Willing to Pause and Feel
by Daron Larson
Photo: Viki Mohamad on Unsplash
You don't have to have a formal sitting meditation practice to experience the benefits of mindfulness. Someone whose practice is sneaking attention exercises into his life shared this example with me.
He told me his most recent trip to the grocery store was the worst experience he's had so far trying to navigate social distancing constraints. The science-fiction vibe was the same, but the air felt more charged with tension. The store was small and people seemed to be ignoring each other rather than negotiating the space together.
The biggest challenge came when it was time to check out. It was unclear where he was supposed to stand. The lines weren't moving.
A stressed-out clerk opened the customer service desk and waved him over, but then balked when she realized he had a full cart. There was an awkward moment when he offered to get back in line, but the clerk tried to muscle through in spite of not being set up with a scale to weigh produce. My friend reported feeling frustrated, awkward, and embarrassed.
He felt wiped out walking back to his car. He decided to take a minute before driving home to see if he could find any relaxation anywhere in his body — something I like to dare people to try when they're feeling uncomfortable (working out, having an argument, sitting in a dentist's chair...).
What he noticed surprised him. Not only could he find plenty of relaxation to savor for a bit, but he actually wasn't able to find any observable physical or emotional discomfort. He assumed the tension and emotion would be so pervasive that the challenge would be to find any neutral or comfortable sensations at all. He was ready to aim as low as needed.
Instead, he realized that the "pain" was somehow all happening in the activity of his mind — his thoughts, what he was saying to himself, what he was imagining other people thinking, the mental effort to hold it together in the midst of the upsetting circumstance.
This direct observation resulted in a tangible shift. He described the intense sense of unease dropping away without any effort on his part. This didn't make the experience pleasant. It just allowed him to realize that the unpleasantness was already over. The residue showed up as a mental activity. When he observed this, his thinking eased up. He felt a tangible sense of relief.
What stands out in his "sensory perception field notes" is the element of surprise he experienced in response to the direct observation of sensory details.
This doesn't mean mindfulness provides some kind of magical exemption from discomfort. Not at all. It's the opposite.
It means when practiced consistently — with or without meditation — we can sometimes change the degree to which we fight against some present discomfort.
Very often this simply means being willing to pause and look — or feel — more closely to notice what's actually playing out in real-time.