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A couple weeks ago, I introduced some concepts on the workings of pain that I think are useful for everyone to know. They’re derived from my explorations into Traditional Chinese Medicine. Here’s a synopsis:
- Virtually all pain is due to stagnation
- Resistance promotes and worsens stagnation
- All levels of our being are interconnected, so
- Stagnation can spread between levels
- Movement on one level can alleviate stagnation on multiple levels
- Relinquishing resistance restores the flow
When I speak of pain here, I don’t just mean physical pain, but also emotional pain and even “existential pain.” Understanding the workings of our pain can be tremendously useful in liberating ourselves from it. Working from this model, our main goal is to get back into a flow state, and there are lots of ways to do this.
First and foremost, when we feel uncomfortable on any level, we can cause an immediate shift by not resisting what we’re feeling. Ultimately this is simply a choice – a choice that’s always available (albeit a choice we usually have to make over and over). However, it’s a choice that sometimes eludes us, so we can employ some methods to facilitate it. Breathing is a good place to start.
When we are in a state of active resistance, this is usually reflected in the state of our breathing, which is restricted. Opening up the breath – breathing deeply and fully into the body and specifically into the area that’s restricted – can help us to feel willingly what’s up and to let go of resistance. Breathing promotes movement and helps to clear stagnation. I cover many different breathing methods in the Live Pain Free course, but the most basic approach is just to lengthen the exhale – that is, emphasizing the letting go phase of the breath. As we do this, we can visualize that the breath is opening and flowing through the body – or a particular region of the body – improving circulation, bringing in fresh blood, and encouraging the removal of waste.
Exercise and stretching are also great for facilitating movement and clearing stagnation for the alleviation of pain of any kind. We can get more out of mobilizing the body if we actively intend that our movement is shaking up, dismantling, and releasing stuck emotions, negative thoughts, and other painful patterns.
Using our voice is another way to promote movement. Whether through toning, singing, chanting, or speaking the truth, both the meaning and the sound vibration we express can have an opening effect on us.
These are just a few of the many ways to restore flow when there is stagnation and thereby alleviate pain. Acceptance, forgiveness of oneself or someone else, letting go, trusting in the process, laughter, loving connections, and spending time admiring beauty such as in nature – all of these tend to have an opening or expansive effect on us that can profoundly affect our experience of pain.
Now, let’s look at a progressive way to understand pain from a scientific lens. A good starting definition is: Pain is the brain or mind telling you it thinks something is wrong. Whether it’s physical pain, emotional pain, or existential pain, there’s an implicit interpretation that this is not how things should be. The pain of depression, for instance, involves an interpretation that, “I shouldn’t feel this way. I should be happy.” The pain of arthritis involves a brain interpretation that a joint shouldn’t be grinding and inflamed the way that it is. In both cases, pain could be seen as an alert that the situation is threatening and requires intervention.
This alert system is more often accurate and useful with acute pain than with chronic pain. For example, you feel burning pain in your fingertips, you move your hand without thinking, and you avoid skin damage from the hot iron you accidentally touched. Chronic pain, on the other hand, is almost always a mistake.
A broader, more technical definition of pain can help us understand why these mistakes occur. Pain is an output – the result of processing in your nervous system – that’s unique to the person that’s experiencing it, and it involves numerous elements – nerves, immune cells, chemical messengers, memory, and emotion – that interact and combine to form a pattern that the brain labels as PAIN. (Thanks to pain researcher Ronald Melzack at McGill University for developing this definition.) This pattern is known as a neurotag or neurosignature and it’s more complex than we tend to think. Pain is as dependent on our psychology as it is on our physiology.
For example, if you were once attacked by a dog and it was frightening and traumatic, something as minor as a dog swiping you with its paw in an attempt to get your attention could be experienced as severely painful because of the elements of memory, emotion, and interpretation. So it’s easy for inaccuracy to enter the pain equation. In this case, there is no danger, nothing wrong that needs to be addressed, but your brain sounds a loud alarm anyway.
Even looking strictly at the biological workings of pain, there is still room for error, though. Acute injuries are usually completely healed within a matter of three to six months at most. The body part can be used normally at that point, so there should be no need for pain after that. However, during the initial event and the healing process, a persistent neurosignature may develop. During all the yelling, crying, and wincing, the nervous system can become sensitized in such a way that the alarm won’t turn off and/or it’s easily retriggered by related images, scents, sounds, thoughts, feelings, and memories.
