appendix 7: jhana and yoga nidra for long covid (and other things) (draft, incomplete, experimental)
Preliminary note: If there's anything useful below, it's probably going to be much more important or at least as important to focus on the basics, i.e. properly time nutrition and properly timed adequate calories and sleep. It's always that way for me. Not medical advice: electrolytes, theory-driven (/ theory-harmonizing-equilibriating) intuitive/interoceptive nutrition and eating, metabolic traps with respect to meditation:, nutrition
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According to a least one recent peer-reviewed paper [~20230311], there are maybe rough "clusters" of long covid symptoms. One cluster is maybe characterized by breathing difficulties (tight chest, painful chest, the experience of respiratory depression), insomnia, and anxiety (and things maybe common to other clusters like low-energy, brain fog, fatigue, and post-exertional malaise).
Zhang, Hao, et al. "Data-driven identification of post-acute SARS-CoV-2 infection subphenotypes." Nature Medicine 29.1 (2023): 226-235.
[^I haven't looked at this paper yet nor updated the paragraph above, but this is what I was thinking about that was mentioned to me.]
The above and what follows is not medical advice. Underlying conditions can look like long covid and be exposed by long covid. Please see a doctor if you have concerning symptoms to rule out and treat everything you can. Additionally, please look into diet, supplementation, peer and family support, the latest research, online communities of practice, everything, as you have desire and energy for. And this is an experimental, incomplete, and draft document.
At least at the time of this writing [~20230311], I'm not a huge fan of jhana, though I think at least "ad-hoc" and "bespoke" altered states are very important for meditative progress.
That said, breathing, sleep, and anxiety issues seem maybe tailor-made for jhana potentially being helpful, as sort of attractor states for useful feedback---jhana can potentially increase safe tolerance for hypoxia and hypercarbia, help to untangle snarls in autogenic and volitional breathing patterns, possibly be relatively more restorative than other states, in some ways, when sleep is hard to come by or other activities are too mentally or physically exertional, and, importantly, generally may help the autonomic nervous system gradually learn a larger felt "envelope of safety" so that it relies less on adrenaline and catecholimines as safety responses.
(I'm not a buddhist scholar or a meditation scholar, but it's my impression that, in addition to a synergistic meditative tool, jhana was used classically as temporary relief from challenging mental and physical experiences.)
Do note, any sort of "deep" state, as well as some kinds of structured breathing, may be useful along the above dimensions as well. So it doesn't have to be jhana or this material that you turn to or anything at all. And, things like choiceless awareness and really any meditative tool can potentialy be useful for sort of untangling (old and new) disordered breathing, explore deep safety, over time, and so on.
Any powerful tool can tangle as well as untangle, so it's important to be patient and gentle and experimental, if you're unsure of something and low on resources, to turn to other tools or to take a break and just rest as best you can or watch netflix, if you have the brainpower, and so on, or call someone just to talk, if it's not the middle of the night, or call a friend on the other side of the world if it is---better to stop and wait and see than to possibly tangle further.
Learning jhana should sort of be "(almost) always downhill, always path of least resistance, always gently inclining or surrendering towards effortlessness." Will and effort are yellow flags, grinding and jamming are yellow flags. If there is resistance there is force hiding somewhere and vice versa, so the goal is sort of to never feel resistance and to sort of gently back away and try something else (maybe a very slight change) if there's even the initial ghost of resistance.
Anxiety can be very "physiological" and it can also be sort of very "specific," and it can also be mixed. See here for additional ways to explore anxiety:
There can be many meta-reasons for suffering:
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Generally, the ability to enter jhanic states is entangled with gently, over time, getting one's entire life in order, and doing that in the right, gentle, no-rush order. You are sort of in a partnership with your bodymind to negotiate together the safety of entering jhana (as well as learning how to do it). So, if you are sitting down to practice, and you're five minutes in, or zero minutes in, and suddenly you find yourself doing chores (or surfing the internet), or reminded of something you need to do, those might be exactly the right things to do or the right thing to be reminded of. Untangling all, and what to do when, and when to think about or remember things or do things, and in what order, is part of the process of learning.
It's important to mix in other tools and no tools, as needed.
Possibly helpful books (incomplete):
Brasington, Leigh. Right concentration: A practical guide to the jhanas. Shambhala Publications, 2015.
At least at this time, I don't actually teach jhana and I am neither classically trained or qualified to teach jhana. Please seek the advice of experienced jhanic practioners and teachers as makes feels right to you.
a larger felt "envelope of safety" so that the bodymind relies less on adrenaline and catecholimines as safety responses
One could make a distinction between, on the one hand, white-knuckling and teeth-gritting, and, on the other hand "actually looking." This is not a moralizing distinction. One only "actually looks / actually sees" when it's all-the-way-down believed-/felt-safe to do so. That is real looking, made out of tiny little steps of progressive real looking, one after another, and it is spontaneous and effortless; it just happens, it happens for you.
