Please let us know how meditation is going for you once your retreat is over.

Some very general comments.

Yvain may or may not be right about the etiology of your buzzing sensations (people get these sensations from many causes), but clearly what you're doing is affecting your breathing, which is the interesting part (you mention having meditated before but never had this experience until using my technique), and typical.

Twitching, inability to hold a posture, feeling like your face or body is contorting is also typical.

It occurs to you that twitching is related to the specific process of noting your breath, which is good. Also typical. Keep observing that. (Cf. my piece of advice in this post about paying attention to new things that seem strange or interesting.)

I'd say you're in middle or late stage one.

Keep noticing your breath, the interaction between your noting and your weird experiences, and your weird body sensations. Your experience will eventually change as you continue to meditate.

Also, go back to being on retreat, away from the internet.

Thanks for giving the experiment a try and reporting about your results so far. Please keep us updated.

I have some comments about your reported experience, but since you do seem to be intending this as an experiment, I would rather not say much and let you see for yourself how things turn out.

Despite that, if you feel the pressing need for some kind of feedback, feel free to send me a private message.

By the way, my name is David, not Daniel!

I believe you are describing paraesthesiae from hyperventilation-induced respiratory alkalosis - ie you're breathing in too much oxygen too quickly and breathing out too much CO2 too quickly, it's turning your blood alkaline, and that's screwing with your nervous system.

It's not uncommon to mistake this for a spiritual result of breathing-related practices - I used to do so myself - but it isn't, it's not healthy, and you should try to avoid it by breathing at a more measured rate.

WOAH, holy crap. Ok, I'm doing a retreat (in my own house, by myself) and i'm only four and a half hours in, but i'm breaking retreat protocol and going on the computer because I have to tell you guys how unexpected what's happened so far is. Woo, ok, sensations subsiding, getting feeling back in my fingers.

I've been meditating for about six months now, starting at 20 minutes a day and gradually moving up to an hour and a half, with no discernible effect other than my butt getting sore. When daniel posted these articles, I was getting so demoralized with my complete lack of results that I was looking into maybe kickstarting things with LSD or something.

Since he really sounds like he knows what he's talking about, and presents the information in a manner that's refreshingly candid and sassy, I decided to at least TRY doing a retreat, however painful it was. I expected maybe kinda sorta to get palpable results if I could stick with it for a few days.

Instead, here's what's happened so far. I actually started last night, but immediately went to bed, and just tried to be mindful in the moments I was awake, haphazardly. Got up, sat for fifteen minutes, nothing, walked for an hour, still absolutely nothing, sat for an hour, and here something at least worth writing down happened, which is that near the end I started getting a bit twitchy.

I'm prone to the occasional twitch or spasm in my daily life, but no more than a few per day. But I was starting to get them a couple of times a minute. I noted them, and eventually time was up, and I felt a little smoother or more clearheaded as I (slowly, mindfully) went downstairs and made myself a protein shake for breakfast, but certainly nothing out of the ordinary.

Then, more walking, still nothing, more sitting, and soon the twitching came back. Then it subsided for a while. Then it came back. Then it got worse. Then it kept getting worse and worse, more and more twitching, jerking, spasming. It seemed to be related to the noting process, if I let my mind wander or concentrated on the breath without noting "in in in in in out out out out out", the jerking subsided.

Eventually it started to get kind of painful, some of the random unpredictable jerks hurt my neck and whatnot, so experimenting I found that if I breathed faster (and consequently noted faster, "ininininin outoutoutoutout"), the twitching would come even faster, but in smaller, tighter, more controlled jerks, and in fact I was tensing up like crazy. I noticed a kind of buzzy vibration in my teeth and considered "Is that the vibrations he's talking about? No, i think that's just something irrelevant. That happens to people now and then". In retrospect, I'm not sure it does. It wasn't a REMARKABLE sensation, but I don't really recall having my teeth buzz normally.

But, the buzzing sensation did not stop in my teeth. Soon I was feeling it in my hands as well, and then spreading from my neck to my face, and eventually all over. Meanwhile my breath had become quite labored and audible and irregular and I'm sure had anyone else been trying to meditate in the same room they would've been greatly irritated.

My body felt very much the way your foot does when it falls asleep, though without any accompanying loss of sensation. Also I was getting a headache. And most weirdly of all, my fingers were bending back of their own accord. I found that regardless of how hard I tried, I could not hold my hands in the proper posture, they were all screwed up. Similarly my shoulders were hunched and my face was somewhat puckered, I think.

The vibrating / tingling / asleep body part feeling was mildly unpleasant. I've smoked salvia once or twice (actually it's the only drug i've done),and gives a certain prickly sensation all over. This somewhat resembled that as well.

When I had started out this retreat, my feeling was "if i can just get my foot in the door, i'm sure I can make it to the end", but not really expecting to get my foot in the door. Now that I have, I can see it's going to be just as difficult taking the next step as well. This was not an easy thing to sit with for even part of an hour, and in fact I gave up and broke my meditation a few seconds before the bell.

The world looked considerably... brighter? More detailed but in its normal textures? definitely different, in a positive way. The same way it looked after the first hour, which I dismissed, except much more so.

I'm surprised this happened so fast, and I'm surprised at how physical it was. What I've experienced so far did not feel in any way enlightening, but nor was it my imagination playing tricks on me. This is serious business.

Anyway, I'd better get back to my schedule. After typing all this, I'll probably have to start all over.

Try imagining having a full-body orgasm vibrating at 20hz (as per my definition of 'vibration'). Let us know if imagining it produces that experience.

Better yet, before you try imagining it, give us your probability estimate that it will work 1) for you, and 2) for others.

Sorry, I read the first sentence first, and so experienced a minor full-body orgasm. It didn't particularly vibrate, though - I don't have a clear enough picture of what that's even supposed to mean, possibly.

I get the impression that you didn't pay very close attention to what I've written. Is that true?

Apparently I didn't pay close enough attention. On the other hand, if enlightenment doesn't fix the really obvious flaws in our brains, it would make it more unlikely that it fixes the less obvious ones. I mean, come on, it should at least stop Asch's conformity experiment from working, right?

I agree that "ey" is annoying and distracting, but I feel like someone's got to be an early adopter or else it will never stop being annoying and distracting.

the fact that God cannot do something that cannot be done does not limit His omnipotence.

The point is that "omnipotent" is itself a "hollow adjective", as you put it. Omnipotent doesn't mean "you can do anything that can be done", it means you can do anything, full stop.

Wow, I often curse the world for not dropping the information I need into my lap, but here it seems to be on a silver platter. When I got around to reading this post, I had literally 23 tabs open, all of them about research into meditation.

I've been meditating for about six months and in the last week or so, getting disenchanted with the mainstream (within theravada buddhism) model of the path, and looking into alternate sources of information.

It's excellent to see that there's people already succeeding in the independent investigation I was wearily beginning to attempt!

I like it, but stop using "ey". For god's sake, just use "they".