Savoring is the capacity to attend to, appreciate, and enhance the positive experiences in one’s life.
How can savoring help those of us who live with chronic pain, illness, and/or disability?
Remember that you HAVE positive experiences. Sometimes when you are feeling worn-out, hurting, or exhausted it’s hard to lift your head above the horizon. It feels like the suffering has no end. Buddhism offers the notion of impermanence: everything arises, abides for a while, and eventually dissolves. EVERYTHING. These moments of pain and discomfort won’t go on forever. There will be better times.
Savoring encourages us to watch for those wonderful moments. Looking out for them changes the way we interact with the moment.
Here’s a helpful practice I call “delight of the day.” It involves five steps.
- As your day unfolds keep watch for a moment of joy. Will this be a good one? How about this one? You spend your day with a lively curiosity, putting yourself in the way of positive encounters. Feel free to seek one out. One way you can do that is Google “joy” and surf the results. Lately I’ve been sharing this video of 99-year-old Dick Van Dyke, released in December 2024.
- When you find a moment of joy NOTICE it. Enjoy it. Sink into it. How are you feeling in your body? Take time to appreciate the sensations.
- Respond to what you feel. Dance in celebration. Sing a song. Shout a whoop. Fist bump with someone.
- Share the joy: tell someone about your joy. Sharing it allows you to re-experience it and more firmly establishes it in your memory.
- Document your joy. Make a note of it in your journal. Take and save a photo. Put it into some format where you can review it later.
Saved delights will brighten days when you don’t feel great. Reviewing them will give you a bit of dopamine in dark times.
Even when you are living with health challenges, the next moment may be one of delight. Be on the lookout.
In your journal: describe a delight.