Can You Stay With the Discomfort?

A couple weeks ago I invited us all to slow down our pace in life and recognize the preciousness of life. And in doing so create space for our bodies to heal. 

Well I had to do just that. A couple days after the last writing, I experienced an ongoing headache and bodyache for almost five days straight which left me more or less unable to work. I found myself wanting to write but unable to do so.  

At first I took some pain medicine. My energy came back and I was able to do some work again. But as soon as the medicine wore off, all the symptoms came back and I was no better than before. After going through this cycle twice, I felt that the medicine was actually suppressing what the body needed to experience and process so I stopped taking the medicine.  

There’s a growing body of evidence that suggests that taking medicine that just suppresses underlying symptoms decreases the body’s ability to respond effectively, simply because all the pain receptors have been subdued. 

So sensing that I needed to allow the body's natural process to continue, I decided to go without medicine. I had to endure one night of cold sweats. It was one of those nights where one moment the body felt hot and in another moment, cold. I turned clockwise gradually for the whole night in light sleep. My body felt as if it had become a cocoon where structurally my head and body were going through a sort of recalibration.  

After one night of enduring this experience, 90% of my symptoms were gone the next day. I felt light, fresh and solid again. I had taken no medicine and took none afterwards. To my surprise and delight, the body was able to go through its natural recalibration and was now ready for action again. 

I’m not suggesting that you stop taking any critical medicine but just offering my own experience in one instance of life experience. I am suggesting that perhaps taking ‘medicine’ in all instances of pain blindly may not be the wisest decisions for our health. Sometimes feeling the discomfort and enduring it is what’s most beneficial for our long term health. 

When I say ‘medicine’, I also mean any form of physical, mental or emotional bypassing which would suppress the symptoms and not allow us to experience the discomfort in our life. Being able to experience discomfort is what allows us to stay connected to life and naturally allow the next evolution to occur. 

It can be difficult during these times to slow down when our body needs it most, because of the expectations we place on ourselves and those of others that we feel obliged to follow. I remember walking through the house in the evening and justifying my guilt by saying, “I wasn’t feeling well so I had to rest”. Inside, I felt guilty for not having been ‘productive’. 

It can be difficult to let the body heal through its natural course in this way. It’s tempting to take ‘medicine’ to suppress the ‘feeling’ of discomfort and get back to work. That would be convenient and would also allow us to keep the ‘expectations’. 

I’m not suggesting that it’s wrong to take medicine. Though, when we resort to suppressing any discomfort at the slightest occurrence, the underlying pain that was never resolved builds up until it can’t be held any longer. Then it bursts forward and becomes an emergency. It’s what happens when we’ve disconnected ourselves from the flow of life. 

Largely that’s how we operate as a society these days. We suppress short term discomfort through pain killers and let the pain accumulate until we have no choice but to respond. It’s how we disconnect ourselves from life until our response becomes an emergency. 

So perhaps ask yourself where you’re experiencing some discomfort in your life right now. 

What’s the physical, mental or emotional pain of your life right now?

What ‘medicine’ - pharmaceutical or otherwise - are you taking to cover up the discomfort for short term convenience? 

What if you allowed yourself to be with the discomfort and open up the natural journey of growth and evolution for yourself?

What if you became friends with your pain and allowed it to move through you with grace? 

In doing so, you would be allowing pain to serve its very purpose in your life. The purpose of enabling the next chapter of your growth to come forward. 

- Nitin