I know I have written on this subject in the past, but time and time again, I see people focusing on taking the pain away. I get the flyers and information constantly for healing bodywork methods of all kinds that guarantees to take the pain away. However, from what I have learned in my own life, when the focus is on taking away the pain, you’re not healing the mind and body.
You may be sitting here and thinking this I am nuts! Why on earth would you want anyone to be in pain? After all, most of us don’t enjoy sitting in pain and we sure hate to see others in pain. You may be thinking, what kind of sick person am I, to disagree with someone wanting to take away pain or you may just roll your eyes at me. Regardless, there is a higher truth here.
A majority of humans don’t really feel all the pain they are in. People tend to minimize the pains of their life because if they felt everything, it would be overwhelming. Our body and our mind numbs the pain and tries to separate us from it, so that we don’t feel it as much. However, pain is a messenger to our body. It tells us something is wrong. It tries to get our attention so that we can make necessary changes in life to correct what is happening.
The goal of getting rid of the pain is not to run from it or avoid it or minimize and numb it. It isn’t to act like it doesn’t exist or take medication to mask it. Instead, the purpose of pain is to get us to travel within our mind and body and listen to the message of the pain. It is all about stopping, sensing and feeling and being with the pain in that moment. Just by connecting our mind and body together and focusing on the pain, we can give ourselves an opportunity to transform the pain into something useful for our lives.
Pain is generally stuck energy in the body that relates to something triggered in our life. It may be a past trauma, stress, or other event that we may or may not be aware of in that moment. The story may become important, but it does not always have to be.
If we let the fear over take us and grow exponentially, the pain will only worsen. While we may want to believe that fear is something we have complete control over, often it is sourced from the unconscious mind. Before we are aware of what is happening, fear has excited the neural pathway loops that connect with the pain we are experiencing. It isn’t so much that the pain becomes the center of our attention as much as it is the fear that joins with the pain.
Anything that tries to take us away from the pain and fear may be a temporary fix that helps us escape, but in the end, it is not fully healing our body and mind. What truly heals us is when we stop, focus and feel what is happening. It is when we go into the pain and sit with it, desiring to know what we need to learn from it, that we will begin to reclaim the power stuck in the pain. The trick in healing is not about taking pain away, but going into the pain and being there in union with it.
The more we can be there with not only the happy times of life, but the pain that is taking place in our body, the more healthy we will become. By avoiding the pain in our life, we are setting ourselves up for all types of health conditions. It may be easy to avoid the pains for a time, but sooner or later they will catch up with us. We will notice it when we are sitting in the doctor’s office chasing the latest symptoms we are experiencing. All the medicines and surgeries in the world will not be a match for the pain we have minimized and numbed from our life.
Open up to the pain in your life and you will transform it. Stop, focus, and feel it, and it will empower you to greater truth in your life.
By Don Shetterly
April 19, 2012
Somatosync
April 19th, 2012
Reprinted by permission from the Mind Body Thoughts Blog
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