Recoiling From Pain Intensifies It

Recoiling from pain is futile.  For me, trying to do so actually makes it worse.  It significantly intensifies it.

This goes for any kind of pain--physical, emotional, mental or spiritual.  But in this instance, I am referring to physical pain--the kind that brings deep suffering on every level of existence.

Part of the problem is that I unconsciously resist pain.  This is an automatic and very unconscious response from me.  I don't like feeling pain.  Resisting it always comes first for me.  

In the resistance, I begin tensing up my muscles and my joints in some kind of unconscious effort to brace myself to surmount and bear the pain.

It is not easy to stay conscious and aware that I am in pain avoidance mode. Usually I discover it when I am feeling even more pain and I do a "body check," and I realize that my entire body is now into the resistance of the experience.

It is completely natural to want to avoid things that feel so uncomfortable.

A total mind-blower to me is my discovery that by mentally directing my attention into the center of the pain, facing it, focusing on it, allowing it and accepting it, alters it in a positive way for me.  

This seems very illogical to me.  But I am here to tell you that sometimes it is the only thing that brings relief.

Perhaps the relief comes from not adding the extra tensing and anxiety to the already difficult experience to bear.

I am not sure.  But I know that for me, relief is in the heart of the pain.  That doesn't necessarily mean that acceptance and allowing makes it go completely away.  But it surely does bring some peace and liberation from the depths of the suffering.

Try it!  What have you got to lose?  Maybe some pain!!

Love and Hugs,
Barbara

© Copyright 2009-2015, Transformation Of A Mystic | Barbara F. Manning. 

All Rights Reserved

 Thank you Google Images, for the Commercial Reuse of your Images!