In this episode of the Empower Students Now podcast, Amanda explores the complexities of working with physical, mental, and emotional pain, drawing from the teachings of mindfulness expert Christiane Wolf MD. The discussion covers the prevalence of chronic pain, differentiates between pain and suffering, and introduces techniques for managing pain using mindfulness and meditation. The episode includes a guided meditation designed to help listeners identify and manage pain more effectively, aiming to offer valuable insights and alleviation strategies for both educators and anyone experiencing chronic pain or the grief of the loss of a loved one.

00:00 Introduction to Working with Pain
00:05 Meet Christian Wolf: Mindfulness Expert
01:11 Personal Experiences with Chronic Pain
01:35 Understanding Pain: Physical and Mental
04:50 Cultural Attitudes Towards Pain
09:15 The Two Arrows of Pain
12:22 Practical Techniques for Managing Pain
23:24 Guided Meditation for Pain Relief

Resources:

https://www.christianewolf.com/

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Transcript:

Amanda: [00:00:00] Today’s episode is on the topic of working with pain. A lot of what I’ve learned about this topic is from a wonderful meditation teacher, an expert in this area who has a website, and I’d love to recommend. Her website is linked in the show notes. Her name is Christian Wolf and her website is christian wolf.com. So I will put a link to her website in the show notes so you can go check her out for yourself.

Christian Wolf. Is a mindfulness based stress reduction teacher, MBSR, and also has many other trainings and roles, and she’s pretty amazing. I, I really admire and, and really look up to the work that she does. And I learned about her through my mindfulness meditation teacher training [00:01:00] program. Uh, she was a guest teacher and she also led my retreat, uh, my, my three day, um, meditation retreat.

And so I also have experienced years of. Unexplained chronic pain, and I’ll talk a little bit about that in this episode. Actually, one of the most. Shocking statistics I learned is that one in three people suffer with chronic pain. Um, and so this episode is about physical pain definitely, but it’s also about mental pain and how do you continue to practice mindfulness and meditation when you’re under.

Just really sort of, I mean, even minor pain can cause you to turn away from, [00:02:00] from this, these practices and, and try and zone out, which is, can be healthy. Um, not to force yourself or arm wrestle yourself, you know, into doing something like meditate when you’re in pain, but small amounts of pain. Medium amounts of pain, huge, painful moments in your life, or huge pains that involve chronic pain.

Uh, injuries. Just heartbreak. That’s what this episode is about. It’s about all of it. It’s about all the pain and what do you do and how do you work with it. Welcome to the Empower Students Now podcast. A podcast about equity, neurodiversity, mindfulness, and student engagement. There’s a lot that needs to change in our education system.

The good news is teachers have the power to make these changes now.

This is [00:03:00] part seven in an eight part series on the topics of mindfulness and meditation and all of these classes I taught about a year ago during a practicum experience for my mindfulness and meditation teacher certification program, which I recently completed, and I’m sharing all of this. Information because I think it’s very, very, very valuable, especially for people who work with children and who have all of the pressures and stresses that teachers have and that teachers face.

And what better time to do this and share this information. But during the summer, uh, when teachers have some time to themselves, so I hope that you’re enjoying this, but you could also listen to it. Anytime you wanna come back to it and share it with a friend or a colleague, that would be awesome too. So let’s go ahead and start talking about this topic of pain.

[00:04:00] There’s something important that I think we need to admit, and that’s that pain is everywhere. It’s constant. It’s, I mean, it comes and goes. Uh, some people experience it. Like just nonstop, uh, people who have chronic pain. Uh, but you can also have nonstop pain if you’re going through, say, a divorce or you’ve lost a loved one.

Uh, a loved one has passed away. Um, I mean, these are. Moments in a person’s life that are incredibly painful, and so pain can be just nonstop. It can also come and go. And so just. Understanding that I think is really important. And I think it’s really strange I that in our culture we don’t talk about pain more.

Uh, I feel like it’s very [00:05:00] taboo almost. It’s, it’s almost taboo to talk about your pain too much because you’re accused of being a complainer. Uh, I think that in our culture, we push pain away. We push it. Out of our conversations because people in our culture, and I’m talking about American culture, we don’t know how to talk about it.

