Meditations on Death (Metal)

A physical record of sensation

This one is a little different.

The discussions I’ve been having lately have centred around meditation. What does it look like? What does it feel like? What should you do, or not do? Everybody has an idea, they can be wildly different, and realistically there’s no One Size Fits All approach.

When I was writing regularly with Foster (oh to be on the right side of the global clock again), one of the most valuable things added to my writing was an initial check-in. Essentially you are giving voice to physical sensations, without needing to add story. It grounds and centres you, and gives rise to so much information which can find its way into your writing.

Recently I’ve been having quite a few discussions around meditation. What it is and isn’t, what it should and shouldn’t look and feel like, what is ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, so on and so forth. So, as I sat down to write this piece I decided to start with a check-in. What followed was what was necessary: a 40-minute meditation of sitting at a laptop listening to Winds of Creation by Decapitated.

This is entirely different to things I’ve published in the past. I didn’t have an end-point in mind, apart from the album and the passage of time. I just closed my eyes, plugged into my body, and let go.

And still, something was created. For me, meditation isn’t flashing lights and divine sounds. The mundane sensations on the body hold just as much transformative potential as the supramundane. Mundane sensations alone brought me this piece.

Observing where the narration changed from ‘I’ to ‘we’, and when body parts went from personally possessed (‘my’) to externally observed (‘the belly’) has been fascinating for me. I hope you’ll enjoy the next 40 minutes journeying through my physical experience of life in a chair, while sat at a computer with my eyes closed, blasting death metal into my ears.

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Nick checking in.

Hot. Tense shoulders. Slightly wavy. Pulse in my upper right quad - which I almost identified as my upper left quad. Tension in the lower left abdomen, but it’s moving. Wrists don’t like the table, but they want to rest on something. Shoulders are shifting.

I feel there is a slight twist in my spine, as if my sitting bone on the left side is nailed slightly further back in the chair when compared to the right sitting bone. There is a related tilt in the pelvis which appears to be softening, as though the top right of the pelvis is sliding back and down to counterbalance the left hip/sitting bone connection.

Yep, there it is. Another layer of tissue woke up in my glutes, and the weight distribution across the left sitting bone has shifted. Now the inside of my left thigh (actually the left one this time) is coming to life, sending shimmers of alertness to the outside of the knee.

But we’re back to the abdomen now. The belly wants to expand. There is a lot of tissue that feels as though it is stuck, gripping to the inside of my skin around my belly. It creates a connection to the base of my ribs and I feel my feet externally rotating as some new weight distribution goes across the inside line of my legs, through my lower abdomen and towards my ribs. The belly softens further. But my torso feels decidedly tilted.

My toes reconnect in order for my brain to find the right description for how my tilted abdomen feels. More waking up in the legs. More waking up in the lower belly, and down into the pelvis. The torso is just twisted.

As I rise taller, my right shoulder attempts to drive my left shoulder backward, but they both land slightly skewiff on top of my chest and it pulls my jaw to the side, causing me to burp. Now there is a pulsing something on the outside left of my jaw. Just pulsing, tick tick tick tick, in time with the double kick from Decapitated.

But now the awareness is back in the belly. It is sinking, shifting, expanding downward, and my toes flicker into the ground again, before my neck starts to do its tick-pulse-twitch dance. I draw breath deep into the belly and feel myself shifting back and to the left, but there is a crazy line of tension from the left hip to the base of my skull on the right side. I feel my shoulder in the middle of it all slope and beginning to speak for attention. He is twisted.

---

Perhaps all those years ago, when you thought benching 46kg dumbbells alone was a good idea, and you dropped it on the sixth rep, you did in fact twist your torso like you imagined. Well, you weren’t wrong about it, but you didn’t do anything about it. So you’re still an idiot. No matter, we’re here to fix it.

Now it’s a twitch around the middle of my left ear and I feel curled like an S, but my posture is not dramatically off-centre, just my head is tilted to my left shoulder. The internal perception feels otherwise. I consciously allow the belly to sink further and, like a lightning bolt, my pointer finger on my left hand shoots further forward in automatic typing than it normally would, and my head has become heavy again. This time it’s pulling me forward and to the right.

There’s tension across the entire back section of my shoulders, but the twitching feeling in my jaw feels a line of connection between the shoulder tension and itself. I lick my lips, and release tension from the jaw; my belly relaxes another layer. My teeth push against each other. My calves grab the floor lightly. The cervical spine wants to be upright. There’s no reason for the head to be sitting so crooked. But the spine doesn’t know where UP is. The muscles have been trained in every direction, but none of them properly. Now it is going to find UP.

The rhomboids grip towards my spine, the upper abdominals do the same, and my transverse abdomen engages slightly. I feel all the subtle muscle fibres and fascial system switching online and reaching its connective fingers to the centre mass. The centre changes from hot to cold as the awareness shifts from external to internal, but the switch is flicked and the body is in the process of supporting my cervical spine in its efforts to stand up straight, to find ‘up’.

More movement in the jaw. A shifting in the centre of my torso, which feels as though my middle spine is pushing into the back of my lungs and wanting me to move forward. My tongue grabs the roof of my mouth, and doesn’t let go. My lips open slightly and my exhalation comes forcefully from my nostrils. I’m active and upright through the abdomen. The middle body is making a subtle twisting. My front delt on the right side is active, and the upper left trapezius is sharing the tension line. It spreads into the base of the pinky finger or the ring finger on the left hand.

When I send my intention there it causes more adjustments in the lower abdomen and upper leg.