At this point – and this is true of virtually all chronic pain – it serves no useful purpose. So there’s little value in trying to track down a tissue pathology, and even less in utilizing an addictive mind-numbing pharmaceutical to make it go away. Instead (or in combination with pharmaceutical interventions, if necessary) we can utilize approaches that take advantage of the phenomenon of neuroplasticity – the ability to change our wiring.
We explore many, many such approaches in my online course, Live Pain Free, and I encourage you to check it out if you struggle with pain. The most useful thing, as I discussed in the last installment of this article, may be simply knowing how pain works. I sincerely hope these articles have given you a new way to understand pain that helps liberate you from its grasp.
Be well,
Dr. Peter Borten
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Back when I was a graduate student doing my internship in Chinese Medicine, I got my first patient whose chief complaint was a lingering cough, and I remember thinking, “This will be easy.” Boy, was I naïve. Even under the guidance of an elder practitioner, it took months of treatment for it to resolve. In the nearly two decades since then, coughs have often proven stubborn. Luckily, they usually run their course within a few weeks – with or without intervention – and I’ve found some herbs that can often speed up the recovery process.
First, a few words on coughs and how they work. The respiratory tract (airway) consists of two main regions. The upper part includes the nasal cavity, sinuses, pharynx (the area where the back of the nasal cavity becomes the throat) and is sometimes considered to include the larynx (“voice box”). This is the site of most common colds, or “upper respiratory infections” (URI’s). Coughs coming from this area are usually due to throat irritation and post-nasal drip, and are pretty responsive to treatment.
The lower respiratory tract consists of the trachea (“windpipe”), the tubes through which it branches into the lungs – the bronchi, the smaller bronchioles, and finally the little sacs called alveoli – and sometimes the larynx. All but the smallest of these passageways are lined with cough receptors, which are highly sensitive to light touch. The presence of phlegm (or dust, or certain chemicals) triggers the cough reflex. Coughing is a cooperative effort between the diaphragm, abdominal muscles, the muscles between the ribs (intercostals), and the structures of the airway – an attempt to forcibly expel whatever’s in there.
Sometimes it’s effective – what we refer to as a “productive cough” – but when the respiratory passages are inflamed and dry, or full of sticky, tenacious phlegm, a cough can go on and on. The hard part is that coughs themselves can be debilitating. We lie down to sleep, the phlegm spreads out, post-nasal drip trickles down, and the cough worsens. It degrades the restorative value of sleep, and the continuous spasmodic contraction of our muscles wears us out, sapping us of the energy to cough in a productive way.
The herbs I’ll discuss here are for these acute forms of cough. Coughs that occur for much longer and those that are due to weakness, asthma, or damage to the lungs fall into the chronic category and they’re beyond the scope of this article because they require more comprehensive treatment.
I have taken and prescribed nearly every Chinese and Western herb that’s commonly used for cough, and they rarely work as well as I hope. That cough reflex is difficult to overcome – and, really, you would only want to suppress it if you were doing something to address the underlying problem. I’ve found that when I’m more accurate about discerning the type of cough (dry / moist, strong / weak, clear phlegm / yellow phlegm), my treatments are usually more effective, but the herbs I’ll introduce today are usually beneficial for most types of cough.
- Mullein: Mullein is a fuzzy, sage-colored plant that grows all over the place in the United States. I see it nearly every day. The leaves and yellow flowers are excellent for coughs. Adults can take an ounce of dried leaves or flowers and steep covered (don’t simmer) in a few cups of just-boiled water. Strain it to avoid drinking the little hairs, and drink it, divided into three portions, over the course of the day.
- Pine, Spruce, and Fir Needles: All of these evergreen needles are useful for coughs and are rich in vitamin C. You can throw a handful of them into a bowl of hot water, put your face over it, cover your head and the bowl with a towel, and inhale the steam. Then you can drink the resulting tea. Or you can just brew a strong tea by simmering a large handful in a couple cups of water. Keep it covered and the heat low, so you don’t lose all the essential oils. I like to chew spruce, fir, and pine needles when I’m out on walks, and the ones that work best for coughs tend to be those with the best, strongest flavor.
- Thyme leaves: Thyme has long been a popular herb in Europe for coughs, and it probably has some antimicrobial effects (one of the noteworthy compounds in the herb, called thymol, is the active ingredient in Listerine and various antiseptic cleaners). The flavor is rather strong, so the usual dose is just one to two teaspoons of the dried herb steeped in a cup of water. I don’t have great faith in thyme on its own, but it can be a useful adjunct herb combined with others.
