Pain Moves
Meeting pain as movement
“Awareness, per se, is curative.”
— Fritz Perls
Someone who tells you to just sit with it doesn’t know what chronic pain is like.
There are all kinds of pain. Some you really can sit with — but others, especially the kind that feels like it will never end, sitting with is probably not the right medicine. That’s an idea in the mind overriding the body’s natural rhythm and self-regulating impulses.
Acute Pain as Practice
One of my favourite Peter Levine exercises is to go stub your toe.
Not literally — but as a way to meet pain as sensation rather than story.
The next time you feel a sudden sting — a paper cut, a bee bite, an elbow on the table — see what happens if you let yourself be there. Notice the rush of heat, the surprise, maybe even the swear words that leap out before thought catches up.
These small shocks are teachers.
They remind us that pain, when allowed, is movement.
It’s the body trying to complete something.
When I was stung by a bee once, I decided not to resist. I stayed curious — these are just sensations. The intensity made it easy to pay attention. Unlike chronic pain, which can go dull and hidden, acute pain insists that we stay awake.
The Movement of Pain
Gabor Maté writes that the attempt to escape pain creates more suffering than the pain itself.
Peter Levine adds that pain is energy trying to complete its movement.
Even the slow, heavy, numb kind is still moving — it’s life energy looking for rhythm.
Fritz Perls, founder of Gestalt therapy, said healing begins when awareness returns.
Pain isn’t pathology; it’s unfinished contact.
When we turn toward it — gently, curiously — the cycle can complete:
sensation → awareness → mobilisation → contact → satisfaction → rest.
When we interrupt that flow, by tightening or analysing, the energy stays trapped.
The ache, the restlessness, the anxiety — all of it is movement waiting for permission.
The body already knows how to find its rhythm; it’s the mind that interrupts.
Gestalt therapy calls this interruption unfinished business — the unexpressed emotion, the half-lived impulse, the words that never got said. Pain, in this view, is the intelligence of the body asking for completion. It’s the organism saying, something here needs contact.
To “sit with pain” doesn’t mean freezing in stoicism — it means entering relationship with it.
Feeling the sting, the heat, the contraction, and noticing how it shifts when given attention.
This is the same principle Peter Levine describes in Somatic Experiencing: energy wants to complete its cycle. If it can’t move through trembling, crying, sighing, or expression, it stays stored.
Titration, Exaggeration and Flow
We don’t need to drown in pain to meet it.
Levine calls this titration — letting in just a thread of sensation, then grounding in something resourcing, like the floor or the breath.
Fritz Perls offered the mirror image: exaggerate it.
Amplify the gesture, the tension, the impulse — let the movement finish itself.
Both point to the same truth: pain needs participation, not avoidance.
The Parts That Protect Us
From a Somatic IFS view, pain always has a purpose.
It’s either trying to protect us or get our attention.
The parts that tense, numb, or distract aren’t enemies; they’re allies.
They carry the history of how we survived. When we meet them with curiosity rather than resistance, the body’s defences soften. What was frozen begins to move again.
Buddhism says: Life is suffering.
But not as punishment — as invitation.
Suffering, when met with awareness, becomes medicine.
Sensation and Story
At its core, pain is sensation plus story.
When we drop the story, what’s left is raw energy — heat, pulse, vibration, contraction.
Without commentary, pain becomes something we can move with.
Sometimes that movement looks like breathing.
Sometimes walking.
Sometimes doing the dishes slowly, feeling the warmth of the water and the rhythm of repetition.
The most important thing for managing pain is resourcing — finding what restores balance.
A hand on the heart. A tree. A line of music.
These are anchors that remind the body it’s safe enough to feel.
Simply put, if you think about it super rationally — whatever the pain is, it’s already there.
There’s nothing you can do about its existence. Not looking doesn’t change anything.
But there is something within your control, and that’s your response.
When we turn toward it with curiosity, there’s a sense of going with it — finding the right movement, the right rhythm. Especially with less acute pain, staying with it might look like breathing or walking, or even doing something as ordinary as household chores — slowly, with presence, sinking into repetition but staying alert, staying with it.
Try This Week
Notice how your body meets discomfort — start small.
A stubbed toe. A paper cut. A moment of emotional sting.
Before the story begins, pause.
Let the raw sensation arrive. Feel its texture — heat, pulsing, tightness, sting.
Then find what helps you stay: the breath, the ground, the sound of life around you.
You’re not trying to fix anything. Give it space, Notice, Stay.
You’re letting the body do what it knows — move, release, regulate.
Each time you meet pain with awareness, you widen your capacity to meet life itself.
Pain, joy, grief, love — they all run on the same current.
When we stop interrupting that current, something larger begins to move through us.
When you stop trying to be what you think you should be and become who you really are, you can dance your dance and move your spirit. That’s freedom.
— Gabrielle Roth