We don’t know how to approach it. It’s no one’s taught us and we have these ideas that began, you know. W with the start of our country, these ideas of being independent and making your own way and not relying too much on others. Um, these are all ideas that, that I think. That our founding fathers had, right?

Like, and, and that we wanted to be independent from, from Great Britain, right? We wanted to be able to be our own country. And, and so a lot of these [00:06:00] values, they have roots and history, and they impact the way we see the world and the way that we expect others and ourselves to behave. And so I think it’s really important to just normalize that.

Everyone experiences pain and that it’s important to talk about it. It’s important to not push it away. Uh, and I know some people might say, but, but like, if you talk about it too much, you know, isn’t that wallowing? And you know, yes, with everything there are, there are boundaries, or not boundaries, but, uh, there’s balance and, and striking.

A balance obviously is very challenging as well. But I. I’m someone who, as I said before, have experienced a lot of chronic pain for the last, I don’t know, 10 years in my back, mainly my back and neck. But in the last few years, my whole body, uh, muscle issues and [00:07:00] also skin, uh, rashes and just a lot of. Of unexplainable health issues, uh, that I’ve definitely seen doctors for and not gotten answers, the answers that I would hope for.

Um, ’cause there’s not one thing you can point to that’s Yes. That’s what’s causing it. That it’s kind of many things coming together. So there’s also this. We also need to talk about, you know, before I talk about working with pain, this idea that sometimes no pain, no gain, right? Like that, that, that we are humans willing to endure pain and sacrifice, right?

Like for our independence, or to have a fit body. You know, weightlifting can be painful, exercise can be intense. Giving birth is so. Incredibly painful, yet people [00:08:00] still do it. So there’s these, like that type of pain, the, the pain that you’re willing to undergo because you, you can get something in return for it.

Uh, and so basically right now I’m defining like. What are we talking about? We’re talking about pain. Um, we’re talking about it all right. But there’s the kind of pain that you don’t get anything out of it. You know, like what I’m talking about with back pain or if you’re having, um. Problems with a coworker, like, or you’re feeling left out.

You know, I’ve felt that many times in, in schools that I’ve worked for, just kind of an outsider, not part of the in crowd, right? That’s painful. Um, feeling like you can’t really speak your mind, that’s painful and you’re not gaining really anything from it. And so how do we, how do we work with that? So what I [00:09:00] wanna explain is.

That. And what’s really probably the most important thing that you need to understand when working with pain. So now I’m gonna start getting into that. Like how do we work with this? Is that there’s two parts to pain, any kind of pain, and I’m talking about physical and mental. Okay. So there’s the part that’s painful, right?

Actual pain. So let’s just think about being left out, uh, of a group, right? Feeling isolated, feeling like you’re an outsider, feeling like you’re misunderstood. And I mean, students feel this pain every day, you know, at school, not on all of them, but I don’t know, teens, middle schoolers, this is, this is something that they try really hard to avoid because.

Um, they don’t want to be the outside insider, you know, they really wanna fit in. So there’s that, there’s the part of [00:10:00] the actual, like, what’s happening. So that’s one aspect of the pain. Like, people are looking at you weird. Uh, it looks like they’re, they’re whispering and you see them whispering and then looking at you.

That’s, and then that, that is what’s causing the pain, right. But then there’s this second painful part and, uh, it’s called, so that’s the, like the first arrow. So the, this is, um, a Buddhist idea called the this Two arrows. It’s a classic Buddhist story where the first arrow is like those bad looks that people are giving you, making you feel like you are an outsider.

That’s the first arrow, and then the second arrow. Is your own thoughts about it. So what’s going on for you internally when it comes to what’s happening? Are you feeling like shameful, maybe like, or [00:11:00] maybe you agree with these people, you think, yeah, there’s something wrong with me. So that’s the second arrow is feeling like.

Wow, that’s painful. They look like they don’t like me, you know, or they’re whispering about me or whatever. And, and that’s also an interpretation. They could be, I mean, people are pretty intuitive, honestly. I think, um, I, I feel like I can intuit pretty well when someone’s not really a fan of me, but. You don’t really know what’s going on.

