Mindfulness toward emotional and physical pain

This summer Emily, who had taken my 8-week course which focused on developing mindfulness toward physical and emotional pain, posted this message on her Facebook page. I am reprinting it with her permission. 

"Waking up terrified something awful is going to happen to one or more my children has been a chronic fear and cause of deep physical anxiety since the night before Nathan went to Kindergarten for the first time. (Silly right? Why the night before the first day of Kindergarten?) I mean, that night I felt like I would have a heart attack I had so much pain in my chest.  I woke up this morning startled at 3:45 am with the same vivid fears and between that first night and now so many other countless times.

I asked Tom Bassarear  at a mindfulness class about this fear after class one night because it plagues me whenever I try to meditate as well.  I’ll never forget how he so calmly and kindly reminded me that the level of anxiety and fear I was experiencing first can comfort me to know the depth of the level of my intense love for my children.

Of course I still was desperate for something to help manage the intensity of the imaginations and fears and he specifically told me to befriend all of those feelings. Rather than try and make them go away, resisting, visualize them like a visitor, there to remind me of my love, invite that visitor to even sit with me for a while and put my arm around them….allowing them space to be there.

Even while I type this I choke up. I practice this each time, sometimes it is more challenging than others, but every time it calms my heart. And the visitor leaves. If it comes back to linger I just hold it again, allowing it to feel even welcomed, and it goes away again.  Tom gave me an incredible gift that night when he said those words to me and handed me those tools. This is the first time I’ve written it down. I hope it helps anyone else who wakes with or can’t sleep because of intense pain, sorrow, or fear.

What you resist, WILL persist. Allow it space to be, embrace it as a friend and feel your heart settle as you thank your “unwanted” visitors for showing up to remind you that you are a living, feeling, loving, sensitive soul."

The “invite that visitor to even sit with me for a while and put my arm around them” is a practice I learned from Thich Nhat Hanh at a retreat. He encouraged us relate to unpleasant thoughts and emotions as we would toward a child who has come to us crying about something. To open our arms and hold and comfort the child, saying “you poor thing. I am here for you” and feeling your heart open to their pain.

The Guest House by Rumi
Most people have been conditioned to suppress and fight unpleasant thoughts, emotions and pain. The Buddha and others have taught a very different approach. During the fourth week of the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction course that Jon Kabat-Zinn developed, The Guest House by Rumi is read.

"This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
As an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still treat each guest honorably.
[S]he may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond."

By this point in the course, participants have the tools and we can begin to focus more deliberately on this radical notion of accepting what is happening, moment to moment. Acceptance here is not resignation, but rather no longer suppressing and fighting, and instead allowing ourselves to be with what feels so unpleasant. Emily voiced this: what you resist, will persist.

I have written in this blog about my experiences with this notion of radical acceptance: my intense anxiety while traveling and severe back pain.

A monk with typhus
I was recently reading a book by Ajahn Brahm who wrote about living in a remote monastery in Thailand and getting typhus. He was in a small hospital and very, very sick and miserable. The abbot came for a visit and Ajahn Brahm was hoping for some wise words of support. But the abbot simply said, "You'll either die or recover" and then left. At first Ajahn Brahm was devastated, but then "it dawned on me that I had been wanting to get well. I had been fighting the sickness. When I realized that, I decided to stop fighting and let go...In a few minutes I couldn't feel my body anymore...I felt at peace...My mind was still and my body relaxed. I was happy."

My experience in ICU
I had a similar experience after my second surgery this summer to place more stents in my aorta when I was in the intensive care unit at the hospital. I was awakened at 4 am by the nurse who had to check my spinal fluid and my toes and legs. The surgeon had been concerned about the possibility of a surge of spinal fluid during or after the surgery which would leave me paralyzed, so they placed a needle into my spine and drained some of the spinal fluid. For the next two days I was bedridden because of the needle in my spine. After the nurse left, I was wide awake.

I decided to practice the loving-kindness meditation. I first focused this energy on all the sensations in my body for about 45 minutes. Then I focused the loving-kindness energy on my surgeon and his team, on the nurses, and on the other 21 patients in the ICU unit. At one point, I realized that—in that moment—I was very peaceful and happy. That state lasted for some time.

Simple but not easy
This attitude toward the unpleasant is not unique to Buddhism, as Rumi's poem attests. And it is not terribly complicated. Some people get it very quickly. Others, like me, get it over time, and then forget it and then remember it. But all who experience those magic moments of finally letting go can attest to the power of such a radically different way of approaching suffering.