Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - How to Outsmart Your Pain | Christiane Wolf

Episode Date: July 26, 2021

Sit in meditation for a few minutes and you’re likely to experience pain, either physical or psychological. Hang around the meditation scene for very long, and you are likely to hear the expression, “Pain is inevitable; suffering is optional.”  And that’s what this episode is all about -- boosting your pain tolerance through meditation. Because pain really is inevitable, but can you reduce your suffering through mindfulness and compassion?  Christiane Wolf argues ‘yes’. She is a physician turned mindfulness and compassion teacher and teacher trainer. She is an authorized Buddhist teacher in the Insight (Vipassana) meditation tradition, teaching classes and retreats worldwide, and she’s also the author of the new book “Outsmart Your Pain”. In this conversation, we talk about meditation techniques that offer us a better relationship to pain, how to work with the physicality of pain, the stories we tell ourselves about our pain, and seeing pain as an opportunity. Download the Ten Percent Happier app today: https://10percenthappier.app.link/install Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/christiane-wolf-366 See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to 10% Happier early and ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. From ABC, this is the 10% Happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Yes, yes. Hello, everybody. Sit in meditation for a few minutes and you are likely to experience some pain, either physical or psychological. And likewise, if you hang around in the meditation scene for long enough, you're likely to hear the following expression. Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional. And that's what we're going to talk about today, boosting your pain tolerance through mindfulness and meditation, because pain, again, we're talking physical and psychological pain here. It really is inevitable.

But can you reduce your suffering through mindfulness and also compassion? My guest today argues yes. Her name is Christiana Wolf. She's a physician turned mindfulness and compassion teacher and teacher trainer. She's an authorized Buddhist teacher in the insight meditation tradition, teaching retreats and classes around the world. In fact, she completed the IMS Spirit Rock teacher training program in the same cohort as Alexis Santos and Joanna Hardy, who are two mainstays of the TPH community. Alexis actually recommended her for the show, and I'm glad he did.

She is the author of a new book called Outsmart Your Pain. And in this conversation, we talked about meditation techniques that will help you have a better relationship to your pain, how to work with the physicality of pain, the stories we tell ourselves about pain, and pain as an opportunity. Before we dive in, one very quick item of business, getting curious about the way you experience your pain, as Christiana describes here, is Mindfulness 101. Mindfulness is, of course, not a panacea, hence the name of the show, but it can be extremely effective as a tool for coping with chronic pain. And if you're looking for a place to get started, I humbly recommend the basics course

over on the 10% Happier app. It's taught by Joseph Goldstein, one of my favorite teachers, my actual personal meditation teacher. In this course, he introduces you to the essentials of meditation in a series of videos and interviews with yours truly paired with guided meditations

that will help you develop your practice. You can try the basics for free when you download the 10% Happier app, wherever you get your apps. Okay, here we go now with Christiana Wolff. Dr. Christiana Wolff, thanks for coming on the show. Thank you for having me. I met you, I think, at the tail end of my first meditation retreat at Spirit Rock. That is correct. That is correct. Yeah.

Summer of 2010, and it was a 10-day meditation retreat at Spirit Rock. That is correct. That is correct. Yeah. Summer of 2010, and it was a 10-day meditation retreat. It had been a huge roller coaster for me. I had hated it and then loved it and then hated it again. But it was nice to talk to you at the end of it because I thought everybody here is just a crazy person. This is all a bunch of weirdos. And then I sat next to this really nice doctor who sounded like so normal. Yeah, this is all a bunch of weirdos. And then I sat next to this really nice doctor who sounded like so normal. Thank you. Yeah, that was nice to meet you there.

And I remember that you were all excited about that retreat and you had already like thoughts about like writing about it. A couple of summers later, when Joseph went back to teach the retreat again, he sent me a snarky email that said, I'm here at the place of your great awakening. I'm surprised they haven't put up a plaque. So congratulations on your new book. Thank you. Let's just start with the title, Outsmarting Pain. What do you mean by that? Yeah, thanks for asking that. In a way, like you could say, like we don't really want to outsmart the pain, but what we want to do is we want to see how our mind influences the way that we experience pain. And so the book is focused on chronic physical pain, but I mean, pretty much everything in the book is also about emotional pain, right? Because it's like how the mind tries to make sense of what is happening in our experience

and how we relate to that and how we can reduce the suffering. Would it be safe to say that the book, while on some level targeted at folks with chronic pain, is not only about chronic pain, but also about emotional pain that you reference, which is universal? Let's start with physical pain. How can meditation help us have a better relationship? What are some of the techniques we can use to have a more skillful relationship to pain? So one of the core ideas around this book is to become aware that what we're experiencing is usually made out of three components. So like a physical component, like the sensations that we're experiencing, then the emotional component, right? Emotions that

also, of course, like show up in the body. And then we have how we think about it or like the meaning about that, right? So we're usually not aware that these are three components, but we experience it as one thing. And then we can label it that is the pain. And then when we go into this, we can look at, at any given moment, this is actually a fantastic exercise to go like, so out of these three, what is creating the biggest suffering right now? Because, for example, people who have chronic pain and they have a flare up, let's say, right? So you have chronic lower back pain. You wake up in the morning and you go like, oh, there it is. So there is the physical component of that.

