Where is the mind during pain (and birth)?

“Mindfulness” is everywhere these days. It’s been overused so much that people have lost a sense of what it really means. One simple definition is: being more aware. Or, in a second definition: a nonjudgmental state of heightened awareness of one’s thoughts, emotions, or experiences on a moment-to-moment basis.

So when I think about pain, especially in the context of labor and delivery, it sounds good to be nonjudgmental. Leaving judgment behind helps us stop the cycle of increasing our pain by adding our bad feelings on top of it. And it also sounds good to me to have a heightened awareness of one’s thoughts and emotions, especially during labor, because those can affect both your perception of pain and acceptance of a difficult, unknown process. But is it good to have a heightened awareness of pain? Or: does it serve your ability to handle pain to have more awareness of it?

Let’s think more about the mind’s role in the experience of pain. I don’t know how often people have experienced intense pain. But I bet many people have, because we’re all alive. We all have to confront pain and our relationship to it at some point. And we all have an experience in the mind that goes along with our experience of pain. We don’t often think about it, though, and just go along feeling at the mercy of pain.

It is a practice to find your own mind’s role and patterns in your experience of pain. That’s what mindfulness and meditation and yoga can do for you. But, I’m not here to teach you how to do that — there are plenty of other great people and resources for you. If you need help finding them, put a note in the comments and I can reach out to you. I’m here to tell you about a mind trick I used during the birth of my second child. No matter where you are in your thinking about and experiencing of your mind, you can try the mind trick below.

Some people are resistant to mindfulness and meditation, or feel they are not “good” at it (spoiler alert: that’s a judgment). You are not alone. Even people who practice it have days and moments of resistance. “Mindfulness” can be challenging. Maybe for some, pure meditation can help you relate to pain in a way that helps you get through it. But for me, it took a little bit of tricking my mind to get the job done.

A little about me: I do enjoy yoga and meditation, though I don’t do either enough for the consistency to pay off. So I do have some practice in it, but I’m not as practiced as many people. In other words, I believe that what we look at and how we look at it can make a difference in our perceptions and then experience, but I’m not always super great at it. I lose my way.

So, even I, “a mindfulness dummy,” could use this trick to help cope with pain. It may sound a little trippy, but if you are game to try it, it may help you.

The mind trick: I tried splitting up my energy and awareness into three: Part of me was with the pain, part of me was in and out with the breath, and part of me was somewhere else. That “somewhere else” can be whatever works for you. Sometimes it was one of my million mental happy places (a certain beach, a stream, the woods, etc.), and sometimes it was the mental calm and focused spot between the eyebrows I have at times accessed in yoga and meditation. These are just examples — because my point is, it helps to have lots of happy places and to shift around which one you “go” to.

Part of me was with the pain. For me, ignoring the pain and trying to focus on something else (i.e., meditation, music) took too much energy and wasn’t helping me at a certain point in the labor. Turns out it helped for me to have a process of constantly acknowledging and accepting that the pain wasn’t going to go away entirely. To be present enough for it to be part of my experience. I do believe it serves us to have some awareness of the pain, but not too much. Too much awareness of the pain can be overwhelming.

Part of me was in and out with the breath. Focusing only on deep breathing wasn’t doing it, either. Same problem — there was this outside pain I couldn’t get away from. When pain is really intense, it can overpower your thoughts and feelings, and squash any nonjudgmental will that you have. I could use what I learned in meditation and yoga practices for this relaxation, but mostly it was just another place in the body I could focus on to take a little of my concentration away from the pain. Also, don’t underestimate the power of rhythm to transport you through pain.

Part of me was somewhere else. Having a split focus on pain and the breath was not enough. I needed the third split in the mind to escape into a different space. This might have worked well for me because I have a very active imagination. That’s a strength I could learn to use to cope with pain. I also have experienced intense physical pain in the past. Sometimes, after the spike of the most pain, I’d also experience my mind releasing (a sort of delirious feeling). It only happened sometimes, and I didn’t think of it as a strength, but I’ve later thought it helped that I had that experience to know it was possible. You don’t even have to “go” anywhere else — just think of a beautiful picture, or a comforting place. How it makes you feel can help you.

With my awareness split in three parts, I was able to turn up my focus on either the outer “destination” or the breath to match the intensity of the pain I experienced during contractions. I still think, in labor and delivery, that a doula is indispensable. She can remind you to slow down, breathe deeper — she can find that little bit of space for you to get you to the next contraction. She can help you when you run out of mental “somewhere else” space or ability to access that space. Besides the other million things she can do to help during pregnancy and birth.

But again, you are the one facing the pain. So how will you meet it, and with what tools and tricks? What strengths do you have that could help you cope with pain? Do you have any ways of coping with pain that help you? Please let me know in the comments.

A teacher once told me that even if you get an epidural, your mind is still there. Where will you take your mind? Try the mantra: “Part of me is with the pain, part of me is with the breath, and part of me is somewhere else, free.”