Category: A Natural Mindfulness

Modern neuroscience now includes the study of the “bodily self”:

A key aspect of the bodily self is self-location, the experience that the self is localized at a specific position in space within one’s bodily borders (embodied self-location). (1)

The “self (that is) localized at a specific position in space” is commonly associated with consciousness. The Indian sage Nisargadatta spoke about “the consciousness in the body”:

You are not your body, but you are the consciousness in the body, because of which you have the awareness of “I am”. It is without words, just pure beingness. (2)

The specific position in space of “the consciousness in the body” is often assumed to be fixed somewhere behind the eyes. Zen teacher Koun Franz suggested that the location is not fixed:

… as an experiment, I recommend trying it, sitting in this posture (legs crossed in seated meditation) and trying to feel what it’s like to let your mind, to let the base of your consciousness, move away from your head. One thing you’ll find, or that I have found, at least, is that you can’t will it to happen, because you’re willing it from your head. To the extent that you can do it, it’s an act of letting go–and a fascinating one.(3)

Franz spoke about “letting go” to allow the “base of consciousness” to move away from the head. Gautama spoke about “making self-surrender the object of thought” in order to “lay hold of one-pointedness”:

Herein… the (noble) disciple, making self-surrender the object of (their) thought, lays hold of concentration, lays hold of one-pointedness. (4)

Laying hold of “one-pointedness” is having the experience of embodied self-location wherever consciousness takes place.

Consciousness can be fixed in place by the exercise of will, as Gautama explained:

That which we will…, and that which we intend to do and that wherewithal we are occupied:–-this becomes an object for the persistence of consciousness. The object being there, there comes to be a station of consciousness….

But if we neither will, nor intend to do, nor are occupied about something, there is no becoming of an object for the persistence of consciousness. The object being absent, there comes to be no station of consciousness. (5)

A surrender of the exercise of will, of intention and deliberation, is necessary to allow the “base of consciousness” to move away from the head, to allow a laying-hold of “one-pointedness”.

In one of Gautama’s lectures, he stated that “one-pointedness” allows the induction of the first concentration, and that with the first concentration, willful activity of speech ceases.  In the same lecture, he went on to declare that in a “fourth” concentration, willful activity of the body ceases, and in a final, “signless” concentration, willful activity of the mind ceases (6).

In the long version of his most famous sermon (Satipatthana), Gautama declared that mindfulness of the first four concentrations was a part of the mindfulness of the state of mind (7). In another sermon, he declared that mindfulness of the four concentrations was a part of the mindfulness of the body (8).

Gautama made no mention of the concentrations in his outline of his own mindfulness, the mindfulness that he identified as his way of living (9).

I have summarized the mindfulness that Gautama said was his own:

1) Relax the activity of the body, in inhalation and exhalation;

2) Find a feeling of ease and calm the senses connected with balance, in inhalation and exhalation;

3) Appreciate and detach from thought, in inhalation and exhalation;

4) Look to the free location of consciousness for the automatic activity of the body, in inhalation and exhalation. (10)

Gautama recommended a cross-legged seated posture for “arousing” mindfulness. I believe, based on my own experience, that the cross-legged posture exacerbates the shearing stress on vertebrae of the lower spine in the movement of breath. In my experience, consciousness can take place in a specific location in response to that stress, and the location of consciousness can lead the balance of the body to engage activity in order to relieve that stress.

A frailty in the structure of the lower spine emerged in the 1940’s, when research demonstrated that the discs of the spine cannot, on their own, withstand the pressure of lifting significant weight.

In the 1950’s, D. L. Bartelink concluded that pressure in the “fluid ball” of the abdominal cavity takes load off the structure of the spine when weight is lifted (11). The pressure in the “fluid ball” is induced by activity in the abdominal muscles.

Bartelink theorized that animals (as well as humans) make use of pressure in the abdominal cavity to protect the spine, and he noted that breathing can continue even when the abdomen is tensed:

Animals undoubtedly make an extensive use of the protection of their spines by the tensed somatic cavity, and probably also use it as a support upon which muscles of posture find a hold…

Breathing can go on even when the abdomen is used as a support and cannot be relaxed.

