I don’t know whether a muscleman’s array impedes awareness or is neutral; I’ve never had to worry about that
My very first “theorem,” based on the work we all did in a three-month residential encounter group in 1975-76, was that “awareness varies inversely proportional to muscular tension in the body. ”
Relax and your awareness goes up. Get afraid or feel threatened and muscular tension goes up, awareness goes down.
Here’s an extreme example. My beloved Mother died in a housefire. I had to take care of going through what remained of the house for anything of value. I lived thereafter with the smell of that smoked-out interior.
Fast forward. Once I was in a planetarium and the projector caught on fire. The next thing I remember was that I was headed for the exit with a man shouting at me to sit down. I have no memory of the time between the outbreak of fire and the man shouting at me. My awareness had completely left me at the smell of smoke, which by then I knew so well.
That’s an extreme case, but it does illustrate the principle. The more relaxed we are, all other things being equal, the greater our level of awareness should be. Just look at a meditator.
The less relaxed, the more we miss, until in extreme cases our fear/threat level goes so high, we “take leave of our senses.” Where we go is another matter I don’t know.
I was – and I wasn’t – there.