But it is just a reminder of something, if it's chronic, that happened before. So what the mind does, it goes into like, oh, last time this happened, I lost three days of work. I had to take the medication and had side effects of the medication, right? So there's the story. And then what am I feeling about that? This makes me anxious. This makes me feel overwhelmed. And then I'm thinking also about the future. Will I again, like, lose work? Will I lose my job? What does that mean for me, like, down the line?

And so what I'm not noticing in that moment, the actual physical pain might not be so bad. Right? And so when we go into that and kind of break it apart and then learn skills to say like, oh, this is how I can work with the emotional component. This is how I can work with the cognitive or like mental, like the thoughts, the story in that moment. Or if it should really be true that the physical sensations are what is core center. There are also practices with that. So I can start to break this big box or this big concept apart that from the outside feels overwhelming and I don't want to touch. And that can really make a big difference

because it makes you really feel more able to deal with that. That's true of so much of meditation. You're sort of disambiguating, you're untangling the strands of whatever's happening in your mind. And once you take it apart, it doesn't seem so solid. It doesn't seem so unworkable. Exactly. Yeah. And then the more you do that, of course, it's a practice to say like, oh, right, here we go again. Right. And then you build confidence on that you can actually be with pain in a different way. So let's talk about how we would build the skill that would give you the confidence, the skill of being able to break the pain apart into the three components. How do we do that? apart into the three components. How do we do that? So always, always, always, always is the first aspect is awareness, right? So usually we're on autopilot. We're not aware. We're suffering. We're struggling. We try to avoid it because it's unpleasant. We don't want to look at it. So

most important moment always is the moment where you snap out of autopilot and go like, okay, this is what's happening right now and go like, okay, this is what's happening right now. Say like, okay, there's pain here right now. And you can already see that when I say there's pain here right now, I'm not saying I'm in pain because that goes back to the, do I identify, right, as the person who has pain and the ramifications that come with that. So in that moment, when I say, okay, there's pain here, what I can do is I can say like, okay, so let me just check in and see out of these three, what am I struggling with right now? So if I had a pie chart, what would be the biggest piece here? And then I can

really, depending on which the biggest piece is, work with them separately and let the other two just be a little bit more in the background. So if the biggest piece is actually the physicality of the pain, what do you mean by work with it? What would that look like? Okay, yeah. So, if it is really that there is just really acute pain right now that is really intense, you have two options. You can either, like, become very specific about it, can kind of call it zooming in, or you can zoom out. So, zooming in would be that you say like, okay, so where exactly is that pain located right now? Because often we don't even check into that area with a lot of specificity. So we can say like, okay, there is like this pressure that is like a little bit above my sacrum, and it's a little bit more to the right and it feels in this moment more hot and it maybe

has the size of a quarter coin. So that's very specific. And what you bring to it, you bring curiosity to it. And we know that like one of the core mechanisms of how mindfulness can really shift or change things is curiosity. Can we be curious instead of already assume that we know what we'll find? Right? And then we can go in and then we can notice, is it there the entire time? Right? So because it often feels like it is always there or it is just, it is too big. And I really want to make sure that we're getting away from

judging labels. So often people will say like, oh, that pain is killing me, right? Or it's like that monster in my back. That is not a neutral observation. But what it will do is it will kind of tell your whole system, right? there is something killing you. This is really dangerous. But if I say there's pressure, there's heat, there's tearing, there is stabbing, there is like these qualities are just a description. They're not judging. You're getting down to the raw data of your physical sensations instead of the story, and the story makes the whole experience worse. Usually. But for example, if you stub your toe, right, that might be really bad

pain. But in that moment, right, you know, you just stubbed your toe, and you know, this will not last, right? This hurts right now, but this will be gone in two minutes and so in that moment the mind is actually helpful because we have to remember so all pain is real pain so i just want to really put that out there because a lot of people when they hear like they should learn meditation for their pain right or they should see like a pain psychologist. What they often hear is that, my doctor doesn't believe that I have real pain. So pain is always real pain. But the way that we know that pain functions is the body sends a signal to the brain saying like, pay attention. There might be possible danger here because that is the function of the nociceptors.