(ibid)

In the 1980’s, Gracovetsky, Farfan and Lamay suggested that in weight lifting, the abdominals work against the extensor muscles of the spine to allow the displacement of the fascial sheet behind the sacrum and spine:

If this interpretation is correct, it would partly explain why the abdominal muscles work hard during weight-lifting. They apparently work against the extensor muscles. Furthermore their lever arm gives them considerable effect. In fact, we propose that the effect of the abdominal muscles is two-fold:  to balance the moment created by the abdominal pressure (hence, the abdominal muscles do not work against the weight lifter) and to generate abdominal pressure up to 1 psi, which would help the extensors to push away the fascia.

It is essential that the supraspinous ligament and the lumbodorsal fascia be brought into action to permit weight lifting without disk or vertebral failure. … It must be kept in mind that in some circumstances ligament tension may reach 1800 lb., whereas no muscle can pull as hard. (12)

Dr. Rene Cailliet summarized these findings:

In the Lamy-Farfan model the abdominal pressure is considered to be exerted posteriorly against the lumbodorsal fascia, causing the fascia to become taut…. thus relieving the tension upon the erector spinae muscles. (13)

Farfan, Lamay and Cailliet referred to the “lumbodorsal fascia”. That fascia is now more commonly referred to as the “thoracolumbar fascia”.

The Lamay-Farfan model presupposed a flattening of the lumbar curve, like that of a person bent over to lift weight from the floor, but acknowledged that the control of the ligament system afforded by activity between the abdominals and extensors could not be directly accounted for in the model. My assumption is that in the cross-legged posture, activity engendered by the location of consciousness can bring about at least a partial engagement of fascial support behind the spine.

There may be another factor at work in the engagement of fascial support. Behind the sacrum, the fascia can be stretched rearward by the mass of the extensor muscles as they contract. As Farfan noted:

There is another peculiarity of the erector muscles of the spine. Below the level of the fifth lumbar vertebra, the muscle contracts in a compartment enclosed by bone anteriorly, laterally, and medially. Posteriorly, the compartment is closed by the lumbodorsal fascia. When contracted, the diameter of the muscle mass tends to increase. This change in shape of the muscle may exert a wedging effect between the sacrum and the lumbodorsal fascia, thereby increasing the tension in the fascia. This may be one of the few instances where a muscle can exert force by pushing. (14)

Farfan mentions a “wedging effect” on the “lumbodorsal fascia” caused by the mass of the extensor muscles as they contract. The extensor muscles run in two sets behind the spine, one on either side of the vertebral column, and the wedging effect of the extensors on the thoracolumbar fascial sheet can therefore alternate from side to side.

That alternation may be the source of a comment made by Ch’an teacher Yuanwu:

… Hsiang Lin said, “Sitting for a long time becomes toilsome.”  If you understand this way, you are “turning to the left, turning to the right, following up behind.” (15)

I believe “turning to the left, turning to the right” is a description of the feeling imparted by the wedging of the extensors, first on one side, then on the other. “Following up behind”, meanwhile, is a description of the feeling sustained by the wedging, behind the sacrum.

The fascial sheet behind the neck and the base of the skull, the nuchal fascia, is in part a continuation of the thoracolumbar fascia. Through the nuchal fascia, the alignment of the skull and the placement of the jaw can enter into the tension on the thoracolumbar fascial sheet.

Some of the ligaments of the pelvis attach directly to the thoracolumbar fascia:

At the base of the lumbar spine all of the layers of the thoracolumbar fascial sheet fuse together into a thick composite that attaches firmly to the posterior superior iliac spine and the sacrotuberous ligament. (16)

The iliolumbar ligaments also attach directly to the thoracolumbar fascia, behind their attachments to the spine (ibid). The ilio-lumbar ligaments provide support to the base of the spine in the flexion and extension of the spine:

In research done at the close of the 1990’s, the ligaments that hold the sacrum to the pelvis (the sacroiliac ligaments) were shown to regulate activity in the gluteous muscles and the muscles of the lower spine (17). I would say, based on my own experience, that the sacrotuberous, sacrospinous, and iliolumbar ligaments can also regulate activity in the muscles of the pelvis and lower back, and in the muscles of the lower abdomen.

