Physical Discomfort

You may experience physical discomfort and distractions while sitting. Try to just watch these during your meditation, just shifting posture if too uncomfortable. If physical discomfort arises in the body, notice the physical sensation, perhaps watch it for a few moments without getting lost in thoughts about it. Breathe into the sensations. Then return attention to the breath.

Pain

Pain is very interesting. Physiologists, psychologists, researchers have found that pain is not a singular, unified thing. It is a composite, an experience that comes from many signals. Some signals are from the body – the nerves in the body. Some of the signals are past memories, stories, projections, fears, worries. So it’s interesting to practice simply being aware of the physical sensations, breathing with awareness of just the physical sensations, without feeding into the commentary, the story, the judgment, the reactions, the emotions. Separate all that from the pain, and just relax and soften and be present with those sensations – is the pain pulling, burning, pulsing, vibrating. Does it come and go? People often say they are in pain all the time. And they think they are. But you can look and perhaps see that the sensations, come and go, they’re not permanent; they change. So by practicing mindfulness of physical pain people report that over time their experience of pain is not as bad.

The trick to liberating physical pain is to peel back its components—to strip it naked. It’s much easier that way. The reasons you have pain—arthritis, for example—those are thoughts. They're ideas. Let them go. Even the name you give it—“pain”—is like its underwear. Let go of that too.

It’s not pain; it’s sensations in certain parts of your body. Once you get it down to a naked sensation—without overlaying descriptions like good or bad, pain or pleasure—then strip it of your feeling of dislike. Now you’re left with a phenomenon—neither real nor unreal. The sensation itself actually comes and goes. It’s not there all the time.

Do you have something hurting at the moment? Let’s do it together. There’s all the “why it hurts,” what you think is wrong with that part of your body—let go of that. Then there’s the word “hurt,” the name “pain,” all the labels you put on it, even its location—“this joint,” “that area”—let all of that go.

Now you’re left with a sensation, neither liked nor disliked, with no attempt to get rid of it, no attempt to hold on. Notice that the sensation comes and goes. You believe it’s constant, but really you’re stringing together a belief system, making it be there when it’s not. Can you see how it flickers? How the pain isn’t steady?

Don’t try to make it go away. Don’t prefer the times when it’s gone over the times when it’s there. Just leave the sensation without judgment to be whatever it is. Sometimes, when you do that, the sensation will go away or diminish. Sometimes it won’t. Don’t care which way it happens. Even if it doesn’t go away, it ceases to be a problem—because you’re not laying problem-ness upon it. That’s how we live with it.

Those of you who don’t have pain—let me reassure you: you’re going to get old, and it will hurt. Unless someone kills you first—and that’ll probably hurt too. So you might as well learn how to work with it.

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