body intelligence

Postponing & Prolonging Pain

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POSTPONING & PROLONGING PAIN

Trying to get rid of experiences that you don’t like

There is no better way to postpone and prolong pain then attempting to get rid of experiences that you don’t like.  What do I mean? Simply that we will do just about anything we can to not feel pain or discomfort of any kind even when its blatantly inside of our experience.  Whether the pain be physical, emotional, mental or spiritual in nature there is often an inherent aversion to all forms it.  Our aversion to, along with our attempts to get rid of, deny and prevent pain, are exhausting, depleting and prolong the pain that we ultimately feel.  

Why do we dislike feeling pain so much?  Well the most obvious answer is that it does not feel good, but it runs much deeper than that.  We have a tendency to create stories about what pain means and this is the real pain.  Most all of the stories we create are along the lines of what it is we feel we will lose if we feel the pain and acknowledge its presence rather than move away by trying to get rid of it or change it.  Common examples are that we are afraid that the pain means something is really wrong with us, that we won’t be able to do the things we want to do, that it will get worse, that we will always feel it and it will never go away, that it will interfere with our life, that we won’t be supported, that we are bad or wrong, that we are not important or valuable, that we felt hurt, that we might die, etc.  These stories keep us pushing away the uncomfortable sensations and feelings at all costs and propel us to try to get rid of or prevent pain whenever it comes into our experience.  

To state the obvious you can’t actually get rid of your experience.  You can attempt.  You can physically manipulate or alter the stuff of your body, and the stuff you put into your body, which may provide some relief of sorts, but more often than not the experience returns or remains, that is until you shift yourself.  Your experience of what is occurs in direct response to you.  Experience cannot occur without the experiencer, and you are the experiencer not the experience itself.  This is quite tricky to dissect out as we tend to identify ourselves as the experience itself, which is why we feel powerless or helpless when faced with challenging or painful situations.  Until you really get this you will seek relief (separation of parts of your experience) more than healing (inclusion of all of your experience).  You will attempt to get rid of, move away from or try to prevent certain experiences (which is simply another type of avoidance) because your only way to feel in some level of control is to try to manipulate your experiences.  As long as you don’t recognize yourself as the experiencer you will be victim to experience and your only hope in feeling better is if your experience changes.   

LENSES OF VIEWING PAIN

Widening perspectives 

There are many perspectives with which we can view pain.  The most typical, collective perspective that is chosen is that of “problem”, meaning the perspective that pain means that there is something wrong and thus we search to get rid of that which is wrong.  Even though this is the most culturally approved perspective it is not the only one.  More and more people are courageously challenging this perspective and choosing novel lenses with which to view pain when it arises in their experience.  One point of clarification that I’d like to make is that at times it is necessary to seek direct support for your physical vehicle and what I am about to share is simply in addition too (a yes and and approach) rather than a replacement for.  You can have novel perspectives on pain that don’t view it as a problem and still seek support at the physical level.  The distinction being that the seeking of direct physical support is in alignment with your new perspective and not as a way to get rid of your experience.  

One novel view is that of seeing pain as a message from Self to self to assist in remembering or realignment with our true nature.  Part of being human is the forgetting of what/who we are.  Due to this forgetting we make agreements with ourselves prior to incarnation to help us remember.  Pain is one way we do this as it speaks loudly and gets our attention typically more than anything else will.  So if we perhaps are either in a deep state of forgetting ourselves or life wants to help us remember ourselves at an even larger level, we might experience pain as a messenger to realign our lives, mainly our perspectives, with what feels good.  If we can pause our story of wrongness long enough then we can begin to see where we might have a belief that is out of alignment with our true nature or some way we are engaging with life that is outdated and in need of an upgrade.  

Another perspective on pain takes into account the emotional-physical body connection indicating that pain means something needs to be felt.  When there are feelings that we are not willing to feel or experiences which evoke deep emotions that we bury rather than feel, often our body will feel the build up of tension that this creates.  What isn’t felt binds energy and therefore we feel pain in the physical body.  It isn’t always obvious what we are avoiding feeling and often times subconsciously we don’t want to feel because feeling invokes movement and change that we may not be ready to make in our lives.  However as soon as we give ourselves the space to dive into ourselves we can access the emotions thus allowing them to run their course and keep moving through us.  This can propel us into taking much needed action in our lives and we begin to see the pain as the catalyst for necessary change rather than a problem.  In this way pain is a tremendous gift.  

Thirdly pain can be seen as an indication of reorganization.  When we are actively creating change and becoming anew in ourselves old structures need to destabilize and that can at times be experienced right down through the physical form.  The destabilization process can bring with it sensations or pain or discomfort as we become anew.

In summary I invite the seeing of pain as simply another part of experience.  The more you can dismantle your charge around pain the easier it will be for your physicality to repair itself.  That dismantling comes from changing and widening your perspective.  We must learn to work with ourselves in this way rather than against ourselves in fighting what is as that simply postpones and prolongs the experience of pain.  It is sometimes the hardest to get ourselves to surrender and allow the experience of pain, yet the reward is great when we do and the freedom that we feel despite whatever is occurring is revealed on the other side of it.  