This might be a terrible example actually. Maybe I should use a different example, like a physical pain. Okay, so this might help you understand it. So the physical pain, you stub your toe and that happens. And that you can feel the throbbing, right? The throbbing of the toe. You just stubbed it. Ow. That’s the first arrow.

The second arrow is your thoughts about how. How terrible it is. Like who put [00:12:00] this thing here, this piece of furniture, like starting to blame your spouse, your, your significant other, right? Like, who put this here? And oh my gosh, what if I broke my toe? I need to go to the hospital. It, it is still hurting an hour later, right?

These are all thoughts about what happened. And so that’s the second arrow. So Christian Wolf talks about. That there’s a difference between pain and suffering. And the pain is the first arrow, the thing that happened, and the suffering is your reaction to it. Uh, that’s negative. Trying to push it away, right?

So it’s like twofold. And in order to work with pain, we have to be able to differentiate between these two types of pain, the first and the second arrow, because. And the reason why, and this is [00:13:00] why this is so powerful, is because you can do something about the second arrow. You don’t have to let that second arrow dig in.

You have control over your own mind. You have your, you have the ability to witness the pain without getting sucked into it and without worsening it through your suffering thoughts. The, the technique is just. It, you get better at it, the more you meditate because you’re, you’re noticing the thoughts that you have about the pain.

Uh, but then there’s also this whole idea, which. Uh, Christian Wolf Wolf talks about this, that this is a trap. Uh, sometimes people, there’s like this third thing that happens, which is you notice the sensations of the pain. You know, it’s, it’s, it hurts and then you notice yourself getting upset about it and wishing that it.

Wasn’t so, and then you notice, oh no, I’m getting sucked into [00:14:00] it. And then you start kind of admonishing yourself for that. And so it’s just like this, certainly like this constant pain. Right? And so just, um, what she says about this is that your pain deserves compassion, bringing compassion, bringing kindness.

And she says sometimes the est thing you can do in a moment of. If of a lot of pain is, is not to meditate, you know, usually that might be too much. What, what, what helps your nervous system? Netflix, uh, going on a walk with your dog, organizing your linen closet, you know, like. Whatever, you know, eating. Um, sometimes this is just what we need to do.

We need to be able to numb out. And so what I love about this is that it’s kind, you know, it’s not forceful. We’re not being [00:15:00] mean to ourselves. You know, we’re not shooting ourselves with more and more arrows. And, um, she tells this story of like Zen Dharma teachers who have undergone, you know, like this teacher.

Who went, underwent like a lot of like chemotherapy and just had so much severe pain because of cancer. And that mindfulness just goes out the window even for Zen teachers. And so I just love her for telling, telling this story. I don’t know who she was referring to. She didn’t name any names, but it’s like they’re human too.

Um. But when we feel resourced enough, when we feel like, okay, I think I’m able to sit with this to allow it, there’s this triangle, right? So there’s the physical sensations of the pain and even pain of the heart can have physical sensations if, if you’ve, if someone’s died, right? Or, um, [00:16:00] I mean, I’m talking about all these extremely painful things.

That could happen. Um, but like you, there are sensations associated, you know, physical sensations associated with heartbreak. Right? And that’s why they call it heartbreak, because a lot of people feel this pain in their chest when they’ve lost someone through, like a divorce, a breakup, or death, right? So there’s the physical sensations of the pain, there’s the emotions that you have about it.

You know, like maybe you feel just regretful. Depressed, sad, stressed out. And then there’s the thoughts and the stories about what’s going on. So there’s these three aspects, a triangle that you can attend to, and you just ask yourself, what most needs my attention right now? And if it’s, you know, the physical sensations just touching into them.

Thinking about, you [00:17:00] know, the sensations and, and maybe describing them in your own mind and then touching into a place in your body that’s not in pain. And so sort of body scans can be really helpful in doing this and, but, or maybe the thoughts, the stories that are painful need your attention. Maybe you need to journal and question some of the thoughts that you’re having about this pain.