- Ginger: Ginger’s pungency is good for opening the respiratory tract. The dried herb is considered “hotter” than the fresh stuff, so I use the dried product more for coughs will lots of clear or white phlegm, and the fresh herb more for coughs with yellowish phlegm. You can use approximately a thumb-sized piece of ginger, sliced or grated, simmered for a few minutes in about a cup of water (do this multiple times a day).
- Licorice root: Licorice is a mild herb for coughs, but it’s a nice adjunct with other herbs, especially when the throat and/or respiratory tract feels raw and sore. Licorice is sweet and mucilaginous, and has a calming effect on spasmodic coughs and a soothing effect on mucous membranes. You can use approximately 2 teaspoons per day. Keep in mind that prolonged use of licorice or high doses can cause a temporary elevation of blood pressure (usually not more than about ten points systolic).
- Hyssop leaves: This common garden herb is a member of the mint family and has a longstanding reputation, especially in Europe, as a useful herb for coughs and sore throats. Several times a day, steep two to three teaspoons of the dried herb (or much more of the fresh herb) in a cup of water to make a pleasant tasting tea. Hyssop is mild, and therefore best combined with other herbs.
- Horehound leaves: Horehound also has a longstanding reputation in Europe and northern Africa as a valuable herb for respiratory complaints, and it’s one of the main ingredients in Ricola cough drops. I’ve noticed that it’s not much used in the United States, perhaps because the FDA claims it has no value in the treatment of cough, but I had one profound experience with it about 20 years ago, when I made some horehound tea and it completely stopped a nagging cough in about a day. You can make a tea using about two to three teaspoons of the dried herb in a cup of boiled water.
- Slippery Elm Bark and Marshmallow Root: These herbs are soothing to mucous membranes and especially appropriate for dry coughs. You can add one or both to your cough formula (approximately a teaspoon per cup of tea) to add a “demulcent” effect that will also soothe your throat.
- Nigella Seed Oil: This herb, also known as “black seed” or “black cumin,” has been trendy recently, though perhaps for good reason. A number of studies show it has promise in the treatment of a variety of health issues, and there’s rather robust research on its value in respiratory problems (asthma, in particular). For cough, you can take a teaspoon of the oil at a time, in a cup of hot water. You can also try rubbing the oil on your chest, over your lungs.
- Umckaloabo root: This African relative of the geranium is useful for upper respiratory infections. It’s available in raw, dried form as well as tinctures and homeopathics. The easiest form to take is as the commercial product Umcka. It’s one of very few substances that can legally claim to benefit the common cold. The specific verbiage allowed by the FDA is, “shortens severity and reduces duration of upper respiratory symptoms.” I always have some of the powdered form of Umcka in the house, which I mix into hot teas to add some additional potency.
- Pineapple Juice: I don’t know of any research on pineapple juice for coughs, but it’s a popular folk remedy, often drunk warm and seasoned with cinnamon, cayenne, or black pepper. I don’t know why it would be beneficial in coughs and I haven’t tried it myself, but it may have something to do with the activity of the enzyme bromelain that it contains. In any case, it’s not likely to hurt – especially if it gets you to drink more fluids.
- Water: Speaking of fluids, staying well hydrated is super important when you have a cough, as it helps keep the mucous in a more liquid state so that it can be more readily expelled. Also, immune function just tends to work better when you’re getting enough water. Other than possibly consuming some pineapple juice with it, it’s best to stick to pure water or tea, rather than juice or sweetened beverages.
Choose a few of these substances, use them simultaneously and consistently (like, all day long), and get as much rest as you can. If necessary, sleep in a semi-upright position to reduce nighttime coughing.
Whenever I write articles on herbs I wonder if I’m doing the field of herbal medicine a disservice by simplifying it and presenting it in such a way as to suggest we can choose herbs simply based on the symptoms we want to treat, without respect for the diagnosis. But I feel the need for accessible home remedies is more important. In the case of the herbs above, they are all quite safe and unlikely to do any harm. However, if your cough persists, if it is severe, if you cough up blood, or if anything else alarming happens, or if you intend to use these herbs on small children, please consult with a qualified healthcare practitioner.
