“Pain is not wrong. The response to pain is wrong, triggering a tangle of emotional resistance to what has happened.” ~ Tara Brach
The wooden meditation hall squeaked softly, and sixty people moved in their seats, trying to find comfort in silence. Outside, winter rains drive towards the windows, soft metronome marking the time. I sat on the black cushion, watching sweat trickle down under my temple despite the cool air. My legs burned as if I had been running for hours, even though I didn’t move out in forty-five minutes.
This is the third day of my first six-day silent meditation resort and I am learning the first profound lesson about body pain, not my meditation teacher, but from the protesting body. Little did I know that this experience would be a crucial foundation that leads to greater challenges.
The pain started with the whispers of my lower back, which was a gentle suggestion that maybe I should adjust my position. Within minutes, it grew up and screamed. When other practitioners appear quiet, their faces are soft and their bodies are still maintained, but I am launching an internal war. Every few minutes, I would change my weight slightly, trying to find an elusive comfortable position. The mat that feels so perfect in the direction now looks as indestructible as concrete.
The meditation instructions responded in my mind: “Just sit down and watch your breath.” But there are other plans for my body. Every breathing inspires people to realize new discomfort, which is the sharp knife on my hips, the pain on my shoulders, the little nails and needles running towards my calves. The physical feeling became my whole world, drowning any hope of paying attention to my breathing.
I tried everything. Borrowed different mats from the prop closet. Various positions – Bo, half lotus, kneeling. I even leaned secretly against the back of the hall, against the wall, and it felt like a failure of meditation as I looked at the direct back of experienced practitioners.
Then, on day four, things changed. Maybe it was to fight my experience, or it was the wisdom of surrender, but I finally heard what the teacher kept saying: “Don’t try to change what happened; just kindness.”
The first time I stopped trying to solve my discomfort. Instead, I’m curious about it. What does pain actually look like? Is it constant, or pulse? Where exactly does it start and end? As I explored these issues in a way that was genuine interest rather than resistance, something amazing happened, and the feeling of my body still existed, but my pain began to diminish.
“In pain, the whole teaching is the whole teaching,” Pemachödrön’s words will be my lifeline, and two years later, the back injury at that time changed my relationship with my ongoing partner due to the pain of periodic challenges. I will join the ranks of millions of lives with a quiet pandemic that affects one in five adults worldwide.
Although medications can sometimes lower the sharp edges of body pain, many of us know that managing chronic pain requires more than medication. It calls for a complete reimagining of our relationship with the body and the pain itself.
At every moment of my daily life, the lessons from that meditation hall play a role in vivid details. Simple tasks become exercises for practice. Getting out of bed requires careful breathing and exercise arrangement. Picking up a pen becomes a practice of patience and physical consciousness. Every exercise requires me to learn to draw the same cautious attention of meditation.
Body pain is just the beginning. In the darkness of a sleepless night, lie on my floor, because there is no other place that makes my mind endlessly annoyed: Will I recover? Can I continue to consult with clients in person? How will I pay for the additional medical expenses? These thoughts surround like hungry wolf, testing my newfound limits of acceptance practice.
Working as a therapist brings your own unique challenges. I vividly remember sitting across from the client, maintaining my therapeutic presence while emitting burning pain from the coccyx through my entire spine. Each lesson becomes a practice of dual consciousness – to provide gifts to my clients among them. Sometimes the effort to maintain this balance has drained me and I have almost no energy to drive home.
There is also social dance with chronic pain. The simple question “How are you?” becomes complicated. After a while, telling people that the constant pain will feel heavy. No one wants to be a suffering person forever. So instead, I would smile and say, “I’m fine,” swallowing the truth, not feeling comfortable. These hidden little movements create their own fatigue, a lonely space between public faces and private reality.
I invite you to stop and reflect on your relationship with pain. What story does your ideas create when discomfort arise?
Note how your body reacts – subtle tightening, eager to push away difficult things. Consider how creating a small space around pain, such as opening a window in a muffled room might feel.
Sometimes, I think pain is unnecessary roommates. We didn’t invite it, we didn’t want it to stay, but fighting it only creates greater tension in our homes. Instead, we can acknowledge it here, set the right boundaries and continue to live our lives around it. Sometimes we may even find unexpected gifts, a deeper appreciation of good moments, a compassion for others’ struggles or discovering our own resilience.
Working with pain shows that rehabilitation occurs on multiple levels. As we cope with physical discomfort with a gentle consciousness, we begin to notice how our minds create narratives about pain, how emotions appear in the waves, and how our nervous system responds to friendly concerns. Through this practice, we can learn to expand our attention beyond pain and find that even in difficult times there is a warm sunshine on our faces, the sound of birds outside the window, and the smell of morning coffee.
Years later, my pain wasn’t that severe, but I was still a companion every day. I have a back pillow everywhere, as if it were accessories, and I clearly choose which activities to attend and how long. Gardening used to be a carefree joy, and being on the field has become a practice – exercise is an opportunity to listen to my body’s wisdom. Sometimes, I still find myself lying on the floor, with everything my body expresses in that moment.
But now there are big differences. In the pain I once had with gritted teeth, I learned to respond to my physical signals in a cautious and compassionate way.
As you age, this transition may lead to new physical challenges. Every twist and pain is no longer an enemy to conquer the enemy, but a reminder to be careful, slower, leaning towards oneself with a kind attitude.
That meditation hall clock taught me about impermanence—even the most challenging moments eventually passed. My back injury taught me about acceptance and resilience. Together, these experiences show that while we cannot always choose what happens in our bodies, we can choose how to satisfy these experiences with consciousness and compassion. By doing so, we find that there is no peace found without pain, but in our ability to get along with it skillfully.
About Katie Fleming Thomas
Katie is a traumatized psychotherapist, meditation teacher and guide to help others develop mindfulness and resilience. She is the creator of Freebird meditation, providing transformative guiding practices, as well as a mindfulness-based nicotine smoking cessation program Zenquit. When she doesn’t guide others, she will find daily life, gardening, toast, dancing and meditations on hiking with her husband and animals. She believes that when we turn inward with curiosity and compassion, there is a real change.
