You cant really pause a process instance like you may know it from bpel engines. I asked a smiliar question a while back and the solution was to create an AbstractWorkItem which holds a pause flag. This way you can pause your process instance by blocking the execution of all workitems when the pause flag is set. But it wont work with timers :/ Maybe I'll find my thread and can add further info to your paused/suspended state question, because it was explained there.