Say, for example, you have a pain in the knee and you're not quite sure whether it's a real, actual or a meditation pain. If the bell rings and you get up and the pain goes away fairly quickly, then it's probably a meditation pain or a posture thing. If, however, the pain continues for more than a couple of minutes into the walking, then you're probably pushing the body too much and it's probably a good idea to ease off on pushing that particular area of the body. Usually a meditation pain goes away after we finish the formal posture, but if the pain lingers in any way after the end of the formal posture, it may be that we are pushing it. Especially if one has had a past injury in the particular area one has to be a lot more careful of that particular situation, and be more conservative with what you do in the posture.
Actually this helps us to understand how the body is not really ours, because sometimes we're put into a position where we have to move the posture due to past injuries or due to the fact that the body is stressed in some way. That shows us we actually have little control over the body. The body is doing its own thing. And even if we develop the power of the mind to be able to be with it, we may actually cause damage to the body. So being able to understand the difference between meditation pain and real actual pain is quite important. So that we see that we don't have the power to make the body satisfactory, that it is beyond our power to make it satisfactory and beyond our power to control.
With the different types of meditation pain, this is particularly very valuable for us to develop the capacity to see sensation as sensation, so that actually we can bring that understanding to deal with the actual pain. But not in the sense of putting ourselves into a posture that we have to feel it, because often times when there is real actual pain, we don't have to put ourselves in any particular posture, it may be present anyway. So learning how to deal with Unpleasant Physical Sensation is very helpful with the smaller types of unpleasant physical sensations, so that our mind gets stronger to deal with the real actual pain from injuries, so that we can see sensation as a sensation and not be so affected by it.
In the formal posture it's probably not a good idea to push real actual pain because you may harm the body. It may be wiser to get in a posture that is less stressful for the body and understand that the body does its own thing from time to time and we don't have any power over it.
But with the ones that go away after the bell rings, we can experiment a little bit more. Bring up a bit of determination and energy, start to investigate into these unpleasant physical sensations, because it may be of great value to us, especially as we age and when we die. We may have to deal with pain when we're dying, so the ability to keep a certain amount of balance in unpleasant physical sensations is very helpful, so that we don't have such a low pain threshold that we go into fear and anxiety when we are confronted with pain.
It also helps watching unpleasant physical sensation that is not disease or injury related, when we come across the normal sort of pains people experience like headaches, etc. These can be viewed as times when we can expand our capacity to observe sensation more moment to moment.
One thing I will encourage people though, is to be a bit cautious with the knees. If you have an idea that it may be a real actual pain starting to develop, then it's okay to ease off for a little until you get a little bit more confidence that it is a meditation pain. Because sometimes I've heard of people being encouraged to push pain, especially in the knees, and actually ended up damaging the knees. And it's very hard to walk without our knees, so be careful with the knees.