Noci actually means like danger signals, right? So the body says like, hey, there might be danger here. And then the brain has to make an interpretation, right, based on previous experiences and context in that moment to say this is dangerous or not. context in that moment to say, this is dangerous or not. And what we also know is that in chronic pain, because our nervous systems are actually not made for chronic pain. And so what the nervous system becomes overprotective with recurring pain. And in a way, so then the nervous system learns, oh, here's the pain again. And it kind of like, we know like this is how neuroplasticity works. Whatever we do repeatedly, we will get

better at. And so basically your brain gets better and better at finding that pain and alarming the whole system. And that's a real danger because a lot of people with chronic pain will say like, I know there isn't really any danger there anymore because the surgery is done. Everybody checked that out. And that gets often so crazy making because what you know, what is actually going on in your system and then the way that you feel about it doesn't, I mean, there is a discrepancy. you feel about it doesn't, I mean, there is a discrepancy. And so a lot is really just like really educating people about this is how pain works. And this is why mindfulness can be really helpful because you're kind of, in a way, desensitizing your nervous system. What if what's really causing us problems is the story, the anxiety story we're telling about how this is never going to end?

Why does this always happen to me? I'm going to lose my job, et cetera, et cetera. What's the meditative approach to that? So usually we're identified with our thinking, right? And that's the autopilot. And out of thinking comes emotions. And sometimes out of emotions comes thinking. And it's just running us. It's a kind of mindfulness is this moment of saying like, wait, wait, wait,

what's going on here, right? And then you notice, oh, I have all these anxious thoughts or these worried thoughts. And then, so two things that you can do is, right, so we disengage and we kind of let the thoughts be more in the background, right? Which is, of course, a lot easier said than done. Like, can you meditate? I can attest to that, right? And this is why we do that in meditation. Like, can you notice your thinking? It has nothing to do with the thoughts that are happening in that moment, but can you recognize thinking is happening? And can you train that muscle to say like, think you're not now? Can you let those thoughts be in the background? And then the more you do

that, like, of course, the easier it becomes, right? Because then, you know, like thinking can say all kinds of things, and they're not necessarily true. Or how Tara Brach says, they're real, but not true. I like that. Thoughts are real, but not true. Or how Tara Brach says, they're real, but not true. I like that. Thoughts are real, but not true. So, you know, how would that work in the moment? Pain has come up, chronic or acute, whatever. We're experiencing physical pain. We start telling ourselves a whole story. We catch it. And then what? What is technically the meditative move? Yes. So what you would do then is, so that's great. So you caught it, you notice, okay, there is like catastrophizing thinking happening

or ruminative thinking happening, right? And then of course that doesn't make it stop. Unfortunately, we wish, right? If we could do that. So we can. But what we can do in that moment, we come back to one of our senses that is a good anchor for us. For example, that could be the breath. It could be your feet on the floor, right? It could be just

like you orienting yourself in the room and say, oh, I'm in this room right now. So the brain has a limited attention span. Part of how meditation works is that we, for once, decide how we want to fill that attention span. If we're not doing that, the mind will do that for us, and it will fill it with all kinds of crap, honestly, right? So, like, rehashing and rehearsing is like, thank you, not helpful right now, right? But who is saying what the mind is actually filled with? And so as a meditator or like using these practices, we can say, okay, I'll fill it with the awareness of my breath right now. And then I cannot at the same time pay full attention to my thoughts and feel my breath. I can do either or.

Or I do both like half, but not really. And that is also, of course, part of the practice. So it's a little bit like I might like bite my arm a little bit when I'm getting a shot. I mean, I'm going to fill my mind with one kind of pain that I'm comfortable with, that I'm controlling on my own, so that the involuntary pain controlled by somebody else is less salient? A little bit, yeah. You choose.

But the thing is, so a lot of what's going on here, what is so scary that it feels like this is out of our control. And I think like one of the great benefits of meditation is that we are taking back control by choosing how we relate to it. Would you say that from a meditative perspective, and this might be tough for some people to hear, that pain is an opportunity? Absolutely. And it comes back to this as like, show me the person who's never had pain. Show me the person who's never had pain. Show me the person who will never have pain.

So we have a human body. Pain is an essential function of our bodies to keep us safe. And then we have this thing happening that we call aging, which we have to learn to come to terms with. And we don't like to hear that. And we don't like to practice with that. But the more we can actually say like pain is a part of life and not take it so personally coming back to this, like, what do I identify with, right? Do I identify with this person that is in pain and how unfair that is and all the mistakes that have been made, right, which is part of how the brain tries to make sense of it. And that is also part of like we can really switch to saying like, yeah, pain is a part of life. And since that will be part of my life's experience, I can choose how I want to work with that and how I relate to that. And I really don't want to say that lightly because I know like a lot of people really have excruciating physical pain.

