Zen pilgrimage walk: Meditation on pain

I recently got back from a 4-week pilgrimage walk through the country, which I did as a Zen monk – carrying no money, just living from my alms bowl. In last week's article I talked about why I would even do such a thing. This week I'd like to talk a little about one of the most intense aspects of the walk - the pain in my feet.

Before I get onto that though, I should say a few words about the route I took and my unusual footwear.

The route

My meandering path was defined by the people I wanted to visit along the way: there was the Dorset contingent of our sangha based in Bournemouth, my partner's mum who lives in Salisbury, some other sangha members in Whitchurch near Andover and in Oxford, the Amara Vati monastery near Hemel Hempstead, the Nipponzan Myohoji temple at the peace pagoda in Milton Keynes, another sangha member in Northampton, the Tariki Trust house in Leicester, and some another sangha members in Nottingham, Sheffield, and Hebden Bridge.

The total distance was about 380 miles (see the full map here).

Footwear

The traditional footwear for a Zen monk on the road would have been a pair of white socks with a separated big toe, called tabi, worn together with a pair of straw sandals, called waraji, which are held on with laces around your ankle and lower-leg. In more modern times, a rubber sole has been added to the tabi socks to make them more robust and more like canvas boots (called jika-tabi). The sole is very thin and flexible (similar to bare-foot running shoes), so the waraji add a nice layer of padding underneath.

Under normal circumstances, the waraji wear out after about 3 days of walking, so I knew I was going to need a good stock of them for the whole journey. I got 10 pairs kindly brought over from Japan.

But while I was on our Zen sesshin retreat, a friend gave me a big rubber sheet, together with some glue and a needle and thread, and showed me how to sew a rubber sole onto the bottom of the waraji sandals. We had enough to rubberise two pairs, which in the end was actually all I needed. The rubber bore the brunt of the tarmac abrasion and the second pair fell apart literally on the last day of my walk! Thanks so much to Gensho for showing me this technique. I now have 8 spare pairs of waraji for sale...

Since the jika-tabi are essentially the socks and fit very snugly, I wore nothing inside them. This was to the consternation of all my acquaintances who had ever done any hiking...

Developing sensations

I'd had a couple of longer practice-walks in the tabi boots and waraji before I started the pilgrimage. After each of these I carefully noted where the blisters had begun to develop. People had recommended zinc-oxide plaster tape (easily available at Boots) as a way of avoiding blisters, so on day 1 I taped up my feet in all the places I knew blisters were likely, and happily walked off into the Dorset countryside.

Little did I know that zinc-oxide tape is no match for the tabi boots... Over the first few days of walking I developed some fairly substantial blisters (under the tape), accompanied by some fairly substantial pain. In Salisbury, my partner's mum very kindly did some internet research and bought me some adhesive cotton padding to put on my feet. One of her friends also extremely kindly donated me a few packets of Compeed (blister plasters) which were very helpful.

I hadn't at all anticipated the level of pain I experienced in my feet over that first week. Every step became excruciating, often to the point of tears... The strongest sensations came when I started off again after a break (I'm going to guess here that after walking for some time, the reason I feel less sensation is that the pain gates in my nervous system began to close – see my blog article about pain gates here).

An important turning point in those first few days was when I realised that I was doing no long-term damage by continuing to walk on the blisters. Knowing that the pain wasn't carrying any serious messages, I knew that it was simply a sensation and I just had to get on with it.

[Health warning: Most of the time pain is a very important signal saying that damage to the body is occurring and something needs to be done about it! If, for example, you've got your finger in the gas flame, just allowing and accepting the sensations isn't going to do you much good.]

Wanting the pain to stop

I quickly realised that tensing up against the pain made things worse. Wanting it to go away also just made things worse. Wanting (or 'craving' in Buddhist terminology) stems from the wish for things to be different to what they are right now. And of course, in this moment, right now, how can things be different? Maybe in a future moment things will be different, but right now it's utterly futile to want things to be anything but what they are. This wanting (whether that's in the sense of pulling towards or pushing away) is what causes suffering – not accepting that things are as they are right now.

I wrote this on day 6:

"Walking is very simple - just put one foot in front of the other. After 6 days of it though, the pain is intense and the mind constantly seeks ways to escape, for relief. There is no escape though - only through softening and acceptance does the suffering end, and a constant re-realisation that there is only now."

So my walking became a practice of softening my feet, every step – softening and allowing the sensations. Not trying to make them go away or make them change in any way. In that first week, after feeling quite nauseous at the end of a few of the days, and I realised I'd also been tightening my belly against the pain. So my walking became a practice of softening my feet and my belly, every step, every breath. I found my footsteps and breath often came into sync (two steps in, three steps out), and on each out-breath I concentrated on totally relaxing my belly (or hara). This helped a lot.

Later I realised that in my softening there was still a whiff of wanting – because I wanted to make the pain feel less. Fair enough you might say – but this was still a craving for something other than the reality of that moment. It was subtle and much more difficult to let go of.