Dr. Amanda Hessel, Chiropractor, Network Spinal Analysis & Somato-Respiratory Integration, Boulder, Colorado

Defenselessness

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Defenselessness 

Beyond Self-protection

Imagine for a moment what it would be like to live defenselessly.  To not react, protect, prove, rationalize or justify yourself to anyone including your own self.  To become so completely transparent that everything moves through you and nothing sticks, lodges or festers away inside of you.  To be so open that no longer is any ounce of separation perceivable by you.  To no longer be afraid.  

We all have a different relationship to defenses.  Some of us think we need to have defenses so that we don’t get hurt physically or emotionally.  It is after all the job of our defenses to protect us from feeling pain and surviving.  Defenses get activated when we feel threat.  That threat could be to our physical or emotional survival or to our sense of self in regards to how we both see ourselves and others see us. However this all begs the question as to if there is something more than reacting to survive or to keeping our sense of self fixed, and the exploration of allowing the impact of pain rather than attempting to keep it at bay.  

You may wonder why in the world would you allow yourself to feel pain willingly whether it be physically or emotionally.  You might ask, what’s the sense in that?  Feeling pain when it’s present is the number one catalyst to healing, transformation and self-empowerment.  It is also what allows you to come back to into presence and an innerly resourceful, clear state when you feel lost and can’t find home or clarity inside of you.  Feeling pain provides the fuel that moves you into the directions where you’ve been too scared to go.  Pain, or the perception of pain, lives underneath fear.  When we don’t allow the pain that is underneath the fear, then fear runs the show of our lives.  Fear reacts.  Fear can see only a very limited perspective which includes only itself.   

It doesn’t take much of feeling pain to get us either in a state of full acceptance of what is or moving us in a new direction that we must take.  Sometimes people have an idea that they have to keep feeling pain over and over and over and just stay in a painful state indefinitely in order to heal.  This is not advisable or beneficial.  Pain is simply the catalyst or activator into healing and transformation and not what is supposed to become your lived day to day experience.  If you find yourself in a perpetual state of experiencing pain then you are mostly likely stuck in your story about pain rather than actually feeling it or you are postponing an action that you must take and not listening to the message of the pain.   

Defended vs. Closed 

Choosing openness or closedness

Defenses keep things away from us and make us unreceptive, un-influenceable, and un-feeling.  This is because a state of defense is a closed, self-contained state of being rather than open and unified.  There are times when a closed state is preferable and your capacity to discern when this is appropriate is a key factor in your personal and spiritual development.  There is also a difference between a defended state and a purely closed state.  The prime difference is choice.  In a defended state you are reactionary and not in full choice or conscious of your chosen state of being.  Meaning no matter what you try to do you can’t shift from closed back into open and you are often triggered or thrown by what is occurring.  Your reactor or survivor is running the show rather than your chooser and you are locked into the pattern.  However when you consciously choose a closed state because that is what best serves or is preferably by you in a particular situation there is no difficulty in shifting from open to closed to open again instantly and at will.  You are also not triggered or knocked out of your center.  This is because you are aware of yourself and not merged with the situation that is occurring.  This is true self-empowerment and an important stage of development.  

Being defended is the the opposite of growth.  What this means is that in order to grow and evolve, both personally and spiritually, you must find your way through your defenses.  You cannot learn when you are defended, you can only protect yourself.  One of the reasons that we often feel disconnected or that we can’t feel or see what is going on beyond our limited perspective is because we are defended in a closed off state and frequently we don’t even know that we are.  This is why learning how to tune into yourself through your body is such a vital resource in discovering your patterns of protection and defense.  Rather than speaking through words or thoughts like the mind does, the body speaks through sensation, breath, movement and energy.  It is through learning to tune into those aspects of our being that we can begin to discover where we protect, how we avoid and where we are not open or receiving energy or information.  Through this discovery of protection we can begin to make contact with fear, and the pain that is underneath that fear.  Developing the capacity to be present with the intensity of these sensations and emotions is our gateway into healing, openness and unlimited energy.

Defenselessness is our natural state.  Open, vast, receptive, and connected.  It is only because we have taken on forms that we have become identified with that we have developed defenses.  With this we’ve learned to perceive ourselves as separate from and therefore having something to protect ourselves from.  In absolute truth there is no other and on a relative level there is the appearance of other.  Don’t be swayed by the multiplicity of forms and the illusion of separateness that they create.  Look past appearances and see with the heart.  The heart sees but one, feels but one, knows but one.  Stop confusing yourself with the form of this body and come to know yourself deep to and beyond the form.  Here you will experience the freedom of defenselessness.

Dr. Amanda Hessel, Chiropractor, Network Spinal Analysis & Somato-Respiratory Integration, Boulder, Colorado

Body Intelligence

Dr. Amanda Love Leave a comment

Body Intelligence

Stress & Acceptance Physiology

There is a natural intelligence to our bodies.  It is clearly evident that our bodies know how to coordinate a zillion biochemical process each day without us even being aware of it.  Modern medicine has barely scratched the surface in understanding the complexity of the way that our body operates and functions.  While it has made advances in looking at the physical components and parts it almost never steps back to see what is the operating force for this physical body in the first place.  