I feel like I need to do this. I’ve been very upset about my. My pain recently because, you know, when you try every single thing you possibly can to try and get better and it’s just still not working, you could feel a lot of, of resentment and, um, anger and, uh, even talking about it right now, I can feel sensations in my eyes.

And sometimes I think thoughts like, I will never not be in pain. This will always exist. I, I don’t think I’ll ever have a life without [00:18:00] pain anymore. And I think I kind of reminisce about my childhood and times in my life when I didn’t have chronic pain and I get upset that I didn’t appreciate it more.

Right? But like that thought that this is never gonna end, that I will never not be in pain. It’s. It’s a really sad, hard thought, and it can make me cry, and if I get stuck in that, it can cause so much more pain. And so what I’ve learned, and I have tried MBSR, mindfulness-based stress reduction meditations, they recommend 45 minutes a day.

Of like lying down or sitting in a comfortable position and just breathing and, and doing, you know, body scan meditations and doing it. I, I don’t remember how many days they recommend 90 days or something. I didn’t do 90 days. I think I did like a couple weeks of meditating for 45 minutes a day. And it’s, it’s incredible like [00:19:00] how your pain changes.

It’s not always, I’m not always in pain. And that’s one thing that was so. Incredible for me to realize is ’cause my thoughts were that I was always in pain, but when I meditated. Sometimes I wasn’t. And I would notice that, and I would notice like, oh, my pain moved. You know, it’s not, I don’t feel it in that one place anymore.

I feel it in this other place. And it’s, it’s not really pain. It’s more like a tickling sensation or, you know, whatever. Like it, the sensations change and they move. Right now my left calf is very, it feels swollen, it feels sore, it feels kind of bruised and. I’ve been massaging it a lot and maybe making it worse.

Sometimes it’s there and sometimes it’s not, and. When I’m noticing that it’s there and I am constant, and I think like, gosh, it’s always hurting. You know, that’s the second arrow. Like, that’s, that’s the thought that it’s always there. But when I [00:20:00] meditate, you know, you can, you can kind of pinpoint when it’s there and when it’s not.

So, you know, just being able to label like the sensations that you’re having or the thoughts that you’re having so that you can kind of step outside of yourself and be, you know, an observer rather than being sucked into it. And there’s so many different sensations to pain. You could, you know, it’s stabbing, it’s pressure.

It feels like a needle. It’s throbbing, it’s numb, it’s tight. You know, like, uh, there’s just a lot of different ways you can label what’s happening, you know, in your body, in your heart, in your eyes. Sometimes I feel tension in my, um, my jaw. And when people start to pay attention, when they’re resourced enough, right, they’ll notice a lot of grief and anger, uh, over having to deal with all of this pain.

And they didn’t turn toward the pain before, and now they’re starting to notice it and they [00:21:00] start, you know, we get used to avoiding it and turning away and suffering even more. And feeling like our bodies have betrayed us, right? And, and a lot of people have these stories about their pain. Um, and so being able to kind of write about it, reflect about it, question it, you know, question the ideas you have about it, it can help us realize.

That the suffering thoughts, the suffering stories that are adding to our pain, and it gives us an opportunity to lessen our pain by not getting so absorbed in those suffering stories. You don’t have to believe this, you know, and, and just sort of thinking about pain differently. Like that pain is a useful, a useful signal.

It’s useful because it’s our [00:22:00] body’s way of surviving, of telling us to pay attention, but chronic pain, you know, when pain is persistent for very long period of time, I think it’s like over a month. You know, is that useful? No, it’s not. And I’ve learned a lot about, um, glial cells. Actually. There’s a New York Times article about glial cells, and I have a pain management doctor who taught me a bit about glial cells and that.

They can malfunction. There are cells that, um, are involved in, uh, sending pain signals. They’re in our spine and they send pain signals throughout the body and sometimes they can start to malfunction and send pain signals to places that aren’t actually in pain. And that is sort of what defines chronic pain.

So I know that this is a lot of information and I just think one of the best [00:23:00] ways to work with pain is to, to realize that there are these two elements. There’s the actual painful experience, and then there’s that, the thoughts that you have about, and the stories that you have about them, and tapping into those thoughts, tapping into those stories and sort of.

