Hello and welcome back to practicing human, the podcast where every day we're getting a little better at life.

I'm your host, Corey Miscara, and in this episode, we're going to talk about why meditation is not simply about tolerating your discomfort, pain, or suffering.

More to come on that in a moment.

First, let's settle in together with the sound of the bells. Okay.

So if you've listened to this podcast enough,

you have a sense of what meditation is and what we're doing

in that practice. And there's an understanding that we're learning to be with the moment-to-moment

experience that arises as part of being human. And this can include positive, enjoyable, pleasurable experiences.

And it can also include some uncomfortable, painful experiences.

In fact, if you do this practice long enough, you will undoubtedly come across some degree of pain or discomfort,

just because it's simply part of the human condition.

But there can be this feeling early on in our practice that we're learning to tolerate the

suffering of life. You might have heard the phrase,

just be with it in mindfulness or meditation, which can be a frustrating phrase for some people.

And it's coming from a place of good intention, but it can be misinterpreted. Just be with it. Just practice being with it.

And that being with it can be conflated with this, just try to be still, grip my hands,

grip my teeth, and just try to be with this experience. Or just wait for it to be over or be present to it and try to not let it create too much

suffering for me.

But it's important to remember that meditation is not about learning to tolerate suffering. It's more about learning to

connect to the part of you that's expansive enough to hold this suffering and to hold the fullness

of your human experience. And that's a different orientation in practice when you are being with discomfort.

Instead of trying to grit your teeth through it or push yourself through it or just

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