The Three Types Of Muscle Tension During Sitting Meditation
1. Postural muscle tension.
2. Distorting muscle tension.
3. Disturbing muscle tension.

Postural Muscle Tension
Postural muscle tension is a needed tension during your sitting meditation. Postural muscle tension is the tension that is needed so that you don’t fall over. If you had no tension in your muscles, you’d fall over like a straw person or like a sack of potatoes. Postural muscle tension is your friend during sitting meditation.

The next two types of muscle tension are an interference during your time of sitting meditation. These two types of tension are distorting muscle tension and disturbing muscle tension. The less you have these two types of muscle tension, the better off you are. The more you have these two types of muscle tension, the more interference there is to your comfort. These two muscle tensions contribute to a restlessness in your body and in your mind. It’s harder for your mind to be still when you have distorting muscle tension and disturbing muscle tension.

Distorting Muscle Tension
Distorting muscle tension is where your muscles are tight enough to pull your bones away from a comfortable natural alignment. Almost all of the distorting muscle tension is subtle. Subtle muscle tension can also be called tension that is “under the radar” because this muscle tension is not obvious to you. Most of the muscle tension in your body is a distorting muscle tension that is under the radar. This is why you can seem pretty good in daily life and then feel very tight when you go to a yoga class for an hour and a half.

When you leave a yoga class, many different muscles that have distorting muscle tension are temporarily relaxed/lengthened. On leaving the yoga class you have less distorting tension that when you began the class. This temporary relaxation/lengthening of distorting muscle tension can become more and more progressive over time. Repeated stretching of tense muscles leads to less and less distorting and disturbing muscle tension throughout your body.

I will give two examples that are a subtle, or an under the radar, type of distorting muscle tension. Almost everyone has these two examples are distorting muscle tension; and they're completely unaware of these muscle tensions. These distorting muscle tensions constrict your body during your sitting meditation; and they can be lessened over time. With this lessening, comes more relaxation in your muscles and the ability for your body to move into a more proper alignment.

An example of a distorting muscle tension that is subtle or under the radar has to do with your spine, the area across the top of your shoulders. Hopefully everyone has had a good massage for their back and shoulders. When the massage is over, doesn’t your back, neck, and shoulders feel more loose? This looseness may be unusual for you. And this looseness is closer to what is a normal/natural state for your muscles to be in. If you feel this change of the muscles being more relaxed, then your usual muscle state is overly tight. This is an example of distorting muscle tension.

Everybody has overly tight (compared to what they need to be) back muscles. You may not feel your back muscles as being tight because you’re so used to that amount of muscle tension in your body. But after a massage, you notice how much looser your back and shoulder muscles are. You can notice a similar looseness after being in a jacuzzi or after a yoga class.

This increased tension in your back and shoulder muscles has a compressive effect to your spine. This compressive muscle tension makes your spine tighter than it could be. This compressive muscle tension does not allow your spinal bones to have a normal, open relationship with each along your entire spine. This under the radar compressive muscle tension lays the groundwork for your spine to become troubled as you sit during longer meditations. You'll be given a way in the posture lesson to decrease this constant compressive muscle tension in your spine and shoulders.

Another example of a distorting muscle tension is when a person's arms are turned in/internally rotated. Well over 90% of people have internally rotated arms. There are three postural problems that result when a person's arms are internally rotated. The first problem is that internally rotated/turned in arms cause your chest to close down in the front. The second problem is that internally rotated arms can influence your head to come in front of your shoulders. And the third problem is that this abnormal arm position can contribute to your hands sliding down your thighs when you sit with your hands palm up during meditation.

The less you have distorting muscle tension in your body, the more you can be still in body and in mind. And almost all of the distorting tensions are under the radar (undetectable by you). The more that you're in proper alignment, the more the distorting muscle tensions in your body can release. The lesson is designed so that these habitual distorting muscle tensions are encouraged to release by being in proper alignment. This releasing of distorting muscle tension is more fully explained later on this page in the section called The Proper Alignment-Muscle Relaxation Cycle. In the next section, you'll be introduced to over the radar (obvious) muscle tension.

The influence on the restlessness of your mind from distorting muscle tension can be hidden from you just as you're not aware of the distorting muscle tension in your body. It's usually only with the absence of the distorting muscle tension that you'll notice more ease physically and the corresponding ease in the restlessness of your mind.

Disturbing Muscle Tension
Disturbing muscle tension is muscle tension that causes you pain. Everybody who has sat for meditation knows of this pain. A disturbing muscle tension is also a tension that causes your body to be distorted. Transient pains and aches are normal to have during a longer sitting. Long lasting pains, and pains repeated in the same place, are not normal during a longer sitting. When your body is having repeated or long lasting pain, it's asking loudly for help.

