Hi All,
My body has been feeling a bit numb to me. For about the last 3 months feels like most physical actions are on autopilot the everyday things. Movement for me has a new feel that i cant explain...reaching for objects and holding them sometimes means nothing other times theres a sort of amazement like a baby holding a shiny new something for the first time...the other night i lay in bed and meditated my body started going numb and I could feel my hands start to melt away at the same time and same rate i could feel my heart beat(felt like hands in my heart)...
At times i blurt these things out to friends hoping they come forward if theyve had odd experiences ...or maybe its ego trying to feel special maybe a little of both.
Willy, it could be you are not spending much time in your body... disassociated. Happens to me all the time.
The way to know is to check yourself. When I am not in my body I don't get hungry... my stomach may even hurt from hunger but I don't recognise the pain as hunger. I don't feel other types of desire either.
To get back into your body, observe your breath. Getting a warm hug can help too.
Blessings!
Placing my focus on my breathing almost instantly made me feel centered, but when you say I haven't been spending much time in my body I'm assuming you mean my consciousness where does it go...how/why does it happen?
thank you
Observing your breathing is amazing for bringing you back into the body and the moment of here and now.
Where ever you go, there you are... in this case, wherever your mind goes.
In extreme cases, disassociation (or clinical detachment) is a psychological illness requiring therapy, often brought on by trauma- you can google the word and get heaps of information... but mundane disassociation is a very common thing.
Whenever your mind gets deeply involved in something, especially something not very physical like reading a book, watching a move or playing a video game, you can forget you even have a body for hours at a time. You are not aware of your body or your emotions, or the passage of time. Your mind or consciousness is fully immersed in what it is giving attention to.
Playing in SL for example, you associate with the avatar body and its world and activities and do not think about your physical body so much. I've set a break-timer to remind me to get up and stretch every hour or so.
I disassociate easily, it is part of ADD but also for my work. Whether writing a web page or diagnosing someone's karma, I am not in my body: I am off to the Void to channel Goddess wisdom or the Witness state, or associated with somebody else's body while I sort their karmic issues. An eyes-open, wide awake out of body experience where I forget about my body for hours at a time... I am nothing but eyes and fingers typing and even that awareness is peripheral to the words and thoughts being expressed.
Any intensely creative focus will do it.. In that state I often have no boundaries and so am unusually vulnerable.., as referenced by a rant I posted to the tea room last summer, regarding students taking advantage of easy access to me to hit me up for support in sl - and getting free session time instead of directing inquiries to this forum or paying for a private session. Without boundaries one cannot say no, I was working 10 x more than was good for me and not getting paid for 95% of it... I am very grateful that my message was understood and that behavior ceased, for the most part.
To a certain degree in this state my body will act on autopilot, getting a drink of water or going to the bathroom by itself like a sleepwalker, while my mind is still engaged elsewhere. If it is hungry it will eat whatever is close at hand, not taking the time or focus for nutrition or cooking.
For this reason I keep a supply of healthy instant sort of snacks, like Boost nutritional drinks,
http://www.boost.com/Products/ourproducts_boostdrink.aspx (http://www.boost.com/Products/ourproducts_boostdrink.aspx)
yogurt, cold steak and chicken, fruit close at hand. My body will get from my desk, get a snack and eat it without interrupting my mental focus at all... I may not even remember if I have eaten or not except for the dirty plate, empty yogurt container or potato chip bag on my desk.
One side effect of this for me was some back and neck issues brought on my leaving my body parked in a bad posture, 18 hours a day for more than a decade while deeply involved in writing, web design or some creative act. It aged me. Spiritual hyperfocus resulting in physical self neglect... the accidental aesctetic.
I am fortunate to have a hubby whose schedule is set: he comes home from work and tells me about his day, it brings me back to my body. I return to here and now and realize I am hungry, stiff, tired... same when I am writing all night and he wanders into the kitchen sleepy eyed to make coffee at 6:30 am- I realize the time and put my physical self to bed! My man takes good care of me; when he goes off sailing for a week or weekend I often get completely disconnected from time while he is gone. he usually buys groceries, cooks a few steaks and stocks the fridge for me before he departs. He will often cook dinner and leave a plate of food on my desk, which I will thank him for automatically, but it might be an hour before a pause in my attention causes my body to notice "Hey, food! Good idea" and eat it.
It was some years before he got the hang of recognising when I am really not present: he would remind me of a conversation I had no recollection of; I'd ask.. was I busy writing when we were talking about this? My body was talking to him but I was not there: my mind was still immersed in its primary focus of attention and as that is a trance state, memories can be lost. He has sort of gotten to know the faraway look in my eyes when I am really not present and any conversation more important than "would you like some tea?" waits until he has my full attention.
I really appreciate his respect for my focus, because if I am deeply immersed in working on something and get distracted, I might lose the memories, lose track of where I was at in the work and sometimes almost have to start over, or retrace my steps to regain my focus. Sometimes I never do... the insight or inspiration for whatever I was working on gets lost with the distraction and interruption of the hyperfocus trance state. The project never gets finished. It can be extremely frustrating.
I give examples from my ADD experiences, to provide some clarity but Kundalini inspired detachment is not quite the same thing. What you are experiencing is related to the spiritual ideal of detachment: something I believe should be practiced for the sake of wisdom and introspection rather than a full time activity. You get Yogis and Gurus telling you to pay no attention to the desires of the body: they accomplish this by abandoning the body through focus on the crown chakra. It is OK in the short term, and as a phase of the Kundalini process but in the long term it causes the body to become frail. The body knows it is a vessel for consciousness, and if you remain out of it for months at a time, it thinks you have died and begins to shut itself down.
In the Zen ideal there is a balance between the spiritual detachment of observing thoughts and emotions rather than engaging them, and taking joy in the daily care of the body, living an ordinary life: chop wood, carry water. Be here now.
Disassociation as a Kundalini effect is quite common, and it can be a merciful Divine anaesthesia which removes your emotional awareness so you cannot resist the karmic processing, or it can be an aspect of expansion of consciousness to experience being less identified with the physical and more with the spiritual world.
For the most part I advise people not to be too concerned about it; Goddess did it, let the processing happen. You can bring yourself back anytime simply by focusing on your breathing, and check in on your physical state and bodily needs.
The disassociated state is a phase that passes, reverses to make you even more body conscious than you were before because you have less karma and your life force is more abundant, your mind is clearer and you live more completely in the here and now.
Blessings...
Thank you
Most of my work is done on the computer doing graphics so I can see that happening, being here for 8 - 10 hours a day almost completely wrapped up in my tasks.
i must say the change is welcomed it provides temporary relief from my back pain until something snaps me out of the "daze".