How To Deal With Other People's Pain

In this short talk, David shares the role of a meditation teacher and the importance of guiding individuals in becoming more aware of their thoughts and feelings, while not healing or telling them what to do, and the importance of safety boundaries and being able to navigate one's own pain to help others navigate theirs.

Transcript

So a lot of people are afraid of dealing with other human beings' pain,

Which I get.

It's like,

Oh,

If I'm going to teach meditation and somebody has trauma,

Or either they get triggered by something I say,

Or they're in a lot of pain,

I don't know how to deal with that,

Or I don't know if I want to deal with that.

You know,

If you're not a psychologist or a therapist of some kind,

You might go,

Well,

I'm not trained for this.

So how do I go about dealing with this energy?

And I think it's important to remember as a meditation teacher that you can stay in your lane.

So you're not healing people.

You're not telling them what to do.

You're just guiding them into becoming more aware.

That's what a meditation teacher does.

We help others cultivate awareness.

So you can be aware of your body.

You could be aware of your breath.

You could be aware of your thoughts.

You could be aware of your feelings,

Aware of the surrounding energies,

Maybe of the room,

Of all the physical aspects of the world.

So you can guide people into different kinds of awareness.

You're not telling them necessarily what to do with their pain,

But you can also guide them into being aware of pain.

Now,

That is where there's some mastery that's needed and some practice,

Obviously,

As teachers to make sure we don't guide someone into so much pain they can't handle it or come out of it.

But if somebody does have some energy start to come up and their pain starts to rise to the surface,

They're uncomfortable,

They're in resistance,

There are ways to walk them through that in a healthy way,

To teach them to be aware,

To not resist everything,

To teach them how to learn to let go of energy when they're ready to reflect and to find their answers.

All of that is possible as a meditation teacher,

All with the caveat of saying,

Hey,

If you're too uncomfortable,

If this is too far for you,

If you don't feel safe,

Then open your eyes and stop.

Don't do this work.

Make sure that there's kind of like a range,

A boundary of safety.

And we learned that in teacher training of how to find that boundary,

That edge,

Because all of growth happens when we go to the edge,

When we're afraid,

When we're uncomfortable.

But if we go way past the edge,

It's too much,

Then that actually could just be traumatic and not growth.

So you don't say to somebody,

Hey,

I want you to close your eyes and think of the worst thing that ever happened to you and relive it in your body right now.

Don't worry,

Just be conscious.

And then they freak out,

Tears,

You know,

It's too much.

So there is a nuanced way to do that,

But we don't have to shy away from pain.

We have a society that does shy away from pain,

Where the whole MO of our society is to avoid pain and chase pleasure.

And if somebody triggers our pain,

Then they become bad.

But the job of a meditation teacher is to gently bring up enough pain in the right moments for the student to be able to work through and grow their awareness and integrate that.

The human experience can be very painful,

And part of our job as teachers is to help students navigate that pain.

And the best,

Best way to do that is to learn how to navigate your own pain,

Because then you're going to understand how to help others with theirs.

So I know that's very surface level just to start,

But you can help others navigate pain.

There are certain kind of boundaries around that,

And the job of the meditation teacher is to help cultivate awareness,

And that includes the awareness of the pain we keep inside,

Deep in our unconscious,

That maybe creates addictions or bad behaviors,

Or keeps us from growing or really fulfilling our goals.

So the sacred job of a teacher is to help people really work through some of that,

And I love that kind of work.

So part of being a good meditator and meditation teacher is almost learning to enjoy pain and knowing how to work through it in a healthy way.

So get on it!

Reviews

Young man, you lift me up. I listen closely to you. May Mother-Father God continue to bless you David. 💞✨💫🌈

David is always simple, concise, clarifying and deeply profound and adds his sense of humour. That is why it helps me so much and I keep coming to his teachings!
Thank you!!

Thank you 🤍

🙏big fan of your tracks on here David & lil bit bummed I missed your live event this morning, 4/21/25 .. so I hope you schedule another one soon 🦋💛🫶🙏 & i will be sure to attend :)

Well said! Thank you for your guidance. 🙏🏻

Brilliant.

So true!!

🙏🏼🤍

thank you David. as an AA sponsor to help other people we don’t get training. so your talks on helping people- help me. they help me me be a better and more understanding sponsor and your talks also help me take care of myself. thank you 🙏💙🙏

Best in saying the responsibility of a meditation tracher is to enable others to become aware of their pain — safely.

Ah! Chronic pain is my area of focus as an instructor. Staying with the soft edge...
I really appreciate this talk

Learning how to navigate our own pain is great first step for sure! Thanks so much, David!🙏

This was helpful to hear as I am dealing with some challenges at work with someone else’s pain/trauma.

I love that you love helping people through their their pain. I allow myself to feel past pain when I am meditating. It’s so cleansing and nothing to be afraid of! Keep laughing and teaching in your unique way, I thoroughly enjoy it! Namaste!