How to Deal with Overwhelming Pain During Meditation

When pain shows up in practice, it can feel overwhelming but it can also be a doorway to deeper awareness.

This is an excerpt from our Community Gathering wherein a student opens up about the challenge of neck pain becoming overwhelming during meditation. Rather than offering a quick fix, Sean Fargo invites a gentler approach: turning toward discomfort with curiosity and compassion instead of resistance or judgment.

This conversation is a reminder that pain in meditation isn’t a barrier to practice, but an opportunity to deepen presence, patience, and care.

Chapters

00:00 – The Question

01:51 – Resources for Pain & Mindfulness

03:27 – Pain vs. Suffering

04:54 – Approaching with Gentleness

06:48 – Exploring the Geography of Pain

08:50 – Visualization & Self-Compassion

10:41 – Movement Practices

11:48 – The Mantra of Softening

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Mindfulness Exercises with Sean Fargo is a practical, grounded mindfulness podcast for people who want meditation to actually help in real life.

Hosted by Sean Fargo — a former Buddhist monk, mindfulness teacher, and founder of MindfulnessExercises.com — this podcast explores how mindfulness can support mental health, emotional regulation, trauma sensitivity, chronic pain, leadership, creativity, and meaningful work.

Each episode offers a mix of:

• Practical mindfulness and meditation teachings
• Conversations with respected meditation teachers, clinicians, authors, and researchers
• Real-world insights for therapists, coaches, yoga teachers, educators, and caregivers
• Gentle reflections for anyone navigating stress, anxiety, burnout, grief, or change

If you’re interested in:

• Mindfulness meditation for everyday life
• Trauma-sensitive and compassion-based practices
• Teaching mindfulness in an authentic, non-performative way
• Deepening your own practice while supporting others

…you’re in the right place.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Welcome friends. I'm Sean Fargo, and in today's episode, we're going to explore a very common question, which is what do I do when physical pain feels overwhelming during meditation? One of our students in our mindfulness teacher certification program brought this up during a recent QA call, and we talked about ways to bring gentle awareness to her felt experience, trauma sensitivity, how to experiment with different mindfulness and meditation practices when we feel pain, and how to approach discomfort with both mindfulness and care, even when we're really hurting inside. So with that, let's listen to what we talked about in the group that day.

SPEAKER_01 1:03

The past week or so I've had really bad neck pain, which is new for me. And I'm finding that when I meditate, it's making me I'm becoming more and more aware of it. And it's really hard. Even and I sort of was wondering if you had any tips because I seem to be, it's like maybe I'm just doing a lot of like body scan meditations instead of other kinds of meditations, but it's kind of becoming super present, like it feels like too much of the time for me for in terms of comfort level.

SPEAKER_00 1:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:39

So yeah, just wanted to kind of ask.

SPEAKER_00 1:42

Yeah, thanks for sharing, Dorothy, and welcome to the program. That's resonating. I'm sorry about your neck pain or the neck pain. Yeah. So I'll I'll share a few ideas you know that you can try. And I also want to point you to some workshops in the guest teacher recordings area of our certification. We've had a few different workshops on chronic pain and mindfulness that may go into more depth than what I'm about to offer. And also happy to dive in deeper here. But the workshops in particular, I did one on chronic pain based on my experience a few years ago, I think. But if you go in the search function and type in pain, and I'm not saying, you know, this will apply to you even though it's not chronic per se, it's relatively new, but a lot of the same principles will apply. And then we had Vidyamala Birch speak a few months ago, who's one of the leading pioneers of mindfulness and pain. She wrote the book You Are Not Your Pain, which is a Mike's book on pain, like physical pain. And then I believe Orrin J. Sofer may have done a workshop for us on this because he's a specialist in this too. If it's overwhelming doing the practices that you're doing, like body scan and kind of being hyper-aware of the sensations, then I think it's wise to try new things, but also kind of have those practices in your back pocket when you feel like they're more doable. I do need to say I'm not a doctor per se. And so I, you know, this is all sort of complementary to what a doctor may say. In general, it's really helpful to notice the distinction between physical pain and the mental suffering around the pain. So knowing that there's a difference and being able to sense into the difference is really powerful. Like, is this purely physical, or is there also a significant mental anguish? Am I judging the pain to be bad or wrong? Or sometimes counterintuitively, like, are we judging it to be good or right? A lot of people judge it to be good or right sometimes. Am I resisting the pain? Am I bracing around the pain physically or mentally? So these are like bullet points uh that take time to really sense into with gentleness. So this is key, like gentle, gentle, gentle baby steps. I'm kind of moving through this quickly, but this takes time and grace and gentleness and heart, you know. So we want to go softly into these territories. Can I like set what parts of the body feel safe to like sense physically? And how close can I get to the geography of the pain before I start feeling nervous, scared, intense? So can I like you know, like with the body scan, can I feel my feet? Can that feel safe? Can that feel do I feel like a lack of pain there? And then how close can I get to the neck area before it really ramps up from all sides? From the top, from the bottom, from the left, from the right, from the front, to the back. Really getting a sense for like the geography of discomfort. Is it the shape of a pencil? Is it the shape of a piece of paper? Is it the shape of a bunch of pennies? Does it feel like a cloud? Does it feel like a lightning bolt? So, like sensing into the shape of discomfort, the area, areas of intensity. Maybe it's intense in like a small sliver of the general discomfort, or it's painful throughout this whole area, like it's the thick pain, like the like is it dense? Is it hollow? Is it the same feeling throughout this area of discomfort? Or is it like a little bit different at the top or the bottom? Is it dry? Is it moist? Is it pulsing, throbbing, or is it still, is it unpleasant? So and moment to moment, is it still unpleasant, or sometimes is it even pleasant? And I know that feels, but sometimes things change based on you largely based on like story or metaphors. So, in other words, like explore the pain itself with acute investigation, sensing in the story around the pain, judgments around the story, around how it got here, or the mystery of it, or but like sensing into the story of it. Like, what is the story and what feels like a healthy perspective of holding it? What happens if I bring sort of a caring hand to the neck? Like, does that help? Like bringing awareness into the hand and bringing the gentle awareness to the neck like this, self-compassion practices, wishing ourselves well, remembering that this is part of the human condition, you know, not to diminish or minimize our experience, but rather to remember that this is this happens to the vast majority of us in different ways, that we're not alone. There's usually this arc of awareness of say acknowledging the sensations, allowing the sensations to be here, which can be scary. And accepting these sensations in this moment, not accepting, like not wanting them to always be here, not like inviting them per se, but just accepting that they are here. And typically we start with acknowledgement and then allowance and then acceptance. And this is a sticking point for a lot of people if they even hear mention of the word acceptance, because they're like, why are you asking me to accept the thing that I am trying to avoid? Why are you asking me to like accept this thing that I'm actively hating? And I'm not saying you're hating it, but this can be very tricky territory, um, especially if it's chronic. So breathing exercises, so deep breathing for extended periods of time can be helpful, breathing into the neck, some visualizations. So this isn't exactly mindfulness practice, but like visualizing what feels soothing to you, visualizing like cool air or warm air, cooling goo or warming goo, certain colors of light that feel therapeutic. These are other kinds of meditations.