Separating yourself from them and not getting so sucked into them. So you’re not shooting them, shooting yourself twice. Right. Uh, with another painful arrow. And so this guided me meditation that I’m going to facilitate for you will sort of walk you through noticing either physical or mental pain that you might be going through right now and, and identifying like.

Those, the three parts of the triangle, the emotions, the thoughts, and the sensations in your body. So let’s try this together now.[00:24:00]

Get into a very comfortable position now with your favorite pillow or under a blanket if you wish. You can be sitting or laying down. Whatever is best for you. Your clothing should be loose and comfortable and not restrictive around your waist as to allow for full and easy breathing. You are in a safe and secure place and nothing can distract you.

Even noises going on in your house, just allow them to be rest in knowing that this time is entirely yours.

Nobody needs you right now. [00:25:00] You have nowhere to be and nowhere to go

find comfort in. Knowing that this moment is for you, this is time to rest and relax and nourish your body and mind. You deserve this break.

Bring awareness to the fact that each moment that passes by is part of your life. It’s here, it’s now, and then it goes and becomes a memory.

As humans, we have a tendency to want things to be [00:26:00] different from how. They are, but we are going to let this desire vanish and allow things to be exactly how they are. Don’t try to change anything or wish that something was different. Experience letting yourself be exactly how you are in this moment.

Any judgements you have about yourself or. This meditation or other people, critical things, you usually think about your body or mind. Let it all fade, fade, fade away.

Those things don’t matter during this time with yourself. There’s no right way to feel, just as there’s no wrong way to feel. [00:27:00] Feelings are simply just feelings.

Acknowledge how you are able to sense any sensations in your body in the moment and accept it. It’s completely okay to feel whatever you are feeling.

Now, I’ll guide you in a body scan. At this moment, feel the weight of your arms by your sides.

Notice your hands. Your fingers. Can you feel your thumbs? How about your pointer fingers? Since what they’re touching.[00:28:00]

Your middle finger, your ring finger, your pinkies.

Become aware of your breath. Now,

where do you feel it most your nose? Your mouth, chest, your stomach. Follow your breath.

Maybe take a few deep breaths now.

Feel the sensations.

Notice now,[00:29:00]

bring awareness to your belly. Observe the rising and falling that happens with your breath. Expanding and contracting.

Now, notice your feet.

Your toes.

What do they feel like? What are they touching?

I wonder if you can imagine that when you breathe [00:30:00] in and you breathe out, that breath can travel all the way to your toes. Breathe in and down to your toes now

and on the out breath, allow your entire legs to become deeply relaxed.

Use your beautiful imagination to witness your breath going all the way up to your head. Now it’s filling your mouth, your nose, your eyes, your ears, and on the out outbreath, your head becomes more relaxed than it’s ever been. Inhale [00:31:00] all the way into the tiny areas of your brain, restoring your mind, and on the exhale, your mind becomes more open and relaxed than it’s ever been before.

Whatever feelings you’re having now, just notice them. There’s feelings, sensations of pain, physical pain. Just notice and maybe name, what is the sensation? It is tingling, stabbing, itching, numbness. What is the sensation?[00:32:00]

Now notice a part of your body that feels pleasant.

Note some of the sensations you have there.

Maybe warm,

comfy,

painless. Neutral.

Allow yourself to relax even more now.[00:33:00]

Feel the sensations of the air on your skin,

whatever thoughts are coming up. Just notice them. Name them.

Maybe they’re pleasant, maybe they’re unpleasant. Just allow whatever’s here to be here. You’re able to fully let go. No desires, no feelings or thoughts, just. Complete presence in this moment,[00:34:00]

watching all of the tiny, little subtle elements of mind, body, and emotion, and how they all work together. It’s incredible.

All that can happen within one tiny moment. All that’s constantly changing.

Allow yourself to become aware of the sounds in your environment now.

You might wiggle your toes, wiggle your fingers. As we come to the end of this [00:35:00] practice.

In your own time, you can open your eyes. And feel gratitude towards yourself for taking this time to turn inward. It’s so [00:36:00] [00:37:00] important.