Our mind does not want to believe this….the way out of pain is into it.
 Resistance is futile and only makes pain worse.
 Dive in to it.
 Dive deeper than it.
 Know that always,
 Always,  there is something mysterious, sublime, and beautiful that is deeper than the pain.
 It only reveals itself when we have [...]

It seems to me in our journey living with pain, that one of the central ingredients that is really useful is to cooperate with pain. To allow what is showing up here and now today in my life the space to be here. Just this attitude has a transformative effect and impact. When we agree [...]

At the beginning of learning to smile with pain, we will find that there are often times where we just don’t feel like smiling! We feel much more like screaming, or  yelling, or collapsing, or fighting, or hating, or just simply blanking out the pain. In the process of learning to live well with pain, we [...]

One of the things that has really worked for me in learning to live well with pain is cultivating presence. Presence can be in any form, stillness, inner peace, silence, a sense of joy, courage, compassion, loving kindness, it manifests according to what is needed in the moment. The reality of living with pain is [...]

I notice that we are often so self obsessed that we miss the very thing that we are. We miss the qualities of beauty, divinity and presence. We miss the fact of our own goldeness, brightness, and brilliance. We stay focused in our limited small painful existence. When we are in physical pain most of [...]

Our attitude towards our pain is everything. HOW we are with our pain is the key to living well with it……. Thats my take on it anyways. Having lived with various degrees, intensities, types, stages and cycles of pain since I was a small child, one thing I have learnt that doesn’t work is fighting [...]

When I really breathe in my own pain, and when I connect  intimately with every other person in this very moment who is in this very same pain as I am, what happens? When I really do this sincerely, the opposite can happen to what my  mind fears….mind says how can I bear that much [...]

10 minutes on the eliptical machine this morning feels like a massive challenge. my own personal mini marathon, at the last two minutes Im just using pure will power to keep going. My legs just say no, we cant do this, stop, get off, you are killing us with pain!  Yet something in me says [...]

Living well with pain is a bit like baking a cake, or cooking a really great meal. Whatever ingredients we use and how well we prepare them and work with them determines the quality of the cake or the meal, and even more importantly whether or not its delicious or not! Same with working with [...]

Freedom with Pain principles apply to emotional pain too…. A dear family member dies, or a marriage or relationship break up happens, or  a friend gets injured in a terrible  accident, or you just have a fight with someone you love and care about… Emotional suffering comes in so many guises. Yet knowing this one [...]