Discipline and 'Turgidity'

  After group meditation, we were talking about how discipline does not necessarily need to be a restricting or confining thing. For instance, we often have signals in meditation that are used to regulate when people can get up, or take a break, or even stretch their legs. Is this kind of discipline so necessary to a lay meditation practice, or is it just a kind of archaic form of punishment? One of the participants described discipline as the thing that a person needs to do to achieve their goals. I personally resonate with the notion that discipline (to a certain degree) allows for the freedom to let go. With a strong sense of purpose and functioning built into one's practice environment, it's possible to let go of scattered mind and accomplish many things within a spiritual practice. But the key is that the discipline needs to be presented alongside the process of letting go, rather than being presented as a kind of encumbrance or armoring. Discipline should not be added or imposed; it needs to be gently applied through a process of minimal instruction and environmental cues. Otherwise, it becomes a kind of ritual that has no deeper experience attached to it.
 An image that comes to my mind is something like that of a straw, or the cellular fiber in a stem which allows water the force and strength to traverse up the stem, rather than dispersing at the base of the plant. With a tight and narrow channel, the water droplets tend to stick to each other and travel upward, having no other place to go, and this in turn tightens the pressure along the walls of the stem, which makes it stronger. I think the idea is that when certain constraints or rules are established as guidance, the mind doesn't have so many options to choose from in terms of how to act. It is forced through a kind of artificially created pressure to create something using the collective strength of its parts and functions.