Suffering: Learning to Sit in the Discomfort of Temporary Feelings

According to the philosophy of Buddhism, one of the Four Noble Truths is that all of life is suffering.  Or better put, suffering is just a part of life.  But you might say you have good and happy days, so not "all" of life is suffering.  But the idea is that if you think those good and happy days will last, you will suffer.  Reality will wake you to the fact that all things constantly change (which is another of the Four Noble Truths), and that even good and happy days will change.  So learning to sit with suffering is a skill that can lower anxiety and stress, which is related to our faulty beliefs that life should be good all the time.  In fact, another of the Four Noble truths is that suffering can end when we stop hanging on to such beliefs that life should have no suffering, or if it does have suffering, we should be exempt from it and have a way out.

Now, this doesn't mean we should go around seeking things to suffer about.  Nor does it mean we should try to find joy in suffering, or pretend it's not really true suffering.  But the idea behind learning to sit with suffering when it occurs is to help us see that we can be present even when things aren't going so swell.  It also helps us see that suffering doesn't last any more than happiness does.  They both occur, but nothing (not even joy or sadness), lasts indefinitely.

For example, when a person is trying to break a bad habit, such as drinking, they may find that when cravings come, they are suffering.  To run from the suffering they might reach for alcohol or other substances to try to make the discomfort stop.  But if an individual can learn to sit in the discomfort instead, they will eventually see that cravings don't last, and so the suffering doesn't either.  But if we try to run from the reality of life's discomforts, we only get even more uncomfortable and suffer even more.

So too, when we experience anxiety it's also a good idea to try to decipher if it's the kind of anxiety that just comes with life, or if it is excessive anxiety.  If it is normal to feel anxiety about a particular event in life, then trying to escape it might not be the best answer.  Avoidant behavior and isolation can prevent the realization that anxiety doesn't last any more than relaxation does.  Therefore, trying small steps towards exposing oneself to the stressful life event is good medicine.  Taken in small steps, one can learn to face some of the more anxiety provoking things that come with life.  

One of the things that Buddhists learn from practicing meditation is that sitting for prolonged periods of time is actually very difficult.  Your legs fall asleep.  Your back hurts.  Your seat hurts.  You want to scratch an itch on your nose but are encouraged to not move.  And so suffering is in full force.  But what happens is that the meditator learns that when the final bell rings to signal that the round of meditation is over, everything changes, and the question is... did the practitioner miss the whole thing because they were only focused on how to escape all of that suffering?  Or were they sitting in the discomfort as a practice in the present moment of what was really happening.  In only the latter case does one learn to accept that life is not all happiness and comfort, nor should it be.

If we spend most of our life trying to escape suffering, we don't really experience life itself, because as was said at the start of this article... reality is full of suffering.  It's a part of what life is.  Running from suffering is what substance abuse, over-spending, over-eating, gambling, excessive sex, and many other behaviors looks like.  But all of these just lead to more awareness of the facts of life.  That it's going to keep changing, and it's going to be full of many moods, many feelings, many events, and none will be permanent.

Anything we want to do to make improvements in our lives will come with some form of suffering.  It's up to us if we want to perfect our skill of studying suffering and what we are like when in it, or if we want to perfect our skill of pretending we can escape the sufferings that come with human life and live in the false belief that we should be exempt from that reality.

You can find my previous blog entery about learning to accept things as they are, rather than always wanting them to be other than what they really are here.

"It's not impermanence that makes us suffer.  What makes us suffer is wanting things to be permanent when they are not."     ~Thich Nhat Hanh

Thanks to Brett Jordan for the great image, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

Abdominal Breathing: Your Number One Tool for Fighting Stress

This month marks the achievement of 10 years for this blog and to celebrate we'll travel back in time to the very first blog entry in March of 2015 where we looked at the importance of abdominal breathing in the reduction of stress and anxiety.  You can find that blog entry here

There are so many good things that come from learning and practicing slow, relaxed, abdominal breathing that once you've experienced the benefits, you will keep this technique close at hand to help you in any stressful situation that leads to increased anxiety.

The benefits of abdominal breathing are plentiful.  On top of decreasing muscle tension, it lowers your blood pressure and heart rate, which are two of the most common symptoms experienced by individuals who have panic and anxiety disorders.  It also reduces the stress response and lowers the levels of cortisol steroids in the body, which tend to flood the system when a stress response is present.

