The Wisdom of Pema Chödrön

Much of therapy and the therapeutic relationship, as I see it, involves working together to get to a place where we see ourselves more authentically--all parts of ourselves. The process involves moving toward acceptance, understanding, forgiveness and self compassion--whatever is necessary to allow us to be present in the moment with ourselves as we are, and with our true feelings and experiences.  Pema Chödrön , the famous Buddhist scholar is a wonderful guide when it comes to facing our fears--the dark places-- rather than running from them.  Sitting with our most difficult feelings and finding that we can move through them allows us to know and to trust ourselves, to heal, to truly be free and live life to the fullest.  I find her teachings to be both wise and inspiring, and they inform greatly my approach to counseling.  Here is just a taste of her wisdom.


"Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It's a relationship between equals. Only when we know our own darkness well can we be present with the darkness of others. Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity." 
— from The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times


"If we learn to open our hearts, anyone, including the people who drive us crazy, can be our teacher." 


"Meditation practice isn’t about trying to throw ourselves away and become something better. It’s about befriending who we are already."

"There is a story of a woman running away from tigers. She runs and runs and the tigers are getting closer and closer. When she comes to the edge of a cliff, she sees some vines there, so she climbs down and holds on to the vines. Looking down, she sees that there are tigers below her as well. She then notices that a mouse is gnawing away at the vine to which she is clinging. She also sees a beautiful little bunch of strawberries close to her, growing out of a clump of grass. She looks up and she looks down. She looks at the mouse. Then she just takes a strawberry, puts it in her mouth, and enjoys it thoroughly. Tigers above, tigers below. This is actually the predicament that we are always in, in terms of our birth and death. Each moment is just what it is. It might be the only moment of our life; it might be the only strawberry we’ll ever eat. We could get depressed about it, or we could finally appreciate it and delight in the preciousness of every single moment of our life."
— from The Wisdom of No Escape: How to love yourself and your world


If you are up for it, you can try Pema Chödrön's "Spiritual Detox," which happens to resemble very closely how therapy works!  Check it out the next time a stressful situation arises and you feel like running for the hills:


1) Think about the outer situation, what just happened to provoke  your reaction-anger/fear/desperation?
2) Ask yourself, what feelings did this situation bring up?
3) Sit with the feelings, try to become aware of the layers of feelings.
4) Now try to become aware of your "strategy," what habit do you use to move away from the rawness of this feeling that you don't want to feel?  Yelling?  Acting out?  Berating yourself?
5) For the next few minutes, let your strategy go.  Try to put that strategy aside and just be with what's there.
6) Observe.  


Insight comes out of being kind to yourself, not out of saying you are broken and need to be fixed, changed or made over.  Staying with your feelings instead of acting them out, repressing them or trying to fix them allows  your own inner wisdom to come forth.



Pema Chödrön is an American-born Buddhist nun and one of today's leading meditation teachers.  She is the director of Gampo Abbey, the first Tibetan Buddhist monastery in North America.

To feel or not to feel, that is the question...

"I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel." ~Maya Angelou


I'll never forget the butterflies in my stomach and the way my hands ached just after my first kiss in junior high, or the racing of my heart and accompanying surge of electricity when I was recently reunited at the airport with my dear friend from abroad.  These bodily sensations helped me to identify my emotions...nervousness, excitement, warmth, affection.


On the other hand, I am often reminded of the fear and anger that I felt when my parents fought...the tightness in my stomach and shoulders, the headaches...and could never forget--even if I tried--the extreme empty pit of desperation and sadness that I experienced at the age of 8 when my Opa Leo died.


Why is this?  Why is it that feelings are imprinted upon us so totally and completely, to the point that we might never forget how another person or situation made us feel?  Why is it that even when we want to let go of feelings, they seem to follow us, sneaking up on us when we least expect them, catching us off guard and impacting us so deeply?  


Feelings get stored in our bodies and our brains.  This storage process was built into our neurobiology as human beings to keep us on alert and safe in the face of danger.  As new discoveries have been made related to brain chemistry and circuitry, it has become an essential component within the therapeutic process to involve both body and mind in the process of healing for true change to take place.  This process almost inevitably involves learning to feel our feelings from head to toe, and accepting and believing that they will not kill us or make us go crazy.


"Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in memory as the wish to forget it." ~Michel de Montaigne


One might say the same of feelings.  A client of mine just recently stated in our session, "it's really difficult being human."  He was referring to the fact that no matter how strong we are, no matter how ready we might be to let go of difficult memories or experiences, we still have to learn to move into rather than run from our feelings when they come up, in order to get to a point where they won't shake us to our core when they arise.  This is hard work, and can seem overwhelming.
Sometimes feelings (especially if imprinted from an earlier time) can feel so big that they are all consuming, taking us over and making it difficult to think or to act rationally.  We develop ways to take care of ourselves when this happens, to protect ourselves from the onslaught.  We learn to run from the feelings, to shield ourselves from the anxiety and the loneliness, the fear and the sadness.  We distract, we consume, we restrict; we reach out or act out, we self medicate or self destruct, we move, we freeze.  


So what, if anything, might we choose to do as an alternative?


Like the stamina and strength building exercises required to train our muscles for a marathon, so must we train our minds and bodies to feel.  Each time we make the choice to identify what we are feeling in our bodies and minds and allow ourselves to move through these feelings, we are building strength and growing the inner endurance necessary to experience our feelings more deeply.  At the same time that we are experiencing our feelings more deeply, we are literally changing our brain chemistry and creating new neural pathways that will open us up to think and function in healthier ways. Feeling intense emotion is often scary, so self care is central to this process...deep breathing, calming self talk and the introduction of self compassion are all components that can help us sit with strong emotions.  Meditation, yoga and other forms of movement and relaxation are also excellent ways to support yourself in this work, along with a trusted therapist as your guide.


So what's the point?  Why bother choosing to take the more challenging path to feel more deeply or change the brain circuitry, especially when we have developed perfectly effective methods of coping?


It's a great question, and the best person to ask is yourself.