I have had a love/hate on again/off again relationship with meditation over the last two decades. I went from believing there was something mystical and supernatural about it, to seeing it as something similar to getting all of my steps in. What follows is a brief overview of my experience with meditation across two long term problems and what I understand to be the lesson it taught me.
Grief
In the early 2000’s my family was confronted with a series of tragedies. Grief raised its varied head and spoiled everything. I developed GERD, headaches, heart palpitations, weight gain, weight loss, and a host of other psychological and emotional problems. As this time period was my early 20’s, the world was full of major transitions for friends and family members; people graduated and moved across the country, people got married, people got sick and got better, graduate school and a career in human service began. It was a symphony of chaos. People I knew were telling me to take my time. The grief would run its course and I’d be fine. But the world moved on full steam ahead and I was financially in the red month after month.
By chance, I came across John Kabat-Zinn’s work with Mindfulness Based-Stress Reduction, a field he pioneered. I ended up reading Full Catastrophe Living and Everywhere You Go, There You Are. John Kabat-Zinn’s books and online lectures emphasized paying attention to each moment in each moment (he was once featured on 60 Minutes).
I was gifted a CD set of yoga narrated by Kabat Zinn. The first CD of the set was a body scan meditation. Skeptical, but holding out something magical about meditation, I began a nightly ritual of scanning my body as I followed a narration by Kabat-Zinn…which lasted about 2 minutes before falling asleep.
After making some adjustments, I gained the ability to stay awake for the full 45 minute audio track. With consistent effort, I was able to do it a few days in a row. I even led occasional sessions with my coworkers before a taxing day at a Structured Therapeutic Activities Program (STAP) camp.
The benefits came from realizing how I’d tense my body without realizing it. Tension in my inner thighs represented stress at work. My lower back represented missing my dad and cousin. My temples, jaw, and face reminded me how sleep deprived and lonely I felt. By examining each piece and combining it with random body parts-like the space between each individual toe and the feeling of the inside of my mouth against my cheeks- I realized I could let these physical sensations momentarily dissapate. I slowly became a believer that meditation could help with emotional healing as an adjunct to therapy and medication. But what else could it be a salve for?
Weight Lifting
In the twenty-teens, I began having debilitating chronic pain due to two separate back injuries from competitive weight lifting.
At one point, the pain was so bad, I couldn’t sleep and I had to miss work. With the ambition of trying to get back to training, I dove into a regime of chiropractic care, physical therapy and NSAID medications. The pain persisted.
After several weeks, the pain persisted. I could barely drive and I had to have my secretary tie my shoes. I needed to change something. I was frustrated with the chiropractor and physical therapist. I was also scared of what the NSAIDS would do to my liver. I reached a point where I abandoned these treatments and figured I’d just rest and concentrate on my suffering instead of my pain. Pain is simply a message your body is sending right?
I tried the body scan CD. It was a disaster. Distraction free, the pain fully consumed my conscious awareness. I worried that it made things worse. I worried that meditation might not offer me anything and I was stuck with chronic pain indefinitely.
The same hubris that led me to train through my injuries and make them more severe had me determined to attempt another mindfulness angle. I found another audio track by Kabat-Zinn and downloaded it. This one was specific for chronic pain. It did not have me pay attention to my body in a broad sense. Instead it asked me to lean in and concentrate on the area that hurt.
For an immeasurably short moment, I felt relief. The pain became just an internal message in my body. Nothing more. I had found a way out of this suffering.
Bigger life changes came from insight that I cultivated through this repeated exercise. I came to realize the injuries as warning shots. I was headed for permanent injury and disability if I continued with a sport where all roads seemed to lead to back problems. A small exercise combined with a way of thinking proved not to be an adjunct to therapy and medication, but a replacement.
The Lesson
Famed researcher Lisa Feldman Barrett, PhD has written a lot about physical pain, emotional stress, and our mind’s perception. In How Emotions Are Made she writes:
“Overall the body sensations that are categorized as pain, stress, and emotions are fundamentally the same, even at the levels of neurons in the brain and spinal cord. Distinguishing between pain, stress, and emotions is a form of emotional granularity.” (p 207)
Strategic mindfulness and meditative practices were the answer in alleviating both types of problems I faced. They can also lead the way to important necessary life changes.
For grief, there was an understanding that life would return to normal, or a new normal, and I’d just carry on. My cells remembered the death of my dad and cousins profoundly. Those events anchored every experience for me until I checked in with myself and observed the tension they created. A body scan worked because grief permeated throughout my body.
For my back injury, looking away from the source of pain created more discomfort and stress. Focusing on a particular region of my body helped rob the pain of its power. It also helped me get comfortable with leaving the sport and moving on to something else (I still do weight training, but it’s modified and I’m happy-sometimes sore-but happy).
Meditation can be general and influence a kind of mindful lifestyle. Kabat-Zinn and others recommend utilizing mindfulness throughout much of our day to day experiences- when washing dishes, when getting angry with a spouse, when opening a door.
Meditation can also be a specific targeted exercise- such as in yoga classes.
I have come to discover meditation is not a blanket cure for all problems, but if a problem enters our conscious awareness, meditation and mindfulness practices are a pathway to a solution. This is not to say physical and emotional problems can be manually fixed. We do not determine the rate of our own healing but we can mediate our relief. It takes time, effort, and finding the meditation to match.
If you are interested in learning more about how mindfulness could benefit you, use this link to set up a free 15 minute consultation.