It is obvious that when we cut or injure ourselves that our body initiates a sequence of events to heal the tissue.  Different tissues tend to repair at different rates.  Many of what we label disease processes are the body’s intelligence attempting to recalibrate or heal itself in the best way it can given the situation it finds itself within.  Even when things seem maladaptive to us, meaning producing some kind of symptoms, this is often an intelligent process that is initiated to help adapt and heal the body.  This is also why simply eliminating symptoms can be dangerous as the body created them for a purpose, which is to support homeostasis and healing.  The adaptability and capacity of this body intelligence is really quite astounding and one that we often don’t give much attention to unless it seems to not be working correctly.  

This begs the question as to why it seems that this intelligence fails us at times.  Why does the body not repair after injury or find that perfect balance in its internal processes that we maybe once experienced?  Why does the body’s intelligence sometimes need external or outside assistance?  Lets start with the most significant cases first and work our way backwards.  In the most significant of cases an injury or insult to the body structure is so great that the body’s intelligence can’t reconnect and revitalize that part of the body despite its best attempts to do so.  You might see this with a car accident where there is loss of a limb or a stroke when a portion of the brain dies.  Connection has been severed and the body’s intelligence simply can’t reach or reconnect to that part.  When a part of this body is disconnected from its intelligence source its energetic resource is limited and it eventually ceases to function.  This is what we would call a death process of that part.  When intelligence completely ceases to inform this body structure that is what we call a full or complete death of this physical form.  Again this is the most significant of cases. 

Now at the body level we experience death processes every minute and this does not mean that a portion of the body or the entire body dies.  Believe it or not millions of cells die each second and millions of new ones are born each second.  Unbelievable I know but look it up for yourself.  The death process is actually a very important part of the regulation and health of this body, so much so that I would say that our resistance to a death process occurring is one of the major factors that interferes with our ability to heal.  Wait, what did I just say?  Yep you read correctly.  Due to our often impatience, fear, loss of stability in our body of what once was and wanting to go back to how we felt in our body before a pain or symptom arose we tend not want to let go of what once was.  We thus create a state of resistance aka stress physiology in our body and we are attempting to live in the past which always creates suffering because its impossible to do so.  In this way we interfere with the emergence of the new (which is on the other side of every death) by holding onto the old with the grips of our current idea of life.  When we are unwilling to accept what is, including the potential or actual death of the way that things were, we get stuck.  When we are stuck we desperately seek for some answer or some clarity that will bring us back to the knowing we once knew rather than this new state of uncertainty and instability that we find ourselves in.   

Now back to the body’s intelligence.  The body’s intelligence is always programmed towards health, vitality and wholeness in its actions.  When communication between our body tissues and the intelligence that informs them are intact and not interfered with this information is effortlessly communicated behind the scenes of our conscious awareness and our body functions optimally.  However if this information cannot reach the tissues of the body for some reason then the communication cannot get relayed.  In my opinion and experience the number one thing that interferes with this communication process is us.  Meaning we create the interference in the system through the inner state of being that we are choosing.  Now are there other things that interfere with this communication besides our inner state of being?  The answer is most definitely yes.  Not creating a good physical environment for the body by consuming crappy foods, crappy thoughts and not taking care of the physical body in the ways it needs all interfere.  These things are vitally important to our physical health and vitality, but they are not the entire story.  

The good news is that in many cases reconnection can be re-established.  The sometimes hard to swallow news is that we first have to accept the current-present-now state of our body before that connection comes back to life and our tissues can be re-vitalized.  On a body level this means that we have drop resistance, drop fight/flight mode, drop stress physiology so that the body intelligence can reconnect.  The physiology of stress (aka resistance) blocks physical healing and blocks the communication of the intelligence of the body with the body tissues.  Stress and healing physiologically work in opposition.  On a mental-emotional level this often means we have to stop thinking and start feeling the loss of what was, feeling the pain of not being able to go back, and feeling all of the other difficult emotions that are connected to not feeling or experiencing how you want to be feeling and experiencing being in your body.  

Acceptance physiology is radically different than stress physiology.  It’s the physiology of flowing, communicating, non-interfered with body intelligence.  When we quit holding onto what was, which is embracing the death of what we once knew, only then will we see the new that can emerge.  The clarity that we were so hungry for when we were feeling stuck begins to illuminate our experience.  We can see what needs to be done and take actions accordingly.  We become increasingly ready for whatever we need to do and be.  Our physical body may still be experiencing some symptoms but our relationship to their expression has dramatically changed such that we don’t even really mind that their present if they are.  This is the power of acceptance.  You have this power.  We all have this power.  

Dr. Amanda Hessel, Chiropractor, Network Spinal Analysis & Somato-Respiratory Integration, Boulder, Colorado