shake and bake journal from friend BP

BP is a jhāna meditator somewhere in their twenties or thirties.

This is from a private conversation I had with him, that he agreed to share, hoping more people will try to incorporate jhāna into every moment of their life, and using shake and bake exercises daily to prime the body for optimal jhāna.

4👑☸ → ☯🦍 → shake and bake 🏃👨‍🍳🥧

frankk to his meditator friend BP

those are good, [those mobility exercises] you're doing. But once a week isn't going to cut it.

You don't eat once a week, and you don't breathe once a week. 

Even with your busy schedule, you can do a lot more on a daily basis.

Instead of being in a static posture every time you're in deep thought working on your [job] or whatever homework, you can deep think while in a standing forward bend, or shake and bake, stationary bike, whatever. 

Shake and bake is a miracle game changer.

I've fixed health problems and my knees, leg parts, are getting better than they were when I was in my early thirties. 

In my early thirties, I could sit full lotus 20-30m comfortably, 45m to 60m things start to hurt. Now in my fifties, I can sit 60-90min comfortably full lotus.

Some of my meditation injuries were feet, ankles, parts of leg nerve damage and partially numb from too much sitting meditation. 

This is a common problem in burmese meditation systems.

Nerves are slow to regenerate, but they do. Shake and bake and the other exercises do are essential.

Without shake and bake, the same things I'm doing daily would not be nearly as effective.

This is especially true with vegans, vegetarians with cold body types, but even omnivores with hot body temperature probably have cold parts. If anyone has hip, knee problems, then there are cold body parts with poor or suboptimal circulation.

   

The two really big ideas that I learned in the last few years, would have made my improvement so much faster if I knew this when I was young

1. partial jhāna can be done all the time, all postures

2. sustainable, enjoyable daily exercise, throughout the day. high volume of very easy to do things makes it enjoyable and sustainable. For example, every hour take at least 2 minutes to do something. pushups, squats, mobility exercises.

what I do daily, in terms of rough quota of time and exercises to hit full range of body expression

https://lucid24.org/tped/r/rule-of-48/index.html

The reason I asked about taiji, is if you learn a good system, it will really help you understand and be able to do partial jhāna in all postures, all day long.

That's the real key to fixing legs, and at any age. When jhanic force increases, it pushes out circulation of blood, lymph, qi, stronger and to all the extremities. That's why I can sit full lotus longer and longer as I age.

If you have strong jhana and apply it to a balanced diverse exercise regimen, do shake and bake as I recommend, it will fix most of the problems you know about that you currently have, and will fix and prevent problems you're not even aware of.

Taiji done correctly, is basically fourth jhana with kayagatisati at its best. As opposed to kayagata with lots of injuries and health problems as you get older.

I took the time and effort to write and share this, because we always hope we can help others avoid problems with easy solutions that we wish we knew about when we were young. And seeing as we have similar interests, and likely to have some similar health problems from sedentary lifestyle [common to modern people sitting on computers all day], I hope you can appreciate I have extremely high confidence in the efficacy of these exercises and methods.

At the same time, I'm not a proselytizer and taiji and good physical health is just not a priority for some people.

So I will say no more, unless you ask and show interest.

I share everything I think is of value under the qigong gorilla section, 

https://lucid24.org/misc/qigor/index.html

 but if no one's asking questions, I know they're probably not doing it. It's like jhāna, I could write a super detailed explanation, and one can understand it fully on an intellectual level, but you should have questions and your understanding of the same points will change as your practice deepens.

BP to frankk

Thanks for the comments. I meant I do the cardio about once a week. I do the stretches daily. Probably I need to do cardio 3-4 times a week instead,

but that’s where I’m at right now.

I do like doing a few shaking movements I learned from a qigong vid-“wild horse shaking” and the 8th brocade “shaking to ward off all illnesses” which are similar except for the arms being in front vs resting on the back. I also do a few other qigong-like motions, not sure what they are called (also learned from a qigong vid). These are more just things I do during breaks-they aren’t anything I have a systematic training routine for. I like the idea of moving around more while thinking, although frequently I need pen and paper to work out my ideas. Maybe dictation to my phone could work there.

I work in 50-20 cycles of work/break time. Usually go on a walk during the break, or meditate.

Yeah the partial jhana at all times thing is super important. I can’t fully maintain the “connection” to jhanic joy at all times yet, but it’s improving. I’ve noticed recently that even sometimes when getting caught in conversations with roommates it’s begun to feel like “they have entered into my practice” instead of “I have been dragged away from practice”. Heh, I end up saying some very direct things about poor behavior in a dispassionate way as a result, which seems to be helpful for everyone. [friend's] advice here to view  the defilements in another person’s mind as something to work on just as if they were in my own mind is helpful here.

