Pain Drives Me to Practice
It's true. While there are different doors for different practitioners it is pain that time and time again invites me to approach and deepen my practice.
Pain was the doorway that created the urgency for me to actually commit to daily practice. While I had dabbled on and off with yoga in college and throughout my twenties, I could not source the discipline to actually show upwith consistency. I would periodically buy passes at studios and go on a kick that could last for up to a month, but then I'd always trail off, distracted by other pursuits. Deep down inside I knew that yoga was my path. I even told people, "one day I will commit to this fully". But I could not make it stick until there was enough pain to drive real change.
That portal presented itself in my dad's death. I was 29 years old and we had all thought he had kicked cancer's ass years earlier. My relationship with my dad was intense and complicated, but he was a rock for me. The idea of a universe without my dad was unfathomable. When he died I crumbled for about 2 weeks. I wore pajamas. I cried until my face was covered in snot. I did not bathe much. For the first time in my life I opened to the full force of emotion and it leveled me to the ground.
At the conclusion of these two weeks I had to pick myself up. It was time to shower and go to work. In a moment of clear seeing resolve appeared, "I will get through this with yoga. I will take myself to a yoga class every day when I leave work." And for the first time in my life I followed through. And I showed up. And yoga provided a framework to be with myself in the pain of grief and decades of backlogged feeling. And so a process of feeling and healing began. And it was pain that opened this door.
Fasting forward to this moment I find another doorway opening. Years of sleep disruption from my daughter who struggled to eat and breath in her sleep for the first years of her life has left an imprint on my nervous system. I have lost the ability to sleep through the night. My body is no longer capable of linking sleep cycles. I have downplayed this, and proceeded with my life hoping the issue would resolve itself. But after 6 years this pattern is well established, my system is sensitive and slow to recalibrate. Recently health has suffered as a result. I know what is happening. My body is producing too much Cortisol at the wrong times, mainly the middle of the night. Some part of me is waking to feed the baby or check that she is breathing. My brain knows my child is 6 and thriving, my endocrine system does not.
All along the way the pain of motherhood, which we do not talk enough about, has called me to practice. I practiced LovingKindness every time I fed my infant daughter, I've practiced Mindfulness to manage the symptoms of sleep depravation and I've practiced Self Compassion for the moments when it's hurt like hell. Now I am seeing there is a clear invitation to practice more, to go deeper. For 12 years I've meditated in the morning. At times I've dabbled with sitting again in the evenings before bed with my husband. Like my earlier experience with yoga asana, I know this is good for me, I know this should be my routine. Pain is now once again clarifying the path. If I sit in the evening, I can give my nervous system a chance to settle itself releasing the residue of the day. In sitting before bed, I can lower cortisol production and increase my chances of sleeping soundly and linking sleep cycles. I've tested this hypothesis a few times and it checks out. Now it's just about implementation, showing up.
In the times when I've sat 2x / day my meditation accelerates rapidly, my concentration improves, my awareness becomes subtle and I grow more comfortable in my skin. I know there are rewards beyond sleep that should reinforce this change and help it to stick. But the pain is the invitation that I accept. I wish it were wired another way. That I didn't require pain to get moving and make changes, but if I'm honest, that's just not the case.
As a therapist I see this phenomenon play out with clients too. I can recall talking with my supervisor about a client who was stuck in some self destructive behavior loops. His response was, "there's not enough pain, they're too comfortable. Until there is enough pain they will not change." Often we attempt to avoid seeing the pain directly, burying ourselves in distractions and self defeating stories. Habit energy has powerful momentum behind it and as the concept of Samskara espouses, it leaves grooves on our psyche that make it easy to sleepwalk through life, repeating unconscious patterns. Pain is a wake up call, it stops us in our tracks and confronts us with the truth of things. Life is hard, nothing is permanent and we are ultimately not in control. No matter how distracted we are, when we resist these truths we create suffering for ourselves and others, If we're paying attention, we can directly experience the pain as we cause it in real time, and then like a child who's touched a hot stove, choose not to persist in the harmful behavior.
So here I am before another doorway with another opportunity to choose healing and waking. It will be a day by day choice until it becomes habit. Today I choose practice. Today I choose self love. And tomorrow I will have to choose again. What pain calls you to wake? What choices are you making today?
