Most people, I think, see their mindful practice as a way of finding peace by practicing or training the mind and body to allow energy to flow by accepting positivity and joy. There are times, though, when simply being mindful or having gratitude doesn’t help. Those are generally times of great pain and trauma in our lives. It is in accepting and coming to terms with our pain, mental, physical, and spiritual, that bring us the deepest freedom.

Pain is usually something humans run away from. We try to hide, ignore, or medicate our pain away, but in truth, pain is a way of hiding from what we cannot face. Some of our most traumatic experiences are buried deep in our pain. It’s understanding the trauma of those moments that set us free from the pain. Conversely, relaxing into our pain can free us from some of our deepest held traumas. Feeling the pain of the sprained ankle can help us to stay off it and allow it to heal.

Sometimes there is a greater message. Perhaps the pain stems from an anxiety, an experience that caused a tightness, and to hold that tension in your body until it worked its way into a chronic condition.

The following meditation ,from a Substack newsletter written by Stephen J King a Scotsman that does not write horror novels but definitely has a way with the written and spoken word., can help transmute pain into understanding. You may need to join Substack (it’s free) and you may need to (again free) subscribe to his Substack “Steven J. King – 100% Human. In fact, I recommend it.

A Meditation In Transmuting Pain.Read on Substack

Meditation: The Gift Of Pain by Stephen J. King

You may uncover an experience that caused you to create and hold a tension in your body that grew into a chronic condition. Eastern healing systems like yoga, tai chi, acupressure, and acupuncture are so effective in helping to pinpoint areas of pain caused by energy blockage. In the case of yoga and tai chi, the body is trained to relax and let energy flow into tightly held muscles. This works if the pain started as an emotional trauma or a physical one. Acupuncture and acupressure literally force the muscle to let go. The sensation of relaxing is profound and deeply healing even if you don’t consciously know what was let go.

Pain can be debilitating, but often using mediation to relax into the body can teach you to free yourself from it.