Right. So this is not like an easy, easy fix. Right. So this is not like an easy, easy fix. But just to put a fine point on it, when you say that meditation helps us relate to our pain differently, how does it help us relate to the pain? We learn to not take it so personally. So if this is just like, oh, this is what a body feels like that experiences this particular pain to compare. This is Christiana who has this pain because I had this accident because that stupid driver didn't pay attention, right? So, you can see how, like, the whole nervous system starts to get activated again through the story, right? Said, like, yeah, this is pain and this is pain in this moment. This is what it feels like. And the other part is, which is really,

really important for people who suffer from pain or chronic pain, is self-compassion. Can I just acknowledge that right now this is hard? This is a hard moment right now. And this is, again, the difference between self-compassion and self-pity, that self-pity is all about me and why this shouldn't be happening to me. And self-compassion is an opening up to like, yeah, this is part of the human experience. And I can connect in my mind or in my heart with all the other people who are experiencing exactly the same thing right now. And in a weird way, that is really helpful. Can you get more technical or granular

about how we can bring self-compassion to our meditative game when pain is there, chronic or otherwise? Yeah, again, like Kristin Neff's three-part model of like self-compassion. So, the parts of like as a researcher that she has like broken down the experience of self-compassion into mindfulness, self-kindness, and shared humanity. So, mindfulness, same thing. So, what we just said is like, can you become aware that there is pain? Huge step, which is really hard

to get to that. Like I will often like walk around like for days before like something says like, wait a second. Oh, that remark did have an effect on me, for example, because I'm so trying to avoid pain. This is about like emotional pain, right? But same with physical pain. So awareness, this is here. And then what we say is, can we just acknowledge this? And can we acknowledge that with the intention of kindness, or we say like the tone of voice, right? So what we would say is, and we often will like place a hand on the heart or on the part that is painful and say like, this really hurts. or on the part that is painful and say, like, this really hurts. This is a moment of struggle.

And just in that way that often what happens, because what we want is like we want to be acknowledged in that way. And like a friend would do that in a way. A friend would say, you have a hard time right now, right? And then something in us goes like, yes, thank you for seeing me, right? And something softens. And we forget that we can actually do that for ourselves. Yeah, there's pain. Yes, this is true. Not avoiding, just looking at it directly, but with kindness. And then, so that's the self-kindness. And then really opening into this is what it feels like for somebody in my situation to feel that pain.

And then we can like internally, energetically, however that works for you, connect with all the other people that have that same experience. They know what it feels like. know what it feels like, right? And this is really the power of support groups where like somebody else looks at you and says like, me too, I get what you're going through, right? And that does something to our nervous systems. Also, this kind of self-talk, this kinder self-talk. I had, you know, when I first encountered this notion, I struggled with it a lot just because it seemed corny to me. A lot of people really like it, so I want to acknowledge that. But just for me, it seems a little corny.

But I've been able to, first of all, just get over myself and do it because there's scientific research that strongly suggests it works. Oh, yeah. And I'd like to suffer less, so I'll take evidence-based practices. But part of getting over myself to do it is not only just seeing the research, but also adapting the language. You can make the language your own. So for me, it's more like bro-y-er language, like, this sucks, dude. You know, and that's what I would say to a guy friend who, you know, broke his leg. Yes. Great. Yes. And it's really in the translation, right? If the words don't land, try different words. Or if language doesn't work, try a gesture, right? This is really why we really love to work with physical touch, right? Because there's so much research showing like, if somebody holds your hand, when you're going through a painful procedure that makes your pain level drop. So if you are really in pain and you get a hug from a friend, that makes your pain level drop.

And so we're making this jump, and I know this is like totally corny, and I work at the VA a lot, right? So there are like some tough guys. So we have to find some different language instead of saying, oh, it's so soothing. And they go like, what? They just want to gag, right? And so, but if somebody just, you're struggling and somebody puts a hand on your shoulder and just looks at you, like I got you, I see you, right? So how can we do that for ourselves is really to see if you place a hand like your own hand on the part of your body that hurts does that make a difference right just like i'm here this hurts it's so interesting then but there are i don't know if you know this, there are fibers in your skin that are just made for physical touch.

Like babies can't survive if they are not touched in a particular way. And those, they're called C-fibers. And what happens is they need to be stroked in a particular pressure, in a particular frequency in order to fire. And of course, the context has to be right. So it has to be somebody you trust. Like if the person next to you on the metro does that, that won't work, right? But there's something that is built into our nervous systems about touch. So at the VA or like with guys, we will say like, can you hold your own hand so if you you're just sitting around and like there's a chance that you actually have your hands in your lap and kind of

holding your right one hand in the other nobody will see that you are holding your own hand that's something where it's kind of a stealth touch I will often do that like before I give a talk when I'm a little bit nervous I I kind of squeeze my own hand and internally say, you got this. I got your back. And there is something that is really using another circuitry of support. So how can we communicate with our own nervous systems in a way that is helpful? And I think that's amazing that we can do that. Much more of my conversation with Christiana Wolff right after this. Maybe you've stayed in an Airbnb before and thought to yourself, this actually seems pretty doable. Maybe my place could be an Airbnb.

