Tag: chronic pain management

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Hurting And Not Hurting Flow Together

Yesterday I had to lie flat on my bed all afternoon, taking ibuprofen (anti-inflammatory pain pills).

Remember the right hamstring story from six months ago?

Well, even if you don’t….this lower right back hamstring nerve area was hurting, the place I tore last year followed by surgery. I tweaked it dancing recently. Again.

Rats. There is nothing good about this! Fist shaking at the sky!

This is definitely a problem!!

Doing The Work on physical ailments can be really amazing. Let’s go for it!

Is it true that this is bad, I hate the pain, nothing good can come of it? Is it true that it hurts?

Yes. I can still feel it now, what are you talking about…is it true.Jeez.

But can you absolutely know that this is a bad situation, a situation to hate, a problem, a difficulty…that this really does hurt?

No.

I worked with clients, answered emails, even had an awesome session with a beautiful inquirer who always devotes two hours to her work, and my back and hamstring never crossed my mind during any of these activities or interactions.

How do I react when I don’t like the physical sensation I feel?

I clutch against it. I think about the future and how it will get worse. I think things like “I have to stop dancing, I can’t bike, I can’t run, I’m aging, this is getting worse, there is no way for this to go but downhill, I’ll be dealing with this forever until I’m dead.”

I get pictures of my mom and her own back issues and want to interview her about exactly every minutia of experience she’s had, what she did, how I can short cut the process to No Pain.

I react also by ignoring the pain. Pain, what pain? Who cares?

So who would you be without the thought that this is wrong, difficult, bad, that I’m against this sensation? Without the thought that I hurt?

“You put someone that understands the mind in a cell and lock the door and tell them that they’re never going to be released and that’s it for life……and if they love everything they think, then they really are experiencing gratitude. If they don’t love what they think, it’s a torture chamber.” ~ Byron Katie

Without the thought, I notice a very strong sensation, tingling, I want to either lie still or shift around. I notice I forget about it as the mind becomes interested in other things, the room gets fuller, then the attention towards this area becomes more acute again.

I feel pressure, like a rock with sharp edges, stuck in my lower right back. I think of calling the doctor, or calling the physical therapist….maybe I do.

Without the thought that this is a grave, serious, terrible, difficult or annoying situation (this could apply to any situation, right?) then I am simply here, living this experience.

“It’s amazing to see what we end up doing with our Will. We actually assert our will in opposition to the flow of life. If something happens that we don’t like, we resist it. But since what we’re resisting has already taken place, what good is it to resist?…It does not do anything to the reality of that situation.” ~ Michael Singer

Turning the thought around: this is a wonderful situation, it doesn’t hurt. 

This is not denial, it’s actually playing with the awareness of all things, all sides….entering non-duality.

Yesterday, I lay in bed and did The Work with others for 7 hours. I had breaks, I wrote, I got up and ate a delicious orange and leftover pizza. I talked with my funny and beautiful daughter.

How spectacular to notice that even though it hurts, it also doesn’t hurt.

Much love, Grace

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Ready For Anything

Yesterday I was walking, rather slowly, in much narrower strides than I usually take, up a long incline, heading back to my parked car.

I felt the now familiar yanking kind of burning dull ache in my right sits bone. One of the doctor’s that I’ve visited recently voice popped in my head “….since it’s hanging on by maybe less than 20%…possible it could pop off…careful until surgery…”

I suddenly pictured 1/5th the amount of attached tendon pulled really tight, like an over-stretched rubber band about to “pop”.  

Oh. What was that? 

I think it’s popping off right now. Could it be?

I kept walking. I noticed the view below of the blustery lake, the space needle off to my left (Seattle icon), wind blowing my hair into my eyes.

Having an injury, with chronic “pain” (which by the way seems to come and go) really reminds me that I have a body.

This flesh and bone thing that I appear to inhabit. Something is on low-grade alarm, radiating from the leg. 

But right now, I also happen to be facilitating the Pain, Sickness and Death teleclass, and we’re looking, as I’ve looked a bunch of times before, at what is believed about HURT and SUFFERING and PAIN.