You can definitely take actions, help, around the edges, you can gently encourage, keep-company, suggest, nonverbally, or dialogue, or gently, provisionally, surrenderingly, participatingly negotiate or bargain with the bodymind. You can do things bobbo initiate gentle proximal experiments; gently, temporarily, experimentally, briefly, temporarily, maintain ground within a zone of tolerable discomfort or tolerable uncertainty. "If it's safe, if it's not mean, if it's not self-hateful, if loving, let it hurt, let it scream, the horror happens... ...and see what happens." let horror, let the self-acceptable possibility of disaster unfold...
That last mile, that last moment just happens, though, when it's ready. It's sometimes just fine, pleasant, sometimes really scary, really unpleasant, sometimes even hellish, on and off, until then, and then "oh" or "oh!"
This isn't just an "internal" thing---sometimes it can be unhelpful to read up on things, to google "<horrible thing> reddit," without the quotes, heh, and sometimes it can be helpful (oh, that is a good [horrifying!] explanation, but, maybe, and I'm a little closer to understanding, maybe") and sometimes it's a mixed bag or it's initially uncertain. But, generally, knowledge is power. If something is scary, long-run, it can often be helpful to read about it, to learn from other people's experiences, etc. If one is going "external" (and for "internal," too), ---epistemic hygiene--- yes people who have the worst of it never post or never come back, but also people for whom things went just fine ...
Notes for incorporation:
Prospective and retrospective engagement when you're there with what happens when you're not there.
Just a little, just a little, too much is too much, there is always a little less ever slighter
The implications, the expectations
Participating in that
Oh. Oh.
Titration, just to the edge. You'll accidentally go past at first, too far at first, too much at first, that won't work, then back, then just a little (you won't know how at first), then just a little, there's the edge, that's not too much, learning occurs, there.
Apologies if I generate some insight porn here but it ends up not being the best way to look at this. There's lots of lindy (time-tested) material out there.
The way I'm thinking about this right now is something like concentration involves "some things not coming up." For that to happen, the system needs to deem that to be "safe." (And when I say "system," I don't mean to imply "essence" or anything "extra," or, with respect to "deem" that there's necessarily anything like "belief" or "deliberation" or "decisionmaking" going on.)
Given something like "layering theory" where "layering" is something like a change that blocks some underlying lability where that change has to be undone (delayered) for the underlying thing to become labile again, one basically want to accumulate non-layered reversibilities, where they system can choose to not attend to something but in a way where it's easy to once again attend to it, at the right time, as needed. If it's possible to attend to it, once again, at the right time, as needed, then it's safe to not attend to it. And so if you a bunch of those are accumulated in parallel, then whoosh, state change (e.g. a concentration state).
Now accumulating all those parallelizable safe reversibilities is a puzzle, hence tower-of-hanoi.
Exploring full range of motion (every joint through every degree of freedom, against gravity carefully within tolerance) can help to rebalance the autonomic nervous system.
Here is a way to categorize practices (that may leave out lots of things; I haven't thought about it too much; this is quick and dirty, and I think it borrows from at least two people, including Shinzen Young and I think someone else). Also, it maybe leaves out or conflates a bunch of distinctions like "top-down vs bottom-up," maybe some stuff like "attention vs awareness," "intermediate goals and attainments vs the whole point," what the point even is, and things like that:
"note"/"notice"/"participate-in":
- this, that (noting, choiceless awareness[, but maybe not open focus type practices?]; indirect pointing [at emptiness? luminosity? void?] via exhaustiveness)
- not this, not that (indirect pointing by exclusion)
- arising, passing/going, gone (direct-ish pointing by dynamics)
- nothing (direct-ish pointing by dynamics if not result (which then flips around to include all phenomena, not exactly emptiness and form, for all of this, but [sic]))
- do[ing] less/nothing (something a bit more general than Shinzen's formulation, maybe)
And then one last one might be "experience less/nothing," and loosely I think that's a big chunk of the value in the jhanic state space and maybe doesn't necessarily need some or all specific jhanic factors or jhanas to get all the value, maybe:
- experience less/nothing
Really, both of this are sort jhana-/jhanic-esque:
- do[ing] less/nothing (something a bit more general than Shinzen's formulation, maybe)
- experience less/nothing
As mentioned above, there's sort of more layery and less (and less, and less) layery ways to explore these, in an integrated fashion. It may be that some things can only be redo[ne]-to-undo[ne] by exposing subtler and subtler phenomena, untangled from other phenomena, and it can make it easier to find one's way there (cf. bespoke altered states), but having useful frameworks around all this, e.g. aspects of this section and traditional and contemporary jhana maps.
So, anyway, one is sort of letting things come up and sort of asking for "not this, right now; not that, right now," more and more subtly and more and more pervasively, relaxed, but alert, but not too alert, and loose, and etc. I haven't borrowed the phrase "subtle dullness" from other systems or used it anywhere in this whole document, because of the inherent "error correction" in main practice p2 and the meta protocol; I've said it's fine to meditate while falling asleep, etc., because of as-needed error correction over time, if ever needed. But, this might be the one sort of space where a more delicate balance and harmony between relaxedness and alertness may be important. I'm still not employing the concept "sensory clarity" or "vividness" (in a particular sense), here, because I'm concerned that's too reifying.