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trial at audible.ca. So let me just go back to this notion of pain as an opportunity. And now I'm really talking about more sort of garden variety pain as opposed to chronic pain. But I think the scales up to chronic pain. If you're meditating, pain, I believe you argue in your book, is an opportunity to boost your capacity for concentration or to use the meditative term of art, samadhi. Have I put that correctly and if so can you sort of hold forth on it yes there are few things that will get your attention the way pain does because that is what it is hardwired to do and so in a meditation setting to have like not too much right so it's like always it's a goldilocks like not too much, right? So it's like always it's a Goldilocks,

like not too much, not too little, but to actually have like a form of pain in the body, right? You can choose to either move, right? And make the pain go away. Or you can, right? If you're on a retreat, that's mostly like, right? That is where samadhi is mostly happening, or concentration, or deepening concentration, is you can choose to actually use that as the object of your attention. Sometimes meditators will report that then pain stops to be painful, but it is just an intense experience. And then it gets really interesting, right? Because as a society, we have learned so deeply to fear all kinds of pain. And so, when this fear stops and we can just really be with it, then it becomes just a pulsing vibration and something that is just like an amplitude, like changing all the time, right? And if you can stay with that,

that can actually like bring you quite deep into concentration. And so Shinzen Yang, right, he is a meditation teacher. He has a whole book on that, right? Because he took up pain practices when he was practicing in Japan, really as his core method of going deeper into concentration. And so he has the saying, like, there is no pain. Pain is a construct. I would say like for the average meditator that is maybe a little bit too far out. And it might be good to know that that is out there too. In terms of meditating with pain, have you heard Joseph Goldstein's expression, in order to mind? Yes.

Do you want to explain what that means? What he means by in order to mind? I mean, I would love to hear like your understanding, actually. In order to mind is to make whatever's ailing me, whatever's bothering me, whatever's unpleasant in my experience, to turn that into the object of my meditation. In other words, to focus my mind on that. In order to? Well, his point is that you may notice that you're doing that in order to. So you're noticing the pain, but then you might notice, oh yeah, am I doing this with the subtle or not so subtle agenda of making this itch subside? Notice that too.

Yes. And that is actually a very powerful practice because as long as you're still doing that, however subtly to manipulate your experience, it's hard to truly let go. And this is like one of the pitfalls also when we're practicing self-compassion. So like one thing that we will say is like, we're not practicing self-compassion to make the pain go away, but we practice compassion because there's pain.

And that makes a huge difference. And at the same time, we're human. Of course, we want the pain to go away. So we're not trying to become like superhuman, but can we become aware? And then what happens actually often is like, okay, so there's the pain, there's the resistance to the pain, and awareness can hold it both. Because usually we come with this agenda without really being aware of it. And then it drives our meditation. And as soon as we can say like, oh, look at the resistance, there's the pain, there's the resistance, and can I allow both to be there? Then there's more freedom in the resistance

to actually to get bigger, to get less, to dissolve. I'll give you another Josephism. He also says, awareness doesn't care. And you can use that as a little mantra in your mind that, okay, yeah, you've got an intense pain somewhere, emotional, physical. And you can just remind yourself, oh, yeah, awareness doesn't care. The knowing faculty of the mind are raw awareness. physical and you can just remind yourself oh yeah awareness doesn't care the knowing faculty of the mind or raw awareness doesn't actually care which is i think what shenzhen young is getting at when he says pain isn't real i phrase it into like awareness doesn't care what

it is aware of and that is just like oh this is not the special thing that we do over here and then there are other areas of our lives where we can't apply awareness. No, awareness is really just like the function, like a flashlight. So it's dark. You don't see anything. You use a flashlight to shine light under your bed. And then, whoops, like, wow, there are all these dust bunnies under there, right? Which you actually, you didn't want to see, but now that you've shown your light onto them, like here they are, right? The light just does the function of lighting up. But then of course, what is really important to also remember that we want to use mindfulness, not just in the concept of paying attention. That is the whole fear of the people who said in the secular

mindfulness movement, we are turning that into mindfulness, when we're just like, just taking a very small sliver of like what mindfulness was actually intended to do. Yes, it trains attention, no question about that. But it's not only about attention, but it's also about the other qualities. So sati, like the Pali word for mindfulness, also having the word memory in it. We want to remember why we're doing this. So we do this with a particular intention to reduce suffering, right? Or to have more insight, to see how things really are, the definition of insight meditation. And then what we also want to see is, what is my intention? Why am I doing this?