Be well and breathe freely,
Dr. Peter Borten
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[post_content] => After writing about
nondual philosophy a couple weeks ago, I received several requests from readers for more information on nondual Tantric philosophy. Tantra is a complicated subject; there are many forms, and it means different things to different people. In the West, the word “Tantric” is usually combined with the word “sex,” and this pair of words has been used to sell millions of books and workshops on mystical sexual practices that have almost nothing to do with Tantra. But Tantra doesn’t need that lascivious association to be significant; it was hugely influential on the development of yoga, which (in some circles) is almost as popular as sex.
Since I can’t possibly explain this entire system in a brief article, I’m going to focus today on just one of its concepts, called the Five Acts of Divine Consciousness. It is explained in the beginning of a work called Pratyabhijna Hrdayam, “The Heart of Recognition,” written by Rajanaka Kṣemaraja around 1000 A.D.
These five “acts” (pancha kritya) describe the Tantric view of how our reality is created. As Ksemaraja says, “Reverence to the Divine, who ceaselessly performs the Five Acts, and who, by so doing, reveals the ultimate reality of one’s own Self, brimming over with the bliss of Consciousness!” Regardless of where your philosophical and spiritual sensibilities lie, I think you’ll find it an intriguing perspective.
• Srsti. The first act, Srsti, means creation, emission, or the flowing forth of Self-expression. This is the process by which Divine Consciousness (use whatever word you like here – Love, Highest Self, God, Universe, Awareness, Goddess, Divine Light) expresses itself as something. It takes form. It emerges in the world as a person or a flower or a breeze.
• Sthiti. The second act, Sthiti, means holding, preservation, stasis, or maintenance. First Consciousness emerges in manifest form as something, then it holds this form – maybe for a moment, maybe for eons.
• Samhara. The third act, Samhara, means dissolution, resorption, or retraction. After emerging in the world as something and sustaining it for a while, the form dissolves – or is reabsorbed or retracted – back into Consciousness. This is why death of a body is not seen as the end of life in this system – because the body was just a temporary emergence of Consciousness into form, which is then reabsorbed into itself. Thus, none of the vulnerabilities of your body actually threaten what you really are. And consciousness never ends.
• Tirodhana. The fourth act, Tirodhana, means concealment, occlusion, or forgetting. An interesting property to ascribe to the Divine, no? Why would one of its five core acts be to conceal? Well, the explanation is that Undifferentiated Consciousness possesses all possible qualities; in order to manifest as one specific thing, it must conceal all the other qualities that don’t belong to that thing.
Additionally, it explains the limited awareness of sentient beings. When Consciousness emerges as, say, a human, as part of its Divine Play, it imparts itself with only a fraction of its unfathomable awareness. In the process, it forgets what it really is. In this way, rather than acting like its various creations, it immerses itself in them. It becomes them. It’s how you don’t realize you’re Divine Consciousness itself, instead believing you’re “only” a human, disconnected from your Source and all other humans. This also allows for each being to have the experience of free will.
• Anugraha. The fifth act, Anugraha, means revealing (revelation), remembering, or grace. Besides allowing for creative expression, the fourth act (Tirodhana) is also the reason why we suffer. We can’t see the truth of our reality and this is frightening and painful. But this is eventually resolved by Anugraha – when what was hidden is revealed and we remember. As author Christopher Wallis explains, it’s not meant to negate the act of concealment, but to bring it to fruition by revealing its deeper purpose: “Such reconciliation is thus also a reintegration; through it you experientially realize yourself as a complete and perfect expression of the deep pattern of the one Consciousness which moves and dances in all things.”
I’m curious to hear how this concept fits with your own worldview. How do you see things differently? Does this perspective feel more or less liberating than your own? Feel free to share your thoughts below.
Be well,
Dr. Peter Borten
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A couple weeks ago, I introduced some concepts on the workings of pain that I think are useful for everyone to know. They’re derived from my explorations into Traditional Chinese Medicine. Here’s a synopsis:
- Virtually all pain is due to stagnation
- Resistance promotes and worsens stagnation
- All levels of our being are interconnected, so
- Stagnation can spread between levels
- Movement on one level can alleviate stagnation on multiple levels
- Relinquishing resistance restores the flow
When I speak of pain here, I don’t just mean physical pain, but also emotional pain and even “existential pain.” Understanding the workings of our pain can be tremendously useful in liberating ourselves from it. Working from this model, our main goal is to get back into a flow state, and there are lots of ways to do this.
