7-Tage-Kurs

Making Friends With Your Pain

Von Mark Westmoquette

Was du lernen wirst

When we feel pain, we have a natural instinct to turn away from it. Of course we do - pain feels horrible. But years of ignoring, suppressing, or denying our suffering can leave us out of tune and in the dark about who and what we really are. Through seven guided meditations, you will learn how to listen deeply to you body and - just like you would with a close friend - hear its pain and suffering with a kind, non-critical, non-judgemental ear. By doing this you will become close friends with your body, and see it not as an obstacle to overcome or gain control over, but as an integral element of your self-development journey. In lesson 1, I'll invite you to truly encounter your body by 'turning the lamp around' and shining the light of your awareness within. Then, in lesson 2, we'll explore facing your body more and more by genuinely and deeply looking within. Exploring your emotional world is the focus of lesson 3, and in lesson 4 we’ll be learning how to set an intention to make friends with your discomforts and pains by smiling inwardly at them. In lesson 5 we'll be learning how to allow your body to move spontaneously, where it's inner wisdom can find expression. Then in lesson 6, we'll be tuning into the energetic dimension of our body through a simple visualisation practice. In the final lesson 7, we'll explore how to work with the body as a Zen koan (a spiritual question or direction of enquiry) by asking the question "What is this reality of my body-mind?”. Ultimately, this course will show you how to transform your pain and suffering into wisdom and insights into who you really are. As the old Buddhist texts say, you’ll “touch enlightenment with the body.”

Mark Westmoquette

London, England, United Kingdom

Mark has been practising Zen Buddhism for over 15 years under the guidance of Daizan Skinner Roshi, and is authorised as a senior Zen teacher. He is the author of ‘Zen and the Art of Dealing With Difficult People’ (Watkins, 2021) and runs a podcast to go with the book called ‘Zen At The Sharp End’. The practices included here were written as part...

Lektion 1

Discovering Your Body

In this first lesson you'll learn to truly encounter your body. I’ll encourage you to, as they say in Zen, “turn the lamp around” and shine the light of your awareness within. When we do that, we discover a whole world of scintillating sensations and feelings, some of which are pleasant or neutral. But most often what catches our inner eye are the unpleasant or painful ones. And of course there’s a natural tendency to shy away from these. However, in this lesson I invite you not to shy away but put your attention right in the epicentre of these feelings and remain curious and listen without judgement. Like this, we begin our journey towards making friends with ourselves.

Lektion 2

Facing Your Body

Your willingness to genuinely and deeply look within is so important. When we start encountering our body, we often start to realise just how much suffering is held in there. Now our work can really start… In this lesson I invite you to bring your kind awareness to feelings of discomfort in your body, and do your best to let go of any sense of wanting them to be different. In this mindful approach, we’re not interested finding out why our body is the way it is or why we feel a certain way. All we’re interested in is acknowledging and accepting ourselves just as we are right now.

Lektion 3

Sensations And Emotions

Emotions can be thought of as energy in motion (e-motion), seeking for an outlet - to be expressed. If an emotion isn’t expressed properly or fully in the moment, then it can get stuck or locked into the body. The suffering we become aware of in our body is, on the deepest level, the cumulative effect of many the traumas, painful emotions and perceptions from our life that haven’t been fully accepted and let go of. In this lesson, I'll invite you to bring awareness to your inner emotional world. Starting on a general level, I use the analogy of the weather. Then I'll encourage you to focus on the counterpart physical sensations to your emotional state - since that keeps things simple and present-moment focussed.

Lektion 4

Making Friends With Your Body

In this lesson, I’ll invite you to metaphorically put your arm around your pain and say, “It’s ok, I’m here with you.” We’ll do this by sending an inner smile to our areas of discomfort. There’s a well-known saying that pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional - we can feel pain, but whether we suffer from it is our choice. Here, you'll learn how to shine the sunlight of your smiling awareness onto the pain, giving it the space and time to melt in its own time.

Lektion 5

Spontaneous Movement

Spontaneous movement is a practice of deep listening and letting the inner wisdom of your body find expression. In this lesson I’ll invite you to spend the time allowing your body to move any which way it wants - big or small movements, soft or vigorous, perhaps even total stillness. There is no right or wrong.

Lektion 6

The Body As Energy

Both from a modern scientific viewpoint and from the ancient esoteric view, the body is just energy. Seeing our body as energy helps us to avoid getting stuck thinking it’s a ‘thing’, and instead release that, like all things, it’s in constant flow and change. In this lesson I’ll invite you to look at your body from this perspective. To help you tune into this energetic dimension, I’ll offer a simple visualisation practice of filling a container of energy in your belly (hara).

Lektion 7

The Koan Of The Body

On our journey we have encountered and started facing our body, bringing a kind, gentle presence to its suffering, discomfort and pain. We’ve learnt to make friends with our feelings, sensations and emotions, and begin to allow its inner wisdom to find expression through movement. We’ve seen how it’s not a thing but a flow of energy in constant change. In this final lesson, my invitation is to allow your mind and body to become one - not to look down at your body from on high, but to inhabit it, to be it, to embody your experience. I’ll invite you to ask the question/koan, ‘What is this reality of my body-mind?’ Like this, you’ll come to see the true nature of yourself, and realise this ‘self’ is much bigger/broader/all-encompassing than previously thought. You’ll start to “touch enlightenment within the body”.

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