Pain is Inevitable, suffering is optional

 Mindfulness and Pain Management

“Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional.” –Haruki Murakami

Because mindfulness is awareness without judgment, we can use it to focus on our mind and body when we are experiencing pain sensations. Because words have power, it is suggested we do not use the word pain to describe difficult body sensations. Statements like, “This pain will never go away, or this hip is ruining my life, or I can’t cope with this pain any longer,” are stories that can amplify the pain. When can replace them with “pain is inevitable, suffering is optional,” a phrase Diana Winston, Director of Mindfulness Education at MARC uses. She has many free mindfulness-guided meditations online if you Google her name. The Buddhist tradition teaches pain is inevitable for everybody alive. We have choices in how we deal with pain. Dealing with chronic pain through mindfulness has been the focus of Jon-Kabat Zinn. He also has many books you can find online.

Our body is incredibly resilient and can adapt to difficult sensations. We may not like them, but we can adapt when we realize our body asks us to pay attention. Because we often ignore these signals to take care of ourselves, our body must get louder in its cry for help. A common mistake many of us make is to hold our breath or tighten and hold on to pain. While focusing on pain seems totally counterintuitive, mindfulness teaches us what we focus on often changes, and by breathing into the pain and paying attention to it, it will change. I will share directions for two ways of managing pain. One is from Diana Winston and the other, is from Tim Desmond.

Diana Winston

You can find this exercise for working with pain online. It is about 20 minutes long. The steps are as follows:

1.     Grounding – feet on the ground, arms relaxed on your lap or beside you, eyes closed or looking downwards, take a few breaths to relax your body. Notice I don’t say deep breaths; deep breathing can make you feel dizzy or light-headed and is not helpful.

2.     Body scan – explore your body with your attention, noting as you progress from your head to your toes any points of tightness, tingling, or other sensation.  Pay attention without judgment as your attention moves over your body.

3.     Focus on a relaxed part of your body – find a place in your body, a place that feels secure, relaxed, at peace, and pain-free.  Rest for a time in this relaxed part of your body. Allow the sensation of peace and calm to spread through your body.

4.     Focus on your pain – focus on the part of your body where you are experiencing discomfort. Feel the sensation and notice any negative thinking you have developed around the pain and say cancel, cancel. Repeat an affirmation like, “I love my body, or you love the body part that is uncomfortable.”

5.     Now gently bring your attention to the relaxed part of your body – experience the comfort and restfulness here.

6.     Continue to take mindful breaths and gently go back to the uncomfortable part of your body.

7.     Go back to the comfortable part of your body.

8.     After a time of mindful breathing and going back and forth between the comfortable and uncomfortable parts of your body, resume your daily activity.

Tim Desmond

This is a Mindfulness practice developed by Tim Desmond, L.M.F.T. Its purpose is to learn how to be aware of body sensations that are uncomfortable, without judgment and without trying to change them. Often you will find what you focus on does change and especially if you listen to what your body is attempting to tell you. When we listen to our bodies, they do not have to scream at us with pain for long. You can use this practice when you are experiencing discomfort. You will also notice that in time you will become more aware of your body’s messages and begin to take better care of it. 

Take a minute now to experience something in your body. It can be hunger, tiredness, something that is too tight like a shoe or clothing, pain someplace, or tension in your body in your neck, shoulders, or back. It could be your stomach feeling too full, too empty, or upset. 

With your eyes open or closed, connect with the sensation in your body; put all your attention on the sensation.

• Allow it to be just as it is. Do not try to fix it, change it, deny it, or judge it.
• Notice what happens when you put your full attention on that sensation. 
• What we put our attention on changes. 
• There is no right or wrong change. Just notice the change.

Try to ask the sensation:

• How are you attempting to help? 
• What do you need me to hear?
• What do you need?
• What is your job?

Non-judgmental awareness and learning to listen to your body will bring a whole-body sense of wellbeing. 

• Can you show compassion and empathy for the sensation? 
• Can you show compassion and empathy to your body?

The purpose of both practices is to change your relationship with uncomfortable body sensations. Pain is a part of life. It does not have to rule our life. Suffering is not inevitable, we do it to ourselves by allowing our mind to tell stories of negativity. Again, awareness gives us the power to know when we are holding on to pain through negative thinking and how to let go. When we set the intention to listen and connect with all our body, we are rewiring and re-training our body’s response to discomfort. We learn to manage pain so as not to suffer. 

