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So the question is: how do we keep on inhabiting our body and relating
especially when there's unpleasantness, when there's pain, and when everything in us
is going: "I don't want to be here"? And there is an equation
that is very very useful when we explore this, which is: pain x resistance = suffering
This is what happens when we have pain, is that there's a signal that
something's wrong and then it starts proliferating so it's not just pain but
there's resistance to what's there and then we lock in to suffering.
A few days ago, I was swimming - I swim pretty regularly - and I strained or pulled
something behind my knee. Now, my two major ways of exercising are hiking and swimming
and so, it was medium pain and, you know, I could feel it with my
steps, and so it was in my awareness; but it wasn't
the unpleasantness of the pain that had me start resisting - it was where my mind
went: "Oh my god, I'm not gonna be able to swim, I'm not gonna be able to hike,
all my techniques, my antidepressants in this world, are gone, I'm going to go
downhill", you know... "How long is this strain gonna the last, what should I do,
should I not even be walking?" You know, you get the idea, right? That's
where we start locking in; it's not just the physicality of pain, it's what our mind
does with it. So, pain x resistance = suffering, pain x presence
pain x presence = freedom. And let's look at how that can be the case.
The first step is, when you find that there's pain in your body, just
out of interest, start checking: "Okay, how am I resisting, what's the resistance?"
And what you'll probably find if you look close enough, is where there's
discomfort there's a tensing against it, you know, there's like a pushing away,
and you'll also notice that your mind doesn't like it and that there's
thoughts about it that are trying to get rid of it. So you'll start sensing
the different layers. Bring that above the line; you know, we talked about
the circle with the line going through and what's below the line is where
you're unconscious, and above the line is consciousness? Bring resistance above the line
because if it's below the line, the contraction will end up creating more suffering.
That's part one. The second thing is, drop the word "pain"
and just sense what's there as changing sensations. And you might even be sitting
here right now and feeling your body and maybe there's an area in it that's
uncomfortable, that hurts. The practice is to shift from that fixed concept "pain"
to: "Okay, this is moving sensations" and get interested in seeing if you can feel
them, just as we practice with the meditation, from the inside out; can you
feel the center of them? Can you feel the space they occupy? Can you notice how
they're changing? Maybe there's even some words like swirling, squeezing, aching, you know,
tight, burning, cool, you know... Just see if you can notice a lot about them
and start discovering, as you pay attention that way, this kind of dynamic
presence, this space that you can inhabit that isn't so caught in the pain;
you're not reacting to it, you become the space of presence. There's a real shift in your
identity. The bottom line trick is to know that the sensations
of unpleasantness belong. In this life, it's inevitable; they say "pain is inevitable,
suffering is optional", you know? It's inevitable to have the discomfort.
So let me tell you about one woman that was one of my inspirations in working with
unpleasant sensations in the body. And when I met her she was like 20 years older than me and
she had been a dancer but between an injury and arthritis and so on
- shoulders or knees - she'd not only stopped dancing but she did less and less
exercise, gained more and more weight, and she became very ashamed of her body,
aversive, and whenever there was pain there it was kind of like a groaning and
"Oh, I'm going downhill" and kind of pushing it away... And so when we talked
about what does it really mean to re-inhabit your body, this was not a pleasant
prospect. I mean, because any attention to her body got her in touch with
hating her body, really. So the work of the practice was to notice the layers of the
resistance: "not liking my body, not trusting my body, feeling betrayed by my
body"... When pain comes up "Oh, it's only going to get worse, this arthritis", you know,
all the thoughts and all the ways that she tensed against and pulled away.
And her practice became to kind of undo the resistance, just to say:
"It's okay, this belongs". In other words, whatever the waves were there -
the waves in her mind, the waves in her body, the unpleasantness - "this belongs".
Now the power of saying "this belongs" - alright, so I'm going to say "this too" - is every time
you say it, there becomes more space for what's there. And when it becomes really
our, a very ongoing wise response, there's more and more of a sense of resting in
the space that can include what's going on.
So she kept saying "this belongs" and shifting from pain, arthritis, and the story,
to just sensations: "Okay, burning, tightness, pressing, squeezing"
and noticing how they change and softening around them - that's one of the really
powerful things you can do when there's discomfort, is to soften around in a
sense of space around the discomfort... And so she started getting the knack
of being able to inhabit her body, the different parts of her body. She started
with where it was easier: her feet. Her feet were not in pain, she could just
feel - and you might feel it right now, again, that you can bring your awareness
inside the feet and inhabit the feet. And although she had a little arthritis in
her hands, she was able to inhabit her hands; and then start spreading that
awareness through her body. And what she started discovering was a sense of this
very alive presence inside, a sense of vitality; she became more vibrant,
and a real sensitivity to energy flows. And, just to move forward on the story,
she began to teach children dancing and, after a couple of years, she
basically told me that, "by inhabiting my body, Tara", she said "I got my life back, and my spirit."
It doesn't matter that there's pain; what matters is how we work with it,
how we relate to it.
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