So like this – focussing on relaxing my feet and belly, and letting go as much as I could of the wish for the pain to go away – the miles fell away. There was the rhythm of the breath, and the rhythm of the walking – step after step. Not wanting anything to be any different – enjoying the sunshine on my back and the smell of the hedgerow flowers as they wafted by, and simply allowing the pain sensations to be there (whether they were strong, sharp, dull, or throbbing).

Audio diary entry from 5th August where I talk about the pain in my feet:

Night time

After some weeks of walking the blisters all but cleared up. But you know that feeling of ache you get in your feet after standing up for a long time? – that took over! And you know the feeling of relief you get when you do finally sit (or lie) down? – kind of like a feeling of expansion? – that became the dominant feeling during the night. It was like a feeling of relief that became so intense that it was painful in of itself!

But I kept on reminding myself of this famous adage which couldn't be more true:

"Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional" - Buddhist proverb

By the morning though, my feet always felt ready to face another day of walking. It's amazing what a night's sleep can heal.

I am a member of the Zenways sangha led by Zen master Daizan Roshi, and I teach meditation, mindfulness and yoga at the ZenYoga studio in Camberwell, London. See my website for further details.

I'd love to hear from you

Ever had a similar experience? Leave a comment below, I'd love to hear your thoughts on meditating on pain.

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An aligned, relaxed body leads to the mind of awakening

Life takes place in this body, right here and now.

We experience the world around us through our body and its senses, so obviously how we use, move, understand and perceive our body has an enormous effect on how we live our lives. If we perceive our body as out of proportion, ugly, or incapable, this necessarily affects how we live compared to someone who is comfortable in their body.

Posture and alignment

Feeling pain, particularly chronic on-going pain, can very easily lead to negative feelings towards the body. One of the biggest causes of pain is bad posture, and the body area that suffers the most is often the back. According to the NHS, back pain is the leading cause of long-term sickness in the UK, and was responsible for a whopping 15 million lost work days in 2013. Sitting for long periods in front of a computer is bad enough, but couple that with bad posture and you've got a recipe for pain.

In meditation we also sit for long periods, so it's no wonder that meditation teachers have a lot to say about sitting posture. The famous 13th century Japanese Zen master Dogen wrote that to practice meditation one should "Sit ... with your [clothes] tied loosely and arranged neatly. ... Straighten your body and sit upright, leaning neither left nor right, neither forward nor backward. Align your ears with your shoulders and your nose with your navel." Simple enough!

When we start our meditation practice and bring awareness to the body, one of the first things we may notice are areas of stiffness or tension. These can arise for many reasons as I wrote about here.

One of the keys to releasing tension and encouraging relaxation is bringing the body into correct alignment (the subject of a wonderful little book by Will Johnson). But what are we aligning our body to? The answer is our innate sense of “up” and “down”, and this comes from gravity. If we can align our body around a predominantly vertical axis (whether sitting or standing), then the force of gravity will support us instead of weigh us down. Right now try leaning to one side. It takes a some work! So aligning of the physical body with the vertical allows us to relax and shed unnecessary tension. This is why sitting up straight is so important, and that's why doing something like yoga practice is also so important.

Upright meditation position

Firstly, yoga practice shows us where our tensions and imbalances lie. For example, almost all of us have natural imbalances in the hips which cause a slight scoliosis (sideways curve) in the spine, which in turn causes our shoulders to sit skewey and our neck and head to be slightly off-centre. Through correct practice we can learn to release and unblock these tensions and asymmetries so that both our physical and energetic bodies can come into balanced alignment.

However, it's important that the uprightness we cultivate isn't rigid. The strength to hold ourselves upright (especially in this day and age where we tend to slouch at every opportunity) takes time to develop, and it must come together with a sense of softness. This is particularly important in the chest and belly so that our breathing can be as unrestricted and natural as possible.

An aligned, relaxed body leads to a relaxed mind

A relaxed body, in turn, encourages a relaxed mind – one that is less distracted by pain and discomfort, and more able to feel and sense what’s happening in this present moment. Zen master Dogen said, "if one's body is straight, one's mind is easily straightened too. If one sits keeping one's body upright, one's mind does not become dull... One must be aware when one's mind runs around in distraction, or when one's body leans or sways, and allow body and mind to return to sitting upright."
In this quote, Dogen is making an analogy between present moment awareness and our vertical axis. As soon as the mind loses alignment to this axis (i.e. the present moment), we can say our mind loses balance and we start to wander off into memories or fantasies.

One of Dogen’s students once asked him “Do we find the way in the mind or the body?” Dogen answered "In the body." And in his famous book "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind" the 20th century Zen master Shunryu Suzuki said "The state of mind that exists when you sit in the right posture is itself enlightenment."

I am a member of the Zenways sangha led by Zen master Daizan Roshi, and I teach meditation, mindfulness and yoga at the ZenYoga studio in Camberwell, London. See my website for further details.

I'd love to hear from you

What's your experience of sitting up straight in meditation? How do you combine uprightness with soft relaxation? Leave a comment below, join the discussion.