A Short Lesson in Neuroscience

 A Short Lesson in Neuroscience

 

Today researchers study the brain through MRI technology. Until now, we could only research the brain after death; therefore, we believed our brains do not change after age twelve, and there is little change in a person’s personality after age five. However, today we know that we can rewire the brain for continuous change promoting healing, growth, and great wellbeing. The research of Richard Davidson led to coining the word, Neuroplasticity. A short lesson in neuroscience will help us understand how mindfulness changes our brain. These changes show up in MRI technology.

Prefrontal Cortex is the location of our executive functions. These functions include concentration, focus, impulse control, digestion, emotional regulation, decision making, and reasoning.

Limbic System is also known as our primitive brain. When we are functioning out of the limbic system, the only goal is survival. The limbic system triggers the fight-flight or freeze chemicals.

The Hippocampus is part of the limbic system and is responsible for storing and retrieving memories and the emotions attached to those memories. When it is damaged, people have difficulty regulating fear and anger responses. In addition, many studies have found that the hippocampus decreases in size when exposed to long-term stress or trauma.

The amygdala decides which part of our brain dominates in various situations. For example, it determines what is needed by how we are breathing. If it believes we are in grave danger, it will go into a primitive brain reaction called fight-flight or freeze. On the other hand, when we breathe calmy, there is no need to have the primitive brain in control, and we have access to our executive functions. Thus, breath is an important tool for relaxation and clarity. When exposed to long-term stress or trauma, the amygdala thickens and becomes more reactive to stress, creating “false alarm” emotional signals. So, the fight or flight reaction of the primitive brain becomes overactive. These are changes in the brain making the symptoms of PTSD and other anxiety-related disorders. Mindfulness is the treatment of choice by the V.A. and many other health care providers. Through breath, mindfulness teaches us how to remain calm and live from our executive functions.

Neuroplasticity is a term coined by Richard Davidson of UW-Madison. It describes the ability of the brain to make changes as a way of healing. Listed below are changes created in the brain when you silently observe without judgment.

·       Increase gray matter in the hippocampus—thus emotional healing of trauma reactions.

·       Decreases the gray matter in the amygdala, thus allowing it to be less reactive to stress and threats. 

·       Mindfulness provides mental training. You practice observing your thoughts, feelings, and sensations moment by moment with nonjudgment, viewing them simply as what they are, thoughts, feelings, and body sensations.

 Neuron’s process and transmit information through electrical and chemical signals.

Synapses are the small gaps between neurons that allow information to pass from one neuron to the next.

Neural Pathways connect relatively distant brain or nervous system areas with a belief system or new behavior.

·       Every time we think, feel, or do something, we strengthen a pathway.

·       Habits are well-traveled pathways.  We can form new habits with repetition and practice.

·       Old pathways used less will weaken. 

·       With repeated and direct attention towards the desired change, we all can rewire our brains. 

Pleasure and Reward Centers are where the brain is wired to seek pleasure and reward; it believes they are essential for survival.

·       The reward pathways are activated when the brain floods with dopamine (the feel-good neurotransmitter). 

·       The pleasure and reward system activates with a pleasurable behavior or substance is consumed. It floods with dopamine, and the hippocampus remembers the pleasure and the good feelings receiving an immediate sense of satisfaction. 

·       The faster and more intense the feeling of pleasure the more it becomes addictive. When it becomes an addiction, the object can release two to ten times the amount of dopamine to the reward system, and it does so more quickly until tolerance develops.  

Tolerance is a condition where more and more of the substance is needed to create the original high. Once tolerance begins, it produces withdrawal symptoms when it is not there because the body believes the substance is required to survive.

Dopamine is released when we anticipate and give in to our cravings and addictions.

Opioids are also neurotransmitters. T

·       They promote more long-term rewards like wellbeing for accomplishing intentions.

·       Opioids are related to social contacts and when released creates good feeling that enhance bonding.

·       Rewiring the brain takes place by changing our thinking, beliefs, and behaviors. Meditation gives us the ability to be the observer creating more regulation of our lives. 

·       The brain can restructure itself in a way to bring more happiness and wellbeing. 

·       We can change old habits by not participating in past behaviors, so the pathway diminishes. 

·       Rewire also takes time and practices, so be patient with yourself. 

·       Celebrate small steps in the direction you are going. 

The neurology of self-compassion is studied by neuroscientist through studies they conduct to find how self-compassion affects the brain. They discovered how self-compassion strengthens the parts of the brain that makes us feel happier, more resilient, and open to others. In addition, it provides comfort for negative emotions in the present and can permanently heal painful memories from the past. In Lesson Two, we share practices and more tips on healing past emotional wounds with compassion.

