Pain Management

Physical pain define the perimeters of the flexibility range of the body. The closer you get to the fence of your body flexibility, the pain starts showing up. This is just an indicator of the presence of such a fence. Closer the fence, the smaller the range of flexibility. Some people's flexibility range is so poor that their life appears a tight rope walking. Pushing the wall of your range outward creates more space for flexibility. Bringing more flexibility to your body is in fact one dimension of freedom. Be a Mafia land lord and push your fences outward and occupy more spaces for yourself. Slowly such pains turn out to be comforting pains, as opposed to restricting pains.Unlike ordinary and symptomatic pain, which is part of a healthy nervous system, unexplained chronic pain resembles a disease, a pathology of the nervous system that produces abnormal changes in the brain and spinal cord. This harms the body by unleashing negative hormones like cortisol that affect the immune system and the kidneys.

Picture the pain wiring of the nervous system as a warning device that protects the body from tissue injury or disease. Symptomatic pain is like a properly working alarm system. The pain matches the damage and it disappears when the problem is solved. Chronic pain is like a broken alarm. The experience of pain continues even when the problem ceases to exist.

Physical pain changes the body in the same way emotional loss watermarks the soul. The body's pain system is plastic meaning it can be molded by pain to cause more pain. In fact everyone who has chronic pain eventually develops anxiety and depression. Surprisingly pain and depression both share the same neural circuitry. The neuro transmitters and hormones modulating a healthy brain - like seritonin and endorphins are the same ones that control depression. Chronic pain use up seritonin in the brain synaptic fluid just as a car running out of gas. Medications that treat depression also treat pain. It is scientifically established that the emotional center and the physical center are so deeply intertwined that the impact on one center has a parallel effect on the other center.

Lets look at our attitude towards pain. We are conditioned to have an aversion to pain. Pain is considered unwanted. No sooner there is an indication of pain, the body is given a pain killer. The internal communication to your body is that you are averse to pain of any sort. Pain is an unwanted faculty is the message. The body is confused. The pain killer industry in pharmacology is a multi billion dollar business. But truly pain is an alarm system. Dr Brand Om Jones who worked on Leprosy patients, said that the greatest regret of a leprosy patient is not the disease itself as much as the regret that they have no pain. When their toes or finger tips are eaten away, they are not aware. The experience of pain was the caution of the disorder at any part of the body. Pain indeed is proportionate to the disorder or disease in the body. It is an indicator to all illnesses. Similarly, the Gynaecologist would consider pain as a welcome indicator of healthy child birth. To respect pain as your mentor and guide is essential. Have a healthy relationship to pain and build a rapport with the sensation of pain. The more averse to get with any thing the more it would haunt you. Similarly, the more you are averse to pain, the more an amplification happens in your body. The more we struggle with the fact of pain that is, the more, it would spread and take grip of your attention. The more the unresisting acceptance of pain, the better is our chances of transcending pain. The practise of healthy respect to pain as well as the application of the deamplification and localizing attitudes to your experience of pain in Yogasanas helps in building up a new paradigm shift in your relatedness to pain.

Since the sensations of pain and depression occupy the same circuitry in the body, the same system of deamplification and localizing can prevent the hijack of depressive thoughts. The depressive thoughts will soon be isolated and will not turn into an anxiety phobia that leads to other deeper issues like Yuppie flu etc.