PAIN AND GAIN

“Our sorrows and wounds are healed only when we touch them with compassion.”  ~Buddha

What do you do when you experience physical or emotional pain? The first reaction for many is to push it away. We do not want it. We do not like it. It is uncomfortable. We tend to believe that pain is bad; therefore we do not own it. You may try to anesthetize yourself; dull the senses, increase distractions and ultimately direct thoughts and energy elsewhere. The first reaction is to protect, contract and guard. Sometimes numbing or turning off the pain is needed, to burn the shock away, allowing you to bolster the energy required to face the situation, but disowning the physical and/or emotional pain only serves as a temporary panacea, as what we resist persists.

 “Behind every beautiful thing, there's some kind of pain.” ~ Bob Dylan

GROWING PAINS

Pain is an important message to receive and welcome, but we cannot hear what we deny. Welcoming it is the first step in eliminating it. Healing is supported and solutions are found by the full on awareness of what is. What happens when we do not own that which is ours? When we do not own the disease, the dysfunction and the disappointments in our lives? Well, there is a message sent to the creative, problem solving part of the brain, do not look here, do not pay attention, avert your eyes. The consequences of disowning are many. This aversion and diversion of the pain relays a message to the brain that this is not important - do not put your energy here. If you are numbing and angry and ignoring your pains, then you are turning off your body’s incredible healing ability. You are blocking the information that the pain is providing. When your brain is told, look here - what is the message? What do I need to pay attention to? What would help? Who can help? A tangible physical response is released; blood flow, healing energy and support is given by all the systems of the body. This acknowledgment and opening to your heartache and loss and sadness instructs the subconscious to begin to seek and find and reveal solutions, release trauma and support a return to wholeness.

 “Pain can be endured and defeated only if it is embraced.

Denied or feared, it grows.” ~ Dean Koontz

We are meant to return to an open and relaxed state after the experience of pain, once the difficulty has passed, but many times the resistance to feeling the pain is so great or the pain stimulus is so frequent, that people will stay in a contracted state – locking pain in and blocking healing energy. There are essentially only two options when it comes to dealing with pain and discomfort - we can live it briefly, but in full force or we can endure it faintly in the background for a long period of time. That is the choice. Pain and its messages will wait in the background, like a dripping faucet and will only recede when given attention. Notice where you are resisting the pain signal in your life. How much energy are you putting into that? What could happen if that same energy was directed towards welcoming it and listening to it and giving it a voice? Life is dependent on the pain signal. It tells us something needs attention whether physical or emotional. Breathe into it. Welcome it and let it guide you.