Why am I paying attention to this? To see how the mind works and to really see how the mind is without bad intention, but creating more suffering just through the way the untrained mind is structured. And this is why often we say that sati in itself actually is a wholesome quality, right? So if we're shining this, not just a flashlight, but the flashlight with a particular intention, then just bringing that to a moment of pain can be a wholesome or healing experience. I teach a lot of MBSR classes, so mindfulness-based stress reduction classes, right? And of course, people come because they're suffering. They're not interested in Buddhism. They just want their back pain to go away, or they don't want to have these anger outbursts, or they want to get better along with away, or they don't want to have these anger outbursts, right?

Or they want to get better along with their colleagues or their kids or whatever. So they come, and we have this practice that we say, can you just be present for what is here? And as you said earlier, notice the in order to mind and include that too. And often people say like, right, oh, I thought, right, because we come with such an agenda, I need this to change. So I need to become aware. And once I'm aware, this is what I need to do to change it. We're saying like, no, no, no, no, no. Can you just hold it? Hold it with this wholesome quality of awareness or loving awareness. And then notice that things will start to self-integrate

and start to heal just through this different environment, if you want it. So what did the studies say about whether meditation can actually help us with pain management? So we need more studies, let's put it this way, and we need more specific studies. And I think there will be more specific studies coming out. I'm actually working right now with UC San Francisco on developing a mindfulness-based stress reduction variation for chronic pain. So we are developing a study for that for people with lower back pain, lower chronic back pain, because it's often hard to say what is really helpful. And we know that some therapy forms are really helpful. And we know that like some studies show that mindfulness

is helpful for chronic pain. In other studies, it doesn't really show an effect. And I think we're casting the net too wide because, first of all, there's so many different forms of chronic pain. And so if we can be more specific, that is helpful. But one study that I always loved, so Jon Kabat-Zinn, actually one of the first studies that he did with MBSR was for people with chronic pain. And that was one of his core intentions when he first started MBSR in 1979, to offer something to people who really had gone through the entire Western healthcare system with no really good results other than just medication or surgery. And what was really interesting is so they looked at, so what are the pain levels starting MBSR and what are the pain levels ending MBSR? And what showed was that for quite a number of people, the kind of objective pain level didn't change.

But their quality of life scores went up quite a bit. And that touches me to just talk about that, because for me, that is such an important way to express how the teachings work, honestly, then. So what it means is there's still pain, but what does that mean if your quality of life goes up? You're happier, you're more engaged, you feel more connected, you feel more like life has something to offer to you. You learn how to live with the pain that is not going away. And people will ask me, so if I learn to meditate, will my pain go away? And I say, honestly, I have no idea. I have seen people with pain, like headaches or strange pain, like unexplainable pain, completely go away through meditation or through these practices. And other people, no, didn't change. But what I truly believe is that

people will really make themselves available to these practices of mindfulness and compassion, that they will get happier. Like maybe 10%, right? Maybe more, but there is something that will change. And I find that so hopeful because we can get away from this fixation of, if only the pain wasn't here, then I would be happy. I just finished Crime of the Century. It's on HBO Max, directed by a guy I know and respect, Alex Gibney. It's a two-part documentary series. It's really excellent on the opioid crisis. And one of the points they make in that documentary is that one of the contributing factors to the opioid crisis may have been or may be our inability to tolerate pain or the culture just deems pain to be unacceptable.

Yes, I agree. And then we want a quick fix, right? I remember when I was trained as a physician, I was trained that if you take opioids after surgery, you can't get addicted. Seriously, I learned that as a physician. Tens of thousands of overdose deaths in America alone over the past few years. Yes.

So I'm interested, you wrote this book about pain, and then you dedicate huge swaths of the book to emotional pain. Why? Why not just stay with the physical pain? Because our system is always trying to make sense of what is happening to us. And it tries, right? So you have to remember that our nervous systems are made to keep us alive. And pain is like one of the core signals that like our life or our well-being could be in danger. And so our nervous system pays a lot of attention and a lot of energy around avoiding pain. And then we have also emotions. So emotions also developed like throughout evolution and they all have a role. So for example, anger has,

anger's role is to defend ourselves and to kind of alert us to the fact that boundaries have been crossed. That's a very healthy function. But I think we have also learned to fear emotions. But I think we have also learned to fear emotions. So the philosophy of stoicism that's been very influential as a way, like I say, like emotions are dangerous and we can never let ourselves guide by emotions. And then the whole idea that we value cognition so much over emotions. And we say, like, don't be so emotional, right? That is not a compliment, right? Or we say, oh, that person can be trusted because they are run by their emotions. So, emotions have a really

bad rap. And what we're trying really to do with this practice is to say like, emotions are not a problem. What we're doing with this and how we're relating to emotions. That's the problem, right? So, just like we say, and I'm sure like Joseph has said that too, so this is like that you're not responsible for the emotions that are coming up. You're responsible for what you do with them. Just like you're not responsible for the thoughts that are coming up, but you're responsible for what you do with them. And we're shifting away from this idea as, oh, there's something wrong with me or I'm a bad person because I'm feeling this way or I'm thinking that way. Say, oh, let's not go there. Let's just, it's here.

