No worries Rigaschuckler, what you're experiencing isn't that uncommon. Sitting calm and peaceful and focusing on your breathing can actually energize your muscles; they're getting more oxygen so you end up with a tingly, electrical feeling. To me it's almost itchy. This will subside as you become more focused on the sensation of your breath and can ignore the other bodily sensations.

Seeing people during meditation is extremely common. There are all kinds of names for them, but basically they are mara's (or inner demons). It's your own mind and inattentiveness exhibiting itself as an image. Again, as you get better at meditation these will subside as well.

Something else to expect is colors! Weeee! So many colors! You'll start to see gold and blue quite often. The colors will swirl and make shapes (sometimes going back to the people you see as with the above).

All of this is your mind jumping around from one object of perception to another and nothing to be worried about. It's all normal.

Right now your mind is like a wild elephant, running amok and wrecking havoc in your life. Meditation tethers your mind down, gets that old bull elephant under control. And just like exercise, meditation takes work. At first you'll be weak and your mind will jump around and you'll see all kinds of stuff. After practice though, you'll be able to latch on to your object (such as your breath) and focus only it for as long as you wish.


Incidentally Citrine, typically people won't see things like colors or objects during transcendental meditation because they can't go as "deep" into it. The shear nature of that type of meditation makes it a bit easier, but ... in the long run (very long run) less effective. Basically it's like learning to swim. Transcendental meditation is like a life jacket. Yes, you'll stay afloat, but you aren't really swimming. But take off the life jacket and you can dive straight to the bottom and find all kinds of wondrous things.


Oh! One more thing. Don't be surprised if you hear the sound of a bell that seems to come from the very crown of your head. Some people do, some don't. It's a perception of the mind, not a stroke so don't be afraid. I've heard Zen meditators refer to it as the "sound of silence".