A Gentle Guide to Dealing with Pain in our Life
I believe we all have a relationship with pain.
Whether that relationship feels conscious, avoidant, scared or surrendered, we all have a way to relate to pain in our life. We know that part from death and taxes, experiencing suffering is also quite inherent in our human experience.
I want to gently shed light on this very particular relationship.
Loving Up Our Resistances
One of the most universally known experiences related to pain is all the ways we learn to protect ourselves.
The ways we shield our heart.
We don’t necessarily do so consciously. It can be a very instinctive reaction that we learn, sometimes while we are very young.
There are beliefs that build up around the idea that if we close off, control ourselves more or behave a certain way, then we will be safer.
Unfortunately, that creates a we disconnect from ourselves, our truth and the authentic expression of who we are.
Over time, these beliefs - when they are played out in our lives - end up re-creating more of the pain that we fear.
There is an invitation here to love those resistances. Understand that they were built for a reason and connect to the version of us that needed them to feel safe.
This process feels like deep compassion that melts structures around our heart. An unwinding of a protection that no longer serves us.
It creates a new opening.
Moving Pain Through The Body
But then, if we don’t have protection mechanisms, how do we feel safe?
The alternative to protection is to allow pain to move through us.
Some research says that when we are able to feel an emotion fully, it takes 90 seconds to move through the body.
Not to say that our grief or sadness is entirely gone. But that when they arise, if we are able to allow it, then it doesn’t have to stay in our body.
To be able to do that, it is incredibly helpful to develop a nervous sytem that is grounded.
This is the first thing I work on with clients in my Energy Work sessions - to begin with anchoring in our body.
Bringing a steady presence is what makes it easier to allow sensations, emotions and pain to move through us.
When our body slowly learns that it can feel safe while feeling, there is no need to protect. There is a new belief which builds up that says something like “I can meet what comes up in my life, and I can be safe in doing so”.
Where We Hold Power
Now, there is another, deeper question, that arises which is: why did this pain come about in the first place?
Why did I experience this.
We also hold beliefs about that. Maybe we think we deserve it, that we failed, that it’s never going to work out for us.
Here again, there is an invitation. A profound shift can happen.
One where we move from seeing that something is happenning to us - to seeing that it is happenning for us.
This is where we connect with our own space of power.
Our own choice of how we interact with this pain, how we allow it to show us and teach us something about ourselves…that brings us closer to who we are.
What is invited to be felt, released, alchemized, loved here?
How is this pain a teacher?
When we can answer that question, then we don’t feel that it is happening for no reason anymore. We can see how there is something it is trying to show us.
Often, this is the reason I work with people in Somatic Coaching sessions - to get a better understanding of the growth that is invited through an experience that life is sending us.
As a Coach and Energy Work Practitioner, I spend much of my work translating and supporting women accessing golden teachings through their experiences.
I’ll end on this idea that suffering holds a purpose - a gentle door that opens the way to our own growth. There is an invitation to walk through it.
Learn More
I offer 1:1 Energy Work and Somatic Coaching in Toronto and online. If you’d like to have support along your journey, you can book a session directly.
You can also book an Initial Connection Call so we can get to know each other and I can let you know more about how we can work together.
