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While I wouldn’t wish pain on anyone, I don’t always think it’s best to make it go away as fast as possible. Sometimes the need to manage pain takes us inward, prompting us to understand our workings and to heal longstanding patterns that might otherwise have never been discovered.
My starting point in pain management is a fundamental principle of Chinese Medicine: All pain is caused by stagnation. When things move freely (muscles, joints, blood, poop, etc.), we feel good. When they don’t, we feel bad.
If we overeat and food is stagnant in our digestive tract, we feel uncomfortable. If blood stops moving through the vessels in our heart, it causes a crushing pain. If our muscles are inflamed or tight (stagnation), they hurt. In the same way, if we broke up with someone but we keep fantasizing about them or replaying our conversations, this also is a form of stagnation, and it’s painful. If we’re attached to life being a certain way, it’s not that way, we don’t accept it, and we feel bad… guess why.
So, the restoration of flow is my focus, no matter what kind of pain a person is in. Besides understanding the mechanism of stagnation in causing and perpetuating pain, it’s important for everyone to know these four sub-principles:
1: All of our many parts are interconnected, so stagnation on one level can readily lead to stagnation on another level. Two examples: If we’re chronically angry, tense, or sad (emotional stagnation) this can eventually show up as, say, a tension headache or lower back pain (physical stagnation). Vice versa, living in a tight and inflexible body (physical stagnation) can contribute to a lack of mental flexibility - rigid thinking, frustration, depression, etc.
2: Clearing stagnation on any level tends to promote flow on all levels. For instance, physical exercise is beneficial for depression, because moving the body moves the mind. Likewise, using the mind to imagine energy and blood coursing freely through a painful area of the body can often be as effective as painkillers. For this reason, stretching the mind – challenging our beliefs, thinking outside our usual patterns, meditating, actively exploring our inner terrain – is excellent for mind-body health.
3: Resisting reality promotes stagnation. Philip K. Dick said, “Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.” Fighting reality amounts to inner resistance and resistance causes stagnation. In my opinion, it’s one of the most basic mechanisms of human pathology: an inner “no” that causes us to close and fragment ourselves. Resistance of what’s happening (not just our circumstances but also our own thoughts and feelings) causes an additional dimension of discomfort and hampers our ability to change our condition. In a pain scenario, the resistance of an already stagnant condition inevitably makes it worse.
4: Active acceptance is the opposite of resistance and promotes healing. Acceptance is a combination of willingness, openness, and nonattachment. When we’re totally willing to experience the reality of this moment, with every aspect of ourselves, with absolute openness and trust, simultaneously letting go entirely of any desire to control what happens next, healing happens automatically. It may not look like a tumor instantly disappearing or pain dropping from a ten to a zero, but something will change. This isn’t a do-it-once magic formula, it’s a way of life. And if pain is what leads you to it, you may end up thanking your pain.
If these ideas resonate with you, check out my online course, Live Pain Free, for many more ways to get out of pain and experience greater peace and happiness in the process.
Be well,
Peter
[post_title] => What Everyone Should Know About Pain
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One of the most basic ways to grow the spiritual dimension of your life is to consciously invite Spirit into whatever you’re doing. It’s like there’s a friend who’s been hanging out in the background while you eat and work and exercise, and you’re saying, “Oh, I forgot you were there. Would you like to join me?”
Doing so doesn’t require any particular spiritual or religious orientation. Even if you’re an atheist, you can probably still conceive of a Highest Self – an aspect of you that, in a way, is more You than any of the various personalities, thought patterns, or styles you’ve had throughout your life. It’s a stable, enduring, virtuous witness to everything you’ve been and done.
Our ability to sense this presence, whatever we choose to call it, waxes and wanes. Same with the degree to which we let it guide us. As these factors increase (more awareness and willingness to be guided), we experience a corresponding increase in trust, an expanded perspective, and less overwhelm. The feeling of being small and helpless in a big scary world diminishes.
If you haven’t done this much (or at all) it can feel at first like you’re hanging out with an imaginary friend. Is this real? Are they still in the room? It’s especially common if this is a dimension you’ve barely tuned in to. You’re used to giving most of your attention to relatively tangible and superficial planes of existence – media and culture, your possessions, your body, your thoughts and emotions. Over time the sense of opening to something bigger and subtler becomes more palpable. Simply remembering and intending to invite this Consciousness into more of your experiences makes a difference.
To get started, you could just try quieting your mind for a moment and saying hello. Hello, Source. Hello, Highest Self. Hello, Divine Light. Then be still and see if you notice anything. I believe we are that Source experiencing itself as a human being. There is no true separation, only the veil of the mind (which can be quite obscure). Your Highest Self wants to be perceived and known and consciously channeled.
Here are some other possible invitations:
Come on this hike with me. Help me notice what I usually miss.
Show me what I need to see for my healing and evolution.
Let me stay present and accepting through this event.
Let’s experience the act of eating delicious food together.
Let me see this through the eyes of my Highest Self / Spirit / God / Unconditional Love / Awareness.
But it’s not just the pleasant things that are worth inviting Spirit into. . .
I let you into my fear so that you may share it, illuminate it, transform it.
Come into my pain; please be with me in this suffering.
I invite you into my grief, as this, too, is part of the human experience.
Enter this crazy situation with me, Highest Self, and give me perspective.
Join me, Divine Light, in my depression, and hold me.
These painful states inevitably change when we open them to the spiritual dimension. It’s the simplest thing to do, yet sometimes the hardest to remember. This message is for me as much as it is for you.
Be well,
Peter
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For the holidays we gave our eight-year-old daughter a set of indoor monkey bars. That meant I spent a day with my arms above my head, screwing eye bolts into her bedroom ceiling. She can now get from the doorway to her bed without setting foot on the floor, which is useful because she tells me it’s made out of molten lava.
