Tuning Into the Body

The idea of tuning in—to look inward, listen, and engage with your body in an intimate dialogue of what you are actually feeling in a particular moment—can be foreign or even a turnoff to many people, especially those who have a serious illness. You may wonder why in the world you would want to be more aware of your body at a time when it is failing and you’re not feeling well.

The answer is that tuning in is an entry into acceptance of the body as it is right now, which allows for a larger sense of acceptance. Tuning in helps you realize that unpleasant physical symptoms, like pain or nausea, are not always the same; they actually change from moment to moment. It allows you to be aware of important bodily cues and to choose how to respond to them. By tuning in, you may recognize that what you’re feeling may not be significantly different from how you had been feeling hours, days, or even weeks before, so you may be less likely to panic when you experience discomfort. It is an opportunity to be aware of your tendencies to automatically react and create meaning about what you feel in your body. Tuning in also allows you to be conscious of what is right or healthy in your body. You come to realize that all of you is not broken and that you are much, much more than a diagnosis or a body with a medical condition.

Befriending Your Body

You, like many people with a serious illness, may feel that your body has betrayed you. You may feel frustrated that the years of trying to take good care of yourself have not prevented serious illness from rearing its ugly head. Why would you ever want to be friends with your body, when it has seemingly let you down?

Befriending your body doesn’t mean that you have to like what is happening to it. Rather, it means that you are kind and gentle toward your body and sincerely listen to it as you would a dear friend. You are open to joining, being with, and accepting your body with all its frailties and imperfections. This allows you to come to a place of deep inner knowing and acceptance, which fosters healing on many levels.

Consider for a moment these questions: Does harboring anger and feeling betrayed by your body serve you in any way? What if you metaphorically joined hands and made friends with your body? How might that serve you?

Awareness of Sensations as Just Sensations

A first step toward tuning in to your body is having awareness that sensations are just sensations. This involves being a curious and dispassionate observer. More often than not, the mind tends to have a labeled concept of what is happening in the body, like “pain,” or a story or interpretation of what the sensation means. For example, you can interpret a new pain to mean that the disease has progressed.

However, if you step back and curiously observe what your body is feeling, you realize that pain is not just one big overwhelming “thing” but rather a constellation of many subtle bodily sensations such as dullness, sharpness, aching, or throbbing, that likely change from moment to moment. You may also notice pauses in the sensations and moments of not feeling anything. Viewing sensations as merely sensations and noticing their nuanced qualities and fluctuations give them less power over you.

The Stories Around Sensations

More often than not, it is human nature to conjure up a story or narrative around what is happening in one’s body or one’s life. The stories are not necessarily grounded in fact or what is known for sure in the present moment but rather are imaginations of what might be, future-oriented fantasies, nightmares, judgments, regrets, or instances of clinging to what has occurred in the past. A mundane example from everyday life would be not being able to find your wallet and immediately panicking and conjuring up a story about it being stolen. Stories are automatic, and they can carry you away. They can agitate the mind, which in turn agitates the body and shakes up your world in general.

For someone who has a serious illness, the mental stories and judgments can easily jump to worst-case scenarios or to self-blame. The stories can take you through a horrific adventure in your mind to the point where your body responds as if it is actually experiencing the story. For example, a new discomfort can send you into a state of panic accompanied by a rapidly beating heart, shallow breathing, indigestion, and lost sleep if you imagine it to mean that your disease is worsening or you did something to cause it. Your thoughts, or the story, can consume you and repeat over and over in your mind, over-shadowing everything else that is actually happening in your life to the point that you don’t even notice any goodness around you.

Stories are automatic, and they can carry you away. They can agitate the mind, which in turn agitates the body and shakes up your world in general.

