Pain: Punishment or Point of Entry

 Pain walks into an Irish bar, bartender looks up and asks, "What 'cha doing 'ear, lad?"

I think we can all agree that pain and illness leaves one stuck, ill at ease and unable to move forward in life. 

Yes.

Hate to admit it, but I have experienced chronic neck pain for eight years. Not every day, but most days I have some level of pain in my neck area. And I have spent way too many nights in my darkened room, away from my family and checked out from life because of pain. I have used every pain relief technology I know of including, from steroid shots to reiki, supplements to a new mattress, a bed full of pillows laid out crucifix style, crying and needles, pills and traction devices, sappy movies and prayers (and I am not even religious!)

After a recent trauma, I began realizing (with horror!) my natural pain relief methods were no longer working. It was as though my pain began to get too loud to operate in normal waking mode. The pain no longer asked, but instead, demanded my attention. My pain became the ignored kid at the grocery store,  gently tugging on their mom's dress and eventually having a full on toddler melt down, so he now has his Mom's attention and everyone else's. 

Steph's "Episode"

A couple weeks ago, I woke up with sharp head pain coupled with extreme neck and back tension. This isn't all that abnormal, these episodes happen at different times in varying degrees. This specific day, I declared self in 9/10 pain with a 100% guarantee of a migraine. It was on a morning I had work, so the pain relief needed to come quickly. After an hour and a half of trying to rid the pain with my natural methods; I was smacked with the baseball bat of hopelessness. It was then I realized that no matter what I did, this pain wasn't going to back off. And then the Y shape appeared on my path forward. I could pop Advil and move on or I could walk the pathway of pain like the somatic healers have pointed to.

Friend & Foe

   Side note about my frenemy, Advil. First, the gel caps may have gluten, so that's a no-
   no for someone with Hashimotos (dutiful student raises hand here). Second, Advil
   doesn't take away the pain, it only numbs the nerves that send a pain message to your
   brain. So Advil does stop the pain signals but your body still suffers (in silence.)  No
   judgment here, I took Advil like it was my job for years. As humans, we do what we 
   have to. This blog post is simply about my experience without Advil. There is no shame
   in healthy pain relief, ever. 

Since studying somatic healing, I began asking pain , "What is your purpose?" Is it my penalty for bad behavior, too much desserts or not enough water? Too many negative thoughts and unlucky genes?  Perhaps bad karma from a past life? Seasonal allergies, perhaps? Or maybe we judge pain as punishment when it is actually a signal. What if pain is a messenger, it tells us to look here, stay here, be with me, listen. What else is our emotional and physical pain except for an immediate demand for our attention.

Back to the story. So, for my extreme pain episode on this day, I decided to stop trying to rid the pain and instead ordered a plate of bravery and placed all my chips down. I stopped trying to force the door closed on my discomfort and instead, I walked through the doorway. I let the pain take over and I'm going to be honest here, it felt like absolute, infinite hell. Total, that agonizing time probably only lasted twenty minutes. During that time, I stopped trying to fix it and started feeling it. I moved from a doing state to a being state. I breathed with the discomfort and sat on my bedroom floor to let this discomfort have a voice, once and for all.

The physical pain continued to call to me and I began to also feel the emotion of pure despair. I felt jailed. I felt alone. I felt no one cared for me. I felt trapped with pure misery and my whole life situation felt impossible. I felt a failure at everything I had ever tried. And then, a collaboration. Both,  the emotions and the pain came together and became so intense, I begged for mercy, no, I screamed for mercy and sobbed. I yelled out how I could not do this, and declared "I DO NO WANT THIS!" I let it all out, I held nothing back, I felt pain in my body while I felt deep emotional anguish. 

My Before/During

  After that episode ("ah-hem," says the doctor at the psych ward, "she had   another episode,")  I slowly calmed down, laid on my back in surrender,   returned to my breathing and allowed a softening. I did a gentle and slow scan

 of my pain and realized the tension in my traps and neck was completely gone   and the head pain had dropped from a 9 to a 4.  I witnessed how my allowing   had actually alleviated the pain. As the next minutes went on, I questioned if   during my pain, I'd taken Advil but forgotten. But no, I knew I had shifted my   pain by experiencing it. My own self empowerment went through the roof.
 I felt liberated!!

