S02/E21: "Physical Tension" - Crystallised Emotion in the Body

It can't be increased.

More can't be manufactured by effort or intention.

The daily production is what it is.

And what varies is how it's spent.

The distribution is specific.

Roughly one quarter goes on the business of living.

three quarters or more on imagination, unnecessary emotional tension and unnecessary muscular tension.

This is the ordinary baseline, running continuously.

Of these three drains, the muscular component is worth examining separately.

Chronic Tension The tension that has nothing to do with movement, that persists whether the person is active or resting, that is present throughout the night, operates differently from the tension of physical work.

Physical work requires energy while occurring and releases when it stops.

Chronic tension requires a maintained continuous current, like a lamp left burning in an empty room.

An arm held in a state of tension consumes more energy than an arm in active movement because movement uses momentum and gravity and releases.

The held tension never releases.

It simply runs.

This produces a calculation that surprises The person carrying significant chronic muscular tension consumes more energy at rest than someone in active physical labor who carries no such patterns.

The drain is invisible and continuous.

It's been so thoroughly normalized that it's become indistinguishable from the baseline experience of being in a body.

It's felt as nothing, which is how it's been operating undetected in most cases for decades.