Diamonds and Trust Nuggets
August Mailing

It's Just the Pain Body: Just Be with It

I was sort of struck upside the head the first time I heard Eckhart Tolle talk about the pain body. This was also the first time I gazed into the face (on film) of this adorable toad-eyed creature with a goatee. (I sat riffling through possibilities: modern-day German hobbit? Uber-actualized alien?) Listening to his words, I felt he was articulating what began to put in place for me some chronic imbalance. Now, years later, without having particularly gotten into Eckhart Tolle's work in any significant way, my relationship with the pain body has changed drastically. And recently I find I'm doing more with clients to guide them into being with the pain body as an entirely separate process from meeting and working with their thoughts.

The pain body describes, very simply, that place in your body where pain lodges. It's the beast that clamps you by the throat or rips up the inside of your chest or settles weightily on your gut and won't get off. The pain body isn't personal. Every human being will experience the active pain body at some point in life, usually plenty of points. It's just part of the package deal of being human. But we tend to take the pain body very personally, especially when we believe the thoughts that show up when it's active. I like to depersonalize it and give it its full generic due by simply telling myself, “The pain body is active.” This allows me to create distance from the story while still coming close to the pain itself.

When you think of it this way, then, little does it matter what events—what story—actually activated the pain body. We're so conditioned to get involved with the story that got the pain body going, and the telling, retelling, and believing the story as we retell it again and one more time (or ten) to go over that particularly odious detail—the Can you be-LIEVE it? bit that sends our friends rounding up the posse. If you know that life is going to activate the pain body at some point or another over some point or another, you can actually step back from the details. They really don't matter. Someone will diss you or betray you or grossly misunderstand you or drop their end of an agreement or get sick and die on you. In the greater scheme of things, the story doesn't matter. How you meet the pain body matters very much.

My favorite metaphor for meeting the pain body is the moment the child runs in crying with a skinned knee that's all raw and hurting. Imagine the child and imagine you're doing what you do—maybe sitting at the computer. Here's what you don't do: glance up and say, “Aw, bummer,” then keep typing away. Instead, you drop what you're doing because, even with that deadline coming up, it's just been usurped by something more important. You bring attention (awareness) to the child, to the knee. You cleanse the wound; you apply balm. If it's your kid, you probably own some cool Phineas and Ferb band-aids, so you stick on one of those. It doesn't take that long—really just a few minutes, most of the time—for the child to feel tended to and ready to move on to the next thing. But you give it however long it takes: you're willing.

When the pain body gets all raw and hurting, it's time to stop what you're doing and tend to that. Please don't plow through the next email and throw it an “Aw, bummer.” Don't do that, because it doesn't work. The other thing not to do is to believe whatever thoughts are running along with the hurting pain body. Just because we feel something, we take this as evidence that our thoughts around the feeling are true. They're not. They're certainly not, to use Byron Katie's phrase, absolutely true. Thoughts need to be met, questioned, looked at from different angles. That's what the inquiry process called The Work of Byron Katie does so brilliantly—and it's Eckart Tolle who writes on the back of her first book, “In Loving What Is, you have the key. Now use it.” Katie's process offers the how for disentangling from thoughts.

But meeting the pain body is a separate process and you can do this with no reference to what you're thinking—especially if you know not to believe your thoughts. If they're a strong presence, you can write them down. That's what Katie teaches. The writing pins your thoughts down on paper so you can see what they're up to. It leaves you with a finite list of thoughts to work with (when you get to it) and sometimes the thoughts, once visible in ink on paper, fairly scream “Not true!” at you. We tend to phrase our stressful thoughts in exaggerated, black-and-white, all-or-nothing, often highly metaphoric terms (all of which the ego tends to take literally): I'm drowning. He never hears what I'm saying. I can't stand one more minute of this. (Actually, you can, or you would've passed out.) Write down the thoughts, put them aside—acknowledging as clearly as you can that they're not true, they're just thoughts—and turn your attention to the pain body.

The process of meeting the pain body is almost absurdly simple. More than anything, what's required is to bring your awareness to the place that hurts. Give it your attention. Bring as much of your awareness there as fully as you can. Be one-pointed, even for just a few minutes. You can also touch that place with a hand—be your own soothing parent. Perhaps most important, you can apply a balm from within by breathing into the place that hurts. Do this for several breaths, watching the breath go in and out, watching for any ease or release that comes of this—without forcing anything.