Anyway, for "not this, right now; not that, right now," this sort of needs patience, participation, and subtle negotiation. It's sort of a life-complete (cf. NP-complete) sort of thing, for it to be safe to temporary let go of experiencing things, because you and the rest of the (body)mind trust that it will come back at the right time in the right way, when needed. So that's a subtle, ordering and planning and integration and refactoring process that can take a long time, and meditation in other ways, working through things all through the mind, and handling life stuff, and sufficiently living life, as a part of you knows that's the whole point, is part of all that. As per usual, even with all this, here, in some sense, not "meditation then" but "meditation and", even if you're on retreat or something. Anyway, generally speaking, we err on the side of letting things come up so as to work through them, so as to not layer or incur technical debt which might accrue enough to block further progress and which will need to be paid off eventually, anyway, in any case.
Unlike with lots of meditation (and I usually suggest it's good to let go of order, because of natural ordering inherent in contingent bodymind structure) or aspects of meditation; here, you're sort of having a even a "goal" or, rather, at least a direction in mind, a bit more mediately than "be enlightened" or "have good or better things happen". But, that's sort of distinct from having any particular local or mediate expectation and also it's important to let one's conception and understanding of the goal be fluid and loose and integrative or untangly or refactor-y with other things.
Sometimes meditating amidst illness is useful (in general and/or for the illness) and sometimes it's better to redirect and wait. It depends on the illness (i.e. present symptomology and timecourse) and it depends on the meditative regime (i.e. what you're doing in meditation).
Whether long covid (etc.) or having intermittent issues (such as extreme insomnia) or freakouts about sleep (and unconsciousness and nothingness and lack of control and uncertainty and death) as an advanced (or intermediate or beginning) meditator, there are some things that can potentially help.
(Not medical advice: One pretty important thing is to make sure your protein has a relatively high ratio of tryptophan to leucine, isoleucine, phenylalanine, tyrosine, and valine, i.e. tryp/(leu+iso+phe+tyr+val) approximately by weight is more than good enough. The ratio may be way more important than the total amount of tryptophan. So, just as an example, dairy or salmon is better than beef is better than pea protein (if I recall correctly), and nuts like cashews and possibly some fruits and plantains (careful with stimulating coconut oil if plantain chips) may be even better than salmon or dairy, even though they have much less protein. I don't supplement with straight l-tryptophan because it might be dangerous if you have any immune stuff, or even in any case, and anecdotally is physiologically confusing for the body. Also, after your last bite, it can take as long as 3.75 hours for serotonin and melatonin synthesis to begin, and, not critical at all, but the body prefers to ideally be synthesizing many hours in advance, like 8-10+ hours in advance is even better. Alternatively, if you do have circulating amino acids already, eating carbohydrates->insulin can differentially shunt already circulating tryptophan into the brain. So ~zero hours instead of 3.75, but there has to be already-circulating tryptophan to do this and a larger ratio of tryptophan to those other amino acids is still better.) [this paragraph can be found elsewhere in document, too]
But, aside from the parenthetical, here's the thing:
It can be helpful to try to stay as awake as you possibly can while working to enjoy comfortable relaxation as best as you can. So you snuggle up in bed and try to get comfortable and then enjoy that comfortableness, such that it is, as best you can. And as you practice, you'll be able to steal some bandwidth for reverie. And then, one thing that can happen is that adrenaline and weird symptoms can start to flare up, such as twitching, vibrating, anxiety, mouth, jaw and breathing stuff (if you're dealing with dysautonomia type things), and if that does happen, try to become more awake! while still being as relaxed and comfortable as possible, while minimally rearranging and managing weird body stuff as needed, including larger movements if needed. So being more awake can calm down weird rough cutover stuff, or kind of let that stuff exhaust itself, and being relaxed and comfortable (and eventually a dash of reverie, as you get used to doing this, over time) is just nice, and eventually sleep takes care of itself. And if it doesn't, you're relaxed and comfortable, or at least relatively comfortable, and that gives the body and mind some slack for non-trivial rejuvenation. And for extreme insomnia (post-viral, psychological, chronic pain, etc.), you can do this through the entire night, through light (or not light) sleep, through microsleeps, taking breaks to go pee or snack or whatever. Possibly still very unpleasant but "active" and workable.
So again: Try to stay as awake as you can while laying in bed (in a position you could sleep in) as "actively" relaxed and comfortable and enjoying as you can. When in doubt, try to be ever more awake while still relaxed and comfortable, eyes closed if safe, and err on the side of more awake! Small or large movement is ok. As you get good at this, mix in more and more interesting or enjoyable reverie. And let sleep, or not, take care of itself; not your problem or your job.
Notes:
- (a) state cultivation and (b) state modulation and (c) stable, non-layering carryover and integration, per se
- elsewhere voids, anxiety, regrowth and rewiring, hippocampus, location, and body map
- see also:
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