As we explore the body through the breath, it’s necessary to have a trusted guide on your journey into uncharted world.
Otherwise, you can end up practicing in unwise ways as I have before. You also need an experienced teacher to tell you when you’re not trying hard enough and when you’re trying too hard.
As my teacher has told me, the goal is not to simply endure pain but to fully comprehend it.
Questions will invariably come to mind when you are more attuned to the experience of pain in the body, but it can be helpful to prepare questions beforehand.
Some questions that my teachers and my teacher’s teachers have suggested are: What specific part of the body is painful? Why are other parts of the body not painful? Why is one part painful at this time and not at other times?
Pain is a uniquely complex and subjective experience. We can’t possibly explain the depth of our pain with others.
There are people who suffer a diagnosable injury and feel little or no pain at all. And there are people who suffer no diagnosable injury and feel an agonizing degree of pain.
As we work with the breath in the body, we can experience changes in our perception of pain.
That raises obvious questions: Who or what is experiencing the pain? And where does the pain come from?
Physical pain is probably the most difficult teacher that we’ll encounter in our lives, but it will teach us many valuable lessons that we need to learn to graduate from the school of life.
