Mary O’Malley – A friend of mine is having a lot of back pain and she hasn’t been out of her house in days. She is hyperalert around her pain and is afraid to do anything. The pain has so affected her life that she told me if it doesn’t get better soon, she feels like “checking out.” I invited her to consider the possibility of opening to the healing of being with her pain rather than always resisting it.
I explained that so often we amplify our physical pain through our resistance to it, not realizing that we create more pain by trying to run away from it. Pain is like coming across a bear in the woods. When you run away from it, the bear runs after you. But when you turn and face it, chances are the bear will go away. It is the same with your pain. When you learn how to turn toward it, it allows the possibility of calming it down.
I then shared with my friend a radical approach to healing pain that Stephen Levine, author and spiritual teacher, taught me. When pain arises and you start resisting it, take a moment and bring your attention to your pain. To focus your attention, it is helpful to describe it to yourself: Is it sharp? Is it throbbing? Does it have definite boundaries or does it move around?