July 2004 | Living Healthy
Chronic Pain
by Jennifer Liss
Darlene Cohen discovered the world of chronic pain studying Zen at Green Gulch Farm. While living there, Cohen developed rheumatoid arthritis, a painful and crippling disease that terrorized her. Despite seven years of Zen practice at Green Gulch, she was “completely freaked out” and overwhelmed with the challenge of “sitting with pain.” She spent one year as an invalid, with the San Francisco Zen Center community caring for her and her two-year-old son. Eventually she did learn how to settle into her pain, and from her own experience developed a system pain management she calls “Meditation on Movement.”
Cohen’s book Turning Suffering Inside Out: A Zen Approach to Living with Physical and Emotional Pain had been praised by Omega Institute’s Jon Kabat-Zinn as “quirky, humorous... and ultimately wise and healing.” She was also inspired by work with renowned Israeli self-healing teacher, Meir Schneider. Cohen believes that everyday activities offer antidotes to crushing stress and chronic pain. Her counterintuitive approach is premised on the idea that release from suffering lies in paying attention to it. “When we keep pain at bay,” she writes, “we keep pleasure at bay, too.”
The first step is learning how to face and acknowledge pain. Her techniques include using “meditation practice to develop vulnerability and feeling so that you can settle into the pain. You jump out when you can’t take anymore, but you vow to come back and never stay in a permanent state of denial.” Other techniques involve noticing the pleasure of simple movements and seemingly commonplace activities such as placing a ceramic cup on a table. Over time, she believes, this process grounds us in perceptions of the richness of life, so that even pain can’t hijack that experience.
Ron Jones, Gym Specialist at San Francisco’s Recreation Center for the Handicapped, where Darlene instructs weekly drop-in classes, praises Cohen’s patience and compassion. “She brings an overall calmness to the whole group. Everyone trusts her. Very few therapists actually get in the pool with clients, but she does. She says, ‘I’ve been there; I’m going to be there with you. We can work at this, and there will be progress.’”
Cohen (M.A., LMT) earned a graduate degree in physiological psychology in 1966 and was ordained a Zen priest with her husband in 1999. For more information on her books, workshops, and consultations, visit her website, www.darlenecohen.net.
Jennifer Liss is a SF-based writer.
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