Pain—probably the greatest motivator in my life. I tried to avoid it, stuff it away for later, bear it with dignity like a martyr, cover it with anger, apply bandages of all shapes and colors, medicate it, manage it, took it to a doctor occasionally.
Pain comes in all kinds of packages—physical, emotional, mental, spiritual—and I felt them all. It’s easy to look back now and appreciate the journey it took me on, but back in the day, it was no joyride. I used to think it was God’s way of punishing me for being such a bad human being—I have to admit, I’m getting a good laugh at myself now for that one.
It was a few moments after hearing Gary Zukov, author of "Seat of the Soul," make the comment on an Oprah show about humans having a tendency to try to avoid pain, that I accidentally slammed my thumb in a kitchen drawer. Sure enough, my first instinctive act was to grab my thumb with my other hand in an attempt to postpone the pain I knew was coming.
After taking a DEEP BREATH down into my diaphragm, which lies beneath our lower ribcage, I made a conscious choice to take my hand away in order to allow the pain, and also allow myself to immerse in it, explore it, follow it to its source and center. The pain that I was so afraid of, in this little experiment, lasted only seconds, and then it was gone.
It was simply a matter of breathing myself through it.
In short, I discovered that breathing while diving into the pain was the quickest way to release myself from the extended suffering of pain. And pain simply became a tool to help me direct my attention to some aspect of my life that was balancing naturally--that was all.
I had an ache in my lower back that was hard to pinpoint, so I lay myself down on our rug in the yoga position called "corpse" (on my back, hands and feet parted enough to feel comfortable) and I started taking deep breaths: inhale through the nose (deep into my diaphragm beneath the lower rib cage) to the count of 8, hold for 4, exhale to the count of 8. The focus on the breath centered me in the present moment, got me to note my heart beating, and I then focused on the area of pain in my back and followed it to its center.
The next thing I knew, memories came to mind of when I was a sophomore in high school and the bank forced us into a sale of our farm equipment. I lost my home, my pastures (my version of church) and my dogs and cats (my best friends)—and I’d never allowed myself to feel the grief at losing them. I’d handled it by getting angry—and, at the time, I wasn’t aware of how angry I was. There I was crying over something that had happened nearly twenty years earlier.
As the tears flowed over the loss of my pets, the pain in my lower back went away, too.
Once I began to embrace pain instead of running from it, it became a gift in my own healing process and I realized that accepting pain didn’t mean I had to endure it in misery for long periods of time.
If I was experiencing pain, there was a purpose for it, and it wasn’t a punishment for something I did wrong. Setting a broken bone is painful, so it stands to reason that healing a broken heart would involve some pain, too.
Just a matter of breathing through it…Just take a deep-down into the bottom of your ribcage breath…Just breathe…
We're all quite the characters--actors, that is--role-playing together. These are stories of my awakening, my remembering realization that Home/Heaven is wherever I am. That I am not the puppet on someone else's string. The search is over. I simply FREELY CHOSE to quit searching outside of myself, and realized all my answers have always been within.
No comments:
Post a Comment