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Thank you. Many Voices, One Journey. SoundsTrue.com. You're listening to Insights at the Edge.

Today I speak with VidyaMala Birch, and I must say that this is one of the most moving and powerful insights at the edge that I've yet to record.

For over 30 years, Vidyamala has lived with chronic back pain as a result of a car accident, multiple surgeries, and congenital spine weakness.

Searching for a way to cope with her situation, she started practicing mindfulness meditation

to help accept and move beyond the pain. She is the co-founder of the Breathworks Organization

in the United Kingdom, where she teaches

mindfulness-based approaches to living with physical pain and illness.

She is also the author of the new Sounds True book, Living Well with Pain and Illness, The Mindful

Way to Free Yourself from Suffering.

I spoke with Vigamala about her 30-year experience

with chronic pain, what it means to turn towards pain and soften, and about how to live one

moment at a time. Here's my conversation with Vyamala Birch.

Vigimala, you have a unusual approach, at least I think unusual in terms of a popular view of how people deal with pain, which is instead of trying to get rid of pain, we actually

turn towards it. And I'm wondering just

to begin here, if you could talk a little bit about what that means turning towards our pain,

and also how you discovered that as an approach that could be helpful. Okay. So, well, I've discovered it as an approach that can be helpful, having completely exhausted the other method, I'd say, because I'm an active person, I'm quite driven, quite ambitious in a certain way.

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