Noticing Pain & Easing Suffering

Experience the difference between physical pain and the suffering we create in our minds with this guided meditation. All you need is an ice cube in a cup and a willingness to look into the stories you tell yourself about pain. This meditation is adapted from Fully Present by Diana Winston and Dr. Sue Smalley, with much gratitude and deep appreciation.

Transcript

I'm Victoria and this is an ice cube meditation for working with pain.

So in order to do this you need to have an ice cube in a cup.

So if you are listening now and you're not prepared I encourage you to pause the meditation and go get yourself just one ice cube in a small cup and then come back whenever you're ready.

So I invite you now to just close your eyes and take a few deep breaths to come back into your body and just bring awareness to the present moment.

Today we're practicing what's called bare attention which is just allowing yourself to hear and feel and experience whatever happens without attaching a story to it.

You can name whatever comes up but don't let your mind completely drift away.

If it does at any point don't worry just bring it back to whatever you're anchoring your attention on.

You can anchor it on sounds around you or on your breath or on body sensations.

We'll take another minute here to ground and center ourselves keeping our attention anchored noticing any sounds that we might hear any body sensations we feel or just simply noticing the breath.

So if you're listening now and you're not prepared I encourage you to pause the meditation whenever you're ready you can gently open your eyes to find the ice cube and you can either pick it up and put it in your hand or you can just put your fingers in the cup and gently relax your eyes gazing softly or closing them and just hold the ice cube as long as you feel you can continue doing it with awareness but feel free to put it back at any time.

We're just playing here so don't get too serious or caught up.

Just allow yourself to notice for as long as you can.

Look at the ice cube on a few levels here.

First of all what physical sensations do you feel?

They might be different if you have the ice cube in the palm of your hand or if you're just holding it with your fingers.

Notice these sensations.

Do they get stronger?

Do they increase or decrease?

Do they change or stay the same?

If at any point it gets to be too uncomfortable please just allow yourself to put the ice cube back taking a short break.

Noticing now what reactions you have to the ice.

Maybe you're saying,

Ah it's too cold I want to stop.

Or maybe you think this is stupid or possibly you say,

Oh I like this.

Can you differentiate between the stories that you're telling yourself about the ice cube right now and what you're experiencing physically?

See if you're able now to go deeper and think about the patterns that come up for you in relation to pain.

You can continue to hold the ice cube as you think about this or you can gently rest your hands on the table or in your lap.

Thinking about when something uncomfortable or something painful happens in your life.

What do you do?

Do you just always power through?

Do you have all or nothing thoughts?

Do you get fearful?

When we're working with pain we often feel the physical stimuli in our body but then we immediately attach a story to it and that makes it infinitely worse.

Consider the last time you were in pain or perhaps just consider the ice cube and think about what was physically happening in your body in that moment and then what were you telling yourself about it?

We often attach shoulds or shouldn'ts to pain.

We have a headache and we think,

Oh I shouldn't have had so much to drink or we have a stomach ache and we say I shouldn't have had so many cookies or we get sick and we think,

Oh I should have taken better care of myself.

Those stories,

Whatever ring true for you,

If it's those or something else,

Those aren't pain.

That is just suffering.

The difference between pain and suffering is that pain is the physical response in your body and suffering is what you create in your mind based on the way you react to the pain.

We often react in pretty much about four ways.

Sometimes we get angry at the pain,

This shouldn't be happening to me,

This is unfair,

It's ruining my life,

It's ruining my day or we get really scared,

We get anxious,

We think it's going to get worse.

Often times if we're experiencing especially chronic pain we get really discouraged,

We get really sad and maybe we feel depressed or hopeless because the pain seems like it just won't stop.

And then we often go back to the shoulds,

We blame ourselves.

If only I hadn't done that thing,

This pain wouldn't be happening.

Notice if there are any other stories that you tell yourself about pain or if maybe one of those I just mentioned comes up most strongly for you.

So how can we be mindful when it comes to pain?

It's almost too simple.

Just simply noticing what's physically happening and then just relaxing in the midst of it just by breathing into it.

It can help us tolerate it better.

So if your ice cube hasn't melted,

Go ahead and pick up your ice cube again.