First and foremost, when we feel uncomfortable on any level, we can cause an immediate shift by not resisting what we’re feeling. Ultimately this is simply a choice – a choice that’s always available (albeit a choice we usually have to make over and over). However, it’s a choice that sometimes eludes us, so we can employ some methods to facilitate it. Breathing is a good place to start.
When we are in a state of active resistance, this is usually reflected in the state of our breathing, which is restricted. Opening up the breath – breathing deeply and fully into the body and specifically into the area that’s restricted – can help us to feel willingly what’s up and to let go of resistance. Breathing promotes movement and helps to clear stagnation. I cover many different breathing methods in the Live Pain Free course, but the most basic approach is just to lengthen the exhale – that is, emphasizing the letting go phase of the breath. As we do this, we can visualize that the breath is opening and flowing through the body – or a particular region of the body – improving circulation, bringing in fresh blood, and encouraging the removal of waste.
Exercise and stretching are also great for facilitating movement and clearing stagnation for the alleviation of pain of any kind. We can get more out of mobilizing the body if we actively intend that our movement is shaking up, dismantling, and releasing stuck emotions, negative thoughts, and other painful patterns.
Using our voice is another way to promote movement. Whether through toning, singing, chanting, or speaking the truth, both the meaning and the sound vibration we express can have an opening effect on us.
These are just a few of the many ways to restore flow when there is stagnation and thereby alleviate pain. Acceptance, forgiveness of oneself or someone else, letting go, trusting in the process, laughter, loving connections, and spending time admiring beauty such as in nature – all of these tend to have an opening or expansive effect on us that can profoundly affect our experience of pain.
Now, let’s look at a progressive way to understand pain from a scientific lens. A good starting definition is: Pain is the brain or mind telling you it thinks something is wrong. Whether it’s physical pain, emotional pain, or existential pain, there’s an implicit interpretation that this is not how things should be. The pain of depression, for instance, involves an interpretation that, “I shouldn’t feel this way. I should be happy.” The pain of arthritis involves a brain interpretation that a joint shouldn’t be grinding and inflamed the way that it is. In both cases, pain could be seen as an alert that the situation is threatening and requires intervention.
This alert system is more often accurate and useful with acute pain than with chronic pain. For example, you feel burning pain in your fingertips, you move your hand without thinking, and you avoid skin damage from the hot iron you accidentally touched. Chronic pain, on the other hand, is almost always a mistake.
A broader, more technical definition of pain can help us understand why these mistakes occur. Pain is an output – the result of processing in your nervous system – that’s unique to the person that’s experiencing it, and it involves numerous elements – nerves, immune cells, chemical messengers, memory, and emotion – that interact and combine to form a pattern that the brain labels as PAIN. (Thanks to pain researcher Ronald Melzack at McGill University for developing this definition.) This pattern is known as a neurotag or neurosignature and it’s more complex than we tend to think. Pain is as dependent on our psychology as it is on our physiology.
For example, if you were once attacked by a dog and it was frightening and traumatic, something as minor as a dog swiping you with its paw in an attempt to get your attention could be experienced as severely painful because of the elements of memory, emotion, and interpretation. So it’s easy for inaccuracy to enter the pain equation. In this case, there is no danger, nothing wrong that needs to be addressed, but your brain sounds a loud alarm anyway.
Even looking strictly at the biological workings of pain, there is still room for error, though. Acute injuries are usually completely healed within a matter of three to six months at most. The body part can be used normally at that point, so there should be no need for pain after that. However, during the initial event and the healing process, a persistent neurosignature may develop. During all the yelling, crying, and wincing, the nervous system can become sensitized in such a way that the alarm won’t turn off and/or it’s easily retriggered by related images, scents, sounds, thoughts, feelings, and memories.
At this point – and this is true of virtually all chronic pain – it serves no useful purpose. So there’s little value in trying to track down a tissue pathology, and even less in utilizing an addictive mind-numbing pharmaceutical to make it go away. Instead (or in combination with pharmaceutical interventions, if necessary) we can utilize approaches that take advantage of the phenomenon of neuroplasticity – the ability to change our wiring.
We explore many, many such approaches in my online course, Live Pain Free, and I encourage you to check it out if you struggle with pain. The most useful thing, as I discussed in the last installment of this article, may be simply knowing how pain works. I sincerely hope these articles have given you a new way to understand pain that helps liberate you from its grasp.
Be well,
Dr. Peter Borten
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