Shinzen guides a meditation for Pain. Part I of III

I'm shinzen young and this is my name is Richard Ford.

And I'm going to demonstrate how to interactively guide a person in working with the issue of physical discomfort. Richard would you prefer rich rich would you say something about the? What you're experiencing now in terms of physical discomfort pain and so forth all the physical discomfort is in the lower back.

Both sides extends down to the hip on the right side.

And then occasionally it's shoulder stiffness and I think it's associated with the back pain in the lower back and is this a condition that with you.

Like most of the time or it's been on and off for 20 something years. I see so it's a longstanding conditions is it something that represents a major impediment in your life or more just sort of inconvenience. It's an inconvenience. But it has been a major impediment. So it's sometimes flares and becomes worse and then other times, it's not so severe.

OK, what we're going to do is I'm going to just start guiding you and you can just follow along and we'll see where it takes us so I'd like you to start by closing your eyes and you could sort of lengthen your spine and settle into your posture.

OK, good.

Now do you feel pretty settled into the posture?

Yes, OK God.

Will call the areas where you feel the discomfort clearly the primary areas.

And I'd like you to focus for a moment on those primary areas.

And.

Get a sense of the size shape position and so forth.

Able to do that.

And is it 1 connected area, or is it several disconnected areas that are the primary.

2 areas to independent areas, OK good.

Now I'd like you to check out and see if.

The physical discomfort in your body is limited to those 2 primaries or whether the primary areas in some way affect the rest of your body you can do a sort of.

Conceptual experiment you can imagine if there was not that primary discomfort with the rest of your body be in some way more comfortable if so, then that represents a spread of influence from the primaries. But if that's not the case. Then there truly isolated and there's no secondary spread.

Can you make a guess as to spread there's a subtle spread does it affect much of your body most of your body or?

The spread is not too wide most of it, OK that is by the way excellent spatial resolution very often when a person has discomfort in their body. Most of the suffering will be in the subtle spread People tend to think it's in the local intensity and sometimes it can be, but subtle is significant. I often say, and the subtle spread. The fact that you can detect that subtle spread is highly significant.

So that's excellent.

So.

Here's what I'd like you to do.

I would like you to work with the not let the primary initially but with the subtle spread. We're going to work with the easier material 1st.

And I'd like you to let your attention freely float within the secondary sensations.

And just sort of note the part of your body like knee face arms that kind of thing where there's secondary discomfort.

And because that secondary discomfort is mild, relative to the primary discomfort. You may be able to have perfect equanimity with it just totally accept it. You may not be able to totally accept the primary sensation. But you may be able to totally accept the secondary sensations. 'cause their milder does that make sense so I'm going to have you do that with spoken labels. I'd like you to do that now.

Smoking labels In other words, you'll say out loud knee face your note. You let your winners freely float within the secondary sensations. Go wherever they want and just say out loud, where you're focusing on the secondary and that will tend to sort of circulate through your body you'll see your your awareness was just sort of naturally go from place to place within the secondary does that make sense good would like you to do that with spoken labels and.

I'll just listen in.

Right.

Shoulder blades.

Neck.

Muscles.

My fingers to make it more impersonal and matter of fact you can just make it like really simple like shoulder.

Finger.

Neck in a sort of gentle and matter of fact voice so you don't have to make it my or like you make it like really simple and sort of impersonal and matter of fact.

Forehead.

Forearms.

Psalms.

Mac.

Spine.

Lower back.

God.