Working with Physical Pain
Dealing with physical pain can be very challenging. Physical pain can have significant impact on your quality of life, on what you can do and your emotional outlook. The good news is that there are practices and teachers that can help us deal with physical pain.
Our typical approach to dealing with pain is to get rid of it in any way possible or try to ignore it with distractions. Unfortunately, these approaches only give us temporary relief at best. Fortunately, there are more enlightened approaches to working with pain and healing masters who can help guide us. One important point about these methods are that they help you to move toward the pain, to embrace and even love it, crazy as that sounds. The second aspect that all these approaches have in common is that they require that you can’t want to get rid of the pain. All these approaches can get rid of your pain as long as getting rid of the pain is not your purpose for undertaking the technique. Ironic as it sounds, pain often dissolves when we accept it, release our resistance to it and become indifferent whether it stays or goes. Needless to say, these approaches require a lot of skill and work. Fortunately, all the methods I describe below have guided meditations and techniques to use in your daily life. This can be a really big boost when trying to master these methods.
The method of moving toward the pain can take several forms and each may be suitable for one person and not another. Therefore, I will present several of the best techniques, I have learned, using several different approaches. The first is a scientific method, the second is using mindfulness and the third a Tibetan Buddhist approach.
Dissolving Pain with Open Focus
Dissolving Pain with Open Focus – Dr. Les Fehmi spent decades studying brain waves. He developed a meditation technique that induces specific brain waves that copies seasoned meditators called Open Focus. Dr. Fehmi also developed a technique to help dissolve physical pain using the Open Focus method. You can purchase Open Focus meditation guided recordings here and the Dissolving Pain guided meditation here.
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Natural Pain Relief – Book and Guided Meditations by Shinzen Young. Shinzen Young guides you through his method of using mindfulness meditation to work with pain. He has worked with many people using this method and has decades of meditation practice. You can purchase the book and guided meditations at Sounds True here
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True Source of Healing by Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche – the most profound treatment of physical pain I have experienced. Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche uses Dzogchen meditation technique to bring awareness, openness and warmth to pain. The meditation is described in his book The True Source of Healing and his online course by that name. Rinpoche also has a 5-part guided meditation on pain using this technique on his Youtube channel here
Releasing Pain with the healing Buddha
Below is a guided meditation by Robert Jangchup on using the Healing Buddha to work with pain. This method combines mindfulness with a Vajrayana approach.
Below is a transcript of the guided meditation.
On the Spot Techniques
On the Spot Techniques to reduce the intensity of Physical Pain can be done anywhere and at anytime. The particular technique you use is not as important as being aware that you tightening against or struggling with pain. Once you are aware, then you are open enough to work with whatever technique works for you.
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Body made of light – this technique comes from the Tibetan Buddhist Healing Buddha methods in which you visualize yourself as made of light. This helps to loosen our grip on the pain and makes our mind lighter and freer.
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Infinite body – this is a follow up technique from the Made of Light approach. If visualizing yourself as light does not help reduce the intensity of the pain one can then visualize the light expanding outward more and more until one is infinite. This helps us re-focus on a wider more expansive outlook rather than the narrow self-focus that pain often induces.
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Hold pain for others – with this approach one imagines that you can hold the pain in trust for others. One can even imagine taking on the pain for others. A student once asked His Holiness the Dalai Lama if one can take on the pain of others. He said no, but think about what that does to your mind if you think in that way. The technique tends to help expand our self centered thinking to thinking about the suffering of others.
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Give the pain to your ego – this technique was proposed by Lama Zopa Rinpoche and is a way to step back from the pain and separate yourself from your ego which is the one that suffers from the pain.
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Give the pain to a higher being – if you are not up embracing or holding your pain give it to someone who can, someone who can help you carry the burden. This being can be anybody you revere or look up to, who has great spiritual presence.
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Purify the Pain – typically when we feel physical pain we have feelings of aversion and resistance toward it and this leads to further suffering. But if we can welcome or be with the pain, even for a moment, we start to change the habit of resistance and start to reduce the suffering. So, every time pain comes up and you can loosen your resistance, you are purifying that suffering.
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Enter the Healing Buddha’s Garden – imagine you are in the Healing Buddha’s mandala which is a healing garden filled with healing plants, herbs and substances. Everything around you is healing. Water is blessed nectar, food is medicinal substance, healing light is reflected and emanated from everywhere. With this technique you use your imagination to bring your mind into a healing attitude.