Embracing The Suck
on dealing peacefully with pain - body, mind & heart, a crazy headache experience
When you are in peace, it means that you are governing your kingdom well. - Durante
Hi and how is your kingdom doing today?
So I am sitting here on my yoga mat. It is 9am. I often write right after I take my last mindful breath of my daily practice, when my mind is the clearest it will be all day. Surely you will receive many letters directly from this space.
Today I am writing to tell you about my experience with the crazy headache I had yesterday. Headache. Nausea. Chills. To the point of feeling like I would pass out.
I had spent the morning joyfully helping a friend collect the olives from his trees. And then all of a sudden, I was in pain. Real pain. Impossible pain.
(Maybe not a coincidence after releasing all those emotions of grief in my last letter to you. If you missed it, here it is: Waking Up With Grief.)
open parentesi (
I will remind us over and over again that physical pain is a sign. A friendly reminder from our body that something has changed or needs to be changed. Sometimes these signs do not feel so friendly. But then we remember:
Everything is connected.
Everything is here to serve.
Neither our body (nor our life) is out to get us.
All we need to do is truly listen, sit with, trust, and then proceed.
With this I will stop here. We can circle back another day.
close parentesi )
Back to my headache
Of course, I put myself into bed. My eyes could not bear to stay open for a moment longer. My ears could not hear a single sound. I pulled the hood of my hoodie up past the tip of my nose and tucked myself into a ball under the covers. It was 4pm.
I stayed like this as I noticed day finally turn to night.
For those wondering, I do not take medication. Drug free for 20 years. Instead I meditate and embrace.
Maybe you are shaking your head. Crazy woman, you are thinking. Why not just pop a pill and get on with it. There are surely better things to do in life than suffer from a headache.
Or as my mom always tells me: Child, suffering is so bad for you. Just take an Advil already.
A man who does not understand the benefit of suffering does not live a clever and true life. - Leo Tolstoy
Sitting with the experience - this has become a practice of deep trust that I turn to again and again in all the painful moments of my life - both physical and emotional.
I never regret sitting with myself. It always feels like coming home and back to life. And this is what it looks like:
So I was laying there praying that nobody would disturb me (and wanting attention at the same time - do you know this contradiction?) and obsessing over how horrible I was feeling and on wanting the pain to end.
The sighing and moaning every time you shift your body kind, the kind that gets even louder and more exaggerated when you know that someone can hear you.
But as my husband whispered to me yesterday as he bent over to give my hooded head a kiss, “Everything, even the smallest sigh, is nothing but an identification with the identity of the victim.” (ouch! and thanks hon!)
So… resistance. That moment when we ferociously push away what we don't like, don't want to deal with, aren't handling well - the discomfort and the difficulty. The impossible pain.
I mean like a small dog barking at a huge dog passing by, knowing that she has no shot of intimidating him, but barking hysterically and non-stop from behind her fence.
Woof, woof… I don’t like you. Ggrrr… go away!!!!
This went on for about 30, no maybe 40 minutes, until my mind floated off to how great I was feeling that morning during my practice.
And there it was. The magical moment of remembering. Go back to the practice.
And this is really it. Whatever your practice looks like, whatever you do and use to grow - sports, creativity, music, nature, etc. - can you remember to turn to this when you are in the midst of challenge, physical or emotional?
Because this is the point of practicing. To be able to apply it to real life. To be the person you are while you are learning to grow when life is requiring you to grow.
I feel the goosebumps forming as I text.
Let me repeat this: Be the person you are while you are learning to grow when life is requiring you to grow.
We may know all of this and yet, here we are. Me writing and you reading. This is because we know and then we forget. Like I forgot yesterday. Like you will forget later today. And it is ok because we trust that we know our way back.
I love the expression: Life is not a performance. It is a practice. So we do not have to be perfect.
So for me laying there, but knowing that this was good for nothing, if not more suffering (and victimhood), it meant coming back to what I practice every single morning, to who I am when I am practicing yoga.
With full presence, breathe into it.