In addition, slow relaxed breathing releases endorphins, the feel-good chemicals that relieve pain, reduce stress, and improve mood.  It also helps to reduce insomnia and improve sleep, as well as improve overall energy.  This kind of breathing helps get more oxygen to the lower third of the lungs, which helps overall bodily functioning, muscle tension, and getting needed oxygen into the tissues.

All of the benefits mentioned here are why most people turn to slow abdominal breathing as the first- choice method for reducing symptoms of panic, anxiety, and stress.  It requires no pills, gadgets, tools, or devices and costs nothing at all.  It is readily available and can become your number one mindfulness exercise with the fastest results.

So, using the link above, travel back to the first entry of this blog from ten years ago and see what you can do with your breathwork.  It's one way to gain more control over your symptoms and see for yourself the results of slowing your breathing.  

"Breathing in I calm my body.  Breathing out, I smile."     ~Thich Nhat Hanh

Thanks to karoly czifra for the great photo, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/

Stress Free Realistic Goals

It's a new year and maybe you made all sorts of resolutions in hopes of bettering your life.  It's never a bad idea to have good intentions for the future, especially if they mean growth and self-improvement.  Exercise, weight loss and improving one's diet are all at the top of the list each year for most people. In fact, the month with the highest number of new gym memberships is January. 

But statistics also reveal that only 25% of people who make these resolutions are still actually committed to the task after just one month, and January is also the month with the highest number of gym membership cancellations.  So yes, you heard that right.  It all happens that fast.  We see the new year coming, and the gyms see it too.  So they offer lots and lots of deals in December while everyone is buying gifts and wanting to set new goals.

That means at the writing of this blog entry in late January, 2025, you and many others like you are already losing your mojo and maybe even wanting your membership refunded.  You could be losing your drive for many other kinds of goals you set for yourself at the start of the new year.  

So what happens that causes many of us to get that inspirational drive to see the changes we want to make, set the goals and put things in place to reach them, but then lose whatever that energy was that set a fire under us to being with?

If you needed to climb a tall staircase and while standing at the bottom you focused only on that top step, you might lose your desire to begin the climb in the first place.  But if you divided the staircase into parts and set 4 different goals, the task might seem a little simpler if you only looked up that staircase 4 steps at a time.  Goal one is to reach step four, goal two is to reach step eight, goal three is to reach step twelve and the final goal is to reach the last step at the top.

Our new resolutions and goals can be seen this way in that if all we see is the final weight loss goal, or the final change we want to see (overnight) in our diet plan, or the newly changed exercise plan we want our body to be doing in the next 24 hours, then of course we can become discouraged fast as we discover, change doesn't come that fast.  Change takes time and any situation we are in today took a long time to reach.  So it will take time to change as well.

If you are reaching the end of January and already feeling discouraged about your new goals, rather than label the whole task as a failure, consider the idea of regrouping and restarting with a new approach.  Break the task down into smaller sections with each section being its own goal.  Rather than an entire diet change (overnight), consider adding or subtracting one thing you'd like to try to change in your diet first.  Such as cutting out just 500 calories a day, or reducing the amount of sugar you take in, or cutting down on just one cup of coffee a day, and so on.  Yes, the goal is to eventually stop the coffee completely, or cut out the sugars entirely, or get the caloric intake down much further than 500 calories a day, but the smaller goal may be more reachable.  Reach for step 4 on the staircase first, and leave the top step for later.

If your goal is to exercise more, regroup and restart by setting realistic goals such as just trying to go for a 15 min walk each day sometime before bed, rather than "I'm going to start running five miles a day and it must be first thing in the morning", or "I must workout for an hour a day starting now", even though you don't really have an extra hour a day to give.  Let the 15 min walk be your equivalent of just aiming for the fourth step on the staircase.  Letting the higher goals be later steps.

Thinking of your new goals as themes instead of resolutions can also ease the pressure to perform and allow the new goals to have aim but not demand.  Reachable goals bring success, not failure.  They are also a lot less stressful and your drive tends to be higher for things you know you can successfully do.

If you feel more discouraged than driven toward your goals as 2025 moves forward, consider regrouping and restarting with reachable and realistic goals.  Muscle is built over time and so is weight loss.  New habits are developed slowly with repetition, not by the flip of a switch.  Take it easy and try again.  Don't give up!

"The most difficult thing is the decision to act; the rest is merely tenacity"     ~Amelia Earhart

Thanks to ray explores for the great photo, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/