Lean into Pain to Resolve It

One of my students once said to me, when doing Big Tree, she has learned to lean into pain to eventually resolve it.

 This is precisely what’s effective in healing, physical pain or emotional pain. Often when a condition becomes chronic, we have learned to ignore it to some extent and numb it in our awareness. This is why the body has learned to co-exist with the condition. In order to heal it, we must bring our full awareness into it, look right into it, lean into it, wake it up, hear it, see it and experience it fully. Then the healing may start.

I have remembered to try it again this morning when my persistent stomachache finally got my attention. So it’s a meditative practice that can be done anytime in life, not only in Big Tree Standing Meditation. It’s not a “oh, it’s hurting again, oh no, oh what can I take to stop it” kind of going-outward-for-help notice, but rather, “what is it trying to tell me, and how can I change” kind of going-in-deep awareness.

This requires me not afraid of what the body is trying to say, therefore allowing it to cry out fully, which could mean at first experiencing more and deeper pain. Know that the body would not give us more than what we can take, so relax into the pain. The more I relax, I feel more spacious in my stomach area. I see, I have been tightening it chronically without notice. As I release more space for the stomach, I do feel the pain spread and intensifying. I ask, what are you trying to tell me? It says, “Give me space. Always allow space for me to work, to breathe. Protect my space even when you feel tense, nervous, worried or pressed in by outside demands.” I hear you. And this will require on going practice in life.

Then the pain begins to subside. It moved to the spleen. My spleen felt hot. I relax around my spleen and ask, “What are you saying to me?” “I am empty. I have been working too hard at times when you over ate. I need rest, too. So please take breaks.” I see. I must not over eat out of nervousness or fear. Be in the moment in my body when I eat, and stop when I feel the signal for the first time. My stomach and spleen slowly begins to calm.

This is all practice to be in the body while living life. And when we feel pain in the body, it’s a wake up call, telling us how we must change for healing to start. We are powerful. We can heal ourselves. Now take that one step and begin to really listen, really see, and begin to release that old familiar tightness pattern. This is a life time practice, and we are doing this together now.

Releasing Main Holding Pattern, Finding Main Life Mantra, and Becoming a Greater Self

We know it is utmost important to live in the moment, to be to present in the now. But why then, something else often takes over? What is it that takes over?

 I know the pleasant feel of living in the moment from experience. It’s a visceral pleasure and overall fulfilled sensation. But I find, the present moment is often interrupted by thoughts.

Where do these thoughts come from? They are also from the body, often rehearsed patterns, what we were used to. The thoughts often accompanied by emotions such as frustration and upset, they are cries for help from the body saying, “Hello, there is still a holding pattern here, there is still tightness that’s limiting flow, the flow of life.”

For me, one of the biggest holding patterns in life was that I believed life is not mine, that I am living for others. It was due to a helpless child having to submit to an overwhelmingly controlling mother. (Of course there were perfect reasons in her life progression for her limiting patterns. We will focus on how to resolve our pattern here, and go into understanding others’ patterns later.) So what others want of me become so important that it overwhelm my own voice, my own needs and wants.

So after realizing this was my greatest holding pattern in this lifetime, or a karmic loop tape of multiple life times in me, I developed the mantra, “This is MY life. I am the center of MY life. I get to choose what serves my life and my spiritual development now. I get to decide where MY boundaries are, and choosing that I am doing this for ME…” The key is repeating the phrase “this is MY life” until I feel it viscerally in my being. And the utmost important word is “viscerally” because that is an overall being shift. I would feel my posture changing to more relaxed, supported and erect position.

This is also what we train and practice in our workshops and classes, to be able to connect viscerally, connecting the mind and the body. As a healer, I am also using myself as a mirror for the client and identify what disconnections I see, when and where the disconnect may have happened, and then extending my energy to help reconnect the neglected connections in clients.

This mantra is what counters the helpless feeling of the baby, and it starts to build strength of the adult. Each time it’s like an exercise of strengthening, just like bodybuilding or any physical exercise, in this case energy and awareness. When there is a weakness, we must repeatedly strengthen it until reversing the weakness pattern.

Lately I have also been envisioning at the end of life, when “judgment” time comes, I would like to feel that I have lived a life of my own, not for others. I have stood on my own and I have followed what makes me happy, not for others. The strong visceral image instantly brings the worried or fearful me back into my center, into grounding in my body.

With this on-going practice, I have been having more moments of feeling satiated, feeling at ease, feeling joy, and can snap out of state of worry, fear and irritation more readily.

The gradual change has been the biggest life-changing shift I have experienced, in my professional and personal life. I hope with my inner seeing and energetic hands I could help more people reverse their life limiting patterns and come into the fullness that is their life.

So do you know what is the main limiting pattern for your life, in your body? Do you know the countering mantra that can gradually reverse the weakness in your body and bring strength and power into your own life? This may be something we could find out sometime into the course of our healing sessions, or this may be something you discover through inner seeing in your persistent qigong practice.