  

My "AFTER" moment

The act of feeling the internal and external pain had pacified my whole system. The pain stopped being resisted after it was seen. Unconsciously, I had not wanted to go to that place of deep hurt so I avoided it with everything in my physical and mental arsenal. And yet, when I moved towards it and let myself be with it, it transformed, it transmuted. Kinda reminds me of a lost child. As an adult, you see the lost child and instead of walking away (taking the Advil) you approach them, tell them you are here to help, and wait with them, until their parents arrive. You know the kid is stressed out and won't feel better until they see their parents no matter what you say. I suspect, pain is like that lost kid, can't be relieved until it is seen by loving eyes.

Side Rant, Sssorta related

Have you ever heard the best thing you can do for homeless person? You don't have to feel conflicted about giving them money or not; the best thing you can do for their soul is simply to look them in the eye. Their physical needs aside, you don't need to give them anything, you just need to see them. You just need to acknowledge them as a human being. Your best gift can be your attention and it costs you nothing. Healing works much the same way; where you put your attention, you can also offer your love, your compassion, your understanding. And how good does it feel to be fully understood and loved anyway, sometimes, it feels like everything!

Zach Bush "Pain is the Entry Point" Interview

More on this topic later, or if you want to dive deep into this with me, send me an email, I'd love to chat with you!

Much love on your journey!

The Mind - Body Partnership

 "Health is the greatest wealth"

Before the mind can realize something is wrong, the body already senses it. Your body knows when there are untrustworthy things in the works, you get that feeling before you actually see it. Even before you mind allows you to accept what is, before intuition even comes, awareness does. 

I do not need to remind you of this, but I will anyway. Your body allows you to do so many things; to witness sunsets, hear funny jokes, hug your dog, taste yummy desserts, feel the warm shower water, smell the rain on concrete, remember your best memories, and breathe, walk, read and understand things. Your sensory motor system lets you grab your phone and bring it to your ear instead of accidentally stabbing yourself in the eye with it. So many thousands of functions without you telling it what to do. But what I'm saying here is your body is orchestrating the entire Broadway play, yet when the curtains close, your body gets no appreciation. No pats on the back. No flowers with a love note. No clapping, No standing ovation. No, instead, your body is a friend who lends money and no one ever pays them back.

The Feedback Loop

The persistent cycle of overwork, over thinking and overdoing perpetuates a rise in stress hormones that has established an unmanageable baseline for us. When we do slow down at the end of the day, we are still wired into adrenaline and cortisol as we watch scary ass shit on our screens, judge ourselves and get told all the things we need to do or buy. Our systems are bombarded with notifications, daily tasks, even our cars reminding us to check the back seat. Everything wants our attention and pulls us away from mental stillness and peace. Our bodies bare the grunt of this constant doing mode, rarely getting a voice unless it's screaming for mercy and about to KO on you. Our minds are writing the playbooks and our bodies are the ones taking the abuse. 

Our society has reached a point where sleep no longer offers a full recovery, it is merely a whiff of it. Our minds are telling us we can't slow down yet our bodies feel like we have been chased by the bad guy for years. And that combo equates to the chest pain that leaves you wondering, body aches in the morning, being extra snappy with people, and the breath that you just can't seem to grasp. Or maybe you keep getting headaches or tired by noon-time. 

Our bodies have been keeping score of the bad habits, negative thought patterns, the body shaming, the anxiety, and the unreasonable demands, the boundaries you don't set with others.

