Jun 7, 2018
A normal reaction to pain is to deny it or view it as something bad, but this tends to only worsen the discomfort. In five recorded Facebook Live broadcasts, Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche guides you in a series of healing meditations that can help ease physical or emotional pain by giving it loving attention, letting it be, and allowing it to naturally express itself. As pain dissolves, you can discover a new space within that is clearer and more connected, comfortable, and joyful.
Rinpoche invites you to bring to each session any physical or emotional discomfort you would like to address and transform. This meditation practice is based on ancient teachings of dzogchen from the Tibetan Bön Buddhist tradition. Rinpoche teaches the practice in his “Healing From the Source” online workshop through GlideWing.com. A recent study of workshop participants found that physical and emotional pain were reduced by more than one-third after three weeks, with the effects persisting after the workshop.
- View Part 1 (May 10, 2018, 36 minutes)
- View Part 2 (May 17, 2018, 38 minutes)
- View Part 3 (May 24, 2018, 24 minutes)
- View Part 4 (May 31, 2018, 37 minutes)
- View Part 5 (June 7, 2018, 32 minutes)
These teachings are all part of Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche’s ongoing series of Pith Instructions. In these teachings and guided meditations, Rinpoche draws from his own years of personal practice and reflection on the heart-essence of the teachings of dzogchen, or “great perfection.” The practice of dzogchen can transport the practitioner directly into the nature of mind, our real essence.
Self-Guided Meditation: Healing Pain Through Meditation
For best results, devote at least 30 minutes a day to this healing meditation. Its focus is on healing physical pain, but the same approach can be used for working with emotional pain.
Sit comfortably with legs crossed, spine straight, and chest open; or, choose any upright position that is comfortable. Allow your body to relax. Draw your attention inward.
Feel the stillness in your body. Connect with that stillness and rest in it. Gradually feel and be aware of inner stillness, the stillness of being. Through that inner stillness, be aware of unbounded sacred space.
Listen and hear the silence within. Feel and connect with the inner silence. Allow yourself to rest deeply in it. As you rest, connect with the presence of awareness.
Bring your attention to the space within and around your heart. Connect with the spaciousness and become like the open sky. Be aware of the warmth that is naturally present. Allow this warmth to emerge fully. This is the warmth of the union of openness and awareness.
Now gradually draw your attention to the specific area of your body where you experience any blockage, discomfort, pain, or sickness. Bring your attention to that location with loving-kindness and care, as a healer would attend to a patient, or a loving mother would comfort her child. Your physical pain or illness needs the warmth of loving-kindness and care. Through your attention, you bring the healing power of openness, connectedness, and warmth to your body where it is needed. Allow time to feel this.
Now shift your focus to the center of your affliction. As you rest in stillness, be aware of the unbounded sacred space that begins to come alive in the physical location of your affliction. This sense of opening can not only unblock and clear the pain but also dissolve the producer of the pain, the pain identity that has been avoiding, clinging to, or disconnecting from the pain on a very subtle level. Allow this powerful opening.
Now, within the deep silence the light of awareness arises. Your pain, blockage, or sickness is alive with awareness. Experience the pure light of awareness radiating throughout this space. Feel your darkness, pain, and sickness clearing.
As you connect deeply with the warmth of the union of openness and awareness, bring this warmth to the space within and around your pain, discomfort, or blockage. Just as when the sun shines, and its warmth begins to melt the frost on a window, when you rest in open awareness the genuine warmth of connection begins to restructure pain and sickness. Your awareness of the warmth activates the process of physical healing. Allow this energetic healing response. Rest in the healing warmth for as long as it remains.
Dedicate your practice to the welfare of others, particularly those who are experiencing pain, with the thought: In liberating my own being, may I benefit others.
Adapted from The True Source of Healing, by Geshe Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche. Hay House, 2015