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Releasing tension and stiffness helps us feel more

Tension and stiffness in the body create numbness. They create a barrier to awareness and the full experience of life. If we can’t relax, then life becomes dulled; the extra tension is tiring to hold and inevitably produces an undercurrent of fatigue. Look around you when you walk through the streets of the city and you'll see tension is a chronic condition. Happily through, yoga and meditation practice teaches us how to begin releasing all these tensions, better align and balance ourselves, and brings us to a new appreciation of the incredible vibrancy of life.


Perhaps one of the first things we notice when we start with our yoga and/or mindfulness work are these areas of stiffness or tension – and for some of us discomfort or even pain. They come about for a number of reasons, and can affect us on various levels: from the superficial to the deep. Causes include:

• our genetics (for example weak joints mean the muscles have to work harder, or scoliosis causes asymmetries in the spine muscles)
• past accidents (e.g. a broken toe meant you avoided putting weight on that foot and now the other leg feels overworked)
• past traumatic experiences (the body mirrors the mind in wanting to protect our soft vulnerable parts so often we end up hunching over)
• our occupation (e.g. sitting at a desk for long hours with bad posture)
• our hobbies (e.g. playing or doing an asymmetric sport like tennis or shooting)

So you can see that the reasons our body might be tight or stiff are intimately connected to our past, our upbringing, and our life choices.

I can see now that when I started my own journey into the world of yoga and self-exploration, I was pretty numb, desensitised, and tense! There were many blockages and tight areas, and I was nowhere near being able to feel the subtleties I'm now able to tune into. In the words of a good friend of mind, I was a brut... An insensitive, lumbering vertebrate with his heads in the clouds and a body that, if on a map, would be labelled “here be dragons”!

When we experience unpleasant sensations in our life, one of our strategies for blocking these out (after all no-one wants to feel unpleasantness!) is to tense up, because tension causes numbness. The body learnt that a long time ago!

Releasing the tension

For many years I understood in my head that yoga could help us release the tensions, blockages and imbalances, but I struggled to relate it to any actuality in my body. I could see my weight changing, muscles developing, and stamina improving, but had no sense of my body coming into better alignment or flow.

It took a sustained level of awareness and the keen eyes of my Zen teacher Daizan Roshi and yoga teacher Jonathan Monks to show me, on a physical body level, that this was actually happening. Through my yoga and meditation practice (and to some degree through my years of psychotherapy), I'd begun to let go of my body’s patterns of tension. Slowly, I’d begun to dismantle the layers of holding and blockages built up over years and years. With alignment, mindfulness and relaxation I suddenly found I could feel finer and subtler sensations in the body that I’d never noticed before.

One of the keys to releasing tension and encouraging relaxation is bringing the body into correct alignment. By aligning ourselves with the vertical, with our innate sense of “up” and “down”, then the force of gravity will support us instead of weigh us down. Right now try leaning to one side. It takes work! So aligning of the physical body with gravity allows us to relax and shed unnecessary tension. This is why in meditation sitting up straight is so important, and why in yoga we learn to move with gravity, not against it.

In the words of Will Johnson (from his lovely book Alignment, Relaxation, Resilience), I've started tuning in to the "fine, shimmering currents of sensation that constantly flow through the body”. As I described in this previous post, these are the shimmering currents of our subtle bioelectromagnetic field.

Spiritual energy by Alex Grey

Is yoga all about stretching?

The most common reason I hear for people not doing yoga is that they feel they aren't flexible enough - "I can't touch my toes...!"

So do you have to be flexible to do yoga, and is yoga all about flexibility? Well, I'd say flexibility is a by-product of doing yoga, and bendiness is by no means a pre-requisite.

What is the point of doing yoga then?

To me, yoga is about awareness, it's about re-connecting the mind and body, and tuning in to how we are in each moment.

The thing is, most of us are quite inflexible. Too much sitting, not enough exercise, a dodgy diet, all causes the body to stiffen and to lock in tension. We also spend so much of our time in our thoughts, not feeling but thinking, not being but doing - we literally think ourselves stiff! Our culture doesn't help either – we're encouraged to ignore those knots in the shoulders, that little niggle in the lower back, and keep on working.

The less aware we become of our bodies, the less we notice how tight and tense we get. The tighter we get, the more it gets locked in to the body and the harder it is to feel anything beyond that tension. Our sensitivity to the body becomes more and more limited.

Massage can bring temporary relief and is highly recommended! A trained masseur skilfully guides our muscles to relax - and it feels fantastic. Ah the relief! But it's only temporary... whatever habits and patterns that caused the tightness in the first place haven't changed.

You see, the flexibility we learn in yoga isn't just about he muscles. Fascia – the tissue between the muscles, bones, organs – can also tighten up and hold stress. And since many of our nerves are embedded in fascia, this tension and stress gets felt by our nervous system and ultimately our brain.

Yoga works on many levels to stretch, lengthen, and release. It also teaches flexibility in the way we think. Thoughts like "I'm not someone who does yoga" become "let's try it and see what I feel". Developing a sense of curiosity, interest, and playfulness can work wonders to free up the mind!

So in a sense, yoga is all about stretching, but not just in the obvious way. A flexible, strong, grounded, aware, and adventurous body and mind means a healthy, content, productive and happy one!