Beyond Pain Guided Meditation
October 12, 2007 by simplybeing
We’ve just published our latest podcast episode, Beyond Pain. It was hard to come up with the right title for this one. The experience of pain is so complex. If we are speaking of physical pain, the pain itself is just a sensation in the body. Unless you are someone who enjoys pain, and there are some people who do, pain is much more than “just a sensation in the body”. It can create enormous suffering.
What makes the sensation of pain so difficult? Besides the fact that it can be so strong that it grabs our attention totally, making it difficult to focus on anything else, there are many ways that we suffer with pain. Much of the suffering comes from the thoughts and emotional reactions that we have along with the pain. It may trigger fear, sadness, anger, or frustration depending on our past experiences and beliefs. We may start to wonder how long it will go on, what it means, where it will go, and whether or not we’ll be able to endure it.
There may be some underlying feelings about the pain that are very subtle and not so obvious, like the sense that it is a punishment or due to our failings. It can bring up a sense of abandonment or betrayal. Pain can bring up all sorts of feelings. Next time you are experiencing pain, you can investigate what comes along with it and also whether the suffering you are experiencing with the pain is from the pain itself or everything else that it brings up.
The purpose of the Beyond Pain meditation is to bring about a greater sense of ease with the presence of pain. We may tend to tighten up and resist pain which in fact makes it worse. The meditation encourages you to relax into the pain, and to let go of the involvement with all the mind’s stories about the pain and the emotional reactions to it. It can help you come to a place of peace in spite of pain. Whether or not the feeling of pain becomes less, the suffering that comes with pain can be released.
We’d love to hear about your experiences with this meditation and invite you to comment!
You have such a beautiful speaking voice — it’s really soothing no matter what topic you’re talking about. I love the music too. In combination it’s like a duet. Good for helping pain “management” — thank you!
On this meditation, I could hear what sounded like music at very low volume so I turned the volume up till the voice was quite loud and sure enough the music was there. I was wondering if there was something wrong with my download, though I haven’t had any trouble with others from your site.
Thanks again. Peace.
There’s nothing wrong with your download. It seems the volume of the music on this one is lower than with our other podcasts. Hopefully we’ll be replacing it with one with louder music soon.
Thanks for taking the time to comment. We’re glad you are enjoying the podcast!
Best wishes, Mary