Enlarging our Hearts: Working with Fear and Pain
During times of heightened anxiety and stress we could use more tools to help us get more grounded. Enter Pema Chödrön: Tibetan Buddhist nun and renowned author of several best-selling books including “When Things Fall Apart,” “Comfortable with Uncertainty,” and “The Places That Scare You.” The titles alone are apt for the collective moment we are facing.
Pema’s quintessential teaching is that we must turn directly towards our pain, to sit in the middle of the fire and breathe it in.
As she puts it, “Rather than letting our negativity get the better of us, we could acknowledge that right now we feel like a piece of shit and not [be] squeamish about taking a good look.”
The idea is that while resistance to our pain only makes it worse, holding it with spaciousness and warmth brings us closer to the truth of our experience. We become more intimate with the difficult feelings, allowing them to soften us and make our hearts more tender, and we gain more access to our inner strength to hold it all. At the same time, the more we practice opening to our pain, the greater our capacity becomes to be present to the suffering of others and our shared humanity.
Pema has many meditations to help us do this practice. What I love about the one I’m sharing here is the image of the heart growing bigger and bigger to fill the whole universe, so that we can cradle our painful feelings with loving kindness and spaciousness.
What might it be like for you to expand rather than contract around your pain? Try it out and notice what happens as you invite in the qualities of kindness, warmth and space when tapping into difficult emotions.
Note: We want to avoid overwhelming ourselves or inducing “empathic distress,” so be mindful of what you need and able to hold right now. This practice may not be for you in this moment. It is also totally OK if you can’t connect to feelings of warmth or kindness for yourself—this is just a practice, so please don’t be hard on yourself.
Below is a meditation based on her teachings:
Begin by checking-in and bringing your attention to whatever you are feeling in the body.
Breath in this feeling deeply, filling you lungs, and breathe out with a sigh.
You may want to place a hand on your chest or wherever you are contacting the feeling in your body.
Breathing in, imagine that you are holding these feelings in the cradle of loving awareness— holding it with warmth and kindness.
Breathing out, sending out kindness, compassion and heartfelt appreciation to yourself. Reminding yourself, “this is tough and we are only human.”
Breathing in, imagine the heart getting bigger and bigger to hold all of this. Imagine filling the whole universe, as you give these feelings space and warmth.
Breathe out, release.
Breathing in, become aware that just as you are holding this feeling in your heart, millions and millions are also feeling this way.
Breathing out, send out a sense of relief for everyone. May I and all other people be free of this suffering.