thinner and straighter and things like that. But don’t think too much that kind of stuff. Just think about the spine being upright as effortless as possible until you can start to feel, your gonna get, a sense of release. Like when you lie down on the bed and you let go of your body and you get a sense of release. Like the bed is holding your body up. As you, how can I hold my spine upright and feel that basically. And then you start to get the decompression in your spine.