Like, what's the wisest and most loving and most skillful way to deal with this? So let's talk tactics now in terms of how we can use meditation on big emotions. You have a chapter title called Anger is a Mixed Bag. Can you tell us what you mean by that? Yeah, anger is a mixed bag because, I don't know, when you grew up, Dan, was it okay for you to be angry as a child? Well, I think this has something to do with how we treat boys differently than we treat girls. I wasn't socialized in a way that made anger taboo, but I think a lot of girls are. That is true. That's what I hear a lot. But I also, I've actually heard that from a lot of men that they also said, like, actually, any display of emotions wasn't okay in their families.

Oh, no, my parents were recovering hippies and everything was, you know, we were encouraged to let it all hang down. Oh, okay. Thanks for sharing that. That makes, like, put some things into making sense. Thank you. Well, it hasn't always worked out to my benefit. I expressed my anger with too much profligacy throughout too much of my life in ways that hurt me and the people around me. So, anger itself is not a problem, right? Anger is just something that is arising. Or let's put it two ways. So, if we let anger run, right? If we talk about neuroplasticity, right? Like if we are angry a lot, we get really good at being angry, right? Behavior that we do repeatedly is easier to do the next time and even easier to do the next time.

So that is why it is so really important to look at what are we doing with what is arising in the present moment. And so anger can really be a great way, and especially for people who have a hard time feeling angry or who got the message for whatever cultural, right? They're like culture where it's just like, no, you can never be angry. Or the stereotype, for example, like of the angry Black woman. So, how are you being angry when you are just like have all the right to be angry and you happen to be black and you happen to be a woman, right? We're moving into whole other territories here. So like, what does that mean for you to own your anger, right? And so that can be a very big first step

for people or for women, really big step to say, I am angry about this, or there's a lot of anger about this here. Because what that can bring us to is to say, like, I need to say something. I need to stop this. This can't go on like this. So I can use anger as an information, and anger brings a lot of energy. Anger makes us, right, and if not used wisely, to be very damaging or harmful. But if we use that impulse that says like, stop, enough, this needs to change. So, there's the anger as information. And so, how are we using that or working with that so that it is not overwhelming and we don't use that as a weapon that hurts other people and ultimately hurts ourselves, right? So, there's the Buddhist saying, anger is like you're picking up a hot coal to throw at another person, right? So, if you're

acting out, it will always hurt you too. Because of course, as practitioners, we practice the five precepts. And the first precept is do no harm. Do no harm to ourselves or to another person. And yet, we're causing harm all the time. So that's why it is a mixed bag. And the way that we practice with that is like, again, the steps are pretty much always the same. Can you be aware that there is anger in your system? How do you know you're angry? Most of my emotions show up in my chest. Okay. So tightness. Tightness. Yeah. What else? Tightness in the chest and maybe restlessness in the body okay like i need to discharge some sort of unacceptable energy oh okay okay all right and right there we see we're

circling back to this idea that something that is uncomfortable is not acceptable so the body says we need to get rid of this this This is uncomfortable. And then we would usually, so if this is not checked, we would go out and do that. We raise our voice. We might lash out at somebody. And then for a moment, we feel like, oh, I've discharged that energy, but I've also just harmed that relationship, right? And with that, I've also harmed myself. So, in that moment coming, really the principles are always the same. Can I be aware of it? Can I hold it without doing anything with it? And the meditation that we use for being with anger is really creating space, which we have mentioned earlier, or an image because anger is so energetic.

Like if you have a wild horse that's just bucking like crazy, you need to give it a wide corral. And so basically what you do, you hold it safe. You make sure it's not like running around, right? And running like through the stables, causing mayhem. But you give it a wide space, you hang out until it will calm down, which it will, because that's the nature of energy. So in meditation, that would work. How? Literally. So you notice you locate anger in your system. Really important, don't go into the anger story. Because the way that the thoughts are working is they will re-trigger the emotion. Right?

You know that like something happened, you're like really upset about it, you forget about it, and then something triggers that thought and immediately you have the emotion again. And then you go into thinking again, and that triggers the emotion again. So we want to really stay away from the story, because the story doesn't matter in that moment. If there's something you need to deal with it, you can do that later, but right now. So where is it in the body? And truth be told, a lot of people can't even feel anger in the body, because they're so disconnected from the body. But if I could locate anger in my body, where would that be? Okay, you sit in your chest and you just feel like that restless energy that needs to discharge, right? That is what you focus on in your meditation.

