19 of the Most Comforting Mindfulness Quotes for Coping with Pain

How do you treat yourself when you're in pain?

If you're like most people, you probably wish the pain would just stop because - let's face it - none of us wants to suffer (why would we?).

Maybe you try and distract yourself at first, numbing out the pain with busyness, over-eating, drinking, or TV. But the longer it continues, the more likely you'll start to feel overwhelmed, hopeless and isolated, like you must be the only person in the world who feels this bad.

Mindfulness offers a radically different approach to painful experiences. Rather than pushing them away or wishing things were different, when we're mindful we learn to gently acknowledge our difficulties and start softening the resistance we feel towards them.

It takes practice, but this approach can lead to a much more compassionate and gentle relationship to ourselves and our pain. Our physical tension will often start to reduce and over time we'll come to realise that we are not alone in struggling; it's simply part of being human.

Below I've drawn together some of my favourite words of wisdom from mindfulness experts, psychologists, neuroscientists and people who live with painful bodies. I hope they bring you comfort, hope and strength even when the pain is at its worst.

Although a few of these quotes refer specifically to physical pain, you'll find that many of them can be just as helpful for emotional discomfort too.

Words of comfort when the pain feels overwhelming

1. "You don’t have to get through until morning. You only have to get through the present moment." - Vidyamala Burch

2. "As long as you are breathing, there is more right with you than there is wrong, no matter how ill or how hopeless you may feel." - Jon Kabat-Zinn

3. "You might tell yourself: Just this moment or Just these few moments. Or you might set a short limit: Just these next 10 breaths, being with sensations. Then, if it’s still tolerable, move on to the next 10 breaths, and so on." – Tara Brach

4. “Soften, soothe and allow.” “Soften, soothe and allow.” You can use these three words like a mantra, reminding yourself to incline with tenderness toward your suffering." - Kristin Neff & Chris Germer

"We are bigger than our pain; we are also the love holding the pain." - Kristin Neff

Words to help you meet your pain with compassion

5. "We are bigger than our pain; we are also the love holding the pain." - Kristin Neff

6. "Bring your attention to the pain as if you were gently comforting a child, holding it all in a loving and soothing attention." - Jack Kornfield

7. "When painful sensations arise and we can simply meet them with clarity and presence, we can see that pain is just pain. We can listen to pain’s message and respond appropriately—taking good care."  – Tara Brach

8. "The pain cannot be ignored or wished away. But underneath the clanging noise of the pain there is a deep wholeness that can be re-inhabited if, just for a moment, we could approach willingly, sense precisely and befriend tenderly the body that seems to be letting us down so badly." – Mark Williams

Words on acceptance vs resistance

9. "Accepting pain can be difficult. It’s just better than the alternative, which is to live in a state of perpetual suffering.” - Vidyamala Burch & Danny Penman

10. "What you resist, persists" - Usually attributed to Carl Jung

11. "Our experience of pain, in fact any unpleasant experience, is strongly influenced by our state of mind. It simply feels worse when we fight it" - Gary Hennessey

12. "if you resist the messages that your mind and body are sending you, those messages will keep on being dispatched (and felt) until you accept them [...] If you mindfully accept (or feel) these messages, they will have done their job and will tend to melt away of their own accord." - Vidyamala Burch & Danny Penman

13. "Pain x Resistance = Suffering" - credited to Shinzen Young, this formula has been widely used and quoted in numerous books on mindfulness

"I am not the weather. I am the wide and open sky." - Josie George

Words of hope

14. "I am not the weather. I am the wide and open sky, and so I can let pain move through me and out of me." - Josie George

15. "On days when the sky is grey, the sun has not disappeared forever." – Arnaud Desjardins

16. "You are the sky. Everything else – it’s just the weather.” - Pema Chödrön

Words on the fluid nature of experience

17. “When we trust that we are the ocean, we are not afraid of the waves. We have confidence that whatever arises is workable. We don’t have to lose our life in preparation. We don’t have to defend against what’s next. We are free to live fully with what is here, and to respond wisely” – Sayadaw U. Pandita

18. "This too shall pass" - Unknown; thought to originate from a medieval Persian saying

19. "Water is fluid, soft and yielding. But water will wear away rock, which is rigid and cannot yield. As a rule, whatever is fluid, soft and yielding will overcome whatever is rigid and hard. This is another paradox: what is soft is strong." - Lao Tzu

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