Meditation and Emotions

Sitting in meditation again today, on a piano stool that is padded and about an inch and half higher than my knees, allowing my hip joints to breathe and stay relaxed. Breathing through the soles of my feet, backs of knees, pelvic floor, respiratory diaphragm, that/thoracic outlet, floor of mouth, roof of brain ( in my imagination), and allowing the gentle openings and closings at my jaw ( lips closed) and armpits/arms/wrists/palms. I don’t do nay fancy imagery most of the time. Just stay in awareness of my body. Thoughts come ( and boy, do they ever) and eventually I recover and come back to body awareness again. Until the next stream of thoughts. It’s not perfect, and can be frustrating at times. Lately though, a warmth has come in though my belly/low back, chest/heart, lips and near my nose, lil a gentle tingling sensation. I have a nice story about this: I believe, for now, that as I get stronger in my mediation practice, the tonus in my ventral vagus which mediates the parasympathetic nervous system. This is the rest, digest, contentment, satisfaction aspect of our autonomic or involuntary nervous system. The ventral vagus nerve is also associated with our ability to resonant with others in social situations, and is very strongly associated with our sense of expression though the voice, and the muscles and awareness of the face and forehead regions. It is one way that we project our feelings to the world and read those of others. I’m sure many of you have heard that we experience a lot of our emotions through the muscles/tissues of the face, and that freezing them through botox can also make us feel more ‘flat’ emotionally. In like fashion, we sense emotion through “introspection” or inner sensing into the heart, lungs, stomach, intestines and all the rest. I could dig up a link on this research, but I know it’s out there. Anyway, these organs are also modulated by the vagus nerve, especially the heart. So, this is one reason, I believe, that meditation helps keep me emotionally more stable and happy ( and makes me wish now that I’d never stopped – and started again, and stopped again, etc).
Or, it could all just be male menopause. Looking that up now ( something about an “androflash” I think.)
:~))