I always find it useful to locate the Witness and notice that a part of you can watch you hurting, and even you attending to you hurting. It's like layers of awareness you can access and check in with. I remember being taken through an exercise once during a meditation intensive that involved locating the Witness, then the one watching that one, then the one watching that one, in potentially endless succession. To my mind, what's most useful in that with reference to the pain body is that you can always find some part of yourself that's outside of it, or beyond it. Ultimately your pain body is not who you are, no matter how much space it's taking up or how loudly it's screaming; you're always bigger than that.

On that note, I also find it very useful to expand the pain. When you give it your full awareness, it's like putting it under a microscope. You can expand or intensify it to make it as large as it can possibly be. Again, you can always expand yourself or find that aspect of yourself—locate the Witness—to notice that the pain, even at its peak, can't be bigger than the whole of you. We're afraid to meet the pain body because we fear it will take us over, get the best of us, go on forever. Actually, meeting it fully, letting it be as big as it can be, testing its parameters (always finite) and continuing to stretch yourself beyond the limits of the pain—this is what takes you beyond the fear. It also—sooner or later—brings the pain down, because once something has reached its full height, the only direction it can go is down.

Think of it this way: sometimes, you'll have an appointment with the pain body. It's a date that won't show up on your calendar ahead of time (though sometimes it will—as when you know you're signed up for something pretty much guaranteed to set it off, such as the visit with family of origin or the high-stakes interview or court date or whatever). When it's time for the meeting, don't avoid it. The pain body must be met—it's part of your job as a human being. Ignoring it, shoving it down, covering it with food, alcohol, your drug of choice—this is what brings you ongoing harm. The pain body itself won't harm you. Neither will the particular story that set it off this time. Something has to activate the pain body. You can look dispassionately at the story and think, This is as good a trigger as any. I do recommend meeting your thoughts about the story. And I recommend meeting the pain body as a separate and crucially important process in your growth and healing.

Love & blessings, Jaya

For the curious and hopeful, I offer a free 60-minute exploration session
by phone or in person.
Contact me here or write [email protected] or call (607) 339-9714. 

Catch the early-bird dates for fall retreats!

Early-bird fees are set substantially lower than the regular fees. For some, it's the difference between getting to come or not. For anyone, it's a nice savings. For me, it's the joy of watching my beautiful programs fill with beautiful souls.
August 31: Last early-bird date for October 12-14 Maine retreat for Lesbians
September 30: Last early-bird date for November 2-4 retreat for women at Light on the Hill in NY state
More on retreats below.

The Living Connection retreat for women takes place Nov 2-4 at Light on the Hill.

August 9-12, I'll be leading workshops at the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival.

1. Three Simple (Mind) Shifts for Powerful Transformation
   (to be presented twice)
   Thursday 1:30-3:30, Area 7
   Sunday 10-12, Area 7
   
2. Get Over Her!
   Friday 3-5, Area 7
   
3. Powerful Self-Inquiry (The Work of Byron Katie)
   Saturday 1:30-3:30, Area 2

September 2, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., I'm leading a workshop on "Living Fully in Your Power" in Toronto. That's Sunday of Labour Day (nope, not Labor Day) weekend.



September 14-16, I'll be one of many presenters at the Healing Hearts Retreat for Women at Camp Earth Connection, just outside of Ithaca. My workshop, "The Work of Byron Katie--Powerful Self-Inquiry," will run twice: 3:30 to 5 p.m. on Friday and 10:45 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. on Saturday. Registration deadline Sept 10 (unless it fills up before then).



The next two listings are my retreats and include support staff of Laura Beck, aka the dance goddess, and Susan Rausch (scroll all the way down on home page of Susan's site for her bio). Laura will assist at both retreats; Susan, in NY.

October 12-14, Retreat just for lesbians on "Supreme Self-Honoring" at Nurture Through Nature eco-retreat center in the beautiful mountains of Denmark, Maine. Here's all the information you need about the wonderful, deeply rejuvenating Supreme Self-Honoring retreat, fall of 2012 at Nurture Through Nature.
(Early-bird fees through Aug 31.)


November 2-4, Retreat for women of all kinds on "Living Connection" at Light on the Hill retreat center in Van Etten, New York. Here's all the information you need about the Living Connection program, fall of 2012 at Light on the Hill.
(Early-bird fee through Sept 30.)



Visit my public page on Facebook (you don't have to have a FB account to do this).
https://www.facebook.com/jayathetrustcoach 
Daily inspiration ... but not while I'm away in Michigan, August 6-13.