So there were three options:
~ Follow my body.
~ After checking Google to to learn that I should see if my pupils are unevenly sized (they weren’t — a good thing), I could  go to the hospital emergency room where I would sit for a few hours under fluorescent lights
~ I could ignore it, push on, then wonder days later, why I feel wonky-blinky

I did the first. I lay on the floor and — this is why I’m sharing this tale — my body did not want to rock. She went right into that slow roll we did one day in Summer Movement Monastery. My skull rolled very slowly along the floor into gravity, the cervical spine quietly extending  and realigning. From time to time my spine wanted to gently twist rather than extend and contract, the head blow having come at an angle. My spine unwound. My cerebrospinal fluid had a chance to distribute itself (I could actually feel this pulse underneath the top layer of sensation), and whatever chemistry was happening inside my cranium could stabilize.

Nausea subsided. The light-headedness and weirdness around my eye sockets muted. I sat up, gently. All those sensations rose then subsided as well. Mostly.

I move around delicately. Keeping an eye on things, I lie down from time to time and let my body do what she needs. It brings me immediately back to the acute level of awareness I cultivated during retreat. Why does it take a blow on the head to get there?

He writes:
“The native Arabic speaker would immediately recognize the w/j/d radical within the words wajd (ecstasy), wujud (existence), wajad (to find) and tawajud (making-ecstatic), and would immediately comprehend the arc using the underlying radical to place these meanings in relationship to one another and at times fuse them into a single term.
We immediately note the difference in metaphor between the Latinate term ecstasy (ek stasis) as in “standing outside of oneself” or “rapture” (from raptus), as “being taken”  or “seized up” out of oneself, and the Arabic term, wajd. Wajd combines the meaning of “intense feeling” with the notion of “finding.” Though we might translate the term as ecstasy or rapture, as Qushayri shows here explicitly and Junayd implies continually…the Sufis always kept in mind the term’s specific meanings of finding and intensity of feeling carried within the terms triconsonantal root w/j/d.”

I am drawn to the definition of wajd—ecstasy—the term used widely now for movement experience. Any sort of movement goes quickly into a wordlessness, followed by an easy quelling of thought, and the ensuing state can deliver us to a state of being loosely termed ‘ecstasy’ because we so commonly identify with our thoughts, or at any rate, use thought forms to identity ourselves. Movement takes us away from that identity.
I love the emphasis here on the idea of ‘finding and intense feeling.’ This characterizes my experience in Dancemeditation. Certainly, in practice, my sense of personal identity softens and, when I am graced, dissolves, but this happens through a sense of ‘going in’ rather than stepping or flying out. I feel more embodied. More present. What dissolves is not the body but the sense of ego identity. Body becomes a sort of feeler—a place, a space, a shape of energy. The ‘my-ness’ is what sifts out of this frame. So it is not that I leave, but that ‘I’ leaves. Wajd and wujud together is this experience.

About wujud Sells continues:
“In addition to intense experience and finding, the lexical field of wajd also includes “existence” (wujud)…The Sufi notion of existence is experiential. To exist is not simply to have being or phenomenal reality. On the contrary…many [Sufis] saw existence as achieved only insofar as one’s ego-self, one’s normal identity and center of being, is annihilated. Existence occurs in the ecstasy and in the discovery  that occurs through “passing away.” The full lexical field of w/j/d—ecstasy, finding, existence—corresponds as closely as any Sufi term to what is currently called the mystical experience…
Tawajud [making ecstatic]…can take on several senses: attempting to so something, affecting to do something, doing something in a studious, deliberate manner. One who makes ecstatic is attempting to achieve ecstasy through his own initiative or, more negatively, affecting ecstasy…
The states occur during the process of a life devotion and are, in some sense, the consequence of acts of devotion and practices of contemplation. On the other hand, the Sufis emphasized continually the fact that states are bestowed freely, come spontaneously, and are not earned or gained through any particular effort.”

Finding comes from reaching, but if we reach too much or too hard, we force it happen—tawajud. Instead, we it is better to do our practice without forcing,with attention, with trust and patience, and without expectation of a result. Big quiet work.

How do I look at the brain and body? Well, after all this training I see them as groups of specialized cells that cooperate to sustain and create the experience of our lives. Further, cells are cities built by intelligent molecules, so at all levels of our being we are the result of cooperating entities.

