From an edited talk on a retreat.
In the morning meditation instructions with you, I wish to touch upon features of meditation on the body, including method and technique, to address physical pain, In applying method and technique, the general interest moves from gross to subtle.
Our meditation practices develop and a quality of attention becoming refined. Meditation reveals more about the physical nature of the body. We become more conscious as human beings.
In that respect, we can take any object as our meditation object. Meditation often takes the breath or the body as the object, as they are close. The relationship with the breath or body contributes to moving from a view of solidity to dissolving notions of substance, including pain. That’s a movement from the gross to the subtle in the physical experience.
Sometimes, the body feels heavy, dull, or lethargic, and it may require some preparation beforehand. This is where exercise or movement, outside the meditation hall, can help get the energy flowing.
We sit down to meditate with a certain vitality and vibrancy available to experience insubstantiality throughout the body. That’s what we’re talking about here—the experience of body as vibrations, sensations, pulses, tingling, throbbing, aches, pains, stresses—all these sensations, including pain, are changeable.
When there’s pain, it’s often some form of contraction. It might be the mind or emotional, purely physical, both or all three. Moving from gross to subtle with pain involves calmly directing attention into the area of pain, seeing where it’s strong and where it’s weak.
Sometimes we place attention directly into the epicenter of the pain. The more we notice change. Even within strong pain, we can learn to calmly witness it breaking up. Initially, pain can feel like a solid mass pressing on us, but by staying calm and observing, we break it down, so it does not overwhelm.
When we observe pain from the outer edges, note where the pain stops and where it’s strongest or weakest. It might appear the pain gets stronger. But really, it means we are not using our psychological filters or resistance to try to block out the pain. As those filters fall away, the pain becomes more intimate, but we also can reduce the intensity of pain by deeply observing the changes within it.
Mindfulness of long in and out breaths supports our capacity to handle pain.
If a pain in the knee becomes too strong, it may cause contraction elsewhere – the shoulders might tighten, hands may clench, or the stomach may pull in. When one pain becomes too much, it can generate another pain somewhere else. We also practice staying in touch with the whole body and experience one or two pains.
There is an area of pain and many areas of absense of pain, There may also be a general area of pain throughout the body. By putting a focussed attention into on one or two areas or the whole body, we can convert pain into deeply unpleasant sensations and towards bare sensations.
We might need to change the posture to reduce pain and then return to the posture. Move mindfully and slowly. When ready, return to the original posture. Calmness develops our capacity to work with pain, not putting pressure on ourselves.
There is the opportunity to expand gradually our pain horizons rather than trying to control pain through will power. The development of calm observation serves as a key to working with pain while being ready to change the posture if necessary.
Perhaps, we can develop such a meditation on pain in sitting, walking, standing and reclining. Remember to use the breath, especially the exhalation, as a resource for calming the mind and breaking up pain in the body.
You can remind yourself. “This pain will pass.”
PS. You have inner resources – mindfulness, focus, intention, breathing, relaxing. These resources can contribute to reducing or ending dependency on pain killers. Meditation on pain is an ongoing practice.