Pain of yesterday is the strength of today

 Let me share my own experience. When I attended my first session of 'vipassana' many years back at Igatpuri, I was told to sit cross legged on the floor. I used to find sitting in that posture for 14 hours each day (for ten days in row), extremely painful. I requested my guide to allot me a chair. But he declined every time I requested him for that comfort. He used to say that I need to go beyond pain. Towards the end of the session, I decided to push myself beyond my pain threshold. I used to get that pain as I always thought there is a flaw in my knee joint.

I distinctly recall that it was the 9th day when I sat determinedly cross legged and went into a deep meditative state. I forgot about pain altogether. And, to my surprise, i did not feel any pain for the next two days! This makes me believe that if you just observe pain without associating yourself with it, it slowly dissolves and disintegrates. There comes a stage where you actually conquer the unlikeable feeling and get over it. I consider this to be your history over pain and a sure sign of emerging stronger mentally.

If after experiencing pain from an episode, you become reactive to the stimuli, then if you are attaching more importance to pain as a negative and unlikeable feeling. On the other hand, if you silently observe the pain, it slowly dissolves itself. In that sense, you have conquered the pain. It also indicates that you are not stopping at the negative experience but going beyond it. We all are born the same I mean by physical anatomy , but mentally we differ a lot!

However, since mentally if we are strong, we can bear more pain! The reasons for why, physical pain makes few people stronger are. The person is mentally strong , so he is determined to take how much ever amount of physical pain. The person has seen so much physical pain, right from his childhood, that physical pain is a part and parcel of his life.They got habituated to the pain, and have reached a point , where pain is a normal thing to them. Acceptance is the best medicine, since the people have accepted the pain, they have become strong and have won over the pain.

Actually all of it depends on what kind of pain and what kind of strength you are talking about. Also,the degree of the pain is a factor. For example: You join a gym. You work out a lot. You feel pain in your arms and legs due to the workout. If you keep doing this, you get stronger. On the other hand , consider this. You are a depressed person. You cut yourself out of guilt or something. That won't help you at all in getting stronger. If you observe, you can see that pain makes you mentally stronger and damage makes you physically stronger. But, you will have to recover from that damage or pain for it to have an effect on you. There's a lot more to tell you, but I think you should see things for yourself.

Of course, being exposed to physical pain can make you stronger if the pain is due to resistance and fatigue not because of injury. Pain helps us to be stronger mentally and physically only if we have pain in right amount and get proper recovery to grow from suffering the pain. For example: Doing pull ups will make you stronger even if it gives you pain but just twisting you arm to such an extent that you'll start feeling immense pain isn't going to help you getting stronger anyway but it can injured you. Exercising all day all night can cause many problems. It'll not make you stronger if you'll not exercise in right amount and take proper rest. Cheers!