Okay,
So I wanted to talk about how meditation can help with chronic pain.
Because I already know what it's like to live with severe chronic pain.
All the time.
And how hard that is and how desperate you can feel too.
Find something to help you.
Live your life.
The reality of chronic pain is that you can't actually take it away.
Which I know in the beginning you just feel so driven to find something.
Take your pain away so that you don't have to feel it anymore.
But sadly,
The reality is that you can't actually take it away.
And this is something that can be quite hard to accept.
Once you really accept it,
Not in a.
.
.
Sorry,
Not in a defeated way.
Just really seeing as it is.
Is profoundly healing actually,
Just that sense of acceptance.
Which I know is really hard.
I remember when I was first injured.
Over a decade ago.
I was frantically searching the world for like.
.
.
The best surgeons and the best people.
Specialist to help me.
Takeaway.
The pain that I was in all the time.
And I tried all suggestions at friends and.
.
.
Acquaintances and people I didn't know suggested to me.
And I was on a load of different painkillers at the time.
But still.
My pain never went away.
And eventually the doctors just told me that.
This type of pain from my spinal cord injury.
As well as all the other secondary.
Problems that you get from it will never go away unfortunately.
But I didn't want to believe it because I thought it was a lie.
I don't know how I can live like this.
Thanks.
And consciously I thought,
You know,
My situation would be different.
I'll find a way.
But eventually the reality hit that This pain is here to stay for this lifetime.
In a way,
It really helped me.
To kind of drop.
That constant search.
The question then became for me.
Is how do I live with this pain?
In a much more peaceful.
Way so that I can still enjoy my life.
And I don't want to go on about my own pain for too long,
But just so that you know,
I'm in immense amount of pain.
Every moment of every day.
So now how it feels neurological,
Musculoskeletal.
Everything you can imagine.
And a simple thing like fighting gravity is actually.
.
.
The hardest part.
Of any day because holding my skeleton up against gravity.
Is super hard and super painful,
As well as everything else going on.
But I feel so immensely grateful that.
At the time of the accident,
I was a.
.
.
Tibetan Buddhists for some years already.
Obviously after I was injured I wasn't able to work so I just put all my time and my energy into my meditation practice.
And this completely transformed my life.
It transformed the way that I inhabit my body.
It transformed how I could still enjoy life.
And mostly it transformed how.
I responded to the pain when it was there.
A meditation helps with pain probably not in the way that you think it is.
It's not like you sit in meditation.
You clear all the thoughts in your head.
Feel really peaceful and you don't feel any pain or you feel less pain.
Because actually meditation is an inward journey.
So you're really deeply connecting to what's there.
Going on in the body and you're experience all the time.
Thoughts arising,
Passing through,
Sensations.
In the body,
Feelings and emotions.
What's happening with your nervous system.
You become aware of all the processes happening while you're in meditation,
But also then while you're in your normal daily life.
And how this helps is that you begin to really notice how you're responding.
When the pain is there.
So how are you?
In your mind and your body and your nervous system.
How are you responding to that pain?
And that's what turns.
Or doesn't turn pain into suffering.
Because pain and suffering are not the same thing.
So again,
You really get to know how.
Your whole system is responding when the pain comes up.
And moves through.
And very instinctively,
But unconsciously most of the time,
When pain arises we have a kind of.
.
.
Constriction of freezing.
Contraction around it.
Around the experience.
Understandably,
Because it's really uncomfortable.
We don't want it to be there,
We want it to go away.
So there's a kind of.
And traction around it.
In the body,
In the nervous system,
In the mind as well,
Energetically.
And this is what turns pain.
Into suffering.
And through meditation we can become aware.
Of these habitual patterns in your body.
And slowly begin to transform.
Are you respond to pain?
Transforming that into something more healthy.
More meaningful.
More manageable.
So that you can always hold a sense of peace within yourself.
Even when the pain is there.
So with a mix of.
Doing meditation.
Processes of.
Of compassionate inner inquiry.
And knowing a different way of understanding life.
Can truly transform your perspective of pain.
But not just perspective in the mind,
So what you think of pain.
Like a genuine embodied being.
Transformation.
Of your perspective of pain.
Again transforming.
How you respond to that.
Because just changing perspective in the mind.
Doesn't make all that much different,
What really makes a difference for us.
It's changing how our body responds to something.
And this transformed perspective of pain.
Helps you to really inhabit your body.
This helps you to completely transform.
Your relationship with the pain.
Because that's what matters really,
If we know we can't take the pain away.
How do we live with this pain?
How do we transform that?
Relationship with it into something that's more peaceful.
And something more manageable,
Right?
So even though the pain is there,
You can still.
.
.
Enjoy your life and do the things that you really want to do.
Maybe in an altered way,
But you can still do the things.
That bring you a sense of happiness.
And it might not be easy,
Because living with pain is not easy anyway.
But it gives you a much more meaningful and fulfilling way.
To live with the pain.
Because you deserve to live the life.
That you want to live.
