I've been dismantling an old blog and found this post. For reasons not germaine to this topic, I stopped going to my yoga school so my specific practices have changed. While that detail of this post may be different, the meat of this article is, I believe, of critical importance, so I am reposting if for you now. This may well be the most important post I've ever written.

Why, exactly, would I get up and go to a 5:30 am class when I know darn well that I am going to be asked to spend prolonged time in physical discomfort? Wouldn't snuggling next to Melvin-Scotty-Sweet Potato Johnson and listening to the frogs in the marsh give me everything I could ever want and take me where I want to go spiritually?

Yes and no.

Waking up next to the love of my life every day is one of the best parts of my life...running neck and neck with falling asleep next to him every night. And the frogs and the spectacular wood ducks in the marsh and the bursting forth of a million trout lillies in my yard definitely feed my spirit. Many things in my life get me high...and soon meditating on the roof season will be here full force and I'll be even higher.

What those things don't teach me is how to live with and work with pain. Pain is a part of life....physical, emotional, spiritual...it is going to be part of your human experience.

In the U.S., we do everything we can to avoid pain (and aging, and death, and loss of sexual potency, and and and...). But despite all our efforts and billions of dollars spent to remedy this and that we still have pain. We still suffer loss. We still age and die. Plans get thwarted. The unexpected happens. It's just the way it is.

I don't know about you, but I would much rather face pain with a few skills under my belt so it doesn't kill me. I stand firmly on the belief that you can't increase your physical and emotional strength without learning how to cope with pain (grief, boredom, fear, anxiety, stress, etc. etc.)

One of the best ways to do this is by gradual exposure to pain and learning how to work with your mind.

If I am standing in the Eagle posture and my deltoids are screaming and my mind is tired and it's early and maybe I just don't want to be in one position for 15 or 20 minutes, my mind is going to be fighting me long and hard. I can EASILY say, "Screw this, I'm not coming tomorrow, this is ridiculous, I can't do this, it's too hard..."

But if I can't handle THAT pain, that self-imposed, totally optional, non-lethal, of no consequence to anyone pain how in the hell am I expecting myself to handle REAL pain...the pain of the loss of someone dear to me, or my own health, for example? It's like an innoculation.

So, while I was in the eagle posture this morning (which may go by different names, and other traditions may use the term "eagle" to describe different postures...) this is what happened in my head.

My instructor hits "play" on the CD that has the song we hold the posture to.

"Crap. " I begin my anticipation of pain and assume the posture.

After a few minutes I get some burning and I start to think, "I don't think I can do this as long today. After all, I was here until 9 last night. Three different classes yesterday of tough postures. I really need a rest, I think. I mean, I'm 43. I've been pushing it hard lately. And a couple nights ago I didn't sleep as well. What's the big deal if I put them down for a few moments?"

And while I am thinking this, my arms are still up.

Then I notice, "Wow, my legs feel really strong. Feet are nice and warm. This actually feels good everywhere but my arms."

"But my arms. I just can't hold them up anymore."

And, yet, while I am thinking this, they are still up. "Can't" is just a belief. A belief that is being dispelled every time I find myself saying I can't and noticing that somehow, I still AM.

Then I start to examine the "pain". What is it that makes me feel I can't hold them up? Let me look into this pain.

There is some tightness, some heat, some shaking. Which of those makes me feel I have to put my arms down? Do I have to put them down because of the shaking? No. How about the heat? No, that actually feels okay. The tightness then? Maybe. Maybe. Is it really true I can't hold them up?

Meanwhile my arms are still up. My body is just standing there and my mind is running all over trying to find ways to justify to myself why I can't do this and why it would be okay to let myself off the hook since I was so good yesterday.

And this takes some time. Soon I realize the song which my instructor is playing is about to complete a cycle and I am hoping he will take pity on me because I've been so good. Yeah, we'll probably get to put our arms down at the end of this cycle, I decide.

I start to feel relief (and a decrease in pain intolerance) because I see the end of the torture in sight.

And then another cycle of the song begins and my instructor doesn't so much as look at us, just serenely standing there like he could go all damn day long. Then my mind starts to get angry at him, think him unreasonable and unsympathetic. I want to blame my pain on him but I'm the one who drove in. He's not MAKING me do anything. He's just standing there holding the posture. Doesn't HE know I can't do this for another round of this song? Apparently he doesn't know that.

Suddenly my pain INTOLERANCE grows. My PAIN didn't change significantly between the last 10 seconds of one song cycle and the opening 10 seconds of the next but my tolerance of it certainly did.

This is huge. HUGE.

You can develop higher pain tolerance but it takes work and consistent practice to do so. Mastering pain is really about mastering your mind. There is nothing to master when I am in bed listening to the frogs and hearing my honey breathing next to me. If I could just live like that for the rest of my life in a little bubble where nothing bad ever happened and nothing I cared about was ever taken away, I'd keep sleeping.

That guarantee has never been given to me.

When I was with my mom last week I watched how her anxiety over what she was anticipating was so much worse than her limitations at several points. Of course, she is disabled and needs assistance to manage stairs and get in and out of vehicles but what I saw (and felt as she clung to me) was that as soon as she became convinced she would fall or couldn't do something she panicked, clutched on to me (or my husband) and let go of everything she knew about how to stand and move her body properly to avoid falling. Elvis completely left the building. Because she never fell and everything was accomplished well she was able to observe that her mind was a bigger obstacle than her body.

I don't want to have to learn that for the first time when I have a stroke and my life is completely dismantled. I want to learn it now, so that when something happens in my life I know how to dance with the pain and hold my center.

A couple more real life examples:

I saved my ex-husband's life when he panicked while swimming in the ocean. He just freaked and started to take in water and I had to hold him and swim him back to shore. In fact, I had to do a similar thing at age 10 when I fell through the ice into water over my head with my little neighbor girl. I had taken swimming lessons which included lessons in just this very situation since we many of us lived on the river and our instructor knew this could happen. I got out and she almost did too but then she had the thought that she didn't have swimming lessons like I did so she was going to die. Once she had that thought, she panicked and slipped back under the ice.

Read that again.

Her mind almost killed her.

Literally.

I had to dive in to fish her out of the river. With no more life saving experience than that, but cultivating an entire life that allowed me to work with pain, stress, my mind (through various practices, most notably martial arts) I was able to draw upon life saving techniques I learned as a child in 3rd grade and not panic allowing me to save my ex when I was 27 and swimming in the ocean.

You have to cultivate these skills as a lifestyle. These are skills that can literally save your life, or someone else's if you master them.

THAT is why endure the "largee pain" at 5:30.

And besides, the moon has been lovely at 4:45 am.