A teaching from the Buddha.

There are two arrows. The first arrow that hits causes great pain and hardship. It hurts. There is a second arrow and this is caused by our own reactions. This second arrow is suffering.

The teaching is that pain & hardship is unavoidable for us all - whether we wear it publicly or privately. However, suffering is a choice.

We need to make the unconscious conscious to relieve suffering & understand our minds & coping strategies. With 60,000 thoughts a day, and between 60 & 95% repeated, that’s a lot of unconscious thinking.⁠are repeated. Each day. Same thoughts. Repeated. That’s a lot of unconscious patterning running the show.

Experiencing pain and hardship - whatever it may be, feels often like the end of the world. It can feel overwhelming and unending. I've been there. The key lesson here though is, although the pain and hardship may be unavoidable, our suffering rests on whether we choose to stay in the pain or look for a way out..

On the journey to wholeness, to freedom of the mind (which are ultimately the goals of yoga and meditation); the pathway out is learning to not identify with the thoughts, the conditioning and patterning. This can be sticky and unpleasant and we all have different work to do for this. And it may be a lifetime's work. At times, even for me, it can feel like I'm just at the beginning.

How can we do this? ⁠

// Meditate - regular meditation practice; noticing your thoughts⁠

// Write - what comes up in your meditations & regular recurring thoughts that you start to notice⁠

// Breathe - regular abdominal breathing practice (I describe an exercise in the full blog- link in bio)⁠

// Friendliness - be kind to yourself when experiencing pain & hardship⁠

// Reach out for impartial support of a friend/coach/mentor⁠

The first steps to reducing our suffering are to commit to a regular meditation practice. More often than not at the moment, my preference is for a body-focused meditation anchor. So you might try and focus on the movement of the abdomen; rising and falling as the breath comes and goes.

This may require some *grounding breaths first to allow tension in the body and mind to release sufficiently in order for the chest to soften and the awareness to shift lower, to the abdomen.

Another powerful meditation is to sit with hands across your heart, and very gently soothe yourself with your hands while repeating to yourself; “I care about your suffering, I care about your pain.” To allow yourself to feel whatever you are feeling, while offering yourself maitri (friendliness/compassion in Sanskrit).

The first arrow of pain and hardship needs to be dealt with with care and patience, and support and compassion. We can work on the suffering though. With care for our pain. We can reduce the suffering.

One thing that we often lose sight of during tough times is all the lessons, all the resilience, all the growth. Even out of pain & hardship we can grow.⁠

*grounding breaths . Sit with the spine up tall, treating the seat we have as a posture to keep us conscious. Feel your body resting on the surface that it’s on; that may be the floor, a cushion or yoga block, it might be a stool or event a seat.

Take a slow comfortable breath in through the nose and exhale through the mouth quite slowly. Do this as many times as you need, carefully, I usually use between 1 and 5 breaths. See if you can make sure the out breath is longer than the in breath.