Being Present vs. Rumination

Hi, welcome back to your Daily Mindfulness. In today's session, I want to talk about the difference between holding space for pain versus ruminating about pain. Now, I often talk about the importance of holding space for your pain in order to, to heal and to integrate it into the wholeness of who you are, rather than just suppressing it. And a common refrain I'll hear in response to that is, you know, all I'm ever doing is thinking about my pain and it does nothing. But I want to be clear.

There is a huge difference between thinking about and ruminating about your pain versus holding it with presence and compassion. The former, ruminating about your pain, creates and perpetuates what's known as secondary suffering. All the thoughts and the ideas about how terrible this is, how much you hate it, how much you wish it would go away. The latter, holding it with compassionate presence, that reduces secondary suffering and because you're no longer caking on all these ideas of how this moment should be and meeting it as it is. The former also reinforces an oppositional relationship to yourself while the latter creates more of a sense of ease and a space of ease.

The former can further fracture parts of yourself while the latter helps us move toward an experience of wholeness. Even though rumination and presence can appear to be two forms of moving closer to an experience, they are two very different things. And it's important that we keep that distinction in mind when we're relating to the parts of us that are going through something difficult. There's a big difference between ruminating about our pain and holding space for our pain. Thank you for your practice.

Let's settle in for today's meditation.