Instead of pushing it away, I needed to move deeper into the pain. Actually bringing my breath to the points of intense pain. My head. My sense of nausea. My various aching body parts. And especially, my resisting mind.
Be with it. This is what I repeated to myself:
I see you. I am listening. I know you are here for a great reason. Take your time. I am strong enough to handle not easy and not comfortable.
other random thoughts of that moment:
Running is useless. You will never run faster than your mind. Slow is the way to go. Slow, mindful breath in through the nose. Slow mindful breath out through the mouth. This is a marathon.
Wow, I feel like I am in labor again.
It seems counter productive. Why would you voluntarily look at something that is hurting you?
But what do experts advise us to do when we feel face to face threatened (for example by an agressor)? Do not push back. Stare them in the eyes and do not look away.
Same deal.
And this is the same thing life asks of us. Not to run or push, take a strong and confident posture, rise if you fall, and come back.
It was not easy to stay still. It was not easy to be with discomfort. My mind fought me the entire time. But I remained there calm enough with it all for 7 hours, until I finally fell asleep.
Coming back to the pain and the sensations, to my breath.
Infinite patience produces immediate results. - A Course In Miracles, Helen Schucman
Every time I found myself resisting, I called myself back with more patience and trust.
Breathe in. Breathe out. One breath at a time.
More speaking to myself: You are not alone. Your breath is here to catch you.
Can we do this same thing in life?
When we get distracted, we come back.
When we are knocked to our knees or blown away, we come back.
When out light is dimmed by someone or something, we come back.
When we feel like we are vanishing, when we get lost, when we fall - we come back.
When something hurts so much that we feel like we are going to pass out, we come back.
We break out of the doubt and distrust and we come back.
Why? Because this is what life requires from us and this is what we do.
Attention: This is not a yoga thing
Although my thoughts are often inspired by my yoga practice, you don’t have to practice yoga to practice this in life.
But if you do have this same passion, let me know!
Instead, it is about continuous learning, being an active participant of our one and only life. And loving it even when it isn’t easy or pleasing.
The ability to stick with something that is difficult, and to do it with a calm mind, is one of the primary principles of yoga practice. - One Simple Thing by Eddie Stern
Life is not supposed to be easy. (Sorry mom, I know that you lovingly wanted this for me.) It is supposed to be full. And this requires us to go past our edge of comfort more often than not.
As a popular Navy Seal mantra goes: Embrace the suck. In other words, make friends with the sucky parts. Love ‘em. Know that the suck is a good thing.
When you do, something amazing happens. You realize that…
the awareness of our pain is not painful. The awareness of our discomfort is not uncomfortable. The awareness of our fear is not scary.
Try it next time. Find a peaceful place and look at your pain and discomfort and fear as if you were an outsider. Sit with it. Observe it with curiosity.
You will be amazed.
When we embrace the suck we realize that awareness feels good and comforting and safe. Do you know why?
Because you are not running away and hiding anymore. You release yourself from all the pressure and stress that comes with you wishing your difficulty away.
Embracing the suck really means that you are giving what feels impossible in your life love rather than frustration, impatience, hate, and other negativity.
Reminder: Pain may be inevitable, but suffering is optional.
Baby your discomfort
Think of your difficulty as a child feeling lonely or a scared puppy. They do not want to be pushed out of their lonliness or fear with words and agression. They want a hand in their hand (or paw), arms around them, and a gentle smile.
Love. They want and need love. And so does every painful experience we experience in life.
If I have learned anything with both parenting and pain (particularly when I am dealing with pain in parenting 😉) is that words are worthless.
The feelings behind our actions, the actions backed by feelings. This is what makes the difference.
The hand, the hug, and the smile tells the child, puppy, and our pain to have patience, to trust. That this will pass and that everything is going to be ok.
And with this, they soften. They trust more. The pain softens. We soften. Everything releases and relaxes. Mind, body, and heart.
You will come to know that one of my favorite spots on Substack is Letters From Love with Elizabeth Gilbert (I can’t promise that she won’t be mentioned in every letter of mine).
