Practicing Nonviolence Through Soothing the Pain Body

This dharma talk and meditation focuses on the concept of the "pain body" as termed by Eckhart Tolle. I explore how the residual impact of unexpressed pain manifests as physical and mental discomfort, unconscious reactivity, and rigid self-constructs. Through very simple mindfulness practice, we can start to heal our own pain bodies and facilitate space for others to heal.

Transcript

Hello and welcome.

The following is a guided meditation by Renee Seals,

A somatic movement educator,

Energy worker,

And astrologer.

This meditation is intended to help support your embodied meditation practice.

If in the recording you are prompted to do something that doesn't feel good for your body,

Please adapt and modify to make it work for you.

Please also note that the content of this meditation sometimes explores deep and subtle states and memories,

And sometimes guided visualizations.

You are encouraged to work with discernment as you practice with them.

If any of the guidance Renee offers feels too activating or uncomfortable,

Please listen to your body's knowing and pause the recording until a later time if you wish to return to it.

These guided meditations range anywhere from 20 to 40 minutes and do not require any supplementary equipment to participate.

We hope you enjoy.

So to begin,

Please close your eyes and take a deep breath in.

And exhale out your mouth as if you're kind of fogging up a mirror.

Feel your jaw relax and hear the whisper of your breath as it comes out.

And take a couple of breaths like this if you can,

Inhaling through your nose and exhaling through your mouth.

And as you inhale and as you exhale,

Just feel that you are here,

Wherever here is for you right now.

And you might even just kind of take stock of where here is.

And I'm going to make the assumption,

And I've done this a lot,

But if you're listening to this meditation,

I assume that you're safe.

I assume that you are in a place where you are not under immediate threat,

Where there is nothing happening,

Where you are not in a place where you are not in a place where there is nothing happening that you need to jump up and attend to right now.

And I want you to really let that in.

That regardless of all the bad news,

Regardless of all the things that feel so urgent,

What is right now and right here is just this.

It's just this moment.

It's the material of the space that you're in,

The shapes around you,

The light.

It's the sounds that you're hearing.

It's the movement of your breath flowing in and flowing out.

And can you really give that to yourself?

Right now I am safe.

Right now I am safe.

Right now I have everything that I need.

Right now,

In this moment,

There is nothing to do.

There is nowhere to go.

There's nothing to attain.

And especially for those of us who are activists in our lives,

We can become so consumed with our desire to serve.

And everything is urgent.

And then we have to come back and find moments where we can just check in with our beings,

With our breath,

Resource.

And your resource right now is just what is.

Right now I am safe.

Right now I am breathing.

And check in with your body.

And just kind of do a scan of your body.

Say hello.

Hello toes.

Hello feet.

Hello legs.

So you're noticing the different parts of your body.

Just noticing what sensations are there.

Again,

Nothing to do about them.

Just notice.

Hello tummy.

Hello chest.

Hello throat.

Hello head.

Hello arms and hands.

And as you feel your body,

Just consider that the stuff of your body,

The flesh and all of the tissues and the fluids and the cells,

That they have all arisen and will return to other elements that exist.

So the water you drink becomes your blood,

Becomes your lymph.

Becomes your lymph.

Food you eat becomes your muscle and your bones.

And one day your body won't exist anymore and it will decompose and it will become water and it will become mineral and plant and animal again.

So can you feel that as a relief?

You didn't always exist.

You won't always exist.

Your life is actually fairly short in the scheme of the earth,

In its magnificence and its magnitude and history.

All the personal responsibility that you feel,

Yes,

It's there,

But there's also only so much you can do.

Only so much you can do.

And allow yourself to just be.

So now we all have inherited pain in our lives and for many of us that pain is in our families.

So many,

Many,

Many,

Many of us,

Our original source of pain is with one or both of our parents or with our siblings,

With a grandparent,

With an aunt or uncle,

The cousin,

But someone somewhere that's pretty close by.

And when I say feel where that pain lives in your body,

I bet you know what I mean because I bet there's a place in your body that when you think of that person or that context,

That thing,

That part of your body maybe gets a little tight,

It's kind of clenched,

Maybe it does something really obvious,

Maybe you stop breathing,

Maybe you notice that your mind gets really loud.

So if it's an actual physical place in your body where this instinct arises,

I want you just to bring your hands to that place and just take a couple of breaths in and without any goal except to be present,

Just feel.

So there's no particular kind of feeling that you're looking for,

Nothing to gain,

Just bringing your attention and noticing what's there.

You might recall the name or the image,

The memory of this kind of original source of pain and it might not even be something that happened to you,

But maybe something that happened to your parent that directly impacted you.