You can set it in the palm of your hand or you can just hold it and we'll take a few breaths just seeing what sensation comes up.

If it begins to get really uncomfortable,

If it feels painful,

Instead of immediately putting down the ice cube and warming up your hand,

Take some deep slow breaths while you simply notice.

What's happening in your hand?

This isn't meant to make the pain simply vanish.

It's only to bring awareness,

To bring bare attention to what's actually happening rather than making up a story like I'm going to get hypothermia,

My hand's going to fall off.

So just be aware of any stories that come up and just smile to them and put your awareness back on this physical sensation,

Breathing deeply,

Giving some space in between the sensation you feel in your fingers or in your palm,

Letting go of the stories that you tell.

Whenever you're ready,

Feel free to put the ice cube back in the cup or let go of it.

When we feel pain,

We often tense up.

Notice,

Think back,

Did you tense up during that last exercise with the ice cube?

If you did,

You're creating more pain.

Mindfulness gives us the space to notice when we feel tense and to be able to breathe and physically relax our bodies so that we are able to calm our minds and have simple curiosity and openness about what's happening in our bodies rather than worrying or fearing or being angry or giving some sort of should story.

When we feel pain,

We often just want to make it go away.

But instead,

Next time you feel pain,

Try using a mindful distraction.

Maybe in your hand right now,

It's still cold and tingly and that makes you feel uncomfortable.

So put your attention on another part of your body,

A pleasant feeling part of your body,

Maybe your toes or your shoulder or maybe just a neutral part of your body.

Just allow yourself to sit in that place of pleasantness and neutrality,

Noticing how that body part feels.

And then eventually bringing your awareness back to the body part that's in pain,

In particular now perhaps your hand from the ice cube and just seeing if that sensation of pain is the same or if it's different.

Has it increased or decreased?

You can move your attention back and forth between the place where you feel a strong painful sensation and a place where you feel a positive sensation.

And in doing so,

You can keep just a bare attention,

Just pure awareness of what's happening in different places in your body from moment to moment.

I would say perhaps the most important part of working with pain is bringing kindness to it.

When you're in pain,

You can feel exhausted,

Overwhelmed,

Scared,

Angry,

But it's possible with mindfulness to learn to just be kind to yourself.

And when you're kind to yourself in a moment of pain,

It can allow you more space and more freedom to just be.

I like to imagine the places that I am in pain to be like a small child crying out.

I wouldn't judge her or tell her to stop,

But instead I would just love and comfort her.

So the next time you feel yourself in pain and you notice a story coming up,

Just allow yourself to hear the story,

Thank it for coming,

And come back to just the bare attention of what's actually happening.

And then try breathing in to that body part and sending it love and gratitude.

So we'll end now by focusing on our hand or our fingers that we use for this ice cube exercise.

And for our next three deep breaths,

Envision yourself sending all of your air and with it all of your gratitude to your hand,

To your fingers.

Being grateful,

Showing kindness to your body,

Thanking it for all it does for you.

And just allowing yourself now to come back into the room,

Come back into awareness of your surroundings,

Noticing sounds,

Noticing your feet on the ground,

And gently taking your right thumb and sweeping it across your fingers,

And doing the same with your left thumb.

Whenever you're ready,

You can open your eyes.

Reviews

I've loved this meditation. The icecube experience has been use ful to clear the difference. Thank you🙏🙏🙏

Awesome meditation.

I love this perspective of pain vs suffering! We cause our own suffering by the stories we tell ourselves! I will be using this technique for period cramps ❤️ I'm very grateful ❤️❤️❤️

Very interesting

Amazing visualization

Loved the ice cube correlation! This will be put to work right away! Thank you!

Wow! I really connected to this practice. The longer I held the ice cube the more tolerant I became 💜 so many great messages here for me. Namaste 🙏

I used this w pain I'm feeling in teeth and gums instead of ice cube. This helped me practice non-doing/letting go through not feeding the pain. I allowed it to live its natural life by feeling it but not attaching to it, and of course it diminished. ❤️🙏

Wow truly amazing session. Definitely my favourite.. I love the approach, background sounds, different subjects touched on which I can personally relate to I think that's why I found this so personal & helpful plus an amazing soothing voice that kept me calm & focused. Kind wishes & thanks. Namaste!