The terms pain and suffering are often used interchangeably, yet there is a significant distinction between the two. Pain is an unpleasant physical signal that tells you something is not right in your body. Suffering is how you relate to it; it is the meaning or interpretation—the story—your mind creates in response to the physical signal. The meaning you construct about the pain and how you interpret it are what actually determine your experience, which can indeed magnify the unpleasantness. This is illustrated in an ancient parable about an arrow. The arrow by chance enters your arm and causes pain. Then you respond by taking the arrow shaft and driving it in further. The arrow entering the arm was inevitable. However, driving the arrow deeper was optional; doing so made the experience exponentially worse. In this example, driving in the arrow represents the mental story like, I deserve to be in pain, or This is just the beginning and more pain will come my way, or Something awful is happening and my medical condition is worse. These stories are truly angst-filled catastrophizing, and each version leads to unnecessary added suffering. It’s amazing how our minds can take an unpleasant sensation and make up a complicated narrative that creates or perpetuates fears and worries. Mindfulness practice can help you catch yourself when your mind goes off in the story.

Wendy, a woman with cancer with whom I worked, shared this comment after learning and practicing mindfulness:

I have found that sometimes when I feel a little twinge and I start to get worried, I catch myself. I turn my attention to what I am feeling and imagine breathing into that area, and then I can sense it easing. This keeps me from getting panicky or scared.

Unpleasant Symptoms

Experiencing unpleasant physical symptoms is often part of having a serious illness. The particular symptoms you experience and the degree of discomfort you have depend on the specific disease and treatments and are also influenced by your age, genetics, and past experiences. Some common examples of unpleasant symptoms include fatigue, pain, nausea, numbness, weakness, and mental fogginess.

It is important to note that there are differences between acute and chronic symptoms. Acute symptoms are physical sensations that come on quickly or increase sharply in intensity and last a short period of time. They can be very severe, like a rating of 9 or 10 on a scale of 0 to 10 (with 0 being no discomfort and 10 being the most discomfort you could imagine ever experiencing). Acute symptoms are not to be tolerated nor are they to be ignored. Severe pain and other symptoms are valuable messengers of important information about the body. It’s critical that you listen to your body and respond wisely.

Chronic symptoms are unpleasant sensations and bodily experiences that linger for weeks, months, or even years. They fluctuate in intensity and are generally tolerable. These are the symptoms that you are told to expect and just live with. While tolerable, they can certainly still wear you down and wipe you out. They can discourage you and cloud your sense of well-being.

It is helpful to recognize the difference between acute and chronic symptoms. Acute symptoms require action. Your body is telling you very strongly that something is not right. Tolerating or ignoring acute symptoms would not be wise, rather seeking medical assistance and/or taking medication or another medical intervention would be in order. On the other hand, chronic symptoms lend themselves to trying a gentler, more passive response, such as mindfully bringing awareness to the body sensations and to the associated mental stories. 

You Are Not Your Pain

Sometimes it is hard to separate yourself from the pain and other discomforts you experience. The sensations and associated stories can consume you and make you lose perspective. Learning to tune in can help you to develop qualities of observing and gaining perspective. With practice you can tease apart the unpleasant sensations and your impulses, judgments, and stories about the sensations and your sense of identity that has been subsumed in the experience. You begin to realize that you are not the pain (or any other discomfort) or just a patient or a disease—that there is much more that makes you who you are.

Turning Toward, Not Resisting

The notion of turning toward discomfort seems counterintuitive. A natural reaction is to resist, push away, or run away from it, which is constrictive and takes mental and physical energy. And while distracting yourself from unpleasantness may seem helpful in the short run, it doesn’t allow you to actually learn how to live with what is happening.

Interestingly enough, you may also notice that when you try to ignore something or push it away, it actually seems to have a larger and more unrelenting presence. But when you turn toward and pay attention to the discomfort, it loses power over you. Sometimes by simply directing your attention toward the pain or other difficult feeling and breathing in and out of that area of the body, you can actually lessen the unpleasant sensations. It also allows you to be in control so that you can do something about it, such as changing your position, taking medication, or redirecting your attention to something neutral or pleasant. You learn that you have choices in how to deal with it. By turning toward the disagreeable feeling, you may also notice that it is not as bad as you had imagined it might be, which can be a profound realization.

♦

From Leaves Falling Gently © 2025 by Susan Bauer-Wu. Reprinted in arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Inc. Boulder, CO. www.shambhala.com