Tao of letting go: strength, tension, contraction.

[Anonymous]

Hello everyone,

I was hoping someone could help me with a question I have regarding the strength, tension, and contraction spoken of in The Tao of Letting Go.

I don’t quite seem to understand the different between these three things. To me they all seem to manifest as tension. Is it important to learn to differentiate between them, or to just know that you are feeling something and therefore it needs to be released?

Thank you so much,

Eternity.

[Anonymous]

We normally associate strength with muscles, so if we feel that kind of thing then it’s bound to be tension. The reason that this one is separated is that we might not feel it as tension as it sometimes requires a bit of sensitivity to realise it.

Tension vs contraction is similar but I think you can have tension without contracting which I believe is why these 2 are separated.

Initially I wouldn’t worry too much about differentiating them. It will be hard enough to focus on letting it go, let alone working out what’s going on.

[Anonymous]

My understanding- to agree with the other responder- is that it isn’t necessary to “identify” which of the 4 conditions (there’s also something that doesn’t feel quite right)… just that one of the conditions exists…

The significance of the conditions _Strength_ is that in our culture we usually see str as a good thing, a power… and yet if one really has a skill down (“know it like the back of your hand, so to speak”) it doesn’t feel strong nor powerful- just ‘no big deal’…. thus if you feel you have the capacity to concentrate- that is a sense of strength… even more so, any aspect that stands_out is in the end a blockage (but start with what is easy)..

Thus the condition “something that doesn’t feel quite right, especially if you don’t know what it is” – if you feel an area and it is “blank” that’s not quite right, if its painful OR if it feel powerful (ie the residual nerve-firing from “bodybuilding’ feels strong- but mainly from grabbing someone’s attention- vs just being relaxed, smooth, even..

Last a comment upon tension vs contraction… The latter can feel like being in a small room, an elevator, or even a “straightjacket- in one part, one point.. that can feel “closed in” without being tight.. (just as one can be tight without feeling tense, etc.)

although in essence they all 4 run into each other- just as different terms to be able to see more, and thus recognize what might be a blockage (the essence in much of this seems, to me, to be shifts in perspective, and thus AHAs… why didn’t I notice that before, etc.

____
a key in this isn’t so much the description, but waking up the mind that within any part… when that point opens- how does that mind feel? what does that sense feel (not from our observing point of view, but how it feels, in its self

– ie getting a sense of how someone feels that you are listening to, vs how you, as the listener, think they would be feeling… and the sense of connection that may, or may not, arise, as it awakens- then get let go, and listener and listened to- can both expand

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the responses guys. I think I will just focus of maintaining presence and feeling whatever it is thats going on in a given body part. If I remember correctly, Bruce suggests in his book that if everything is OK, you shouldn’t notice anything at all. In that case, I suppose labelling the feeling is not as important as feeling it and focusing on it.

[Anonymous]

hello eternity

tension can be muscular, but it can also be from ligaments and tendons, even the fluids of the body.
in the big picture, are you interested in getting the body open and soft? if so, anything that you feel as tension is good to dissolve.

bruce often uses several words for one thing in order to communicate with a variety of people. he also mentions “if something just doesn’t feel right” and that’s also in the same category; stuff to dissolve.

it is my experience that these 3 things are related, and as long as you are able to release it, how much does it matter what you want to call it? it’s about feeling, not language, fundamentally.

hope this helps
richard

[Anonymous]

Hi Eternity,

At the root level, all of these definitions are just describing the possible sensations of blocked energy and point you in the direction of what to look for. At the end of the day, you don’t need to classify blocked energy in order to release it, just as you don’t need to know the origin or “story” of a block to enjoy the increased freedom of having it gone. That being said, I”ve found it incredibly beneficial to explore the subtle differences between tension, contraction, strength, and something that doesn’t feel quite right.

Though all are representative of blocked energy, the exercise of delving deeper into the experience of what you’re feeling will refine your ability to dissolve more and more sublte layers of your system. In order to know what something is, it’s helpful to know what it is not. Using the specific counter points of the four conditions begins to not only give specific insight into what clear, smooth, flowing energy is (via what it is not), but also trains your awareness in how to accumulate fewer and fewer blockages in your daily existence.

Energy blockages frequently carry an echo of what logdged them there in the first place. As you get better at differentiating between tension, contraction, strength, and things that don’t feel right inside your body, you’ll also begin to naturally reduce their occurence in the way that you move through the world.. You’ll “feel them coming”, and start sidestepping or changing course accordingly.

Also, you probably have a lot more sensitivity than you’re giving yourself credit for. You’re already feeling all of these things, just developing a “palette” for separating the individual layers. For me, at first it didn’t make much difference in my physical body whether I could be clear about the different qualities of blockages, just that I could get a sense of what it was like to release them. Later, however, an increased sensitivity in my body started to transfer a much clearer picture of how these qualities of energy were manifesting in my emotions and thoughts.

You said that you tend to feel everything as forms of tension at this point, so let’s just real quick look at a couple different ways to observe the four conditions.The quality of tension is a fight between two things, like the way a wire becomes taught when you pull the ends in different directions. Say you’re trying to decide between two things, it could be job offers, two different kinds of televisions, whatever. How does your mind feel when you’re torn between two things, drawn to both but being present in neither? There’s a certain paralysis between possibilities.

Now contrast that with the contraction possible when there is a fixation on having a certain thing or circumstance. Maybe you’ve made up your mind that if you don’t get this job, life as you know it is over, or that you have to have this particular brand of TV to enjoy watching your favorite programs and nothing else will do. Possibilities shrink in proportion to the fixation.

Strength would be kinda like already having the job or TV and developing an arrogance about having them. There might be an inflated sense of self importance the same way you might get an inflated muscle pump in your physical body after intense activity that make you feel strong, but is really just a symptom of blood being trapped in the area. With a “master of the universe” outlook, possibility and range of motion decrease around the need to make things happen your way.

These qualites can be present in you physical body, emotions, thoughts, etc., and recognizing them at one level will probably make it clearer at another. Smooth chi would be the opposite of the qualities above. Easy going, relaxed, and present.

Paul

[Author]

Posts