Guided Meditation for Managing Physical Pain & Discomfort
Jun 27, 2022It’s natural to feel mental resistance to physical pain. However, many people on the spiritual path confuse their mental resistance to physical pain with mind-created suffering… but they’re two different things - one is a response to a physical experience and the other is a psychological response to thoughts, beliefs, ideas and feelings. This is an important distinction to make when you’re dealing with chronic pain, illness or managing any type of discomfort in the body.
When we feel physical pain, our natural response is to figure out a way to cure it– to make it go away. So we rightfully seek treatment- whether that’s through traditional medicine or alternative medicine or natural healing remedies. However, if after seeking treatment, the pain still remains as commonly happens with chronic pain, the spiritual remedy is to accept it… not as a way to get rid of it, but as a means of coming to peace with what is by liberating our thoughts and beliefs from the direct experience of the sensation of pain.
This isn’t something you can do with the mind because the mind will always resist pain. You are not your mind. Rather, this is about experiencing the sensation that you call ‘pain’ without resistance. Your mind will always resist what it experiences as painful… but your true nature allows all experiences to arise and subside without resistance and this guided meditation will help you to do that. In the beginning, this meditation is best done when your pain isn’t too intense so that your mind doesn’t become so loud that you get distracted by it…. Then, after practicing this meditation a few times you can begin to apply the techniques when your pain is more intense. Finally, this is a non-dual meditation… so the goal is not to get rid of whatever pain or discomfort you’re experiencing in your body because, you’ve probably already tried many different types of treatments. Rather, the goal of this meditation is to discover a new way of relating to the pain and discomfort which will inevitably open you up to new possibilities for healing.
Enjoy!
*This meditation was inspired by the teachings of Rupert Spira*