In her letter with guest Rowan Mangan, she proposes this prompt: Dear Love, How can I find shelter from the storm? (referring to the state of the world and Rowan’s desire to find relief for an anxious heart).
Love tells her that she can’t find shelter from the storms of the world or her life because she isn't supposed to. Love also tells her:
Remember what the monk in India taught you, that if you dig the deepest hole in the world and hide in it, the world will still find you…
You cannot escape your soul’s curriculum here in Earth School, even if you make the biggest pillow fort to bury yourself under.
…How about you cut out the middleman — meaning, how about you stop trying to alter the world in order to find peace, and just find peace?
Come and find shelter inside your mind, little one. You know it’s there. You have experienced inner peace… in the most unlikely of places. You have found it in cancer wards of hospitals; in funeral homes; in a three-hour line at a border patrol; entering a country when you are exhausted after an 11-hour flight; in the middle of an argument; in the hour after someone told you that they never wanted to see you again and didn’t love you; in a divorce court; watching your partner’s body go into the cremation flames…
How did you find that peace? You sat. You settled. You breathed. You called my name and asked for guidance. And I gave you the key to the inner sanctuary — the only shelter you will ever know.
Don’t try to turn off the storms, my love.
From a headache to our life problems to serious world trauma. Everything is connected to this human need to cultivate love and the joy of a peaceful heart. Inner Peace - so that we can continue experiencing life as the miracle that it is.
The big question here:
Can we show up for it all - The good. The bad. The beautiful. The ugly. The easy. The seemingly impossible - knowing that how we show up means everything to how we live this life?
Often it begins with one deep breath and the desire to listen and learn.
The secret to inner peace is having a deep trust that you are capable of dealing with ANY situation with tranquility and love; it is not necessarily about being able to fix or resolve it.
We have all heard stories of people who managed not to lose their inner light in the worst circumstances: in concentration camps, in the aftermath of an atomic explosion, following natural disasters and in the midst of economic depressions, famines, and wars…
I followed an interview with a Tibetan Buddhist monk who had been imprisoned by the Chinese for several years. When the reporter asked him, “Have you ever really been in danger?" "Yes," replied the monk, "several times. “Was this during the times you were tortured?” "No, it was in the moments when I got angry.” The monk did not consider the loss of physical freedom "danger". For him the danger was the loss of spiritual peace. - A Course In Miracles Made Easy by Adam Cohen
Maybe you and I aren’t ready to keep our inner light aflame in a concentration camp or in the aftermath of an atomic explosion, but dealing peacefully with an awful headache could be a good place to start.
This morning I decided to get out of bed. The sun was shining too bright for me to lay there. So I got dressed, walked to my happy place by the pool, and rolled out my mat where the real work was waiting for me.
Why did I experience what I experienced yesterday for no apparent reason? I have a few ideas, but the real answers will come to me as I sit. There is no rush. For now, I was happy to have showed up for myself in an empowering way.
After you show up: This is the moment when you cannot help but feel grateful.
With patience and trust, life remains a miracle. And with this inner peace, I confirm my committment to loving this life. Easy life can be real sweet. May we rejoice.
But true light and love is more often about embracing everything else, one suck at a time. At least, this was what I was reminded yesterday while breathing calmly through a crazy headache.
And once again, our lessons are absolutely everywhere.
ATTENTION: This is a test. Not sure if this is gonna work. It may guide you to listen in your browser. Be patient with me. And please let me know if you were able to hear this one minute voiceover of this last part of this letter. If it doesn’t work, you can read my final words below. Thanks!
Now as we wrap up this letter (place a hand on your heart ) close your eyes with me.
Breathe in. Breathe out. Feel your light brighten from within.
Light in your mind is truth.
Light in your heart is knowledge.
Light in your soul is wisdom.
Light in your life is God.”
(Matshona Dhliwayo)
May your day feel gentle.
my heart reaching out to yours, xo Danni
(n.4/24)
Yes! I could hear your voice! Beautiful! Not quite what I expected. Your voice is sweeter, higher, softer than I imagined as I read. What a great idea to close this way!