A STORY ABOUT PAIN
It seems natural to continue this conversation with some ideas around PAIN and to kick this off I thought I would share with you an experience that I had recently and over the course of the next few weeks, I am going to expand a little further on the subject of pain. Because pain is an experience that I think we can all relate to.
The reason why I chose to talk about this story is that is so familiar. I hear it and I see it all the time, pain is a universal phenomena which is globally recognised by all beings.
A STORY ABOUT PAIN
About a month ago I woke up in so much pain that getting out of bed felt hard, walking even harder. In that moment my mind went back to something I had been doing on the weekend, nothing crazy but some unnecessary asymmetrical movements in an unstable position. I was so angry at myself and spent the next few days in a state of both high pain as well as high emotion. As far as I was concerned, I had done the one thing I tell people not to do and was now suffering the consequences.
This is what happened next.
1. “This is my fault”
2. “I don't recognise myself, I feel broken”
and then the big one
3. “If I am unable to get rid of my own pain, how on earth can I justify doing what I do?”
Before I knew it I had crashed into unbelievable catastrophic thinking and everything was getting worse. The one thing that relieved my pain was movement, but despite all I knew about pain it was not long before I was starting to limit my movement. I very quickly became scared that I may make it worse.
Pretty soon the world started to feel smaller, imposter syndrome was at an all time high and I was so mad at myself.
Things did not look good!
HERE IS WHERE THE STORY CHANGES
And then something happened.
I lay down on my mat, because lying down was the one place that did not hurt, and got really, really quiet. I took myself back to everything that I knew to be true about pain.
Pain is complex, pain is nuanced and pain is an output of the brain in response to a perceived sense of danger/threat.
I reminded myself of the words spoken by Kevin C Moore of Reembody. Words that I have repeated so many times to so many people.
“Your body hates to feel unstable/unsafe, in fact your body would rather be in pain than be unstable/unsafe”
And so I thought to myself
“In what way do I feel unstable? In what way do I feel unsafe?”
And in that moment I pressed pause. I pressed pause on all the thoughts around blame, shame, fear and worry. I turned inwards and lay with the experience of being in my body as it was in that moment. I focused on my breath, the rise and fall, and before I knew it I was moving my body, very gently, very quietly, and very slowly.
No, this is not the moment where some kind of magical thinking took my pain away. Sorry but it does not work like that, although I really wish it did. The pain was very much still there, but it was a pivotal moment in coming back into relationship with my body and from there I have been able to shift from feeling stuck to finding ease in my body once more.