Dealing with feelings of disgust during lying relaxation

[Rik]

Hi all, hope you are doing well! I've embarked on a lying relaxation habit with a buddy. They are enjoying the recordings posted in the stickied thread, but are having some issues with the exercises involving opening and closing of the hand. The sensations of the muscles, bones, and tendons working provoke in them an extreme feeling of disgust, to the point where they have to consciously distract themselves until the specific exercise is over. Is this something someone has encountered before? And how did you deal with it?

For now we're trying to pick out recordings that don't have this specific exercise in it. Are there any alternative exercises that we could be doing?

 

P.S. When I say "exercise", I of course mean experience

[Kit_L]

12 hours ago, Rik said:

The sensations of the muscles, bones, and tendons working provoke in them an extreme feeling of disgust,

@Rik: that sounds quite incredible – I've been teaching these materials for 25+ years now, as you know and to many tens of thousands of students, and we have never encountered that reaction before. Please ask your buddy what arises in his or her body before the experience of discust manifests. As well, you might consider asking what memories from the past are invoked in the practice, before, after, or during the experience of discust. There is definitely a deeper story there, I would say.

We do have a number of recordings that do not feature the opening and closing of the hand, so you could volunteer to select a few at random and try them out yourself and eliminate the ones that do feature this particular element. If you look on the list of recordings on our site, you'll see that some of them do have the elements listed and you may be able to find one or two there that don't feature this particular element.

In Buddhism, disgust is an aversion response (the three 'poisons' are craving, sometimes called desire, delusion, or ignorance, and aversion, or hatred). It is often possible to get deeper into these responses, to see what is underneath and what might be giving rise to this particular response. 

If your friend is prepared to explore a bit, there is potential gold to be uncovered if they are prepared to endure the disgust reaction for a moment or two, consciously relax in the face of this response, and stay with the sensation to see what might reveal itself.

[Rik]

Thanks, Kit! For now I think we'll go with the recordings that do not feature the opening and closing of the hand, but definitely something to keep in mind in the future.