And then just like we do so in a meditation, the way that you can focus on a very small piece, you can focus like feeling the breath at the tip of your nostrils or at your belly, or you can feel the body breathing. You can feel the breath and the whole body at the same time. So we have the capacity to zoom in or zoom out. I mentioned that earlier. So you locate where is it in the body, and then you open up to feel the whole body. And then do you feel anger in your whole body? No, it's just in the chest. Okay, that means there are other areas in your body that are not feeling that kind of sensation right now. And then it really like, I mean, people can't see this, but I make this

round with my arms. And in a way, it's like sometimes an image, I don't want to like infantilize anger because anger can be really dangerous. But sometimes in my meditation, it feels like I need to control a tantruming toddler. So I have three teenagers. So I've had a lot of tantruming toddlers at some point, and now I have tantruming teenagers. I hold space for them, make sure they're not harming anybody or themselves as best as I can. And then as we know, right, tantrums will pass. And just experiencing that we can do that and we don't need to do anything with it can be very powerful. Let me ask before we go about another emotion that you write about, which is resentment. And you talk about

how we can use our meditation practice to vector toward forgiveness. Can you say a few words about that? Yes. So, forgiveness is a really hard one. And forgiveness doesn't happen overnight. Forgiveness is not something that we decide to say, yeah, that makes sense to forgive that person or that situation or myself. But the thing is that anger will turn into bitterness if we over time can't let go of it. And that's just like a yucky feeling, honestly, right? And forgiveness practice can help.

And it's really like, I mean, Jack Kornfield, he has taught a lot, and I'm actually using his meditation as a foundation because I find that is the most helpful step-by-step way. And he talks about his forgiving his father, his abusive father, over years of doing a practice daily, just a little bit. And starting out really was coming back to what we mentioned earlier, the intention. Because we have agency over our intention. We don't have agency, as I said, we can't decide to forgive, or we can't decide to be compassionate, or we can't decide to love, right? But what we do is we can set the intention, and then we can keep inviting these qualities in over and over and over, and just trust basic neuroscience, right? That whatever we do repeatedly, that will change us.

So, what are the steps for forgiveness meditation? that will change us. So what are the steps for forgiveness meditation? Just starting out by, is there a situation where you think you might be ready, right? Or that you want to kind of work on? And then depending on, like, is it something that you have done? Is that something that somebody has done to you? Or is it something that you have done? Is that something that somebody has done to you? Or is it something that you have done to yourself? So what is it actually that you want to forgive? And then using actually compassion practice to say, I'm not that person anymore. Maybe I made a mistake there. I moved on. And then you just like with the loving kindness or the meta practice, we can use particular phrases. People can Google them or they're also in my book is basically out

of my own ignorance, out of my own fear, out of my own just being stuck. I made this mistake. I made this mistake. And then just really repeating that and feeling into the pain of not being free here. And not like if it's in a relationship with another person that we're still holding kind of the other person. I've learned a lot. And I suspect a lot of people will have learned a lot too. But is there something that we really should have covered here that I failed to bring us to? No, I think we've touched a lot of things. And what I really want people is to not feel that because they have pain, that they cannot have joy and a full and fulfilled and meaningful life at the same time, right? Because we can really fall into this idea, because I have this, I cannot be or feel a particular way. And that is something really, I think the most important message is, of course, I wish for

your pain to go away, right? And I, of course, you keep searching for solutions. And, but even if the pain doesn't go away, doesn't mean you can't have a really, a really beautiful and meaningful life. Before we go, can you just remind everybody of the name of the book and any other resources you have on the internet or elsewhere that people might want to avail

themselves of? So the book is called Outsmart Your Pain, and I have resources on my website and also classes where I teach about pain and a lot of guided meditations and retreats that I'm teaching. And my website is just my name. So christianawolf.com. Christiana, thanks very much for coming on. Thank you so much for having me. That was a pleasure. Thank you. Thanks again to Christiana. That was a great chat from my point of view. This show is made by Samuel Johns, DJ Kashmir, Kim Baikama, Maria Wartell, and Jen Point with audio engineering by Ultraviolet Audio. We had special help on this episode from

Candice Mattel-Kahn. And as always, a big shout out to my ABC News colleagues, Ryan Kessler and Josh Kohan. We'll see you all on Wednesday for a brand new episode about secrets. If you like 10% Happier, and I hope you do, you can listen early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at wondery.com slash survey. Where can I get help hiring people with disabilities? There are hundreds of thousands of Canadians with disabilities who are ready to work, and many local organizations are available to help you find qualified candidates

and make your workplace more accessible and inclusive. Visit Canada.ca slash right here to connect with one near you today. A message from the Government of Canada. Being an actual Royal is never about finding your happy ending. But the worst part is, if they step out of line or fall in love with the wrong person, it changes the course of history. I'm Arisha Skidmore-Williams. And I'm Brooke Ziffrin.

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