Likewise, I believe that the ligaments between the vertebrae of the spine can regulate activity in the muscles of abdomen and chest, and the ligaments between the spine and the skull can regulate activity in the muscles of the neck and jaw.

In my experience, the relinquishment of willful activity in the body can depend on realizing a reciprocity in muscular activity, a reciprocity regulated by the stretch of ligaments. An appropriate stretch of ligaments can, in turn, depend on particulars in the alignment and stretch of the thoracolumbar fascial sheet.

I would guess that even when the spine is not under significant load, activity to align and displace the thoracolumbar fascial sheet is still engaged to provide support to the structure of the spine. Such support would serve to ease the nerve exits between vertebrae along the sacrum and spine, and the free occurrence of consciousness in the body I believe depends in part on such ease.

In the mindfulness of Gautama’s most famous sermon (18), the mindfulness of feelings consisted of a mindfulness of the pleasant, the painful, and the neither-pleasant-nor-painful. In the mindfulness that was Gautama’s way of living, however, the mindfulness of feelings consisted of a mindfulness of feelings of zest and ease, feelings that he also identified as belonging to the first concentration (19).

I would now have to say that the feeling of ease associated with concentration is the feeling of ease that arises from activity of the body by virtue of the location of consciousness. Activity of the body can follow automatically as the location of consciousness leads the balance of the body. Automatic activity of the body by virtue of the location of consciousness has a feeling of ease, and initially a feeling of energy (or “zest”) as well.

Gautama spoke of the extension of the feeling of ease, an extension such that “there is not one particle of the body that is not pervaded by this… ease”. He used the words “steeps, drenches, fills, and suffuses” to describe how the feeling of ease pervades the body, indicating that the feeling is accompanied by a fluid sense of gravity.

The extension Gautama described maintains an openness of the body to the placement of consciousness at any point, and to ease through automatic activity of the body by virtue of the location of consciousness at that point.

Gautama taught that the feeling of ease ceases in the fourth concentration. Instead of ease, a “purity by the pureness of mind” is extended:

… (one) suffuses (one’s) body with purity by the pureness of (one’s) mind so that there is not one particle of the body that is not pervaded with purity by the pureness of (one’s) mind. (20)

The “pureness of (one’s) mind” is the pureness of the mind in the absence of any will, intention, or deliberation with regard to activity in the body.

Gautama began his instructions on mindfulness with advice on the appropriate setting, and on the posture to adopt:

Herein… (one) who is forest-gone or gone to the root of a tree or gone to an empty place, sits down cross-legged, holding (their) back erect, arousing mindfulness… (21)

That Gautama’s mindfulness was his way of living implies that once he had aroused his mindfulness, he could continue that mindfulness in other settings and in other postures.

At the start of his descriptions of the fourth concentration, Gautama noted that:

(A person)… comes to be sitting down… (22)

Nevertheless, I believe that once Gautama had attained the fourth concentration, he could surrender activity of the body to the free location of consciousness in any posture.

Yuanwu cautioned:

Those who leap out of the diamond trap make an effort to leap out, those who swallow the thicket of thorns swallow it with care. (23)

The effort to leap out of the diamond trap is, at least in part, the effort to realize dispassion with regard to the pleasant and the painful of feelings, such that consciousness can take place freely in the body.

Applying past understandings to the experience of the present can be like swallowing a thicket of thorns. I bear in mind the assertion Gautama made with regard to each of the stages of concentration:

Lack of desire even for the attainment of (the concentration) has been spoken of by [me]; for whatever (one) imagines it to be, it is otherwise. (24)