At bedtime I reached out to turn on a faucet and suddenly my mid-back locked up. It was incredibly painful and I felt unable to move without worsening it. I made the mistake of bending down to touch my toes, thinking it would help, but was then frozen in that position.
I’ve treated this same condition in countless patients. Often this type of back spasm is crippling for at least a few days – meaning missed work or travel – followed by a lingering stiffness and pain for a week or more. Frequently the locked area, even as it begins to release, is prone to getting retriggered if we move or sleep the wrong way.
Luckily, I knew what to do. I started locating and massaging effective acupuncture points on my hands and arms that began to release the locked up muscles. Meanwhile, I used certain visualizations and breathing techniques that facilitated the loosening of my back. Eventually I could move enough to lie on a small ball to put pressure on the muscle spasm while continuing with the breathing, visualization, and self-acupressure. I went to bed about an hour later than I intended, but with my back feeling 80% better. The next day I released the rest of the tension.
Several times throughout the process I thought, “This would be so much worse if I didn’t know how to do this.” I would have to find a practitioner and wait for an appointment. But what kind of practitioner, and which one? What if they weren’t available during the holidays? Would I have to be immobile during our holiday party? Would I be reliant on pharmaceutical painkillers? Would I be in a daze? Would I find it hard to get off them?
This conundrum is why I created an online course called Live Pain Free. It started with the advice I found myself giving hundreds of pain patients in my office over the years – and the realization that I didn’t have time to explain everything I wanted to teach them. Little by little, the course grew to include virtually all of the techniques and lifestyle modifications I have found useful for self-treatment of pain. It’s more comprehensive than anything else I’ve found.
Are there other things like it? Yes, of course. There are plenty of books and courses that teach pain relief techniques, some of them very useful. But most feature a single approach to pain, and I’ve never found a single method that works for all – or even most – pain. Even for a given individual, some things work one day and not the next. This is because there are many “ingredients” in pain, especially long-term pain – our history, psychology, lifestyle, body mechanics, etc. – so we need a blend of multiple approaches.
During the years I spent crafting this course, I discovered that beyond helping people to make their pain go away, much of what I wish to share deals with releasing ways of thinking that are restrictive and keep us trapped in discomfort. Although pain management is the issue that often leads people to look deeper, the ultimate resolution may be something so much more than mere physical relief: liberation from our resistance to life, the opportunity to accept and live in the present moment, the recognition of patterns that have held us back, and more.
The feeling of gratitude I had the other night – I want that for everyone. If you deal with frequent pain, if you would like to help a loved one with their pain, or you just like the idea of being prepared and knowing a wide range of strategies – some based in modern science others in Eastern medicine – check out Live Pain Free.
Be well,
Dr. Peter Borten
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While I wouldn’t wish pain on anyone, I don’t always think it’s best to make it go away as fast as possible. Sometimes the need to manage pain takes us inward, prompting us to understand our workings and to heal longstanding patterns that might otherwise have never been discovered.
My starting point in pain management is a fundamental principle of Chinese Medicine: All pain is caused by stagnation. When things move freely (muscles, joints, blood, poop, etc.), we feel good. When they don’t, we feel bad.
If we overeat and food is stagnant in our digestive tract, we feel uncomfortable. If blood stops moving through the vessels in our heart, it causes a crushing pain. If our muscles are inflamed or tight (stagnation), they hurt. In the same way, if we broke up with someone but we keep fantasizing about them or replaying our conversations, this also is a form of stagnation, and it’s painful. If we’re attached to life being a certain way, it’s not that way, we don’t accept it, and we feel bad… guess why.
So, the restoration of flow is my focus, no matter what kind of pain a person is in. Besides understanding the mechanism of stagnation in causing and perpetuating pain, it’s important for everyone to know these four sub-principles:
1: All of our many parts are interconnected, so stagnation on one level can readily lead to stagnation on another level. Two examples: If we’re chronically angry, tense, or sad (emotional stagnation) this can eventually show up as, say, a tension headache or lower back pain (physical stagnation). Vice versa, living in a tight and inflexible body (physical stagnation) can contribute to a lack of mental flexibility - rigid thinking, frustration, depression, etc.
2: Clearing stagnation on any level tends to promote flow on all levels. For instance, physical exercise is beneficial for depression, because moving the body moves the mind. Likewise, using the mind to imagine energy and blood coursing freely through a painful area of the body can often be as effective as painkillers. For this reason, stretching the mind – challenging our beliefs, thinking outside our usual patterns, meditating, actively exploring our inner terrain – is excellent for mind-body health.
3: Resisting reality promotes stagnation. Philip K. Dick said, “Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.” Fighting reality amounts to inner resistance and resistance causes stagnation. In my opinion, it’s one of the most basic mechanisms of human pathology: an inner “no” that causes us to close and fragment ourselves. Resistance of what’s happening (not just our circumstances but also our own thoughts and feelings) causes an additional dimension of discomfort and hampers our ability to change our condition. In a pain scenario, the resistance of an already stagnant condition inevitably makes it worse.
4: Active acceptance is the opposite of resistance and promotes healing. Acceptance is a combination of willingness, openness, and nonattachment. When we’re totally willing to experience the reality of this moment, with every aspect of ourselves, with absolute openness and trust, simultaneously letting go entirely of any desire to control what happens next, healing happens automatically. It may not look like a tumor instantly disappearing or pain dropping from a ten to a zero, but something will change. This isn’t a do-it-once magic formula, it’s a way of life. And if pain is what leads you to it, you may end up thanking your pain.
If these ideas resonate with you, check out my online course, Live Pain Free, for many more ways to get out of pain and experience greater peace and happiness in the process.
Be well,
Peter
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