These past couple of weeks I’ve been working on raise diaphragm and the other day there was something going on in my body that was really interfering. I was finding it much harder to get past pts 7 to 8 than in the few days before. The interference and sensation kind of intensified and focused at the back of my nose. The soft tissue behind the bone felt funny and it seemed to be stretching and unstretching and the end result was that my body was telling me something close to 'you can't breathe something's blocked'.
It was a weird experience as I could clearly feel the the air was coming in but part of my attention was being pulled to this ‘ you can’t breathe’ sensation and this was really getting in the way of going through the 10 points. So 12 weeks in and this is the first time that I really ‘got’ the ‘ignore’ power of the open awareness side of the training.
By taking the 1000-yard stare with peripheral awareness, I was able to refocus and continue working through points 1 to 8 without distraction, trying to get to 9, then (hopefully) 10, which wasn't happening.
At some point something let up and my breathing switched further into my back and really stretched the ribs there in a way that they weren’t used to - big stretches and not the small waves of movement that would I normally feel. After while this got too painful in my intercostals and breathing slipped back to my norm. (maybe a future direction). After this experience I 'think' was able to complete to point 10 where it felt as if the foot cavities were providing a bouyed lift to the diaphragm, a bit different to lifts I had experienced before.
So this post isn’t really about the diaphragm and the various sensations or experiences I am really posting about my appreciation of just how well integrated this method is as mind-body training.