About S&D
Suffering & Delight is about living with pain that is mundane–a condition of our life–inviting us to explore “our hours and days with an eye to their healing and comforting possibilities.”
Here is what Darlene Cohen wrote on her website about Suffering & Delight when she started the groups in (about) 1996:
“My purpose in establishing this website is to encourage and inspire people living with chronic pain or crushing stress to learn the skills necessary for dealing with these often catastrophic situations. Even if you are taking medication, seeing a physician regularly or already have established a formal meditation practice, I believe it is in your daily life and everyday activities that you will find the antidote to your distress. Therapy and formal meditation may provide relief for a couple hours a week. But when our misery has become so pervasive that it is actually mundane, a condition of our life, then we must explore our hours and days with an eye to their healing and comforting possibilities.”
As folks who have pain or chronic illness that will never go away, Suffering & Delight students come to groups to develop a new kind of relationship with their daily life and everyday activities. It is in connection with the common objects that give us daily support (like your microwave or coffee cup), the activities of our ordinary lives (like fingers on keyboard or in the dish water) and the intimacy of expressing our deepest values (like joyous self-care) that we find relief.
There is relief, and it might just be closer at hand than you think. Meditation is known to calm the alarm that goes off in the body when we experience pain. This allows us to decide how we will respond to our pain, rather than being dragged around by it whether we want that or not.
Darlene loved fashion, which included wearing frilly blouses with tiny buttons. Even though it was arduous and painful for her to button them up, the blouses gae her such pleasure, such relief, that she figured out how to continue doing so. What did she learn? One button at a time! She taught herself to focus on one button at a time, and she gave herself permission to take a small, intentional break after each one was closed up. She taught herself in this mundane activity to experience her pain AND her pleasure. That way, she decided what she would wear, not her pain.
Details About S&D Groups
Current neurological research validates that when we are actively doing something about our pain, the pre-frontal cortex actually works to neutralize pain signals within the brain, effectively shutting off the alarm when pain increases. Meditation has proven to be a powerful thing to do about pain. Helping others also helps everyone.
Suffering and Delight groups are small communities of people with chronic physical or emotional pain. Members support one another in using meditation and other practices to live full, satisfying lives right in the midst of their pain. We make our suffering useful to others and this helps everyone. Membership is by invitation only.
For more information: info@sufferinganddelight.org.