SPEAKER_01 8:50

When you in the meditation in the beginning of this afternoon session, you were, I think you meant you said something like sense into the layers of the layers of feeling of your body, or there was something about the layers, right?

SPEAKER_00 9:04

Energy.

SPEAKER_01 9:05

Yes, thank you. Layers of energy. And I sort of sensed into the back of my neck. And then, and I don't, I've never done any visualizations at all, but my brain like automatically went to like I imagined, like a it sounds really cheesy, but like kind of like a warm glowing light on those muscles.

SPEAKER_00 9:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:24

And then it and you know, and it it completely helped. Yeah, and then it turned to green, and then I was thinking about something else.

SPEAKER_00 9:31

But anyway, that's yeah, you know, if if that helps, then do it. Yeah, and then also like sensing into the layers of the neck and all around the neck. So skin, sensing skin, just the skin, the esophagus, the air through that's moving up and down, um, the soft tissue, the vertebrae, the temperature, like the presence of warmth or coolness in different parts of the neck. Maybe like there's a little bit of hair on the neck, or hair touching the neck, or you know, a collar, sensing into the space right in front of the neck. This might sound a little woo-woo, but we can do this. Sensing into the space in front of the neck, to the right of the neck, behind the neck, to the left of the neck, sensing the body in the space below the neck and into the skull and the brain. So, like sensing the layers of energy in and around the neck and the textures, the elements, sensing the blood pulsing through the neck. Maybe a little bit more of a coarse suggestion would be experimenting with meditation, laying down outside, standing up, bringing mindfulness to movement, like yoga, tai chi, Feldenkrais, that can be helpful for kind of softening the layers in a very gentle, you know, doctor-approved way, but kind of like allowing movement. We don't have to be rigid and still. I invite a non-rigidity in general, but like allowing ourselves to kind of like be supple. We can be still and supple. So noticing if we're, you know, if we're doing a body body scan or some sort of you know, still meditation practice, are is there like a sense of like tightening a little bit? Sometimes, you know, subconsciously we'll just kind of tighten up a little bit, might tighten up our breath, our belly, you know, like our whole body, because it's like, oh, well, it's statue time or it's stillness time, or it's whatever it is. Like, can we invite a suppleness to this experience and allowing these energies to be to flow to soften? A lot of mindfulness in my experience is softening. And that might be a mantra, softening light, you know, from the heart. Can can the heart exude, you know, love or care or compassion for the neck? Can one part of the body share that that care for the neck? So not like being here per se, but really being here and then bringing that energy from here up. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_01 12:26

Yeah, thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00 12:28

Yeah, and when all else fails, maybe try a little Arnica. Thank you so much for listening to this. You know, pain can feel like an obstacle in practice, something that we just can't bear to be with. And sometimes it can be a teacher for us, showing us new ways to soften, to meet our experience with care, and to honor our body with gentleness. If you'd like to bring your own questions to live calls like this with me, while also receiving comprehensive training and resources to teach mindfulness with confidence, I'd love to invite you to explore our mindfulness teacher certification at mindfulness exercises.com slash certify. I would be honored to support you. Thank you for listening.