It hurts. I am in pain. She hurts. He hurts. This is terrible. Having a body is vulnerable. Having a body is dangerous. I’m in control of this body. I HAVE a body.

Are these things true?

Oh brother, YES. Would you stop asking that for once? This is DEFINITELY true. 

Without a body, I wouldn’t be anything. I wouldn’t be here. And this thing, called a body, hurts sometimes. It can get hurt (I have evidence)!

It appears that other people get hurt! 

But I don’t actually know if this is terrible, and I don’t know if this body needs to stay NOT hurting, and I don’t know if it’s really dangerous and vulnerable to have this body. At all. 

OK OK! I don’t know if it’s even true that this is MY body. I’m not sure who or what invented it, and it appears I had nothing to do with it.

How do I react when I believe the thought that this sensation is called “pain” and that it means something terrible is happening, already happened, or is about to happen in the future?

I have images form in my head, flashing like a speedy movie of moving flash cards, of surgeries and knives and cut off limbs and death and other things that frighten me. 

I feel sick to my stomach, nervous, worried. I treat myself like I’m a victim, something happened TO me. I got unlucky. Other people are walking around freely with connected hamstrings. 

Look, there goes a person now, running by. She isn’t having stabbing pains in her pelvic bone! That’s the way it’s supposed to be! 

I chuckle. 

Who would I be without the thought that this sensation “hurts” or that it’s very bad news, or that I am getting surgery, or that this body is mine, or that something is wrong with this right leg. 

Strangely light. Like giggling. Goosebumps. 

Without the thought that this is a bad situation, I’m here, now. Tuned in. Alive. I feel a pulsing awareness of everything, sensing it all with this thing called a body. 

No regrets, no fear in this moment. 

Now here’s the bizarre thing: without the thought that this is terrible, wrong, that pain is bad, or that this is my body and it is dangerous to have one….

….I’m almost looking forward to having this surgery. 

Oh wow…that’s the ultimate turnaround. I am willing to have this hurt, to go through this, to feel this body…..I look forward to having this hurt, to go through this, to feel this body.

Weird, right? WOW! COOL!

“The Master gives himself up to whatever the moment brings. He knows that he is going to die, and he has nothing left to hold on to: no illusions in his mind, no resistances in his body. He doesn’t think about his actions; they flow from the core of his being. He holds nothing back from life; therefore he is ready for death, as a man is ready for sleep after a good day’s work.” ~ Tao Te Ching #50 

With Love, Grace

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Pain Brings The Most Alluring Thing

Yesterday I had a moment when in about 10 seconds I had the thoughts: “it’s all over from here…there will be a time I can never dance again…I have a limited time left on the planet”.  

I was feeling hip pain. From my gymnastics move about a month ago.

The right hamstring was injured, but now the left hip hurts since I’ve been favoring it, walking kinda weird, and ignoring it half the time.

Through my mind ran the following thoughts:

  • this pain will never go away
  • the writing’s on the wall…if hips are hurting, I’m on my way to the end
  • I have to finish my book before I croak! Quick!
  • I’ll never see my kids’ in their old age (so weird the way that works)
  • I need more time
  • one day, I will not enter this dance studio any more, I’ll be dead

Then I thought about the great sage Ramana Maharshi for about ten minutes, as I have many times before, and his story of at age 16, lying down on the floor and pretending he was dead, just to see what it felt like.

BOOM. He saw what he was without a body.

So where’s my ecstatic “boom”? Seeing who I am without a body is kind of attractive at the moment!

I’m way older than 16 and I don’t have to pretend really, to get the sense that it’s over soon, and I’m going to be dead at some point.

But it pretty much feels like I’m stuck in this sack of flesh, for now, to put it bluntly.

Not that I hate the body…in fact, it’s genius, kind, accepting, miraculous and completely fascinating. Hurts, heals, changes.

Off and on throughout the day I feel the dull pain and I think about who I am before my parents were born, the zen koan.

I’m not even TRYING to concentrate on seeing from the perspective of No Body and Who-I-Truly-Am and all that rot. Yet, I’m thinking about this anyway!

There’s that silly mind again. On the job attempting to figure it out.