Boy that took my brain a while to cognise WHERE I felt WHAT. But it’s there now. And I’m still twisted.

My eyebrows are softening. My face is relaxing. The chin is very heavy, and it falls into my chest, but I can tell it barely let anything go. Something is shifting into the right shoulder again and a small change just occurred in the base of my left scapula. Now my left arm is off my chest, it’s supported by the shoulder girdle itself. I have an armpit, and it isn’t designed to feel perpetually glued to itself. There is space there.

My abdomen expands like a balloon. I look like an idiot but I feel upright and supported. And I believe that my cervical spine, throughout all that business, has found his way to upright.

The spine feels upright.

The right shoulder is having a difficult time living where my spine is holding him. Confirmation that I’ve not in fact been living a fantasy. The right shoulder is going back to school. And it already received an education today.

My eyes open. I read what I’m writing and observe that it changes the narration slightly from embodied to seen and thought. Abdomen expands further as my shoulders attempt to learn how to relax in their position, and my wrists find the table. All is different.

I am sitting at my laptop in a way that, in the last 20 years of desk work I don’t believe I’ve ever once sat. I can feel my shoulders AND my wrists AND my abdomen as I type. Rather than exclusively a burning sensation of pain through my knuckles, fingers, and hands.

I become aware of the fire in my chest. There is more movement to occur, or rather there is more occurring for my awareness to observe. The album isn’t finished just yet. I can feel my right shoulder has shifted backwards and is searching for the chair. I notice the insane tension in my elbows. I consciously adjust my posture and the laptop. A line of sweat forms down my lower spine. It is insanely hot to be sweating while sitting. But I am concentrated, and it generates heat. I can find no comfortable posture to sit extensively at the laptop. I shift, stretch, and move. I will stand up and stretch.

---

A new chapter of the experience. The guided approach: I allow my focus to rest beneath my nostrils. I type nothing.

My abdomen softens from a deeper level.

I type incredibly slowly.

I am consciously aware of the full length of my inhalation, and where it meets tension.

I am less aware of the exhalation. I look for the exhalation.

Things get lighter.

I become aware of the top of my head, a slight pressure. A tingle across my forehead and through my eyes. Quite blind on the back left of my head. Both sides, actually. Left side of my head is kissed by the breeze. Forehead is cool, as is my left cheek. The right cheek, right eye, and right jaw feel hot. My neck feels tension. The jaw feels stuck, and dare I say sticky.

Hot throat. Warm shoulders. Sticky. Areas where it's more accurate to describe them as wet. Slight movement of air across the skin of my arms. The table pressing into my wrists. The fingers sliding across keys. The shoulders. Heavy. Crooked. Moving. The chest, vibrating. Pulsing. Loving this guitar solo. An incredible solo. (Human’s Dust - Decapitated)

My nasal exhalation hits my chest and I feel the tension in my upper abdomen. Still a twist in the torso. A line of tension through the belly. The hips feel tilted immer noch (German: still).

The top of the shoulders, wet. The upper back, tense. Carrying something for the top, or the front, which it should not be carrying. The middle back, not supported sufficiently by the upper abdomen. Has been carrying the chest for too long. Problem has flowed upstream.

The lower back is awake. Alert, but not alarmed. It knows pain, but it is centred. The kidneys feel sticky, as though they are glued to the lower belly. The lower belly expands and the sitting bones connect to the seat.

I feel the material of my shorts on both legs. My knees release tension. The legs feel strong. Left leg feels high, right leg feels low. Occasional pulses of energy through upper legs, knees are making adjustments. Calves are being forced to relax and they pull my posture forward.

Incredible tension in the front of the ankle and the top of the feet. My toes are tucked under. The stretch is awakening in the right, the left is still silent. Entire body is online, just the left toes and the right pinky toe are still not fully engaged.

Abdomen releases more, and the left calf squeezes tension out of the left hip. Pelvis shifts slightly and a line of energy awakens from left to right hip, connecting right foot to right hip. Left foot is slowly joining the party. Tension in the left calf is unrelenting. My pelvis shifts forward ever so slightly (posterior pelvic tilt I suspect) and my left calf switches on again, but this time connecting right into the lower belly.

I shift my posture again entirely. I am sitting upright on both sides, on both planes. Top and bottom. An intermission in the album before the closing track. I allow myself to sink into it.

I am ready to begin.

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Mandatory Suicide - Decapitated (Slayer cover)

The bell rings. The guitar kicks. The drums prepare. The Dan Tien switches on. There is another energy here. I am breathing into it and out of it, and I am separate from it. And it is stable. It is centred. The drums pound around the outside of it, but it is strong. The lyrics attempt to penetrate the Dan Tien, but it is relaxed, and in the process of expansion and relaxation, there is no way for the music to enter.

But it gets close. Dan Tien is attempting to connect with the feet, but they’re still not fully engaged. Time to go upward.

The guitar rips and shreds, and my awareness races to the top of my head. My fingers are flying again. The guitar is racing me along. Shivers shoot up my spine.

The drums come back to steadiness and my upper chest goes live, connecting with the Dan Tien. The heart is mixing with it. There is a weird interplay. Two very different spaces, two different power sources, but they harmonise. Where there is softness needed, the heart pours it out and allows it to soften and let go. But where there is a strength needed, the Dan Tien expands, relaxes, and supports it with full power. Occasionally they find a point where they work together.

Like the centre of the abdomen, at the base of the spine. They dance and twist.

Stillness. Silence.