Thank you for the link to your article.
could you please elaborate on what you mean by physical sense of location in space?
so you mean this literally, i mean objects in the room etc.
If you can please give an example.
so my issue, is waking up around 3AM on most nights, then trouble falling asleep.
In my experience, the practice is the same, whether I am waking up or falling asleep: when I realize my physical sense of location in space, and realize it as it occurs from one moment to the next, then I wake up or fall asleep as appropriate.”
(from Waking up and Falling Asleep)
(“humbleone”, on Tao Bums)
Hey, humbleone, thanks for asking!
Ok, it’s a feeling, for sure- if I slip and start to fall but recover myself, the place my mind went is what I’m talking about.
Now a question I have is, is it necessary to practice something like sleeping sitting up or a martial art like judo before a person can recognize that their mind is connected with a physical sense of location? That is to say, maybe some people don’t notice that their mind moves when they start to fall, that the location of awareness moves to where it needs to be to catch the fall- maybe they would say that their mind was between their ears the whole time!
I’ve been listening to a lecture by Todd Murphy on The Sacred Body, in which he proposes that the chakras are centers of referred brain activity. The brain itself apparently has no nerves for distinguishing pain or pleasure, so that a brain tumor can grow to enormous size without pain. Likewise the heart, so that the symptoms of a heart attack are pain in the left shoulder and arm, referred pain.
When I sit, I become aware of referred sensation from the nerve exits along the spine: my ability to feel my feet, my little fingers, and my jaw are involved in some way in the activity of my posture. Again, this is allowing my attention to drop where it will, and reminding myself to include my whole body as I inhale and exhale. To what extent does my physical sense of location in space depend on my relaxed experience of referred sensation from the spine and brain?- maybe I am oversimplifying to say “my physical sense of location in space from moment to moment”, but in the end it comes down to the same thing, IMHO.