The voiceover from an old TV ad for Trix Cereal comes in, where the rabbit is doing everything he possibly can to get that awesome cereal, and he just can’t seem to outwit the situation and have what he wants.

The rabbit tries many maneuvers….and then discovers that he’s been trying to get something that is actually not possible for him to “get”.

Because he’s a rabbit. 

“Silly Rabbit”, the children say when they realize he’s been up to multiple shenanigans trying to acquire their cereal….“Trix Are For Kids!” 

Silly Mind! Awareness is not for you! 

But what IS for the mind, thank goodness, is The Work. At least, so far this mind seems to delight in it.

This mind (and yours probably, too) just LOVES to answer questions.

So let’s take a look at the troubling little thoughts about the body that have appeared from this message of pain apparently originating in a human hip.

Are these thoughts actually true that have been streaming through this mind? That the pain will never go away and it’s all downhill from here?

Well, I could be completely pain free (in fact, come to think of it right in this moment, on the same day only a few hours later as I write, I don’t feel pain).

And no, I don’t have to finish my book before I croak, or see my kids in their old age.

And it’s possible I don’t need more time….and it’s absolutely true that one day I won’t enter the dance studio anymore.

I mean, I am going to die….at least the physical body will.

But what if all this wasn’t a BAD BAD thing?

I mean, how I react when I believe these thoughts, and believe they are alarming, is that I am instantly afraid, nervous, planning, calculating, and grasping at all kinds of strategies for softening this situation, either emotionally, mentally or physically.

I’m the rabbit BEFORE he finds out the tricks are not for him. Ha!

Without the thought, however, that any of this pain, injury, change, death, departure or ending is terrible in the great big scheme of things….

….wow.

I am so curious, and interested in All This, including whatever Pain appears to be. (Is it energy? What is it?)

I remember that every time I enter the dance studio, I am different, so I’ve already lived the story of having no dance ever be repeated.

Without the thought, I see there is nothing guaranteed, nothing steady, nothing gained and lost, because nothing sticks anyway.

Without believing things are getting worse, I am excited to see what this body does, what it’s like, what happens next.

I’m psyched about the story unfolding. What will she do now?

Oh look, she went to physical therapy, she made a massage appointment, she slowed down and held still all day, she scheduled the book-writing time on her calendar.

She went to the dance studio and remembered the sweet friends who will never come there again, as they have already crossed over into death, and that we’ll all follow.

“The only way to get out of this is to see through it. Don’t renounce it, see through it. Understand its true value and you won’t need to renounce it; it will just drop from your hands. But of course, if you don’t see that, if you’re hypnotized into thinking that you won’t be happy without this, that or the other things, you’re stuck.” ~ Anthony DeMello 

Turning everything around, I see how this is all very wonderful, and nothing is ever truly permanently ending, and everything is always beginning, and fading away…

….and things are getting better. Could be just as true.

  • this pain will always go away; emotional, physical, all of it
  • I’m on my way to the end, to the beginning, who knows
  • I don’t have to finish my book, in fact when I die there will be tons of things unfinished, that’s the way of it
  • I have no idea how much of my kids’ lives I’ll see or not see, it’s a mystery and doesn’t seem up to me
  • I need less time! Whew, what a relief!
  • one day, I will not enter this dance studio any more, I’ll be dead. Woohoo! What, did I want to dance here forever? That’d be weird.

“No-thing-ness…as much as that doesn’t make sense to the mind, is the most alluring thing of all.” ~ Adyashanti

I hear the rain pattering outside, drink an incredible taste of water, read a sweet text from my daughter, look into the vast gray sky, and for just a second my throat wells up with tears of gratitude.

Then even that passes and in this emptiness I am stunned to find gratitude also for the pain.

How else would I have been considering the mystery of life and death, and All This today?

Much Love, Grace

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Pain! Ouch I Hate It!

Physical accidents, trauma, injury or death all seem to be things most of us do NOT love. Chronic pain, broken limbs, deep back aches, going through chemotherapy, something ongoing that is always there, unpleasant or horrendous, always hurting.

How do we work with inquiry and asking questions like “is it true?” when this kind of stuff is going on? These areas do not seem like ones where I can feel peaceful, accepting, open. Or can I?

