Tried It Myself

What happened when I stayed with menstrual pain during Vipassana

On the 7th day of Vipassana meditation, as I sat down to meditate, the menstrual pain started to come up. Witness the pain, don't identify with it, is what we were being been taught. Can you see the pain without wanting to get rid of it? Let me try. My hips were aching and my lower abdomen was hurting. I started to notice my lower abdomen / pelvic area, which is where I sort of imagine my uterus and fallopian tubes and ovaries are.

I wanted to see, what is the nature of this pain? What is the actual felt sensation, once I removed the word pain from it. Was it like a tearing pull? Or something being pinched? Or stabbing or buring sensation? What was the temperature? Was it throbbing or heat or what?

So I started to notice in the lower abdomen pelvic area. And I couldn't really find, you know, the location where I thought the pain was. Didn't seem to be coming from there. So I tried to trace the pain, where was the seat of the sensation that was causing me so much discomfort? And nothing in the pelvic area. The pain seemed to be coming through there, but the source was somewhere else infact. And I thought, "Ah, yeah, it's the lower hips at the back." I had a rough memory of pain coming from the back to the front. And as I went to the lower hips at back, I was having a hard time finding the site of the pain and figuring out the sensation... maybe a pull, some heat, some pressure. And somewhere in the process of trying to figure it out.. choon! It disappeared. Like it was waiting to be noticed properly, it wanted my attention. And when it got it, the pain dissipated! Just like that.

Now I must say this process required intense focus to witness the pain. I would say I was not aware of anything else in those moments.

But it is not so easy to get rid of all pain this way. These are the ingredients that were needed to remove pain through witnessing/in meditation:

  1. No judgement about the stimuli/experience - where it is good or bad.
  2. No craving or aversion towards it - I want it or I don't want it.
  3. No identification with it - no sense of suffering or elation.
  4. Very sharp focus, single minded or what we call 'mindful' attention to the bodily sensations at the site of pain.