Reframing Pain: Transforming Your Experience for Healing and Growth

In the previous post, I reflected on moments in life when trusting a quiet inner voice - despite fear or uncertainty- opened the door to growth. Whether it was backpacking through unfamiliar places or stepping away from a conventional path, those decisions shaped a life that’s been more aligned, more expansive.

But growth doesn’t only happen through bold choices or outer leaps. It also unfolds in a more subtle space -one that’s deeply personal, internal, and often invisible to the outside world: the space of how we relate to pain.

In fact, inner growth can be hushed by outer success. Achievements, adventures, or relationships may temporarily quiet the restlessness… until it returns – in a different shape or form, asking again to be felt. And when it does, it invites us not to do more, but to feel more. To slow down. To turn inward.

Everyone encounters pain.Physical pain. Emotional pain. The kind that arrives without warning, and the kind that lingers for years beneath the surface.

But over time, through lived experience, I came to understand this:

Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.

At first, this might sound like a paradox. But it revealed itself to me through silence, stillness, and embodied awareness—not as a philosophy, but as truth.

In 2008, I attended a 10-day silent Vipassana meditation retreat. Ten hours of meditation each day. No books, no distractions, no conversation. Just breath, sensation, and observation.

The first few days were difficult. My body ached. My thoughts raced. Doubt crept in.

But around day 6, something began to shift. I started to feel subtle waves of energy through my body. The pain I had been resisting didn’t disappear, but it no longer consumed me. Because I could observe it without attaching meaning. Without tightening around it.

That single shift -witnessing pain rather than becoming it- changed everything.

This practice later became invaluable during the births of my three children, all delivered naturally, without any medication. The pain of childbirth was intense, there’s no romanticizing that. But thanks to years of meditation, I could soften into it. I didn’t fight the pain. I allowed it, breathed with it, and let it move through me. I remained grounded and open, rather than contracting in agony.

It wasn’t pain-free. But it was free of suffering. And that distinction is everything.

The truth is: it’s not pain that creates suffering. It’s our identification with the pain.

Suffering begins when we attach a story to the sensation. When we tighten around it, fear it, or believe that we are the pain: “This shouldn’t be happening”, “I can’t take this”, “Why me?”.

In those moments, we move from having pain to being the pain. We forget that we are the witness -the awareness behind it all.

This is why I don’t resonate with Descartes’ famous phrase, “Je pense donc je suis” - “I think, therefore I am”. To me, it’s not thought that defines us. It’s being. Je suis donc je pense. I am, therefore I think.

We are not our thoughts. We are not our emotions. We are not our bodies.

We are the presence that experiences them all. And when that presence is remembered, the pain loosens its grip.

Emotional Pain Is No Different

Physical pain is the most tangible form of pain. But emotional kind of pain often runs deeper, and stays longer.

The weight of unspoken grief. The quiet ache of loneliness. The burnout hidden beneath high performance. The inner conflict that’s masked by outward success.

These are not always dramatic or visible. But they shape our inner world profoundly.

For many high achievers and leaders, emotional pain is carried silently. Tucked behind responsibility. Managed through structure. Outsmarted by productivity.

But the body knows. The heart knows. And at some point, the holding becomes too much.

We try to explain it away: “I shouldn’t feel like this”, “Other people have it worse”, “I should be grateful”.

But pain doesn’t respond to logic. It asks to be met with presence, not explanation.

Suffering comes not from the emotion itself, but from the identification with it. From believing “I am suffering”, “I am this sadness”, “I am this fear”, “I am broken”.

By repeating these narratives over and over, we become these stories we tell ourselves.

But emotions are temporary. They move like waves. We are not the wave, we are the ocean holding it.

And the more we can witness emotion with tenderness -without story, without resistance- the more it softens. The more we open to its message, the faster it moves through.

“The wound is the place where the light enters you.”

- Rumi -

Pain, when met consciously, becomes a teacher. It shows us where we’ve been tight, where we’re still holding on, where we’re not yet free.

You are not your pain. You are the awareness behind it.

This isn’t about bypassing pain or pretending it’s not there. It’s about remembering who we are in the midst of it. There’s a part of us that can hold pain gently without collapsing into it. That part is steady. It’s quiet. And it’s always available when we bring our awareness to it.

It’s the part that feels deeply – pain, grief, sadness, anger, but also love, joy, happiness- without attachment to the feelings. As Buddha said: “Pain is certain. Suffering is optional.”

In the next post, I’ll explore another layer of this: How thoughts shape reality, and how awareness transforms that too.

But for now, if you’re in pain -physical, emotional, or mental- know this:

You are not your pain. You are invited to work with what life presents without identification or judgment. But with compassion and patience.

Let that awareness be the beginning of your healing.

From my heart to yours,

Cho