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Nancy Bardacke Biography

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“In the very observation of pain, a tiny window of freedom has opened up in which you have the ability to choose how you will relate to the painful sensations in that moment-and in the next, and the next after that. With mindfulness you have brought an entirely new element into the pain-of-the-stubbed-toe equation, and because of that you have changed your relationship to the sensation in your toe. And in doing so, you actually experience the pain differently. You still feel pain, but you are liberated from the reactivity of the mind.”

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“We have a choice, a choice not about whether to experience pain, but about our relationship to that pain or how we interpret it. This is the difference between pain and suffering. It is sometimes said about life that pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional.”

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“While there’s nothing I can do about the pain signals being sent from the nerves in my toe to my brain, with mindfulness practice there is a lot I can do about how I perceive it-how I handle the thoughts and emotions that spring up in relation to that pain…. In bringing mindful awareness to the pain, I have in that very moment stepped out of reacting, and instead found a way of responding to the unpleasant sensations of my toe.”

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