A: I respect the aches and pains that I get during meditation and I try to understand them. A pain is a strong signal from your unconscious, drawing your attention to some part of your body. These signals are different from the body's direct reaction to stress or injury. If you hit your thumb with a hammer, it will give you a pain signal too, but then you'll know what it means: hold the hammer more tightly and focus your attention on the nail. When you get a spontaneous physical sensation that doesn't have any physical cause, especially one that comes when you're sitting quietly and goes away when you move or uncenter your attention, you're getting a signal from your unconscious that needs to be understood.

A sign that the pain is an unconscious signal and not a physical symptom is that it comes on during meditation and ends soon after you stop meditating. If you feel a pain without meditating, assume it's a physical symptom and not necessarily an unconscious signal, and refer that symptom to a medical specialist. In my experience, the physical signals are more common than the physical symptoms. I believe that a signal can turn into an illness if it is ignored.

There are many subtle signals that you could get in meditation, like the spontaneous appearance of your pulse in some area, an itch, a minor feeling of discomfort in a specific spot, or a tick in some muscle. Meditators have reported feeling like an insect was crawling on their skin. These signals can occur anywhere -- ball of right foot, left knee, right side of stomach, left ear, etc. They all have the same general message: "Pay attention here." Each also has a specific meaning according to its location.

Every part of the body has a meaning, so by drawing attention to your hands, for example, your unconscious would be saying, "Pay attention to your work." Your feet represent the need for grounding: becoming more realistic and stable. Knees refer to kneeling, which means submission to the events in your life: stop resisting!

Pain in the back, as you report, varies in meaning according to the height of the painful spot on your spine. To establish a reference point, refer to the point on your back that is the highest you can reach with your knuckles of your fist as you slide up along your own spine from the waist. That is a key spot, corresponding to your solar plexus. Pain there relates to an old trauma that has sunk into the depth of your heart.

Also refer to the point on your spine that is the lowest you can reach with your thumb with your hand going over your shoulder. That spot corresponds to the heart. Is the pain above or below there? (This way of locating these points is imprecise because of different degrees of flexibility that people have with their arms, but it's a good approximation.) The heart point relates to current feelings of betrayal, resentment or regret. The first step in resolving these feelings is to be aware of them. You can be grateful to your pain for that.

Or is your pain on your spine just below your waist? That would indicate repressed impulses restricting your proliferation, expansion, and freedom. Or do you feel it down in your tailbone? That indicates a deep fear of being uprooted, unsettled, and abandoned. Is it higher, in the neck? The neck relates to vibrations received or expressed. Also, is the pain more on the left or the right?

There is no judgment in this. We simply want to get the message that the body is sending. There is not room here for a full decoding of the body's numerous signals; the point is that the physical signals we get are messages to us from our unconscious. Some meditators try to ignore these signals, and one can ignore them in a transcendant state of consciousness. But you can get the information that these signals contain by keeping your consciousness in your body. While you're waiting for a spontaneous sensation, put your attention on your breath and your heartbeat. Every sensation has value, and these inner rhythms of breath and heart are especially valuable.