If you have no severe physical limitations, then disturbing muscle tensions exist for only one reason. That reason is that you're not sitting correctly. Your body gives you noticeable pain to let you know that something is wrong. The problem that many long time meditators have is that they don't know how to properly respond to the pain that their body is giving them. Therefore, many long time meditators can have pain keep reappearing in the same place(s) in their body for decades.

The posture lesson for sitting meditation will help you to repsond to your body's signal of pain by teaching you why your body is having this pain. When you stop the cause/reason for the pain, the pain will not keep repeating. I could almost count on a left mid back pain to occur in every sitting that I did that was over forty minutes long. This pain was still occurring after meditating for twenty four years and being a chiropractor for twenty five years. Now it's so easy to know why my body is in pain in that area. That pain does not stay in longer meditations. It may appear to tell me that I'm in an old improper posture. Then I properly correct the reason for this pain by attending to the lower manager, the upper manager, or to both managers. The pain goes away and now my attention returns to being more firmly focused inward.

If you've read the testimonials, you'll know that many other long time meditators are also finally responding correctly to pain in their body; the signal that something is wrong. And these meditators are now having deeper meditations because pain doesn't keep pulling their attention outward for extended periods of time.

The posture lesson for sitting meditation is designed so that you'll be able to correctly respond to your body's painful request for help. You'll reduce the amount and the duration of disturbing muscle tension during your time of sitting meditation. The less you have disturbing muscle tension, the more still you can be in body and in mind.

I lead a review-practice lesson where you review the entire lesson in 30-45 minutes. Then you sit for 45 minutes. During these last 45 minutes, you can tell me any problems that arise, or that usually arise, during your sitting. You'll be able to listen to others. You're welcome to take this review lesson soon after the basic lesson or many, many months later. You're also welcome to repeat the lesson until you have best solved all problems of being uncomfortable for your individual body. To read more about this review-practice lesson, click here.

When disturbing muscle tension is resolved there is a corresponding easing of the restlessness of the mind.

The Proper Alignment-Muscle Relaxation Cycle
When you’re in proper alignment, the only muscle tension that you need is postural muscle tension. Distorting and disturbing muscle tensions always interfere with the peace in your body; and usually eventually the peace in your mind/emotions. Disturbing muscle tension often draws your attention outward to pain.

The more you’re properly aligned, the more your muscles are encouraged to lessen the amount of distorting and disturbing muscle tension in your body. Distorting and disturbing muscle tension always cause trouble to being in proper alignment. The less you have these tensions, the more that proper alignment is supported. The more you're properly aligned, the more your muscles can have only postural muscle tension. The more your muscles have only postural muscle tension, the more your alignment can be proper. This cycle of proper alignment supporting muscles to release unneeded muscle tension is what I call the proper alignment-muscle relaxation cycle. The second part of this cycle is when the muscles relax distorting muscle tension, then the alignment (that was being distorted) can become even more proper.

The foundation of the proper alignment-muscle relaxation cycle begins with proper alignment. Without proper alignment, your muscles will have to be more tight. This extra muscle tension is needed to because the bones are not doing their job of supporting the weight of your body by being in proper alignment, so extra muscle tension is needed to help maintain your alignment. With proper alignment, over time, your body will have progressively less and less distorting and disturbing muscle tension.

The proper alignment-muscle relaxation cycle is when proper alignment encourages distorting and disturbing muscle tension to relax. This relaxation of muscle tension encourages even more proper alignment that encourages even more muscle relaxation that encourages even more proper alignment that ..... (you get the idea). Everybody I've worked with has an obvious (to them and to me) amount of distorting muscle tension (once we investigate if their body is holding distorting muscle tension). Many people also have disturbing muscle tension.

By beginning with your sitting posture having a fairly good amount of proper alignment, the proper alignment-muscle relaxation cycle can continue throughout your meditation; with no direction from your mind. Oppositely, when you don't have proper alignment, a cycle, without any direction from your mind, can naturally happen during your sitting meditation where your alignment worsens and this makes your muscles tighten that makes your alignment further worsen that makes your muscles further tighten that makes your alignment further worsen ..... (you get the idea).

Most of the people who have taken the posture lesson for sitting meditation now experience this alignment-relaxation cycle during their meditation. This is how they can sit with proper posture for one or more hours with only transitory discomforts. This transition to such ease during a longer sitting is sometimes instantaneous and sometimes the body will gradually have more ease during longer sittings. Over months your body can more and more fully embrace the proper alignment-muscle relaxation cycle.

Many people have found that their posture improves during their sitting because of the positive influence from the alignment-relaxation cycle. This is opposite of what they were experiencing before taking the posture lesson. Before the lesson they often experienced more muscle tension and more posture problems as their meditation became longer.

To read why my initial alignment/posture is not the best alignment of the sitting, click here.

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