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Talking Wellness with Peter: Dealing with the Underlying Causes of Pain

Dr. Peter Borten shares some important philosophical principles that can make a big difference in your experience of pain. All pain (physical, mental, and emotional) is rooted in some form of stagnation.

Watch this video to learn some valuable tips on how to break out of a pain cycle by minimizing your resistance to the pain, which will open and move stagnation out, and offer you relief.

3 thoughts on “Talking Wellness with Peter: Dealing with the Underlying Causes of Pain”

01 / 10/ 19 | Christina

Thank you that was very helpful. It seems like everything comes back to the breath!! Not resisting what is and breathing into where stagnation seems to be present. ☀️ Your examples of stagnation and the simple way you spoke are the perfect start to my day today.

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01 / 10/ 19 | Cathy Seilhan

Thank you, Dr. Borden, for this message. It rings so very true. I will endeavor to pass this on to others.

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01 / 11/ 19 | Susan

I enjoyed being a student in your Dragontree “Live Pain Free Course”. This video is a timely reminder. I also appreciate that I can go back and review your video lessons at will. I have retold some of the stories from your Course many times. The snake bite comes to mind. Teaching via parables makes depths of lessons stick. (Snake/stick…* smile)

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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 [post_title] => Getting Smarter about Pain [post_excerpt] => [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => open [ping_status] => open [post_password] => [post_name] => getting-smarter-about-pain [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2019-09-18 17:11:56 [post_modified_gmt] => 2019-09-18 17:11:56 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => http://thedragontree.com/?p=7636 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw [webinar_id] => 0 ) [1] => WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 2350 [post_author] => 2 [post_date] => 2013-03-19 21:48:30 [post_date_gmt] => 2013-03-19 21:48:30 [post_content] => According to legend, this herb was revealed in a dream by an angel to cure the plague, hence the name Angelica, and its nickname, Archangel. All parts of the plant were believed effective against evil spirits and witchcraft, and at one time it was held in such esteem that it was called 'The Root of the Holy Ghost.' Generally cultivated in the United Kingdom and France, Angelica grows in damp soil near rivers and streams as a tall, stocky, aromatic plant with large white flowers. While commonly prescribed by herbalists internally to detoxify the blood by boosting the lymphatic system, Angelica is also great to use externally to address pain caused by rheumatoid arthritis, nerve damage, and muscle impingement. -Michele C. Lead LMT - Dragontree PDX [post_title] => Garden Angelica [post_excerpt] => [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => open [ping_status] => open [post_password] => [post_name] => garden-angelica [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2013-03-19 21:48:30 [post_modified_gmt] => 2013-03-19 21:48:30 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => http://www.thedragontree.com/?p=2350 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw [webinar_id] => 0 ) [2] => WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 7201 [post_author] => 3 [post_date] => 2018-12-13 17:43:12 [post_date_gmt] => 2018-12-13 17:43:12 [post_content] => Last year a disabled veteran came to see me for help with back pain. As we talked about his history, a familiar story arose. He got injured, experienced a lot of discomfort, was prescribed opioid painkillers by a Prescription Doctor, but how he overused them. He described how his journey through his addiction treatment center and how, for several years, “I lost my personality and my life. I was barely a human.” He lived in a numb haze, with no sense of humor or interest in anything, until a new doctor specializing in recovery treatment for all levels of addiction, finally recognized what was happening and began to wean him off these drugs. Much of the pain remained, but we were able to work on that. More importantly, he got his life back, and his friends and family got him back. The familiar part of the story is the widespread long-term use of opioids and the unfortunate consequences. The uncommon part is that he got off of them. A 2017 study by the Centers for Disease Control called “Characteristics of Initial Prescription Episodes and Likelihood of Long-Term Opioid Use” looked at 1.3 million opioid users over 9 years.¹ It found that the longer the initial prescription period, the higher the likelihood of long-term use. If someone used an opioid for 10 days, there was a 20% chance they’d still be using it a year later. At 35 days, the risk of yearlong use was about 45%. A 2014 study in the Clinical Journal of Pain came to a similar conclusion – the higher the initial dose and the longer the initial use of an opioid, the greater the chance of the patient developing a condition of abuse and dependence.² It’s worth mentioning that both of these studies excluded patients with cancer pain (which is often expected to require ongoing medication, perhaps until death). That is, the great majority of those who were on opiates for several years were using it to manage back pain or joint pain (or to manage their dependency on opiates). Thus, we can assume that the prescribing doctors either didn’t know of an alternative method for pain relief or didn’t care. Do effective non-opioid alternatives exist? In the words of some ancient healer: Hell Yeah! The first modality that comes to my mind, as you might guess from the story above, is acupuncture. Acupuncture is no longer a fringe therapy. Its effectiveness is well supported by clinical research (comparable to opioids in effectiveness³), it’s routinely offered by many hospitals in the U.S., recommended as a standard option for pain management by health systems around the world, and even adopted by the U.S. military (in a form called “battlefield acupuncture”) for severe pain. If acupuncture has been unsuccessful at managing your pain, I advise that it isn’t always an instant miracle. Sometimes it takes several treatments to produce significant, lasting results. Also, practitioners vary in their specialties and level of skill. If you don’t experience any relief after a couple sessions, try someone else – and ask if they specialize in pain. Further, a licensed acupuncturist is almost always going to be more skilled and certainly has more training than a medical doctor or physical therapist who also does acupuncture. While it’s great to receive acupuncture from a professional, it’s also useful to know how to utilize this system to manage pain on your own. Many acupuncture points can provide effective pain relief simply by pressing on them. Especially when traveling, or when needles weren’t available or practical, I’ve often utilized acupressure to successfully eliminate my own pain or that of friends and family. There are specific points for pain in different locations, though one of the most utilized for pain anywhere in the body is called Large Intestine 4, and it’s located in the muscular web between the thumb and index finger. If you press around in this area on the back of the hand, especially directing your pressure toward the hand bone that leads to the index finger (second metacarpal), you will find a tender spot. Pushing firmly on this spot while moving the painful area may alleviate your pain. Mindfulness-based pain management techniques can also be very effective, and they have the added benefits of helping you live more in the present and experience more gratitude. These strategies were pioneered mainly by Jon Kabat-Zinn, and are based loosely on Buddhist meditation. There are numerous books and courses available in his Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) practice. The basis of these techniques is non-avoidance of discomfort – learning not to resist or mentally depart from the experience at hand, but to instead “turn toward” it and explore it willingly, whereupon it ceases to feel like suffering, and may even open us to a whole new dimension of experience. Breathing is another vital practice for self-management of pain. How we breathe can profoundly affect both our mental state and the feelings in our body. I have witnessed people doing breathing exercises which, within a half hour, turned off pain that had persisted for decades. In a way, breathing through pain is similar to mindfulness techniques, in that we’re willingly bringing our attention to the experience. I feel that the power of the breath to reduce pain makes so much sense – it seems like an intelligent plan that we should all be equipped with the means to facilitate our own healing. In the most basic way, you can imagine that, with each inhale and exhale, you’re moving the breath – and energy along with it – through the painful area. After years of teaching these and many other pain relief techniques to my patients, I decided to gather all my knowledge into an online course. In it, I teach a philosophy for understanding pain that will make sense and will illuminate your perspective of what’s happening. And I explain and demonstrate a huge array of methods for eliminating your own pain. As I was creating the course, in fact, the others who were involved in the project kept asking me, “How much more are you planning to include in this?!” But there are so many useful approaches, so many opportunities not just to overcome the pain, but to grow and evolve as a person, and that’s my real goal for participants in the course. My greatest hope is to see fewer and fewer cases like that of my veteran friend – fewer cases of opioid dependence, fewer cases of pain relief at the expense of the joy of life. And more cases of people overcoming pain in ways that are empowering and even help them heal and awaken. If you’re in pain or know someone who is, check out the course. It’s called Live Pain Free. It’s affordable, and you’ll learn things you’ll use for the rest of your life. Be well, Peter

