Healing the Soul

“The cure for pain is in the pain.” ~ Rumi

When I was a kid and fell off my bike or scuffed myself up somehow, I would run to my mom and tell her I had a “hurt.” For whatever reason, I didn’t tell her that I was hurt, but that I had acquired a hurt—a thing that was causing me pain. This thing was not a part of me. It was something I had, and once I healed and ditched the Band-Aid, it was forgotten.

When we are physically injured, our bodies intrinsically know what to do to heal. We don’t really have to think about it; we simply allow the body to do what it already knows how to do. Of course, an injury can be painful and uncomfortable for hours, days, or even weeks. But if we give ourselves enough time to recover, healing happens. The body processes the injury and instinctively directs its energy toward repairing the physical wound, without us having to make a conscious effort.

But what about our “soul hurts”?

These are the wounds we cannot see but can feel deeply. They can linger for years and have a profound effect on our lives. I’m talking here about trauma.

Unlike a physical wound, we often attach ourselves to our soul hurts. They become our possessions. Some of us are still carrying wounds from childhood. Our bodies remember these hurts, and instead of allowing them to heal, we nurse them. We protect them, insulate them, and sometimes even hoard them, like a child selfishly stockpiling her favorite toys.

Perhaps, on some level, we believe we deserve to continue feeling the pain. Maybe we feel we have earned the right to suffer because of our past mistakes or because of the injustices that were done to us.

But when we hold on to past trauma and build a wall around it, we hurt ourselves twice. Not only do we continue to experience the original soul hurt, but we also spend enormous amounts of energy guarding it—protecting ourselves from feeling the very pain we need to process.

Instead of allowing ourselves to move through the pain so that we can eventually release it, we find ways to avoid it. We deny the trauma. We distract ourselves. We dissociate. We lash out at others or redirect our pain somewhere else. We do whatever we can to avoid sitting with the discomfort.

So, how does any of this relate to a yoga practice?

Sometimes, we simply have to sit with our discomfort. We have to feel it. Breathe through it. Resist the urge to distract ourselves long enough to discover what is underneath it.

I’m not suggesting that yoga poses should be painful. But they can be intense. And many of us have certain poses we avoid because they bring up something uncomfortable—not necessarily physically, but emotionally. Sometimes a pose asks us to stay when everything in us wants to escape.

As Jason Lyle writes in his memoir Sacred Grit, sometimes we just have to “sit in our shit.” And Rumi reminds us, “The cure for pain is in the pain.”

Denying that the hurt exists or turning away from it does not make it disappear. In many cases, it only gives the hurt more power.

Maybe healing begins when we are willing to turn toward the places that hurt. To sit with them. To breathe into them. To look them in the eyes without judgment or shame.

We don’t have to become our hurt. Just as I learned as a child, we can recognize that we have a hurt without believing that we are the hurt.



And perhaps, when we finally stop running from our soul hurts, we give ourselves the same opportunity our bodies have always had: the opportunity to heal.