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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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What an amazing time to be alive, isn’t it?
I was meditating last week and a little story popped into my mind. I was a soul not yet born into this body. I was looking down at the world with some kind of guide and the guide said, “Are you sure you want to be a human right now? During your lifetime there’s going to be a pandemic and it will be scary and sometimes tragic. The world will be forever changed. Plus, there won’t be much toilet paper.”
I can’t say for certain that this is how it works, but if it does then we all made this choice. I like to believe that I made the choice to jump in because I knew I would have the faculties and resources to manage whatever might happen, and to thrive and make a positive difference in others’ lives. I have a feeling that a part of you (maybe all of you) feels the same way – even if your mind tells you otherwise.
Unfortunately, it’s easy to lose sight of this core truth. Fear is contagious and it has a frequency which (especially when resisted) can be intensely jarring. After all, that’s its job. It’s the emotional mechanism of our survival instinct. It’s trying to convince you that the only thing that matters right now is security. But humans evolved the ability to experience these animalistic impulses without letting them control us. One way is to open our eyes and notice all that’s good in the world – all of the evidence that our mind’s irrational concerns are untrue. Here’s some good news that’s come about through this tumultuous period.
- There is greater appreciation for the working class. More than ever before, many are recognizing that these beautiful people – the grocery store clerks, the UPS drivers, the garbage collectors, the utility company technicians – are keeping our world running. Let’s show them our gratitude.
- There is a pause in the habit of filling ourselves up with stuff. Sure, we’re stocking up on beans and rice, but for lots of people who have a habit of shopping to self-soothe, this period has initiated a rare break. It’s a time when we’re prompted to make do with what we have. Perhaps to repair, instead of replacing, what can be fixed.
- The environment is healing. How else could we have gotten the whole world to drive less? In such a short period of time we’ve seen the canals of Venice become clear enough to see fish and dolphins swimming in them, and the cloud of pollution over China has mostly disappeared. These may be short lived miracles, but it’s important for the world to witness that the environment is resilient. When this pandemic runs its course, environmental issues will still be here, and hopefully this vivid display of the impact of human activities will inspire us to develop permanent solutions.
- Everyone is working together. The world has never been so united in a common cause. We’re seeing unprecedented stories of cooperation. In England, there was a call for National Health Service volunteers and over 400,000 people signed up in the first 24 hours.
- We’re reminded of the value of our elders. Who could forget that line from Joni Mitchell’s Big Yellow Taxi (1970): “Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.” The threat of losing our senior citizens had helped the world recognize just how important they are. The young are helping the old. Stores are offering special hours for seniors only. This period has also highlighted how isolated many of our elders are, and it’s prompting a collective desire to honor them, to care for them better, and include them more.
- We’re recognizing the importance of community. The bigger and faster the world gets, the easier it is to feel disconnected. But social distancing has been a (sometimes painful) reminder of how much we need and value each other, and all sorts of novel ways of connecting have emerged from this crisis. We’ve seen virtual sing-alongs, virtual dinner parties, video chat board games, meetings in parks (maintaining six feet of distance) to make eye contact, tell jokes, and (non-contact) dance. People have been doing the “reach out and touch someone” thing with folks they haven’t been in contact with for years. We need each other.
- Unprecedented generosity. We’ve seen offerings of free products, free counseling, groceries, donations of medical supplies, sharing of toilet paper, help with yard work, and so many other ways in which people are stepping up to contribute.
- Teachers are getting the recognition they deserve. For all of the parents who are suddenly forced to home school their kids, there’s a mass awakening happening as to how hard it is to be a teacher and how much we depend on them, not just to educate our kids but to keep them safe, to hold space for them to develop and grow, and to create a healthy classroom culture for them to discover who they are and hone their gifts.
- We’re reminded of how many heroes there are. People everywhere are putting their health (perhaps their lives) on the line to serve others. Doctors, nurses, medical staff, caregivers of all kinds, receptionists, and everyone who continues to show up at jobs in essential businesses – these dedicated humans are putting the good of the community first and we should all be grateful for them.
We would love it if you’d share some good news in the comments below. What silver linings have you discovered? What’s beautiful in the world that’s being revealed in this crazy time?
Be well,
Peter and Briana and Everyone at The Dragontree
[post_title] => {Good News} 9 things to celebrate right now
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We know that conflict is hard. But when we avoid it - nothing gets better.
[post_title] => Conversations with Briana: Conflict Resolution (Video)
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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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