If it's pain or discomfort that is interrupting your meditations or making it feel like you can't meditate,
This is the track for you.
Settle in to a comfortable position,
Especially if you're dealing with some level of discomfort.
Don't feel like you have to stick rigidly to a seat.
What position would decrease your discomfort most?
Lay on your side,
Lay on your back,
Knees bent,
Maybe feet flat,
Maybe a prop under the knees.
Or if you are seated,
Maybe you could sit up on a big fluffy pillow.
Maybe sit up against the wall so you have some support for your back.
As you start to turn your attention inward,
You might take a big inhale through the nose and maybe a sigh or an exhale out the mouth.
Maybe taking a couple more breaths like that to collect attention,
To tune inward.
And see if you can settle on just the feeling of the breath coming in through the nose and out through the nose.
Just following the sensations of breath wherever they might be.
Maybe you feel them in the nostrils or the throat.
Maybe feel as the chest expands and settles in the belly.
Or maybe it's a whole body sensation of breathing.
There's no wrong answer or right way to do this.
Just wherever you feel the sensation,
See if you can keep your attention resting on wherever the sensation is strongest of the breath.
Just resting with the breath as you can.
And if there's already an area of discomfort,
Turn your attention there.
Bringing compassion,
Softness with you.
Not being tense about your attention,
Not being intense.
And how great is the discomfort?
Maybe just labeling if it's really uncomfortable or medium or just slightly uncomfortable.
And I find the word pain really unhelpful.
So I'm going to keep using the word discomfort even though you might be experiencing a great deal of pain.
Pain,
The word pain is really unhelpful because it's like a hammer,
A sledgehammer,
To describe any kind of myriad of sensations as one big stupid thing.
So instead of pain,
What are the actual physical sensations you're experiencing?
Instead of pain,
What are the actual physical sensations you're experiencing?
Is there a twisting,
A pulling,
Shearing,
Stabbing,
A searing heat,
A dull ache?
See if you can find the best description for the actual physical sensation you're experiencing.
And maybe just repeat that really slowly,
Really quietly in the back of the mind a few times.
See if you can breathe with the sensations.
See if you can soften around this labeling of the sensation.
Has the sensation changed at all?
Did it get stronger or weaker?
Or is there now a different label that matches what you're experiencing right now?
And if so,
Maybe you change your label.
And with kindness,
With sweetness towards yourself and your experience,
See if you can just stick with labeling whatever your current experience of discomfort is.
Discomfort is breathing with the sensations.
Imagine that you could create space around them with the breath,
Trying to soften any resistance or tensing or bracing against the discomfort.
Has the sensation changed?
Is there a better description or label?
Can you soften a little more around the discomfort?
Can you breathe with it and allow the sensations to be just as they are?
It's not wrong to feel these.
Has the sensation changed?
Is there a different or better label?
Can you stick to kindly labeling,
Gently,
Softly?
Ending with this quote from Anne-Marie Lindbergh.
Go with the pain.
Let it take you.
Open your palms and your body to the pain.
It comes in waves like a tide and you must be open like a vessel lying on the beach.
Letting it fill you up and then retreating,
Leaving you empty and clear.
With a deep breath,
It has to be as deep as the pain.
One reaches a kind of inner freedom from the pain as though the pain were not yours,
But the body's.
The spirit lays the body on the altar.
The spirit lays the body on the altar.