Panksepp & Biven published a book in 2012, The Archaeology of the Mind, demonstrating how the practice of self-compassion recruits’ neural pathways to produce oxytocin and endogenous opioids. These are chemicals that promote bonding and act to comfort negative emotions and reduce distress

Increase Body Awareness

 How to Increase Body Awareness

“One of the magical experiences in Buddhist training is our growing ability to quiet the mind and sense the body and the world anew. Zen poets celebrate the crunch of snow on the winter path, spring blossoms covering their robes, wind among the pines, walking wet in the autumn mist, listening to the laughter of children.”—Jack Kornfield

Mindfulness of the body teaches us to tune into our bodies' needs. Learning to trust and love our bodies is important as we age. Our culture would have us trusting pharmaceutical companies and Western medicine without regard to what our bodies may be trying to tell us. Learning how to ask my body what it needs and listening for the answer has been one of the greatest gifts of mindfulness. No one understands me and can love me as I do. I am the only expert who knows me, what comforts me, my joys, and desires like I do. Through self-awareness, and awareness without judgment, I can increase my joy and decrease the things, I fear.

We know one of the keys to better relationships is to make sure the person hears us and knows we are listening. Remember words matter. The subconscious mind does not know false from true. It only accepts what you say and thinks as fact. It takes information and builds on it creating the reality it hears. Become aware of the words you use with your body. “Everybody’s body starts declining at the age of 40.” “I hate my stomach.” “I am fearful of getting cancer, because it runs in my family.” This is not what the body needs to hear. If you are saying things like this, it is time to seek more awareness of the messages you are picking up from a disease-based culture. A diagnosis may be a message to the subconscious mind. In my therapy practice, I tried to avoid diagnosing a client out loud. I did not want to reinforce the message of depression or anxiety. While it is important to treat the symptoms, I never liked to say, “You are depressed.”

Tim Desmond, L.M.F.T. describes how mindfulness is used to listen to our body without judgment. By bringing more awareness to the body we notice sensations of tension, pain, or sensations of tingling and heaviness. We keep our attention focused on the body sensation without trying to change it. We just feel it. He describes how it is important to have an attitude of warmth and acceptance toward the sensation. One of the analogies is that Thich Nhat Hanh is of a mother holding her newborn baby with an open and loving acceptance. More information follows when we discuss using mindfulness to manage pain.

Ellen Langer in her book, Counterclockwise, states “Instead of mindfully attending to our health, we are a culture bent on the psycho-pathologizing of everyday life. Instead of recognizing that in certain circumstances sadness is rational, we call ourselves depressed. Rather than recognize that there is more than one view of any situation, we deem people— even ourselves— to be “in denial” if they disagree with the dominant view. If we have a positive view of events, we are told we are rationalizing. Almost every pain becomes a syndrome. How many of us declare that we suffer from insomnia after just one night of little sleep?” Langer calls us to become “Mindful Learners” by learning how to tune into our bodies and to become more involved in our own healthcare. Mindfulness of body “is most relevant for the prevention of disease” because it enhances our ability to tune into our bodies and distinguish changes. This empowers us to discern imbalances before they become a disease or chronic illness. Langer described how mindfulness and body awareness are “literally and figuratively enlivening.” When we are fully engaged and learning we are more alive and fuller of the energy needed to understand and create greater control over our health care.

Louise Hay in her book, Loving Yourself to Great Health, describes in chapter four “How Listening to your Body is a Powerful yet little-known Health Secret.” She states that when learning to listen to your body, it may only whisper with a vague feeling or a slight symptom. The more you practice listening, the easier it will become to understand the message. Intuition is a mind-body function, often described as a “gut feeling.” When you are more in touch with your body sensations through your senses, you will be able to sense intuitive messages. You will notice the difference between thinking of the chattering brain and knowing with the body. Knowing with our hearts and body is an intention we work on throughout this journey of wisdom.

Some Things to try:

·       Louise Hay suggests writing in your journal ways your body speaks to you through body sensations. “Today I woke up feeling like I needed more rest. My body may be fighting off an infection.”

·       A guided body scan with the intention of listening to your body is helpful.

·       When you are feeling like your body is trying to tell you something, listen and try to do what it is asking for, more sleep, less sugar, more water, or exercise.

·       When I catch myself saying something unkind or not helpful to my body, I say, “cancel cancel” and replace it with an affirmation.

o   My body is a healing machine.

o   My body guides me to my highest good.

o   I know what is true for me.

o   I trust my body to know what is best.