So there's,

You know,

Things that we carry in our lineage that we're going through,

And that's the kind of thing that we're going to be talking about.

There's,

You know,

Things that we carry in our lineages,

But we all have it.

So whatever that thing is,

Go and be there and don't do anything,

Just be.

This practice is simply a practice of listening and all different kinds of things might come up.

So within the sheaths,

You might find that the Anamaya kosha,

The material body,

The physical body,

That actual pain arises,

That there is a knot or some kind of discomfort and maybe it needs to stretch or to express or maybe even to make a sound.

Let it express,

But don't force anything.

Within the Pranamaya kosha,

You might find that there is kind of an innate instinct,

This like survival instinct that kicks in,

And you go into that place and immediately there is someone there that's very scared.

And when you find that place,

If that's what's coming up for you,

I'm going to encourage you to move back and forth between this beginning simple awareness,

Noticing your surroundings,

I'm here,

I'm safe,

There's no immediate threat right now,

And then feeling that deeper instinct.

And I just want to continue to repeat that you don't need to explain it,

You don't need to know why,

And you don't need to fix it.

There's nothing to do,

Just listen.

And when it's an instinct for survival that comes up,

You can be with it,

But notice how it wants to pretend that that is right now,

That the part of our brain that holds trauma does not know time.

So part of the practice of listening is to resource yourself to remember that right now you're safe,

You have access to breath,

Everything you need,

There's nothing to do,

And then to go back and just feel that instinct.

Another thing that might happen when we touch in with this place is a lot of story comes up.

You did this to me.

You,

You,

You,

You,

You.

Me,

Me,

Me,

Me,

Me.

I,

You,

Me,

You.

And you'll go back and forth and you get,

You want to,

You go through your whole lecture or your argument,

Your dissertation you're going to give.

You're going to make them understand.

You just keep coming back to,

Okay,

Here I am right now,

And this is me breathing.

So when the mind starts to trip out on itself,

We can breathe.

And one of the kind of underlying foundational concepts of yoga is that the mind is linked to the breath.

So when your mind starts to spin out,

Bring your attention back to your breath.

Okay,

So that's the practice.

That's it.

That's very simple.

You can just go back and forth.

So that's the practice.

That's it.

That's very simple.

You get quiet.

You take time to breathe.

Take time to notice and to look around and to see your surroundings.

Take stock that yes,

Indeed,

Right now you are safe.

And then when you've spent a little bit just being present with the fact that right now probably you're not going to be present for a while.

You're going to feel like you're exploring,

Like not that much is going on.

When you're present for a while,

Then you can start to look at the pain.

You check in with that pain.

You can feel it and it'll probably have a place in your body that,

You know,

Feels quite strongly when you think about it.

And then you go to that place and you breathe again and you get present again and you breathe again.

And then you listen and you notice what comes up.

And then you come back to right now and you notice that you're safe and you notice that you're breathing.

And in this way we can start to work with the pain body.

It is not a logical or rational body.

It doesn't respond to conversations particularly.

It has,

Like any other body,

A vested interest in keeping itself going.

So we have to approach our pain with non-violence,

With the spirit of non-violence.

We're not there to squelch it,

To cut it out,

To make it stop.

We're just there to listen.

So with that I will close and offer that non-violence is a listening practice and that we can practice this with ourselves and we can also practice this with one another.

So there will be any amount of moments when you are in a relationship context where someone else is very much living in their pain.

And because pain wants to see itself,

You will feel your own pain arising in response.

In a kind of array of different possible responses.

Pain as anger,

Pain as guilt,

Pain as pain,

Pain as grief.

So you can do this practice with yourself when you are with someone else's pain as well.

And you can check in with their pain,

You can feel it with them,

And then you come back to yourself.

Okay,

I'm breathing,

I'm safe,

I'm here.

And this is just that very simple knowledge that we have all said.

You have to help yourself before helping another.

The one who's drowning,

You can't save the one who's drowning.

So thank you for listening.

Please bring this practice into your lives.

Please share this practice with as many people as you can.

I wish you peace in your hearts and in all things.

Until next time,

Goodbye.

Reviews

A practice for deepening connection. Renee holds space with love and kindness.

Excellent. Thank you. Down to earth and definitely helps release tension.

thank you Renee for this brilliant and subtle practice 🐞

Thank You. 🙏 This was a very interesting and revealing exercise. With years of various trauma work, I am surprised I’d never been introduced to it before. I will return to it and your other offerings and share it with others too. (The intro was a little off putting for me, but necessary...perhaps done in your voice could soften it.)

I love Renee so much. This practice was exactly what I needed today.

This mentions it's for activists but as someone going through a very bad time and needing to stop the panic while remaining strong for a child this has been amazing. Thank you