For months I lived with a sharp pain in the lower corner of my left shoulder blade. It felt as if a knife were lodged beneath the bone, sending shocks through my shoulder, arm, and fingers.

I tried everything—chiropractic sessions, different pillows, massages, posture correction, yoga, stress reduction, exercises, energy work. Nothing truly changed.

I didn’t know yet that it was a storm passing through a landscape I had barely learned to inhabit.

The Night the Pain Spoke

I had traveled to the mountains of Asturias, in northern Spain, for a healing seminar.

On the day of my arrival, the pain was present but manageable, though even carrying my backpack felt difficult. That evening there was a demonstration of the healing practices we would study the following day. Participants could volunteer to experience the practices.

When my turn came, I chose my shoulder.

Secretly, I hoped the pain would disappear.

Instead, that night I barely slept.

The pain intensified dramatically. It felt as if my body were splitting open.

A Night of Resistance

I spent most of the night meditating.

Between meditations, gusts of emotion swept through me—fear, frustration, confusion, helplessness. At moments I silently screamed or cried into the darkness of the hotel room.

Occasionally, a small flicker of clarity appeared: perhaps life was trying to show me something.

But I couldn’t grasp it.

Eventually exhaustion overtook me, and I fell asleep for a short time.

Walking Through the Mountains

After two sleepless nights, the morning after the seminar I woke up depleted but determined to go hiking.

My arm hung from my body like a numb limb, but I walked anyway.

The mountains offered space—wide valleys, whispering wind and quiet ridges to breathe, cry, and reflect.Somewhere inside I knew that one day it would make sense. 

But at that moment nothing made sense. 

I kept walking along the narrow mountain path, letting the vastness of the landscape hold what I could not yet understand. The air was cold, the valleys wide and quiet. Around me the mountains stood silent, unmoved by my struggle, their ridges rising calmly against the sky. Patches of snow rested patiently on their slopes, waiting for spring to carry them back to the sea. – How could something hold so much weather? – They stood like ancient giants with soft hearts, enduring every storm that passed.

Eventually I noticed grey clouds gathering over the nearby peaks, and I decided it was time to return.

When I arrived back at the hotel, I shared what I had been going through with another participant. She looked at me gently and said:

“This is the peak, where healing is taking place. Embrace it.”

I stared at her, wide-eyed.

Embrace this?

The thought of another sleepless night terrified me. Finally, with humility, I asked for painkillers.

That night I still woke often, but I managed to sleep a few consecutive hours. It felt like a miracle.

An Unexpected Turning Point

The following day I began my journey home.

To my dismay, the pain returned despite the medication. The idea of a full day of travel in that condition felt unbearable.

In a moment of surrender, I did something unexpected.

Instead of fighting the pain, I spoke to it internally.

“Please give me a break,” I pleaded.

Then I practiced some of the techniques I had learned during the seminar.

Two hours later, the pain was gone.

It did not return for the rest of the journey.

I didn’t even need the painkillers.

I remember thinking:

Well… this is interesting.

A New Relationship With Pain

When I arrived home, the pain eventually returned.

But something inside me had changed.

The pain no longer felt like an intruder. It felt familiar—almost like a companion whose presence I could tolerate.

Slowly, fear began to dissolve. Shame and frustration visited less often. My body softened around the experience instead of bracing against it.

It had become part of my inner landscape, like weather moving through a terrain I was only beginning to know.

What Pain Revealed

I cannot fully explain what happened.

Somewhere along the way, my perspective shifted. The question stopped being How do I make this pain go away? and became What is moving through me right now?

The mountains and the storm became a mirror.

When I think back to those mountains in Asturias—to the path I walked with my arm hanging beside me, unsure of what was happening inside my own body—I realize that at the time I believed the pain was something to defeat, something that had gone wrong.

Now I see it differently.

Mountains do not resist the weather that passes through them. Storms arrive, winds carve their ridges, rain reshapes their slopes. The mountains endure it all with a quiet strength, allowing themselves to be slowly shaped by the elements.

My body, I realized, might not be so different.

Pain had come like a storm across a landscape I had barely learned to inhabit. And when I finally stopped trying to push it away, allowing it to shape me rather than fighting its force, something inside began to soften.

Weeks passed.

Little by little, the pain faded.

One day I realized I had forgotten about it.

Quietly, it had left.
Like a storm that had finished crossing the mountains, it passed as quietly as it had arrived.