Methods For Living With Pain And Illness

In this session we will hear Vidyamala’s story of using mindfulness to live well with life-changing spinal injuries that she sustained in her teens. She will share the major insights gained over more than three decades of mindfulness practice and the central role of breath awareness as a way to ease pain and release tension. She includes the helpful slogan “when in doubt, breathe out!” as a rule for living. This session also includes a guided Breathing Anchor meditation.

In this session we will learn how to use awareness to divide pain, or whatever symptom or difficulty we are experiencing, into two components: 1. Primary Suffering - the unpleasant feelings in the body 2. Secondary Suffering - the extra suffering that arises from resistance and reactivity. We’ll learn how to accept the primary suffering; to soften resistance; and reduce secondary suffering, thus reducing the overall burden of suffering. This session also includes a guided Body Scan meditation.

In this session we will learn how to manage our thoughts and emotions about our pain or illness. Many of us feel our minds are out of control, like a monkey leaping about a tree, which adds to our torment and distress. Mindfulness can help us radically change our relationship to our minds and develop perspective and calm. We can develop a mind like an elephant – stable, dignified and steady. We’ll practice a Breathing Anchor meditation to develop this skill.

In this session we will practice some very gentle mindful movements to help get an experience of moving with a soft breath and with balanced, appropriate effort. This will help us experience a more gentle way of moving so we can then take that attitude into the various movements of everyday life. Instructions are given on how to adapt this session if your physical ability to move is limited in any way, making the session appropriate for all.

In this session we will learn how to come into a more caring relationship with ourselves – to respond to our own difficulty the way we would naturally respond to a loved one who was hurting. Many of us oscillate between denying our experience on the one hand or being overwhelmed by it on the other. With mindfulness we can find a middle way of deeper acceptance and kindness. We’ll practice a Compassionate Acceptance meditation to help cultivate this.

In this session we will learn how to appreciate and enjoy pleasant experience that is always present, waiting to be noticed, alongside pain and difficulty. Mindfulness opens us to everything more deeply: accepting difficulty as we did in Day 5, and in this session becoming more sensitive to simple pleasures such as the light shining through the window, warm hands etc. This session includes a Treasure of Pleasure meditation to help cultivate this skill.

In this session we will learn how to cultivate a stable and open awareness as we reflect on the nature of life. We will see how everything is more fluid than we normally realise - including our experience of pain or illness. We will learn how to rest within this sense of flow with calm and depth, rather than pushing away painful experiences and clinging onto pleasant ones which is our more normal, unsatisfactory, mode of living. This session includes an Open Heart meditation.

In this session we will learn how to use the self-awareness cultivated so far on the course as an opportunity to feel empathy with others. By getting to know ourselves more deeply, by inference we get to know humanity. Pain and illness can be isolating and we can feel very alone and separate. But using reflection we can profoundly shift our perspective and imaginatively connect with others on the basis of commonality rather than difference. This session includes the Connection meditation.

In this session we will learn how to take our mindfulness practice into daily life. If we are to live well with our pain or illness it is essential to maintain mindfulness as often as possible throughout the day, not just when we are meditating. We do this by learning to find the middle way between ‘Booming’ and ‘Busting’, and achieve more harmony and ease in the midst of normal activities. This session includes the Three Step Breathing Space meditation.

In this session we will summarise all the key points from the previous nine days to embed the learning of the course. It has been a systematic and thorough programme providing mindfulness and compassion skills for anyone living with pain and/or illness. This session ends with the tantalizing image of becoming a warrior with a soft heart - embodying boldness and courage as well as tenderness and compassion. This session ends with a Compassionate Body Scan meditation.