Building the Capacity for “Being With”
An image became a teacher for how to embody the capacity of “being with” pain.
An intuitive sketch from systems sensing practice, March 2022
How is it to experience the “being with” of something? For example, to be with grief or to be with fear. Often, for me, just bringing attention and allowing spaciousness with myself and my emotions is enough.
Until it’s not. A few years ago, I was experiencing painful headaches and I tried a lot of different things to ease and heal the pain. One modality I tried successfully was breathwork. For those of you not familiar with breathwork, this involved laying down for about 1.5 - 2 hours while intentionally breathing. I opted to work 1:1 with a practitioner for a few sessions because I had fallen asleep previously in group sessions and wanted extra support. In our first session, I experienced a wall of pain, like an electric current or shock to my hands and feet. In breathwork, it’s normal to experience waves of sensation to varying degrees and the goal is to often to be with whatever comes up and experience it fully. There is usually an intensification of sensation and then it passes. What this journey brings up to consciousness is often rich in learning.
As the sensations of shock intensified, the facilitator noticed that I was falling asleep and brought me back to my conscious awareness. A part of me tried to meet the pain yet I noticed I was bracing myself and tensing up. I experienced this like hitting a wall and there not being any place for the intensity to be discharged. So try as I might to “be with it,” after many failed attempts and no other options, I felt stuck and terrified.
Then an image came to mind and I had the impulse to embody its shape. I had painted the image above the week before as part of the systems sensing practice space with Collective Transitions. I don’t remember the prompts of the practice, but I do remember that the painting was an intuitive expression. It didn’t have much meaning at the time but I liked the colors.
At that moment, this image became my teacher. I can’t explain how this happened, but the part of me that was tensing up in pain became the shape of a half-circle. In that embodiment, I became a welcoming presence for the shock — an expansive sense of care and a life-giving sense of safety, like that of a womb. In an instant, the pain transformed, as if it dissipated into the soft glow of care and expansive sense of presence and compassion. I felt a wave of relief as the intensity shifted and the pain subsided.
After the session, I reflected on the experience with my facilitator. “Wow, I just learned how to be with pain in a new way,” I exclaimed while sharing more about the image and how it felt to embody it. My head felt a lot better as well. I left with a profound sense of wonder and appreciation for the intelligence of my body, breath, and subconscious mind for orchestrating the series of serendipitous events.