Primary vs. Secondary Pain

So let's find a comfortable posture, which could be sitting, lying down or standing. If it's comfortable to do so, you can close your eyes. And we'll start by taking a deep breath together. In through the nose. And slowly out through the mouth.

Inviting the jaw to relax and soften. Letting the shoulders be at ease. As well as the hands and the belly. And as the body starts to settle, let the breath fall back into its natural rhythm. And just spend some time focusing your attention at your breath.

Remember this isn't an imagining of the breath. It's not thinking about the breath. Instead we're feeling it from the inside out. Sometimes it can be helpful to place a hand on the belly to feel it a little more vividly, if you have trouble feeling it otherwise. And enjoy the peace and simplicity of not having to do anything other than just feel your body breathing, the gift and the privilege of that.

So much of our tension and suffering isn't coming from difficult experiences, but rather the thoughts and the emotions that we cake on top of those experiences. In meditation, as we're doing right now, we practice dropping beneath that internal narrative, the judgements and the ideas, and experience something at its most basic simple form. So we'll continue practicing this with the breath as it's a preparation for other things that we might experience in our day. So continue to feel the body breathing. Particularly feeling the belly as it inflates like a balloon on the inhale and deflates on an exhale.

Anchoring your attention at that very simple movement and experience. Regardless of how the breath is for you, if it's long, short, shallow, deep, there's nothing intrinsically right or wrong about it. It just is how it is. But practice viewing the breath in that way. Just with curiosity of, Oh, what is it like to breathe in this moment? As if you were getting to know the breath as a long lost friend.

If ideas, thoughts, judgments arise, just deepen the presence back to the breath. Nothing you need to fix or make better. Dropping beneath the judgmental mind and into the bare experience of breathing. Let's take one more deep breath together. In through the nose.

And out through the mouth. Great job. As you go about your day today, notice when your mind gets caught up in secondary pain, thoughts, emotions, judgments, all the things we cake on top of our experience, especially the difficult experiences. Primary pain, the normal pains of life that's going to be there. But secondary pain, we have some choice around.

And in this meditation, we're practicing dropping beneath the secondary pain and just into the raw experience. Great job. Thank you for your practice. Until then, take care.