Safely doing full lotus seems like a pipe dream to me! Maybe one day if I keep up the daily stretching as a “lifetime habit”. 

frankk to BP

jhanic joy (both physical and mental) is unreliable, because when fourth jhana becomes the normal, neutral sensations become the norm, just as your body stops giving you pleasure chemicals when you're not hungry anymore.

The only reliable jhanic markers are the sensation of jhanic force pervading the entire body, singular focus of mind, and bubbly or electrical sensations wherever you direct attention on the body, even the entire body all at once, since nerves get more sensitive and expansive. 

It's instant on for jhana, so even in the midst of walking around talking to people, you will be able to freqeuently connect with micro moments of jhana where you feel jhanic force surge or pulse in your body.

nothing wrong with mental joy if you want to sankhara that and maintain that and feel you need it at the time. But also practice your best version of noble silence at whatever your highest jhana level is, being able to instantly turn it on, keep it on, and when it's not possible to do that, take micro jhana breaks. When I chant, every pause, even less than a second, I get a micro jhana session in there just to train that ability of always on, always zen. 

The question monastics and serious yogis should be asking is not, "can I do jhāna?"

but instead, "can I turn it on like a switch, keep it on, think only thoughts I want to think and not think ones that I don't?"

and, "can I do attain better than third jhāna, which is the 'normal' level of samādhi the buddha expects for his disciples?" 

After twenty minutes, body totally transformed by S&B shake and bake

The thing with shake and bake, if you do it several times a day, and always before you stretch, your static stretches are going to improve much more. If you really get to understand the benefits of s&B (or an equivalent cardio that you enjoy) that can heat up your body, then you won't think full lotus is a pipe dream, you'll really start to experientially understand that the 4 elements can be harmonized with the right training. When I do shake and bake for 20 minutes, after 20min my body is totally different, like a bag of water, aches in the right shoulder areas gone, tight ankles dissolved, movement and reflexes get faster, stretches are more effective when the body is pliable. Going from cold start, it's really hard to make net progress.

And my baseline stiffness for right when I start a shake and bake session is starting to improve.

I also used to think certain parts of my shoulder and back pain were never going to completely disappear, now I don't know. The shoulder tightness mild pain even from cold start is declining, at this rate in a year or two my baseline cold start will have no tight shoulders, it will be like my current 20 min. S&B mark where shoulders turn into bag of warm water with no pain. 

BP's first try at Shake and Bake

I experimented some with your shake and bake idea today. It does seem helpful, especially for shoulder and neck tension. The gentle bouncing of something like the 8th brocade is made more effective by the elevated pulse and placidity created by mild cardio and light jumping. I'll keep experimenting, thanks.

Sitting cross legged to eat lunch today also seemed a bit looser too.

frankk responds, gorilla buffet samplers

what i expect would happen is you'll keep finding out s+b is so good you should be doing it more (both more short 1-5 min. warmup before any other stretching activity  through out the day, and just in total minutes in aggregate daily).

if you want to know the effectiveness of an exercise, that's something i do in general, test it all the time. i call it the gorilla buffet sampler. example: I always do one plough helicopter suite before each sit (10-30 sec.), and based on how that feels, I'll do  2-5 more times spliced in with counter stretched backbends such as updog. So the principle is take a small bite at the buffet, and based on how good it tastes it tells you how much of it you need to eat.

So 30 years ago when my neck and shoulders were huge problems, I did a few minutes of turtle exercises every hour. Now I probably do just 2 minutes of turtle total daily, but I still buffet sampled it 10-20 times per day.

'assess to progress': basically, sati and sampjano applied to your body condition. constantly lucidly discerning what the condition is, what needs to improve

'inject bottle neck' giving more time and attention of problem areas,  

'finish diminish' decrease time in exercises that are giving you dimnsishing returns

'finish the mission of exploitation' increase time in things where you're not harvesting that benefit enough even though it's right there for the taking.

with s+b shake and bake i don't ever see it being less than 20 min a day total, divided into at least 5-10 sessions spread out the day. as you age you're only going to get colder and stiffer no matter if you've got perfect routine ever invented. So if not s+b, something gentle cardio that will warm up and make body more malleable.

and nothing gets higher quotient of jhana while warming up than s+b, though if you find something reasonably close that you like better, than do that instead.

i'm constantly still testing and experimenting too. for example, i've tried just doing a coupel minutes of pushups or squats as a warm up... 

BP after one day, feels noticable hip improvement

It seems useful so far. Surprised at how much “smoother” hip motion felt after one day of it only. Maybe it’s placebo though, will have to keep testing.

One (maybe) negative side effect is that while it feels like the stiffness in my neck and and shoulders is “breaking up”, I also feel a sense of inflammation there. The feeling is like tiny toxins are being released as a result of breaking up knots. There’s more “crackling” as well. Maybe I let my upper body wobble too much before getting used to the motions. It does seem to be fixing the knots though, just feels like there are little “pieces” of the knots knocked loose that the body needs to “digest”/“process”.