Can you imagine the absurdity of saying in your hospital bed when you wake up “oh, that’s right, I lost my legs, I got burned, I have cancer, my back hurts, I’m paralyzed…and it’s not a problem.”

The other day I hurt my hip. It’s actually been an ongoing pain that’s been building for awhile, sometimes a dull ache, sometimes more burning. This time it prevented me from dancing, which I usually do twice a week.

I’ve been studying Pain for awhile…and how the mind works with it.

Humans have studied pain for decades. It’s fascinating. We talk about people having different pain thresholds. Some women report that childbirth is terribly painful, some report that it was only uncomfortable.

We also have thoughts about those people who don’t feel much pain or who don’t get sick very often are doing something right, better…they are lucky, have it easy, are blessed, are wiser.

Not only is the pain bad, but there’s something wrong with me for experiencing it in the first place!

A study was done recently by scientists trying to understand more about chronic pain, at Northwestern University in Chicago. They concluded that the emotional state of the brain, how the mind reacted to an injury, had so much to do with the experience of the injury, that they could predict who would have chronic pain after the injury, based on brain scans.

In other words, different parts of the brain got very excited, jumpy, and active in response to a physical ailment…and this made the pain last longer or hurt more. Who knows why these brains got more excitable, they just do.

So there I was yesterday with my hip, feeling very sorry for myself. Thoughts like:

  • this is the beginning of the end of my life of ease
  • I’m getting older and I will have more and more body parts that hurt
  • I don’t want to “have to” take care of this
  • it should stop hurting
  • I’m such a complainer—other people have it much worse
  • I should be grateful it isn’t some major accident
  • Quit your bellyaching!
  • BUT I HATE IT!

My attitude towards this sensation in my hip is that it is a total annoyance and irritation AND I feel very sorry for myself. And then almost instantly I’m also thinking I should stop complaining about it and ignore it and STOP feeling sorry for myself.

Now I’ve got a boxing match going on inside the mind. What do you think happens when I’m mad at the pain and mad at myself for being mad? MADNESS ALL AROUND!

Endless loop. No inquiry. Mind spinning fast. Pain appearing and re-appearing.

So, I stop and slow it down and ask myself questions. I can be a scientist studying this interesting sensation in the hip joint.

It shouldn’t hurt. Is it true? I can’t stand it. Can I absolutely know that this is true? It means I will continue to feel pain into the future, now that I’m aging. How do I react when I think this thought? This is “hurting”. Who would I be without that thought, if I didn’t think this sensation was actually hurting?

“Everything turns out to be a gift—that’s the point. Everything that you saw as a handicap turns out to be the extreme opposite. But you can only know this by staying in your integrity, by going inside and finding out what your own truth is—not the world’s truth.”~ Byron Katie in A Thousand Names For Joy

How is it a gift that I have this hip pain, for the third day in a row? Or, any physical ailments in life: broken ankle, cancer tumor cut off my leg, horrible case of mumps, chicken pox, fevers, vomiting, rashes, colds, car accident, aging.

Katie speaks of herself doing inquiry on physical deterioration of the body. She watched the mind become horrified once when she passed a very old woman at a mall. Being right inside that old woman, she thought “oh my God, I’m trapped here! I’m supposed to be the young, bright one! There’s been a mistake, I’ll never get out, I’ll be like this forever!”

Without these thoughts of being stuck, trapped, horrified….there is such openness, entering a mysterious unknown. Katie describes how her own inquiry canceled the painful thoughts out.

“….The horror was equivalent to a deep gentleness, a caressing, a full, immovable acceptance. There was no discomfort. It began…..to love itself as the old woman, and to appreciate the slow pace, the withered flesh, the pain, the stench….there was no longer even the slightest desire to be anywhere else…”~Byron Katie

As I stop dictating to myself that I shouldn’t complain, stop telling myself that this hip is awful, that I’m STUCK because of it, that I’m trapped in a body that can get sick, injured or die….then I wonder what this is all for. I’m curious. I’m gentle and kind. I listen to the voice of this pain.

