Emotional discomfort, physical discomfort

Invincible_summer

Which is easier for you to overcome? Which is most challenging for you to face? Which do you feel is most beneficial/hindering to your practice?


I realize that both can be intertwined in many cases, but for the sake of the topic let's try to isolate them.

I'd have to say for me, physical discomfort is the most challenging to deal with. I'm a wimp. If I start getting a bit of a cramp during meditation, my mind will be screaming at me to ease the discomfort, whereas if I recall a distressing situation, I can get over it so to speak.

In my everyday life as well - for example, if it's too hot, I'll whinge and have a bad attitude about it. If someone cuts me off in traffic, I'll be upset for a little while but I'll forget about it soon enough.

I think that this low tolerance for discomfort (although i have a fairly high pain tolerance, like when I go to the dentist... which is interesting) hinders me because I let my mind become too wrapped up in the physical sensations of discomfort. For some reason, I can deal with emotional distress and talk myself through it, but physical discomfort makes my mind react so strongly that it's difficult to steer it back on course.


What about you?

lobster

other way around

physical discomfort, yesterday I was all but immobile from gardening . . .hobbling around like a crippled gollum . . . no discomfort
however I was emotionally upset about . . . no doubt something or other . . . some slight . . . cannot remember anything . . . must have an emotional block on it . . .
Worse than I thought . . .

Oh wait I remember, did walking in a circle meditation.
Did not like the circle. It was too damn small!

:om:

John_Spencer

Invincible_summer said:

Which is easier for you to overcome? Which is most challenging for you to face? Which do you feel is most beneficial/hindering to your practice?

Interesting post.

When we experience something physical it becomes 'emotional' only because we label it 'discomfort'.

As you say:

"I'd have to say for me, physical discomfort is the most challenging to deal with. I'm a wimp. If I start getting a bit of a cramp during meditation, my mind will be screaming at me to ease the discomfort..."



I say this because for 15 years I practised as a physiotherapist dealing with people, often in chronic pain and the subject is fascinating for me.

Research suggests that those with long-term pain don't respond best to physiotherapy, medication or surgery but to psychological therapy (particularly CBT).

Research also shows that our responses to pain are conditioned when we are quite young so that some individuals respond to pain with disabling themselves and other don't.

Not quite what you were on about @Invincible_summer but I wanted to mention it.

Do you consider the 5 hindrances when you meditate? - Could be a bit of restlessness and anxiety?

genkaku

My experience from meditation practice is that there is honestly no difference between emotional and physical pain. None.

Knowing that doesn't make me any less of a wimp ... just sayin'.

karasti

Hm, hard to say. I have a much easier time dealing with physical discomfort, but I have a high pain tolerance, too. I can sit while I'm meditating and my feet might go numb, I might get a bruise on my ankle but I don't really notice until later on. It rarely interrupts my practice. But when I injured my knee, it was very distracting to my practice because I couldn't sit anymore. I couldn't get on the floor at all and I couldn't sit for a long time without my leg elevated, so I got really frustrated at not being able to do sitting meditation the way I wanted. That frustration was far worse than the knee pain and swelling.

I've worked through quite a bit of my emotional discomforts. I still have a few and I'm still working to even find out where they originate from so that I can dispel them. Having a hard time with one of them that's been troubling me for a long time, since I was a small child. It's a level of fear that causes me to sit up at night with the lights on and I can't figure out where it came from. I used to be afraid of that fear, if that makes sense. I'd dread it because I knew when it would come, I used to be terrified of my husband being gone over night for any reason. So it's gotten better, I know now that it's just stuff from the past coming up and I can deal with it better. I just haven't gotten to a point I'd like to be with it yet. It's much more difficult for me to manage things like that than physical pain. Except headaches. I cannot handle headaches, at all. I would rather go through child labor and birth again than have a migraine. Thankfully, I haven't had one in years, but they were horrid.

Barra

I don't experience any emotional pain when meditating, nor do I experience physical pain in my daily half hour sits, but after the first day at my last retreat I was experiencing a lot of pain in my back that took 48 hrs to pass. In the future I will switch to using a chair after the first few hours.

lobster

When we formally take a break from Dukkha during meditation, discomfort is still present.
When we informally meditate on the nature of our being as we are, what do we find? Are we fragile? Pained? Suffused with a variety of emotional, intellectual and other varied conflicted arisings?

Full time 'Practice' or Being, devoid of discomfort is enlightenment.
. . . however we can not avoid dukkha, it comes with existence . . . that too is enlightenment.
Samsara and Nirvana are One.

Hello darkness, my old friend
I've come to talk with you again
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence
Paul Simon