BP after two days of S&B

On Day 3 total of trying out your shake and bake. I'm really impressed by the results so far. This is the first time I've really felt such obvious progress for flexibility and mobility in such a short time. Previously I was trying to only measure my improvements in terms of several weeks, so I wouldn't get discouraged day by day. With this, the progress is immediate and obvious. Maybe it's just 'beginner gains' though, we will see.

I've been emphasizing hip external rotation as well by externally rotating the hips (not a huge amount, just enough to activate and relax the hip) in each of the jumps for shake and bake. (As if you were trying to touch your foot with the opposite hand.). Other variations I've tried: arms in front, hands resting in back (causes more bouncing in shoulders and neck), hands overhead with palms slightly facing up, arms directly out to the sides, small side-shuffling motions (more bouncing in adductors), and slight internal rotation of hips each bounce (very slight, just enough to intend it). 

The neck inflammation I mentioned is gone already by the way. My neck is dramatically more relaxed as well-I notice this especially when laying down to sleep at night. Previously the tightness sometimes made it harder to fall asleep easily.

I also am experimenting with adding 'drop and bounce' motions to various stretches where I pull back from the stretch and then relax the muscles entirely so they drop into the stretch and naturally bounce at the end of the range of motion. It seems to have a similar feeling.

The main drawback is how ridiculous it looks. Or perhaps that's just good dhamma practice .

frankk response, wish more people would do S&B

keep tracking your progress, and please publish or give me permission to publish some form of it when you've got a good sample size you want to share.

I really want more people, not just meditators, to try it out and get the health benefits of this, and having more testimonials will help get the word out.

I don't think you're going to ever find s+b not helping.

I wake up at 2am everyday, do s+b for twenty min., then some meditation. Got on my computer (desk switches between standing and sitting, highly recommend), stood for about 90min working on sutta translation, felt my back getting a little uncomfortable, did s+b for 5 min. and instantly fixed. The older you get, the more easily you can incorporate jhana into your standing, walking, and even s+b, you're going to appreciate s+b more and more. It's like sitting meditation, eating, breathing, it's never going to go out of style or beyond your frequent needs.

After one week, BP shares progress on S&B

So still doing shake and bake, it's been a bit over a week now I think. It's a ridiculous exercise that has benefited me physically in pretty much every way possible. My hip flexibility is dramatically improving, and I'm getting to the point where sitting cross-legged is 100% comfortable, whereas in the past it's always felt tense in some way or another. My energy levels are dramatically increased (even compared with times I did "normal" cardio). Knots and tensions in my neck and shoulders are disappearing. Hip 'clicking' is disappearing, even when doing large hip motions. I noticed my sleep needs have also decreased, by how much I'm still figuring out--but now when I lay down to sleep at night I have tremendous amounts of leftover energy. Currently I've reduced my sleep by 30 minutes (reduced to 8 hours) compared to before starting shake and bake. I'm even currently sick, and despite that I have more energy when not ill than I did before starting shake and bake! My mind is also clearer, and it's easier to put in effort to annihilate the unwholesome when it rears its ugly face.

All of these benefits from a single low-intensity exercise seem unbelievable to me, and yet the improvements continue to keep coming.

I incorporated the principles of shake and bake into my stretch routines as well, which I mentioned before. I'm now of an opinion similar to you about static stretching-I can feel tensions building up if I hold a static stretch for too long. Seems the ideal thing to do is do short static holds ~10 seconds, alternated with a round of bouncing/swaying/jiggling etc near the end of the range of motion. The alternation between the two is rapidly increasing my flexibility gains. Keeping the body warm and pliant seems critical for gaining fast progress with stretches. I feel confident that I'll be sitting Burmese style in maybe 2 months, instead of the previous estimate of ~4 months. Perhaps even faster, will have to see.

Some notes on increasing the benefits: open jaw slightly to relax it more, move the neck very, very slightly in different directions and hold there while bouncing to help relax different parts of neck and shoulders, gently open and close the chest to relax the upper back, and spine more,  place the hands on the tops of the shoulders to dramatically loosen shoulders (looks like 'chicken wings', works best with jumps with both legs at the same time), emphasis should always be on maximizing the amount of relaxation and 'bounciness' instead of on going fast, short 1/2 second pauses can be helpful to let the body relax and oscillate/bounce after a jump (for jumping with both legs), and for the calves which are harder to relax for me during the jumping you can sit in a seated forward fold position and 'drop and bounce' the legs to relax them. Let me know if you want me to clarify any of these notes.

This does seem like the ideal lifelong exercise, especially for renunciants who are going to be entirely focused on health benefits instead of looking good or looking cool while doing the exercise..