As for feeling events happening in the brain, when I have mentioned to some of my friend scientists that I can sense things happening in my brain, they reflexively state there are no pain receptors in the brain. My response is, the sensations of brain activity I’m referring to aren’t pain, they are sensations of activity. So, I too have those sensations, so yeah, I think people can sense parts of the brain at work. Can most people? I don’t know. That being said, what is the mechanism by which we target specific areas of the brain? Are we guided by these sensations or does the very act of doing things that require and stimulate those parts of the brain produce the sensations we later report?  I can’t answer that yet.

AND MORE FROM URVASHI:
The short answer is yes, you can directly target different parts of the brain via actions. Those areas experience plasticity (learning) as a result of those actions. Over time, you will get better at those actions because of molecular level changes in the tissue subserving those actions.

With regard to breathing, the brainstem is involved in normal respiration. So, one region you may be targeting is the group of cells in the brainstem that monitor and stimulate normal respiration. Maybe.
It is as likely that you are targeting the anterior and posterior serratus and abdominal muscle groups that assist inflation and deflation of the lungs. This means the motor regions in the cortex are addressing relevant motoneurons in the spine, thus overriding signals from the brainstem that would normally recruit these muscles for respiration.

There have been a few scientific studies directed at understanding just what the patterned respiration in yoga is doing to the brain and body. No studies have been done on Sufi practices, to my knowledge (yet . It is clear these practices cause plastic changes in the cardiovascular and nervous systems. The exact mechanism of these changes is unclear. I will dig around and see if I can find copies of these papers to send you. It is probable that cell groups in the basal ganglia and forebrain that subserve executive attention control are driving conscious control of respiration, but I haven’t seen any studies on this question. That doesn’t mean they aren’t out there. Must run now! More later!

The physics of getting going might mean,  for an early morning practice, being tired or sleepy. Launching out of bed for me is a bit of a foggy period.  My body has been in another condition: sleep. If I dance and breath a song first thing, I feel sluggish, but that’s okay. Just an observation. If I dance and breathe a song in late afternoon my body has been through various unconsious experiences of sitting and walking. Getting going into awareness of sensation and gravity takes a moment or two, or ten or fifteen. Fifteen minutes to really wake up inside my body. So there is more than will or attentiveness involved here. We have the physics of the body.

Wake Up Inside my Body. I might be awake in my breath, or my mind, but to be awake in my body takes a little longer. How interesting to be in a body all the time and to be so unaware of this obvious fact. Even those of us who practice conscious embodiment regularly find this reality challenging to maintain. Yet is a reality, and reality returns us to sanity. Whenever I feel ungrounded, I simply put my attention into my breath and feel where my body is touching a surface, be it floor or furniture.

Right there I encounter The Crust. It takes a a period of time to switch from wherever I was—caught in anxiety and disconnected from my embodiment, for instance—to being awake inside my body. When I am in my body, I can then go on to listening and being in my body, reading and being in my body, writing and being in my body, thinking and being in my body. The Crust is that rim of surface tension, like water just before it boils. Pop, and we’re through.

Being awake inside the body entails getting through The Crust. It is easy, but it takes a little patience. I remind myself of this. I give it a chance to happen.

Sufi Master, Maneri, has said of subtlety. “Being the most subtle, the Divine must permeate all, for the greater the subtlety, the greater the quality of permeation.”

We can enter the perception of subtlety by treading along the path of breath into deep interior meditative states where the Ego-self ceases to dominate, and where “I”-ness fades. When our ‘story’ — riddled with competitive-ness, arrogance, complaining, resentment, grasping, envy, self-criticism, rage, and other destructive qualities — still binds our awareness, subtlety will not appear. Subtlety is delicate, a wild creature that skirts danger.

Yet subtlety is powerful. It can sweep us away from our repetitive, redundant small self into our Essence.

Subtlety cannot be muscled into being, yet without a sincere invitation, it will not appear. The door to subtlety is sincerity. The door is willingness. Only the heart of one’s heart can offer a sincere invitation.

Breathing must, of course, be awake, not mechanical. And beyond that, as we breathe, we must let the heart of our heart offer a sincere invitation. We must be willing to give up what we think we are, willing to be lost in intimacy.