Exercise for more body awareness from Eckhart Tolle, author of The Power of Now, offers this technique for becoming fully present in the moment.

1. Close your eyes and hold up one hand so that it’s not touching anything but air.

2. Ask your thinking mind, “Without opening your eyes, how can I know that my hand exists?”

3. Feel your mind’s attention go inside the body to answer the question, activating a nonverbal part of the brain.

4. Now hold up both hands (eyes closed, remember) and feel the inside of both at the same time.

How the Celtic Women became the Wisest Creatures in the Land

 The Story of How Women Received Wisdom

Told by Sharon Blackie “If Women Rose Rooted”

Once upon a time, inside a hill like this, Celtic women were transformed into the wisest creatures in the land. In the Otherworld, wisdom is largely possessed by women, since they are the ones who hold the Cup. The Queen of the Aos Sí decided one day to bestow that gift on human women too, and so she sent out an invitation to all the women of the land, asking them to come to her great hall beneath the hill on a certain date, and at a certain time. The news was carried on the winds and the waves, by the birds and the fish; even the leaves of the trees whispered of it. Soon, women from all over the country began to set out on their journey. Some traveled alone, some came together; and when the appointed day dawned, the doors to the Otherworld opened. The women streamed inside the hill – and gasped to find themselves in a beautiful hall that was draped with bright cloths woven from nettles and dyed with the blood of shellfish and the sap of plants. Soft animal skins covered the floors and seats, and a feast was laid out on tables of wood and stone, set on plates of pearly shell. A soft green light pervaded the vast hall. When everyone was inside and the watchers saw no more coracles on the water, no more women climbing up the slope of the hill, the doors to the outside world were closed. Into the hall then came the Queen, bearing herself with kindly dignity, her face shining with a strange but lovely light. She carried a large golden Cup in her hand, bright with unusual marks and carvings; eight fairy women followed behind, each carrying a golden flagon of sparkling liquid which they used to continually fill the Cup. The Queen passed through the hall, offering a drink from the Cup to each of the women who were present. The Cup held the distilled wisdom of the world through all the ages past, and as each woman drank, she suddenly grew wise and understood many things she had never known before. Some were able to see much, some were able to see little – but every one of them benefited. And then the women feasted, and the next morning they went back out into the world again, filled with the wisdom and knowledge of the Otherworld.

In addition to this story is sometimes told: Just as the ceremony ended and the feast began, there came a hammering on the walls and doors of the hall. The fairy folk looked out and saw the hill covered with latecomers who had arrived after the doors were closed. They had been unable to enter and were now too late to receive the gift of wisdom. There is still a saying in Gaelic about a foolish woman: ‘She was out on the hill when the wisdom was distributed.’

Earth Sky Grounding Meditation

 Earth Sky Grounding

HeartMath has done the research and tells us that our hearts create an electromagnetic energy field that vibrates and has its own unique frequencies. The Earth’s frequencies interact with our own. Everything alive including rocks, plants, animals, rivers, and oceans is alive with its own electromagnetic fields of energy. They all resonate with our own and bestow the blessings of nature when we connect with them. Our individual energy field can be clear and intentional, or it can be scattered.

When we come into our circle or we go into nature, we wish to align our energy. Grounding is an important way to balance energy and bring us into alignment with our bodies. When we are not in our bodies, we lose our connection to our hearts. Grounding is a way to distance ourselves from a busy life, triggered trauma, and old stories that keep our energy stuck and cloud our perception.

This is a meditation to align our energy and open our hearts.

Begin:

Do a quick body scan and see if you are relaxed and present. Are you upset rather than calm? Take a few breaths to feel calm.

1.    Focus your attention on your feet. Are they firm on the floor?

2.    Imagine tree roots going from your feet deep into the earth.

3.    Place one hand on your belly.

4.    Imagine energy flowing up the tree roots into your feet. Breathe in as you imagine the energy flowing up through your body.

5.    Breathe out as you reach the top of your head an the energy flows up to the sky.

6.    As the energy moves up to the sky, it takes all the nosiness of your life with it.

7.    Take your hand off your belly and gently place it over your heart.

8.    Become aware of your breathing.

9.    Say to yourself, I am Love. I am Love. I am love.

10. Feel the love and let it be a part of your breath. Breathing in Love, Breathing out busyness. Breathing in Love, Breathing out Busyness.

You may come back to the room when you are ready.