I’ve been thinking a lot about pain this past week. I’ve felt plenty of it too.
I know I’m not the only one whose heart broke listening to the testimony of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford and Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh last Thursday. Since my husband and I were in Washington, DC, that day visiting museums on his birthday, we were just blocks away from Capitol Hill, where the senate hearings were taking place. It was as if the collective energy of all victims of sexual abuse was gathered in the city that day. As I listened to Dr. Blasey Ford’s testimony, I knew that millions of women were reliving their own past traumas at that moment. She was speaking for women dating back to the beginning of time. I could feel it in my heart, my chest, my gut, my limbs, my soul.
It didn’t help that we had chosen to visit the National Museum of African American History and Culture before the hearings were scheduled. After an hour in the slave trade exhibit, I couldn’t take it anymore.
We thought that going to the Newseum to see the history of Pulitzer Prize winners for photojournalism would help. But most of those photos were images of man’s inhumanity to man, natural disasters, people jumping or falling off of buildings, and more suffering. And of course, since it was the Newseum, the Kavanaugh hearings were playing on a two-story high by one block long screen in the foyer.
I felt despondent, sapped of hope, weighed down with collective emotional despair.
I was suffering from emotional contagion and empathic distress — feeling the pain of others so intensely that the pain centers in my own brain were activated.
I tried to put to use the lessons I have learned in my Search Inside Yourself training. When we’re confronted with someone in pain, we can go in two directions: 1) empathic distress or 2) compassion. The compassion route entails extending feelings of love and kindness to the other person. Rather than feeling with them, we feel for them. Brain scans have shown that compassion practice actually lights up different networks of the brain compared to the pain center activation of empathic distress. Instead of being paralyzed by our buzzing pain networks, other neural networks associated with love, feelings of well being, and motivation to act come online.
Last Thursday was the super advanced practice. When we came home, we left the TV off and turned on music to bring in some calming, uplifting energy while we waited for family to arrive for birthday cake. I reminded myself to schedule my “get out the vote” postcard writing parties that I have committed to do once a week between now and the mid-terms (that’s the “motivation to act” part of compassion practice). I gave my son postcards to fill out at his place. The next morning, I took the dog on a long walk, taking in the beauty of the blue sky, the onset of fall, the feel of Mother Earth under my feet, re-grounding myself in the present moment and the reality of what is true for me right NOW.
I am safe. I am healthy. I am loved. I am in alignment with my purpose. I can take action.
We’re going to be OK.
I’ve got to run now to finish preparations for this afternoon’s “Retooling for Pain Management: Transforming the Pain Relationship with Mindfulness and Yoga” workshop, which I’m co-teaching with my beautiful yoga therapist friend Carolyn Bagdoyan. During my meditation this morning, I realized I couldn’t go into this workshop before getting this blog post written, as so much of my experience these past several days draws on the layers of our relationship to pain and suffering that we’ll be exploring today.
If you are local and would like to be on my list of get out the vote postcard writing party invitees, just shoot me an email! And though this afternoon’s Pain Management workshop is full, we will definitely be offering it again. Let me know if you’d like to be on our notification list for the next one.
Also note that the next session of my 30-Day Mindfulness Meditation Challenge begins in just a couple of weeks on Wednesday, October 17. This will be the last time I offer the 30-Day program this year, so if you’ve been considering kickstarting or deepening your daily meditation practice, now is the time! For details and to register, click here.
Be WELL!
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