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For some reason, 2/3 of

's meditation technique in the Cutting Machinery app works perfectly for me, but the third seldom works.

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Alternating between focus and open awareness works perfectly well - I mean, as an exercise - but often there's no emotion to process!

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Which leaves me feeling moderately awkward that I just can't conjure up anything to feel upset about, at least in the moment.

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The only thing that seems to work consistently is to spend a lot of time invoking some particularly horrible thing about the world, but...

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... even then, the whole thing becomes rather contrived, turns into more of an exercise in imagination than processing emotion as such.

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Either I am grossly misinterpreting the point of the exercise or bungling the technique, or for whatever reason it just isn't an issue.

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Echoing what Vinay said, I've found that just gently resting awareness over tension / pain in the body can help release those knots.

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Brilliant. I may even be having trouble because I lack some joint flexibility, so tension from emotions gets overshadowed by postural pain.

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Sit in an armchair.

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Yeah, I was lacking a good chair for a while. Had good success with a big yoga ball eventually.

3:20 PM · Oct 29, 2017Twitter Web App

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Nice. I've found that standing provides a bit more vividness around body sensation too, especially when you get your posture right.

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This, from

meditation guide is exceptionally good advice I found

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FWIW, I also found that lying down with the knees up and gently fastened with a yoga strap (relaxing the psoas) was excellent for “affective-somaesthetic granularity” as a mentor called it. If you can stay awake it’s a great posture for emotional work, IME.

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