“Your thoughts make you suffer more than anything else, your interpretation of how dreadful it all is….”~Eckart Tolle  

I stop inflicting more, additional pain upon myself the minute I turn my thoughts around.

I have no idea, I realize, that this hip pain means I am trapped, that it will last, or that I can’t ever dance again. I notice that I can be happy even if I feel physical pain or sickness or aging, I’ve known that always, I’ve experienced it.

I start to get excited about getting older. Feeling what happens, watching skin change, feeling messages to stop or go or do other entirely different things with movement.

What an amazing body, bringing me research into peace, awareness, awakening. 

Love, Grace

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Does A Friendly Universe Include Cancer?

One of my best friends summed up the experience of addiction recently: More.

This moment, this place, this experience is not good enough, long enough, big enough, full enough. It needs to change. Now.

Eckhart Tolle writes about changes and shifts in life that “some changes look negative on the surface, but you will soon realize that space is being created in your life for something new to emerge.”

I find that I used to react to change kind of like this on the inside:

AAAAAAHHHHHHH!!! (picture a person falling off a 2000 foot cliff)

I confess, I might have even had this kind of reaction for things as small as missing an exit when driving somewhere on the freeway. Or the phone ringing. Or realizing I’m at the gym without my towel.

Now I really do feel more relaxed, waaaay more of the time. Something changes and I think so soon “Oh! I guess it’s going THAT way…oh, I wonder what will happen now?!” It’s very subtle, but what a different way of walking through the day.

With the Work, we begin to think ‘What could be the advantage here? What’s friendly about this situation, that seems so unfriendly when I first look at it? What is interesting, curious, an advantage even?’

I think about the time I learned I had a cancerous tumor on my leg. Here is what I found so far have been benefits of this experience:

  • I realize my body is doing it’s thing, and it’s not me. I am something beyond this body
  • my former husband and children brought over roses after my operation to cut the tumor out
  • my mother showed up to drive me to the surgery, and take me home, and I realize how she is always there when I really need her, always 100% willing (thank you mom)
  • I know all this is temporary in a way I didn’t before, this body is going to end in its own time, just like everyone else—I’m not getting out alive (ha!)
  • it didn’t hurt that much, the pain left pretty quickly, I could stand it
  • saying I had 45 stitches sounds pretty cool, I survived it
  • I have done the Work on cancer and I realize it’s just doing its thing, living its life, shining its star….I don’t have to hate it, in fact, it feels exciting to feel open to it just like anything else (cancer! my new best friend! OK, maybe not quite but how incredible to even contemplate!)

Living a turned around painful concept is an amazing and exciting practice. It feels creative, crazy, fun, playful…entering into the previously unknown. What if things are not as I believed….what if it’s friendly out there?

I feel the thrill of being beyond this ME, this individual person, this being with a physical body. This is literal, not a conceptual thing…it’s like Life is happening, I’m in the middle of it, and when this body is done, Life will still be creatively being itself.

Adyashanti, the spiritual teacher I mention often who I so enjoy, says “the very thing that’s animating you is very mysterious. It’s not good or bad, it’s simply a mystery. As long as you’re trying to improve yourself or break yourself down, you’re missing this incredible mystery. And it’s always been there. As far back as you can possibly remember. We look away from it because the noise in the mind is so much more willing to tell you who you are. “I’m a woman, I’m good, not so good”…very willing to tell you about yourself. The spiritual journey is about getting fascinated with this mystery rather than the little me.    

Change comes along and something new emerges, who knows what. Unknown, magical. Just questioning the horrors, injustices, disease, death….what else is there besides all that? Could this be a friendly universe? I used to be so positive that it wasn’t, or so it seemed. But I couldn’t really know it was true, not even before I had the Work.  

Now, even if I’m unsure or afraid, I see if I can find examples of how the thing I thought of as terrifying might have something to offer. This is not playing be-positive games, this is seeing what’s actually true for me. Wow, I really don’t know if it’s 100% terrible or not. And this alone is lighter, even if I don’t think I LOVE something.

Once upon a time, there was this bad experience that entered the kingdom….what exciting adventure will happen next, if I remember that it’s just a story? It’s a Mystery. 

Much Love,

Grace