The Root Cause of Physical Pain

I was at a meditation retreat this weekend and was reminded again of how the body is programed to work, if we give it the chance to. So many people live with pain. All pain has something in common, whether it is a headache, back pain, neck pain, abdominal pain, PMS/pelvic cramps, interstitial cystitis, nerve pain etc. If your pain is severe, it can be debilitating. But many people live in tolerable pain, and just go on with life. They may have forgotten how it feels to feel good. Let me remind you to dream high in regards to your health and Photo Credit Esther Max allow yourself to live pain free.

Pain is actually a signal, a sensory alert that something is wrong in your life. If you touch a burning stove, it hurts. The pain tells you to quickly pull your hand away, so you don’t keep hurting yourself. If there was no pain, and you left your hand there, your skin would be burned away.

With chronic pain conditions be it a headache, backache or abdominal pain, the pain is also a signal that something is wrong in your life. What happens physiologically is that our nervous system communicates with our body when we encounter life situations. Have you ever felt nervous and your stomach tightened up? The situation that created the nervousness created a sensation in your body (for example a tight stomach). This tight stomach sensation is generally interpreted as a negative sensation and we often don’t like it. But the more we don’t like it, and stress about feeling sick to our stomach, the worse it gets. Why? Because the more we dislike something, the more chemicals our bodies release (stress chemicals), that make create more of these sensations such as pain or tension etc.

Actually it does not matter what the sensation is. Whether it is pain, tension, itching, an energetically blocked off area, cold or hot, it’s just the body’s somatic feedback, giving you a sensation in reaction to what is going on in the world around you. What’s going around may be bad diet, physical trauma or lack of sleep that gives rise to these sensations such as pain. But more often it is the adding up of our emotional reactions to our world on a very constant level that builds up and builds up that is the root cause of physical pain. We are often unaware of how unacceptable to our body these life situations are until our bodies are screaming in physical pain.

Sometimes there are patterns of where the “stress” is stored in the body. I’ve seen unhealed sexual trauma, tumultuous relationships, loneliness, or self judgement often show up as reproductive pain, or reproductive conditions. I’ve seen stress, especially financial stress show up as lower back pain. I’ve seen people with difficulties saying no, difficulties communicating, or feeling trapped in their circumstances experience frequent sore throats. We are often unaware that something is not OK. In our culture we may feel something is wrong intuitively but it slips away so quickly as we then continue to go about our day. But our body does not forget and then pain builds up to alert us to change our life.

So how do you get out of pain? We need to reverse the process. We need to allow the body itself to let go of the added up “stuff” that is stored in a particular part of the body that resulted in pain. It is like a detox. I am so excited about this, because it is so easy. But yet it takes some effort, or may seem “stupid” that many people are not willing to give it a chance. See our culture wants to pop pills, whether it’s medication or natural. But that only skims the surface. If you really want to get out of pain, would you do what it takes even if it is not the method you are programed to believe to be the solution? Most solutions are simpler than we make them to be. I really want to share this with you because for the patients who are willing, I have seen patients who feel like they have tried everything for months or years heal. Patients who are trapped at home with bladder pain from interstitial cystitis, patients with frequent debilitating migraines can all be pain free no matter how long they’ve suffered from these conditions.

To start the process of reversing pain one must realize that pain is a sensation, that is no different in a profound sense to a pleasant sensation. Both of these sensations change. Everything in our world changes, nothing is permanent. If you feel energetic, you may later feel tired. If you feel pain, it will go away. If you have an itch, it goes away. Nothing is permanent. The first step is to observe it. Do not judge it as good or bad. When you judge, you create emotions that secrete chemicals that are inflammatory and create more pain. When you start to observe the parts of your body, your body is alerted, awareness is brought to the area. The body has wisdom. It will start to release the stored up “stuff” automatically, and you have started the process of reversing pain. There are techniques you can learn and various healing modalities you can receive that make the healing process faster. To gauge if a technique of healing is good and can get to the root of releasing pain make sure the sensations of the body are addressed. We need to get back to the physical body, the somatic programming and unprogramming to work. If you are ready to let go of your physical pain and let go of some aspect of your life that is unsatisfactory, I would be honored to assist you in the process.