Meditation & Tent-ativeness- 4 min reading
Lisa Feldman Barrett calls it body budgeting. The ways in which our minds anticipate or predict what’s going to happen, and remain at various stages of preparations through our bodies to perform the action as response. Lisa Feldman is Distinguished Professor of Psychology at Northeastern University, and Director-Interdisciplinary Affective Science Laboratory.
At any given point of time, if we were to take our awareness to various parts of our bodies, we can sense that it is not at ease. It is in somewhat responding or anticipating or a combination of the two states.
Think of it this way. Imagine i were to say the following.
“I am challenging you. At any point in the next 20 seconds, i shall utter the word “now” in a whispering tone. And you will have to stand up and sit down”.
What do you think will happen if we were doing this live and you were genuinely participating in this experiment? I guess the following would happen.
You wouldn’t know which second of the 20 seconds i shall be uttering the word.
And then you will have to immediately perform the stand-up-sit-down exercise.
Because you do not know when of the 20 seconds, your body is tensed up or prepared to perform as if its the next second that is going to be that second. Much like the ready-steady-go or the sound-of-the-gun-fire that sets the athlete on the track.
Our brains keep predicting what’s going to happen and it keeps sending signals to body to be prepared for it. The body sounds like a homogenous concept or word. But is a heterogenous of so many sub-systems and parts. Think of it like a factory where there are several machines and raw materials undergoing different stages of its production. At any given point of time, depending on the anticipated order, the various inventories keep building up at the different stages of production.
Similar is the case when the brain is constantly processing past experiences. Its also sending signals to the body depending on how the experience went. Depending on whether it was negative or positive, then the body manifests it in forms of various contractions or expansions.
So, the body is constantly manifesting and processing the various contractions and expansions from the prediction mechanism and the past processing mechanism. Hence, the tensed up states that we mentioned in the start of this write up, are those getting manifested in these manners.
While these have been adaptive in our evolution, what various contemplative practices show, is that a continuous unabating unchecked factory of constant contraction and expansion of the body could lead to intermittent burnouts. And in the long term be one of the causes for physical challenges or diseases.
Everso, training our awareness to various parts of the body (including facial and scalp), and using practices like deep breathing, labeling the feeling, mechanically trying to ease the tension, tapping, etc, could go a long and deep way in our journey.
