Pain sucks. And it's a teacher.

Pain gives feedback that can lead to positive shifts and growth in habits and routine. 

My body has been going through the wringer this year: stitches in my shin—>knee tendinitis—>whiplash—>now coming out of a nasty bout of the flu. Everything telling me to SLOW DOWN. Quit rushing, there’s no finish line to life until death, and I’m not hurrying towards that. And interestingly, my mind hasn’t been going crazy amidst all this pain like I would have suspected. 

A few days ago I was flipping through some notes and this quote from the Buddha popped out at me: “Incline your mind to wellbeing.”

Pain and suffering are part of this human experience, but they do provide sneaky insight to adjustments we can make to live our lives from a more aligned space. And WOWZA do they teach about compassion! Shadow exists where there is light. We know this. And I’m realizing more everyday that I can look at the challenges in my life from a mindset of lightness and with the recognition that they are temporary, and that allows me to stop wallowing in self pity and judgment and not take the pain quite so personally.

Not taking pain personally might sound weird, but think about it. Think about how easy it is to get caught up in a victim story of “poor me” or a shame story of “My body isn’t good enough” or so on and so forth. What if instead, we become interested and curious about the pain so that we can LISTEN and adjust and if that adjust again, and again, and again, and realize that all of life is essentially a big experiment and we get to be scientists unearthing the most aligned, powerful, intelligent way for our unique beings to exist. Wheeeew.

So back to “inclining one’s mind to wellbeing”. I feel that, since pain is inevitable, if we can explore it and listen to it rather than try to avoid it altogether, we can tune into our deeper intelligence from which we can respond to the pain and recognize where it stems from and shift into habits that don’t continue that painful pattern. And as we do this more and more, we become less reactive to the pain so it doesn’t interfere with our internal wellbeing so much. And after years and years (or lifetimes?) of this practice, we cultivate a sense of equanimity so that the painful circumstances don’t have such a hold over us, and we can really lean into the joy, love, peace, excitement, trust, etc that all come along with this human package as well.