Healing Klesha in Body and Mind

In the last articles, we described some of the ways that klesha can manifest and lead to suffering.  While technically speaking, how we’d work with healing and releasing kleshas is within the 4th noble truth of the path, I’d like to offer a couple of practices here so that it doesn’t get too one sided and gloomy talking all about suffering without any relief in sight! 

Healing Klesha in Our Bodies

Many of us would intuitively agree with a Buddhist teaching that says that kleshas are stored in our bodies to the extent they’ve become strong or reinforced, whether by being ruminated upon, acted out, or both, or even when they involve emotional injury and literally leave an impression. 

For that reason, one very direct way of healing and releasing klesha is to work with them directly in our bodies. 

We can start by identifying a klesha, for example, a strong anger or resentment. 

Then we can ask, where is this in my body?  How does it feel in my body?

For example, maybe the anger is like a frozen ball of pain in our heads, or like hot iron in our hearts, or like a twisted, heavy knot in our stomach, etc., etc. 

While contemplation can certainly have its value, here, we won’t actually give it much thought or reflection.  We won’t be trying to figure it out, analyze, or anything like that.  We can notice and “drop” when those tendencies start to happen.

Instead, we go directly to where it is in our bodies in a felt and physical way. 

“Metastasized” klesha energy will always be closed and stuck in some way, because that’s what klesha is, as opposed to an open and free flowing wisdom energy.  In Buddhist physiology, it’s quite literally created a knot or blockage in the channels within which our spiritual / emotional energy flow. 

The way we can heal, melt, and release klesha is to embrace where it is in our bodies.  We can breathe, bringing our minds there, and embracing what’s stuck and painful in the bigger, loving, grounded space of our breathing. 

As we breathe, we can remain gentle and curious, really exploring the texture of the klesha, and offering space.

Kleshas will always be painful in some way, and what pain often needs to heal is loving and felt connection, so we can give that to these wounded parts of ourselves as we breathe. 

We can even think of each in breath as like hugging and inviting the klesha, and each out breath as breathing space, love, relief, with and into it. 

Very gradually, the klesha energy can begin to loosen up and dissolve this way. 

Signs that’s happening are any fundamental---if gradual and messy (tears are OK!)---process of opening, or of the conceptual stories changing or reframing in more insightful ways, or even just losing their grip a little bit. 

If that’s happening, we just keep going, and healing will definitely happen on its own timeline.

However, especially when trauma is involved, sometimes the energy will be too powerful and we’ll get overwhelmed or even retriggered, as if we’re reliving the experience.  In that case, we need more support, whether in the form of a confidant, a therapist and fitting modality, or a spiritual friend.  It’s important not to try to “sit through” these kinds of things, as we can actually just be hurting ourselves more, but instead, to invite support. 

If that happens when we’re meditating, we can always open our eyes, look around the room, reground ourselves in our sensory experience, or even break off the meditation session and go for a walk or seek out whatever support we’ve found helpful. 

There are also all kinds of “trauma informed” approaches to meditation and ways to adjust our practice to avoid that happening, and it’s an area where guidance and support from a suitable teacher can go a long way. 

Transforming Klesha into Compassion

Another way we can heal klesha is by transforming it into compassion.

We can do this by again, coming into contact with the raw pain and energy of the klesha, and holding it within our loving, grounded breathing. 

Then, we can bring to mind other people who we may imagine “know the feeling”.  Of course, our circumstances will vary widely, but for instance, if we’re working with anger, so are LOTS of people all around the world for all kinds of different reasons. 

We can breathe with this recognition, inviting connection with these other people who are also experiencing pain similar to ours. 

In this way, what could otherwise close our hearts further becomes what can open us into a more connected, bigger, space, in which the klesha can be held and gradually released. 

If we want to go a little further, as we breathe in, we can be inviting the other person’s pain into our pain, like literally letting it in as a catalyst for connection.  And as we breathe out, we can be offering whatever is needed to heal and release to the other person and also to ourselves. 

The cycle of breathing in this way can help ventilate things, and more actively be working with transforming the pain of klesha into compassion and openness. 

It’s also something we can do deliberately, like when we know there’s something very painful in our lives that we want to work with, and don’t necessarily want to just sit in meditation waiting for it to come up. 

There’s a more full practice called tonglen in Mahayana Buddhism, that’s basically like this but then has more stages and elements to it, and it’s something I’ll introduce in another course on the Bodhichitta, or awakened heart, practices. 

For now, these are ways we can work with healing klesha.  In building our confidence, it’s helpful to start with kleshas that feel relatively workable, and not try to take on the “big ones” right away, but just let things have their own natural progress. 

Because our buddha nature is deeper, limitlessly open, and powerful, we can absolutely do it.