question about sensations during meditation

Hey everyone!
i've been practicing concentration meditation for about 5 month already ( about 30 minutes per day ). the object is the sensations of the breath. after about two or three month i began experiencing some very pleasent mind states during meditation. they lasted only about a couple of seconds or a couple of minutes max. the feeling is a sort of disorientation of the body. for example, the head can be felt as being very high and at the same time under the legs. sometimes i felt as though my whole body is being smeared to the left or to the right. it is kind of hard to describe. but i felt really secure at those moments, it felt good. lately i don't get these sensation at all. and i've been practicing coherently.
can anyone tell me if this is the first jhana? and if so why don't I get to achieve this mind state anymore?

thanks alot!

Iftah

Hi Iftah,

I've had similar distortions of the body come up. The hands feel huge and up high, feels like my head and spine are flipped in weird ways, etc. I don't think this is indicative of any jhana in the way we talk about them here, or any particular state/stage within the maps at all. It probably just means you're getting a little concentrated, which is good. But if this stuff ceases to arise, that doesn't mean you're doing something wrong either.

It's all good.

Nadav

I get this on occasion too. Usually my hands feel flipped, stuff like that. Is it possible now that you had those pleasant states, that you are looking out for sensations more and are doing some (accidental) vipassana instead of just concentration practice? Just a thought, as this tends to happen when interesting things arise when highly concentrated. It happened to me.

Hi Iftaf and welcome on board,

I agree with Nadav. What you are describing sounds very much like the stage when concentration starts to develop and all kinds of strange sensory phenomena may arise. In my experience this is a passing phase.

Just keep on practicing and perhaps start journaling your practice regularly on the forum to get feedback and advice from more advanced practitioners.

Antero