Lean into Your Pain
One of the most common obstancles to celebrating the temporary is our avoidance of pain. We dread pain. We fear pain. We do anything to escape pain. Our culture reinforces our avoidance of pain by assuring us that we can live a painless life.
Advertisements constantly encourage us to believe that life can be pain-free. There is a remedy and an easy escape from every hurt - novocain from the dentist, anesthesia before the stiches, pain-killers for the headache. Alcohol or drugs to kill the pain of an awkward social situation or personal crisis.
To live without pain is a myth. It is possible to live
virtually without pain by cutting yourself off from your feelings. The pain is in you, but the message does not reach your consciousness. Many people live this way, like walking zombies, rather than allow themselves to feel pain.
To live without pain, however, is to live half-alive, without fullness of life. This is the unmistakable, clear, unalterable fact. The more we escape pain, the more it comes back to haunt us in other ways. When it comes, we are unprepared for it and there is no escape.
I am not proposing that we go about looking for painful experiences - like putting our hand on a hot stove to prove we are alive. If the pain of having a tooth repaired is too intense, then surely we should have it deadened. But should we demand novocain every time, before we even know how much it will hurt? Should we not be able to live with some pain? The danger is living deadened lives, avoiding the experience of pain at any cost.
We sometimes stuff our mouths beyond our need for nourishment in order to deaden our feelings. By keeping our attention in our mouths, we can ignore the anxiety signals coming from our insides.
But there is another way to live. A more satisfying way. To help you feel into this other way, I'd like to invite you to try a simple experiment. There is a basic yoga position which helps to dramatize the experience of leaning into pain. You sit on the floor with both legs extended before you. You should be wearing loose clothing, no shoes.
You take the right foot and place it inside your left thigh as high up the leg as it will reach. Then extend both arms high above the head with your thumbs locked together. Slowly bring the arms forward, reaching for the left foot and bringing the head down toward the left knee. Unless you are unusually loose, you will probably reach a point where it hurts as you come down.
When you hit that point of pain, concentrate on the precise point of the pain. Say to yourself, "That's where it hurts - right there." You may find that you have a tendency to pull back from the pain when you hit it. That is a life style for many people - retreating from the first hint of pain. But try this time to lean into the pain, look it in the eye and see what happens.
Why not stop reading now and try it. When you hit the point of pain, concentrate on it and relax into it. Take a deep breath and lean a little lower. It will only take a few minutes to try this, and the rest of the chapter will make more sense to you if you do.The fascinating discovery of most people trying the simple head-knee pose is that pain is not all that bad. By concentrating attention on the pain, and by relaxing into it, the pain tends to diminish or
disappear. Leaning into life's pain can also be a life style, and is far more satisfying than the avoidance style. It requires small doses of plain courage to look pain in the eye, but it prepares you for more serious pain when it comes. In the meantime, all the energy expended to avoid pain is now available for the business of living.
What many of us do not realize is tht pain and joy run together. When we cut ourselves off from our pain, we have unwittingly cut ourselves off from joy as well. To allow yourself to feel pain is to allow yourself to feel. To prevent pain, you also prevent other feelings because you have blocked off the messages from your body. You may
think you experience joy, but the experience of joy encompasses the whole body, not just the head.
To celebrate the temporary
Is to lie in bed
A few minutes
When you first wake up
Watching
The sun
Coming through
The window
The reflections
On the ceiling
The colors
In the room
And
Thanking
God
For
Life
