IanSDW

Maybe I'm too simplistic with my mediation practice or how I view it, but I do not relate to this thread. How can just focusing on the breath and how your body feels lead to psychosis? I have a hard time grasping how just training your mind to be satisfied with the present can lead to psychiatric hospitalization? I'm being a little critical because I'm so skeptical of what this is saying. Are there other forms of mediation that can lead to this issue? To me a person must have some other underlying issue to have a psychiatric illness develop like this.

This is really interesting post Frac. I relate to it a lot. I have definitely reached some states of "deep relaxation" only to lose it, and chase after it again which only causes more internal conflict. I'm not sure how to deal with this, but something said that helped me put it into perspective is no 2 meditation sessions are ever the same. You approach a new body every day, and you can not expect to always be in the same state of relaxation. Being present is not about always feeling the same, it is being present with how your body is at that moment. Even 2 breaths back to back are unique and different if you pay attention enough. Just like this every day is unique. And accepting this, I think, resolves some internal tension. Maybe something in there will help you in some way...I'm still learning how to cultivate these mindsets as well. Also, could you recommend which relaxation scripts you found helpful?

Yeah thank you. The pain is definitely not that severe. Thank you for your input though

That is really interesting and not what I was expecting at all. Thank you for that information I often hear about how there are myofascial massages to release tension in this tissue. is that something else that could be considered in a situation like this? Also, does stretching not eventually relieve fascial tension as well?

Yeah sure, I would say the base of my lumbar spine is the focal point and it radiates to the left and right. It'll also cause me to tense up in my lower abdomen, but this may be more as a response to the pain. The pain is relieved by me bringing my knees to my chest, or getting up and walking around. It really is only in a flat laying down position after the stretch that it'll bother me. Does that help?

When I work on this hamstring stretch, I feel like i an improving my ROM; but afterwards I will often lay down to relax and over and over again i will feel lower back pain. I feel like this almost ruins my whole stretch because the pain is so bad I will tense up afterwards. Also, I tend to notice afterwards that my legs will become very shaky as well as I walk around. Does anyone have any recommendations about why i have such bad back pain after the hamstring stretch? Should I be targeting another muscle as well? _)

Thanks for gathering all this together for me! Ill take a look

I know this is generally a forum related to stretching, but I feel like this group has such a wide range of expertise someone definitely will have input on this topic. Right now I need perform a 2 mile run, 40 push ups, and 50 sit ups minimum. The issue is with my push ups, I'm having a hard time progressing because my wrists are starting to hurt as I go along. Initially, I thought my issue was I needed to stretch my wrists, which I have been working on. But recently I learned how Important core strength is to push ups to reducing strain on your wrists. The problem is I don't know how to adress this... Does anyone have any recommendations on stretches/exercises to have a more balanced core to help improve my push ups?

Today while I was stretching I had a thought that I wanted to share, and hopefully this is the right section. I want to share this because as a beginner, sometimes the complexity of stretch therapy can be overwhelming, and I wanted to share a struggle and realization of mine that may help other newcomers in the future. A significant mindset shift that i needed to make was that I CANNOT do everything all at once. A pattern I fall into is I would find an exercise; try it. Fail. Maybe it hurt me. I would get frustrated. Try something else. And repeat. Never progressing. At least what I realized is a lot of these exercise are shown in the ideal end result, when you already have a bit of progress under your belt. BUT you don't have to do the whole exercise to get a benefit from it. Instead of trying to go all the way to the end of an exercise, which would inevitably frustrate me; I now go to the start position and take a much more gentle approach, slowly progressing to the final form of the exercise and stopping to observe tightness and changes in the body as I move on. An example is my desperation to get a good hip flexor stretch. This video below has been the bane of my existence. Every time I get in the final form I am so uncomfortable that I just cant seem to get any benefit out of it. So, today I took a little bit of a different approach. I got on my knees, put one foot out preparing to lean forward, and I already started to feel tight, so I stopped and just let that be for a moment. After, I widened the spread of my legs a little bit and let that be. And slowly I got into a better position, observing how changes in my hip position and width of my length spread would change the sensation in my hip flexors. I never completely finished it off like in this video, but that can only come with time This is a long winded way of saying, to myself, and others who struggle with these exercises, that I think at the beginning LESS is MORE. Patiently working your way up to a full exercise is the key to success. Hopefully someone will find this useful

Wow...this might be the most liberating mindset I've ever heard. Thank you for sharing

This is really fascinating. So, from your perspective the negative ways we interact with the world (with anger or stress) is just a pattern of behavior we learned? And I should think of relaxation as a new behavior to replace them? I always approached mediation as a way to become comfortable tension, or become aware and accept my tension so to speak, not as a way to replace it.

It's amazing, i've heard this advice a thousand times for stress and anxiety, but I didn't approach anger the same way. Thank you for saying this

As I've progressed in my self-study of of Stretch Therapy, I'm realizing more and more that before I can learn to truly benefit from Stretch Therapy, I first must learn how to relax my mind. I do daily 30 minute lying yoga nidra exercises now and the benefits have been immense. Most interestingly of all, it is allowing me to relax more and more as I stretch allowing me to make even more progress. Anyway, the reason i mention this is because as I address the issue of calming my mind I am now realizing how angry I am. This surprised me and still surprises me, I never thought of myself as an angry person. Anxious person, yes, I can understand that, and am working on it. But anger, I never expected this. And more so I am having a difficult time addressing it. When I ruminate on things or people that have made me angry, it consumes me, and I still have not properly learned how to control it. So, I hope someone out there can give me some advice on how they learned to control their anger to properly help them become more relaxed in their day to day life. Thank You, I learn a lot from these forums

Are there any Stretch Therapy communities in the Washington, D.C. area? Or anyone that follows Stretch Therapy in Washington, D.C.? I'd like to meet up with people to be able to explore the partner stretches, etc.

Today I was working on the advance piriformis stretch and I think I really hit a good line and felt a deep stretch that went all the way into my lower back. It took a lot of effort to truly relax the body and let my left piriformis stretch out. Afterwards i wanted to move onto another stretch but I just couldn't. I felt a little dizzy and decided to lay down and meditate on it and was fine, but I really felt like there was a strong release and with it I felt even temperature changes in that part of the body. Does anyone have any experiences where they released an area of long-held tension and how their body reacted to this?