A Path Through Suffering to Waking Up

by Ruth Lerman

Medical training and athletics taught me to push through pain, even to ignore it.  And so I learned to numb myself, to not fully feel the pain of my toddler sobbing as I left him at daycare while I went on to my job as a medical resident. I practiced rising when my beeper went off after two hours of sleep instead of the seven my body needed.  Physical and emotional suffering became things to push through, to compartmentalize, to numb myself to, so that I could get on with my gritted-jaw life. This worked for eighteen years until it all fell apart: my job, my house, my mentor, my health, my child’s mental health.

My work doctoring others paused: no beeper, no patients, no job.  And I woke up to my broken body, my buried thoughts and feelings.  Yet, in being broken, I was also broken open.  When a healer suggested going to the gentlest of yoga classes, I went.  In the sanctuary of the studio, I could breathe. I could safely hold my pain instead of pushing through it.  I could trust my pain as a guide that said “Look here,” or as a reminder, telling me, “You’re alive, don’t zombie through your life.” 

I learned to seek out teachers who had suffered and not run away from their suffering, had not pushed through it but rather lived in it, carrying it tenderly and courageously.  I wanted what they had to teach me.  I wanted it for myself, so that I could heal and be fully present for my loved ones.  I wanted it for my patients because traditional medicine offers limited help for suffering that it can’t fix.

It’s been twenty-two years since everything fell apart.  Some things got much, much better, others got much, much worse.  All of it offered opportunities to grow and here’s what I’ve learned:  my understanding of pain has changed.  Pain (physical, emotional or spiritual) is a wake-up call, it reminds me I’m alive.  My practice has changed.  I learned to love sitting meditation and the body scan.  I bring and offer mindfulness in my clinical work.  I became an MBSR teacher and then a teacher trainer.   I learned that humility offers freedom.  I can’t know everything.  I don’t have to be “the best.”

To aspiring MBSR teachers, I humbly suggest, start with your own experience: your practice, your suffering, your strengths and your failings.  Then, yes, become a teacher but first and always wake up and be a student.