Let Me Teach You How to Erase Your Own Pain Without Drugs

Sources: 1: Shah A., Hayes C. J., Martin B.C. Characteristics of Initial Prescription Episodes and Likelihood of Long-Term Opioid Use — United States, 2006–2015. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep 2017;66:265–269. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15585/mmwr.mm6610a1 2: Edlund, M. J., Martin, B. C., Russo, J. E., DeVries, A., Braden, J. B., & Sullivan, M. D. (2014). The role of opioid prescription in incident opioid abuse and dependence among individuals with chronic noncancer pain: the role of opioid prescription. The Clinical journal of pain, 30(7), 557-64. 3: Grissa, M. H., et al. Acupuncture vs intravenous morphine in the management of acute pain in the ED. The American Journal of Emergency Medicine, Volume 34 , Issue 11 , 2112 – 2116. [post_title] => Live Pain Free [post_excerpt] => [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => open [ping_status] => open [post_password] => [post_name] => live-pain-free [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2020-01-09 10:06:29 [post_modified_gmt] => 2020-01-09 10:06:29 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => http://thedragontree.com/?p=7201 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw [webinar_id] => 0 ) ) [post_count] => 3 [current_post] => -1 [in_the_loop] => [post] => WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 7636 [post_author] => 3 [post_date] => 2019-09-18 16:55:50 [post_date_gmt] => 2019-09-18 16:55:50 [post_content] => 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

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Getting Smarter about Pain

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Talking Wellness with Peter: Dealing with the Underlying Causes of Pain

3 thoughts on “Talking Wellness with Peter: Dealing with the Underlying Causes of Pain”

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