What Leonardo Da Vinci Can Teach Us About Pain

I’ve been listening to Leonardo’s da Vinci’s biography (slowly) and as nerdy as that makes me sound, his perspectives on life and his heightened level of awareness (understatement) were absolutely astonishing.

Leonardo believed in the art of observation. He would spend hours analyzing the tiniest micro movements of insects, or the way air flows over a bird's wings, or the way water moves under different pressures and currents, or simply how long curls of hair sit when they rest on the skin of someone's shoulder for their portraits. He was a keen master of observation.

Observation, to me, directly translates to pure presence and mindfulness. He was really a master of seeing what others couldn’t see, because he was fully present in his studies and fully immersed in his frequent rendezvous with nature.

From those observations he was able to make intelligent inferences and create the masterpieces he’s so well known for today.

One inference he made that really stood out to me was the idea that after studying thousands of plants and animals he concluded that anything that moves - animals, versus anything that is immobile and stationary - plants, had a very different anatomy. Particularly, the largest differentiator being one could feel pain, and the other could not.

He believed that the ability to feel pain was created to keep animals safe. Since animals are mobile, pain was needed to signal to them that something was endangering their body and ultimately their survival.

Plants don’t need this signal. Plants start and end their life in the same place they began.

As humans, we need pain.

Pain shows us which direction to move, whether it's a physical pain like accidentally touching a hot stove or an emotional pain like losing a loved one or receiving harsh criticism.

They are both designed to tell us which way to move. Pain carries information with it. Information that Leonardo recognized plants didn’t need but animals, and especially humans, can greatly benefit from in terms of surviving and thriving.

The thing about pain though, is many of us have spent a lifetime trying to become more like plants. 

Avoiding pain.

We feel pain at an early age, deep pain like the cut from that first love, or the absence of a parent, or unrelenting bullying from other kids at school and we decide that it’s better to turn down those receptors.

Better to stay still.

Better to numb it out and go unconscious with “painkillers” like stimulants and depressants, overworking, shopping, and unnecessary distractions all because we don’t want to feel the pain.

Because feeling the pain would mean receiving the message that you most likely don’t want to hear, the information, and then being asked to move.

Moving can look like changing something about yourself that you’ve been tightly gripping as your identity for years, or leaving that relationship, or telling your boss that this job is no longer serving you, or admitting defeat in a business venture and closing it to begin a new one. Or, literally moving across the country, as I did, leaving all your family, friends, and lifestyle to build a new one.

Moving can take on a lot of forms but we must first feel the pain, hear what it has to say, before we can truly know which direction to go.

 So some advice to you, if I can offer any, is to become more receptive to pain. Open yourself up to it. Become more like the human that you are and less like the stationary plant life that serves a purpose in this world but is not you. 

You are remarkably human.

Becoming more receptive to pain also means you become more receptive to pleasure. Because it’s the same receptors. The same nervous system.

Essentially, you become more sensitive, and sensitivity is a powerful gift.

I can speak to this for myself. I am naturally a very sensitive person, but I learned from culture and conditioning that sensitivity is not a superpower, but a burden. 

As a result, I spent years avoiding feeling my pain and sadness, which also meant I spent years avoiding feeling fully alive. I would detach from anything that felt painful and distract myself with constant work, excessive and spontaneous traveling to stay stimulated, partying and creating drama in my life that was non-existent before. My default for avoiding pain was mostly to stay stimulated and distracted. Only problem was we all only have so much energy and attention to stay stimulated and distracted and once those reservoirs are burned out, you’re left feeling depressed and lifeless. As a result, I oscillated sharply between the two. Like hopping on a roller coaster, going for a wild ride, only to find I have to get back in the long lifeless line and wait for my next turn - sitting with my sadness and grief.

To come back alive, I slowly started finding sustainable pleasure (not the quick hit pleasure I was used to administering) in the little things. 

The really little things.

I started noticing how good it felt to have a hot shower every morning and how lucky I was to have that opportunity. I noticed the way the leaves moved in the wind when I was on a walk. I noticed the way blueberries popped in my mouth when I bit into them, the tart juices lighting up my taste buds. I noticed the way the sun streaked into my living room in the late afternoon, illuminating the whole space. I noticed the subtle loving ways people communicate to you without even having said a word. Through smiles, eyes, and small gestures. 

I became a little Leonardo without even knowing it (I’ve been reading the book a long time but not that long!) and as a result, I was able to increase my capacity for both pleasure and pain.

Because you can’t have one without the other

Feeling fully alive is the capacity to feel the full spectrum of emotions. The whole range. It’s increasing that capacity to hold all of it - the highs and the lows, the lights and the darks, the sadness and the elation. 

We are whole beings, meaning we have all forces within us.

Feel it all. The pain and pleasure. Then move.

Increasing your capacity to feel and manage the full range of your emotions; dark & light, pain & pleasure, is a leading philosophy behind my signature Self by Design Method.

If you’re a conscious entrepreneur, creator, or leader who’s been considering mindset coaching and are curious to know more, Book a Free 15 Min Exploratory Call with me and let’s chat. This call is completely no-strings attached and solely for the purpose of opening the conversation to see what’s possible for you!