• You denied yourself a nap and pushed through the afternoon slump but you ended up yelling at your kids by dinner time
• You establish new rules for yourself around food and fitness but you keep breaking them, you are just. too. tired. 
• You are hosting so many dinners despite the exhaustion that comes afterwards 
• You ask for help from family, don't get it and then do the tasks yourself to avoid causing waves (guilty)
• You overate to avoid your emotions, maybe for years (guilty)
  
  

Sisyphus

Now picture in Greek mythology, Sisyphus, pushing the huge bolder up the mountain as punishment. Then picture a adult human jumping on Sisyphus' back, so now Sisyphus is piggybacking a human up the mountain that he can never summit. Then having this person jump off his back and scream, “What’s wrong with you, you can’t do anything right, why can't you do what everyone else can do, you’re worthless and I hate you!!” 

The body has been used, abused and beaten down while the mind had the wheel, making decisions and leading us away from our true nature. The mind kept telling us to go in a direction that was avoidant of our emotions, distracting us away our hurts, ignoring our core selves, dismissing our heart’s desires with logic. It’s not because the mind is bad, no, our mind is an excellent servant but a sub par master. Our minds prefers distraction, avoidance, skimming the surface and addictions because it needs to keep the status quo. Now, the body wants a voice and it wants a partnership; stronger together they are!

The Consequence

When injury, illness or trauma happens, suddenly self care moves from a request to a demand. And we could dive into the symptoms, understand the why's. Does my stomach hurt because I’m not listening to my inner knowing, does my back hurt because I feel alone and unsupported? What is my neck pain trying to show me. 

Eventually, as it has been for me, we might have backed ourselves into a corner where our bodies no longer bend to our physical manipulations alone. The tools that previously worked to ease your pain, keep you in the game, those methods stop working. The pushing that used to get you ahead now starts needing days of recovery. The way someone treated you in public makes you cry on site instead of giving you the grace to cry alone.  We can't hide anymore, our broken parts are starting to show. The quiet whispers of our bodies are becoming heart stopping screams.

The Mind Fears Change

Change, to the mind, even positive change, equates to death. Even if you won the lottery, it would cause stress because it is new. Stress isn't all from too many things happening, stress is just anything different. Thus, taking a leap into any new endeavor feels like suicide within our systems. So the mind keeps you stuck in unhealthy thought loops, wanting the sameness to stay because it has kept you alive this long.

But what if the sameness your mind convinces you is necessary is exactly what is in need of an overhaul. Right along the lines of not being able to solve a problem with the same mind that created it. And if you happened to notice, things around us are all changing, the old systems are failing, the world is forcing us to evolve. The government, the financial system, the food systems, even our weather - nothing can stay the same anymore. That includes us, we can't stay safely in our bubble, we are being asked to grow.  The game board of life needs new input, more resource. The mind might say to keep strong and carry on while the body screams "there might be a better way." The mind has led us all away from ourselves while our bodies want to help. Our bodies are not taking it anymore. Queuing music now…

Twisted Sister 

Your BODY could be saying: 

1. I'm so tired, please let me rest

2. It's too much, no more pushing through the pain

3. Let's try something new, the old way doesn't work anymore

4. Please be kind, I am working so hard

5. This is a betrayal to me

6. I know another way, sit with me and I'll show you

 Your mind, with all its well intentions, has been leading you away from the innate intelligence of your body. Your mind has been telling you a narrative that you can't slow down because you won't be able to get it all done. Maybe it wasn't all meant to be done? Maybe slowing down means we can think clearly and be more productive. But mostly, slowing down means we get to enjoy the ride. Returning to the body is returning to the perfect beauty of the now. Dare I say, our body is the direct line into our soul. 

The human race is counting on you to stop the verbal, psychological and physical abuse to self and end the slavery! Let your body join the decisions making, adding intuition, presence, its heart-felt grace. Free your body from being the thing you leap frog over to satisfy your mind, let's create a beautiful collaboration together.

A letter to my legs

If your seeking landed you here and you read to the end of this top ten blog post, thank you. And a small gift to self, if you resonate with this message.

Today , I ask that you take five minutes of just breathing, sitting in the silence today. No phone, no music, no distractions, no getting up when you mind tells you to do this one thing first. Add in a simple breath pattern, five seconds in and a five second exhale out. Little to no movement for five minutes. You don't even need to close your eyes or try to stop your thoughts. Just sit with peace. 

Let us begin a new relationship with bodies today. Yay for us!