Pain Without Suffering, an Opportunity to Evolve.

Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional. --Buddhist Saying

Every morning at the end of my shower I turn the water to freezing cold and stand under it, breathing slowly and deeply, for 4-5 minutes. The water is so cold that my fingertips sometimes feel numb and turn almost white. Sometimes I am shivering and have a hard time warming up when I get out. My kids often complain that my hands and skin are cold even an hour or so after my shower. 

You're probably thinking that I'm nuts, but there is a method to the madness. I started this practice as part of a mind-body-spirit challenge I completed a few months ago. When it was presented my initial thought was "No way, I hate the cold." Something made me try it, however, and I had to admit that I felt exhilarated afterwards. I continued the practice after reading a book about the possible health benefits of it--balancing hormones, fighting infection, reducing inflammation, etc. As I continued, I noticed some of these benefits. Neck stiffness related to an old injury disappeared, age-related hormonal symptoms reduced, and I'm pretty sure I avoided a cold that felt like it was starting. 

This practice is, needless to say, uncomfortable. At times it's even painful. I'm noticing, however, that how much I suffer around it varies quite a bit depending on my perspective. I consistently suffer far more in anticipation of my shower than I do during or after it. If I allow myself, I begin to dread my shower. I think about how uncomfortable the cold water will be, how long it will feel standing there, how cold I will feel. Some days I will even try to put it off, and I often tell myself that I'm going to skip it. 

When I actually get into the shower and turn the water to cold and start to breathe, I'm consistently amazed at how little I actually suffer. Sure, it's uncomfortable and even painful at times. I keep breathing, though, and focusing on relaxing my muscles, and the discomfort truly feels minimal. I often don't even really notice how cold the water is. The time passes remarkably quickly and before I know it I am out of the shower, feeling exhilarated and energized. I wonder then why I wasted time and energy dreading it. 

Over time I've become much more aware of how often I create my own unnecessary suffering with my thoughts. I allow myself to engage in a mental battle, the irony being that I create more pain by trying to mentally push it away. 

We often put pain and suffering together and either mistake them for being the same thing, or decide that if we experience pain we will surely suffer. That simply is not the case, however. They are not one and the same, and they do not need to occur together.

Pain is an inevitable part of life, and it is really necessary for growth. We must experience pain, there is no way around it. We do not have to suffer, however. Our suffering only occurs when we resist the inevitability of pain. 

We tend to work very hard to fight pain. Instead of reducing our pain, this fight very often not only intensifies the pain, but adds a nice dose of suffering to it. Our fight with pain leads us to tense up our bodies and our minds. Our muscle tension creates more physical pain and our mental tension adds painful thoughts, expectations, perceptions, emotions, and attitudes to the mix. We end up miserable when we could have stopped at uncomfortable. 

Instead of fighting pain we can work to accept it, and even embrace it as opportunity to evolve. All of our painful experiences include learning. Painful conflicts teach us about ourselves and others, painful breakups teach us about ourselves and our needs, painful experiences teach us about ourselves and the world. Even my cold shower teaches me about myself and my ability to reduce and even avoid suffering. 

You may have noticed a theme there--all of our painful experiences can teach us about ourselves. We can learn about our needs, our desires, our strengths, our weaknesses, our minds, our emotions, and much more. We can learn about our ability to tolerate pain and our ability to reduce our own suffering. With each of these lessons we grow and evolve, and we become more rooted. We give ourselves more of the foundation we need to rise up into possibility, and into greater joy. 

Today let's work to shift our perspective on pain. Let's accept it as inevitable, embrace it as educational, and observe it to find the lessons.

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