Pain vs. Suffering

​Emergence of Spring

We are getting a lot of rain this week, and it’s turning everything vibrant green. I love witnessing the emergence of spring. 

It’s a perfect time to increase our calm, and our joy, by actively looking for glimmers:
A patch of daffodils brightening the hillside. The weeping cherry, crabapple, and magnolia blooms dotting the landscape. The burst of colors is magnificent. 

And for Mike and I? Uncovering Little Wing added extra excitement! 

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“Between stimulus and response there is a space.
In that space is our power to choose our response.
In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

~ Viktor Frankl

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Hi friends!

Wow! What a phenomenal return to Yacht Club Yoga! When I arrived, Lake Kalamazoo was super foggy and misty. Soon after, the sun broke through and the fog cleared. It was pretty special. 

Thank you to ALL who joined me! And, shout out to my two friends from high school who made their way from afar.  What a wonderful surprise! 💕

Class continues at SYC this month on Saturdays, 9 - 10 AM. All are welcome. 

Recently I read a study that was trying to figure out if there’s a difference between the way longtime meditators experience pain vs. the way those who do not meditate experience pain. 

Being a participant in this study would have been miserable. Because, it involved basically scalding hot water being piped onto your wrist, repeatedly. Ten seconds before the hot water? A sound let you know , . . pain incoming. UGH!

Thankful I was not someone involved in the study, I am fascinated by its results:

1. The non-meditators began having a pain response VERY quickly after the sound. Even though nothing painful was happening quite yet. 
2. The sound did not activate a pain response in the meditators. 
3. Both groups experienced the pain with a similar level of response. In fact, the meditators experienced the pain slightly more acutely.
4. The non-meditators experienced a pain response for FAR LONGER than the meditators. In other words, the meditators recovered from the pain MUCH more quickly. 

It’s this fourth fact that I find very interesting. 

The non meditators continued feeling the pain. In other words, they continued suffering. 
The meditators made a much quicker recovery, returning to a baseline that was free from pain. 

Here’s how Cortland Dahl, a participant in the study explains the significance of this: 

“So what they were seeing -- what the scientists found here in this particular study -- was the neural signature of the difference between suffering and pain. This is super important. Normally, we think that pain equals suffering, and this underlying assumption drives many of the things we do in our life.

We're basically trying to avoid pain and discomfort because we think that by doing so, we will be able to avoid suffering. What this showed is that there's actually a hidden variable that most of us are completely unaware of. Suffering does not equal pain. Suffering equals pain times resistance. So if you can dial resistance down to zero, you are not doing away with the pain, but you are completely eliminating the suffering.

Super, super important fact. So if you understand that fact, this is a total game changer for how we live our lives.”

I fully understand life is not only made of glimmers. 

We have physical bodies. We will get sick. There will be pain. 
We are in relationships. There will be loss. There will be pain. 

The real question is: How do we help ourselves deal with, recover from, the pain? How able are we to return ourselves to baseline? 
Not by burying things. Or suppressing them. Or pretending they did not happen. 

But by experiencing them fully. And then releasing ourselves from suffering. 

If you missed the Viktor Frankl quotation up above, go ahead and take another look. 

Here’s to our collective growth. 

Love, light, and longing for peace,

m