Contacting Pain With Mindfulness

In this guided mindfulness meditation, I invite you to come to your body and, with responsibility and care for yourself, contact a physical pain. I give you resources and guidance to allow the experience of pain as a way to manage the suffering around it and release the resistance.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to meditation.

All right,

So just before we start the practice of working with pain,

It's important to remind you that it's a practice that requires your responsibility towards yourself,

Your self-care.

Because only you know your own experience of connecting and contacting your pain.

Whether you go towards the pain or you go a little bit away from the pain,

It's something that you're gonna sense within and respect and honor your own body and your own moment.

So that's an important aspect of this practice that you need to take care of yourself.

You need to be responsible for your experience and know that there's nothing that you need to do.

You just,

The only thing that you need to do is to care,

Is to care for yourself.

All right,

So let's start by closing your eyes if that's comfortable to you.

Or you can just gaze down and remain with your eyes slightly open.

Finding a position for the body that is comfortable and connecting with your sense,

Your sensations inside your body,

Your breath,

The movement of the breath,

The sense of touch,

Maybe from your hands resting on your legs.

Noticing the sensation as sensation.

Noticing that the mind might bring in all sorts of concepts and names and thoughts around your experience.

And you can acknowledge the thoughts as thoughts and return attention,

Awareness to the pure sensation,

To just feeling,

Sensing your body.

Extra dancing,

Your body.

As you feel your breath inside your body,

Notice the length of your breath.

Allow the breath to be as it is.

Just curiously pay attention.

Feel the breath in your body.

Start to notice in your body if there's a place inside that you feel safe or that you feel pleasant,

That if you go there,

If you sense that,

You feel safe or you feel comfortable.

Maybe that is your breath on your nostrils.

Maybe that's the touch of your hands on your legs.

Maybe that's the sense of your feet touching the floor.

Maybe that's something else completely.

This is your own experience.

So what feels safe to you inside your body?

Go there and feel this place as fully as you can.

Find home in this place.

Find comfort,

Safetiness.

And as you connect with this feeling,

The sense inside your body,

Notice how it feels.

Notice the sensations around the safety place.

This is going to be your resource.

This is going to be the place that you come to whenever you need,

Whenever your experience becomes overwhelming,

If it does.

So this is your safe place.

This is where you return to whenever you need.

It's always here for you.

So connect again,

Feel the sense of safe place,

Of home inside your body.

And from this place,

Start to explore your body,

Your whole body,

To notice some place,

Maybe not the place that you feel the most pain,

But just the place that you feel some pain or discomfort.

And just from afar,

From this place of safety inside your body,

Just notice this other place where there is discomfort.

So you feel safe,

But you know there's some discomfort.

And I'm going to invite you to,

On your own pace,

Following your own journey,

Your own experience,

Start to get closer to this place of pain inside your body or this place of discomfort.

Just slowly,

You don't need to jump into it,

Run towards it.

Just little by little,

Move the awareness inside your body.

Getting closer,

Slowly,

To this point of discomfort or pain.

Always moving the attention intentionally with an attitude of kindness,

Curiosity,

Openness.

Feeling closer and closer around the area,

The point of discomfort.

And start to notice if there's any resistance as you get closer to this place of pain and not discomfort.

Maybe there's a resistance in the body,

Some tension,

Some contraction in the body that happens.

Maybe there's mental resistance with judgment,

With worrying.

Maybe there's emotional resistance with fear or another emotion that comes in.

All of those are natural,

Normal,

And can be included in your experience.

It's normal that resistance happens because we are protecting ourselves from feeling pain,

From feeling discomfort.

And that's an act of love,

Of care.

So I invite you to allow,

Allow the resistance to be present and see if even with the resistance you can start to get a little bit more close to the point of pain and discomfort in your body.

Noticing the resistance,

Including the resistance in your experience,

And slowly getting closer and feeling this point of pain or discomfort.

And it might be helpful to breathe,

To soften,

Taking a deep breath,

Knowing that life is just like this,

Pain is part of it,

Discomfort is a natural part of life.

The more we allow,

The less resistance we create around being with the discomfort,

The less suffering we create.

And if your mind went away with other thoughts or distractions,

Just notice,

Acknowledge that that's also very normal.

And you can always return,

Return the attention,

The awareness back into the body into sensations,

Into that safe place that you have inside your body.

And back slowly walking towards your pain,

This place of pain in the body or discomfort.

Just notice right now how close or not close you are from this place of discomfort and in feeling it.

So how much can you feel,

How close can you get to the sensation of pain and discomfort?

And there's no right answer.

There's no obligation of any kind.

It's just an assessment to see where you are.

And to remind you that this is your experience,

It's your choice,

How close you get or how far away you get from this place of discomfort in your body.

And wherever you are,

How close you are or not close you are,

See if you can breathe and create space around or inside the place of pain,

This spot of discomfort.

Just as if you're trying to dilute the pain in water and in space and air.

So you create space around this place of pain by feeling around it,

By feeling inside of it and from inside opening and breathing and allowing the experience to be just as it is.

You're bringing the breath,

You breathe around this place of pain without trying to avoid the pain but just to create more space so you can be with the pain.

So that it is more possible,

Easier to be with the pain.

And start to notice as you get closer and create space to get even closer,

If possible,

If that's the experience that you choose.

What's the sensation of this pain?

Before the concept of pain,

Before the ideas of whether the pain should or shouldn't be there,

Before any mental process,

There's the experience,

The sensation,

The pure sensation of the pain.

It might be that there's some tingling,

It might be that there's an acute sensation,

It might be that it's more dispersed.

What's the sensation itself?

Before the label pain,

How does it feel?

Using the sensation as a constellation of sensations,

Knowing that the experience of pain can also change over time as you get closer,

As you pay attention.

Or it might be the same.

Just notice your own experience and be with the sensations before the label that comes with whatever sensation is present.

And as you feel the sensations,

Whether it's more spread or it's acute on one spot,

Feel that just as it is before any concept.

And see if you can offer kindness,

Offer care towards that feeling,

Towards that sensation.

And maybe offering kindness feels like just creating more space.

Or maybe it's a touch of your hands on the spot where you feel the pain.

Maybe it's you saying to this place,

It's okay,

I'm here,

I'm with you.

Whatever kindness feels like to you right now,

However you can offer kindness to this sensation,

I invite you to do so.

And notice what happens when kindness is offered.

What's the sensation?

What's the experience,

The relationship that you have with the pain itself,

With the sensation of it?

And for the last part of our practice,

I invite you to return awareness to that safe place inside your body and feel that again.

Feel the sensations of safety,

Of comfort.

And allow a sense of gratitude to come from having this place,

To come from this experience of having a resource,

Having a place inside your body where you can go back to return and feel safe and feel home.

Thank your body for offering the space.

And as you allow this gratitude to emerge,

I invite you to offer the gratitude to your whole body and spread the sense of gratitude almost as if it's a waterfall.

Allow gratitude to spread all over your body and feel how it feels to offer gratitude,

To feel gratitude.

And whenever you feel complete with the sense of gratitude,

I invite you to slowly and slowly return attention to just the sensation of your body and slowly also open your eyes and return to this place of here now.

Reviews

Thank you, this was excellent. I'll definitely return to this meditation. Thank you for providing a supportive resource for working with the challenge of pain. 🌼

Really good it made me feel much better thanks so much