The Key to Healing a Painful Condition

The key to healing a painful condition can be summarized in one word: Acceptance but acceptance of what? Acceptance of the pain itself. How does one know if there is acceptance of pain? You will know by noticing that there is no anger, resentment, frustration, fear, anxiety or regret with regard to the pain and how it has affected your life. It is not our nature to accept anything that is undesired or unpleasant. That is why we normally resist rather than accept when confronted with these situations.

It is important to understand that resistance to unpleasantness is one of the primary tools of the ego. The ego is by it's very nature not ever present. This means that it strengthens itself by harboring negative thoughts and regrets about the past and by worrying about what may happen in the future. The more you focus on the past and future, the stronger the ego gets. The ego creates obsessive thought patterns which in turn create the negative emotions of resistance. These can be felt in the physical body. If a painful condition exists in the body, the ego's resistance will intensify it.

The ego wants to survive and strengthen itself. It can only do this if you are not aware of it when it is active. It will try to compel you to avoid doing anything that will help your body heal.

If you try to participate in physical rehabilitation, the ego may convince you to give up because there is a temporary worsening of your pain. It will create fear of worsening the condition or worry that the pain intensify or possibly never go away.

The ego does not want you to get better because physical and emotional pain are the primary ways that it feeds itself.

On the other hand, presence or being fully focused on what is going on at this moment weakens the ego. When you start to become more present, the ego feels threatened and like a cornered animal, will try to defend itself. It may create thoughts aimed at discouraging your presence. It will try to get you to re-identify with past and future. If it succeeds, you will be stuck in pain which is exactly what the ego wants.

When you are experiencing negative thoughts and emotions with regard to your pain, simply make a conscious decision to become very aware of them and know that they are being generated by the ego. In order to do this, you have to become present. This will weaken the ego and allow you to do what is necessary to stimulate healing and recovery.

Know that the ego will try to trick you into identifying with it again. Just stay alert and bring awareness to any thought or emotion that reflects the ego's operation. Make this practice a habit and you are on your way to releasing your pain.

Creating a Healing Environment

In this blog, I want to discuss what a healing environment is and how to create one. A healing environment has two components. One of them is physical and refers to having good nutrition and engaging in an active rehabilitation program which directly involves the injured or painful body part. Good nutrition means having an adequate intake of nutrients which provide the body with the raw materials it needs to heal. It also means minimizing the intake of calorie rich, nutrient poor foods which provide no benefit while burdening the body and taking some of it's energy away from the healing process.

The second component of a healing environment involves regular engagement in exercises that restore flexibility, range of motion, strength and balance. The key to this is a willingness to bear some discomfort and push the envelope so that progress continues to be made toward a resolution of pain and/or injury.

I am more concerned, however, with a largely overlooked aspect of healing which involves what is going on inside the body not on the physical level but on the energetic level. This is where thoughts and emotions exert their effects. Negative thoughts about the pain create negative emotions. These negative emotions have a strong and usually unrecognized effect on the pain that a person experiences. If unrecognized, they can exert a strong negative effect on the healing process.

There are four steps to addressing negative thoughts and emotions so that they do not get in the way of healing:

Step 1. Sit quietly with your eyes closed. Make a conscious decision to closely observe your pain with your awareness. Instead of trying to distract yourself from the pain which is our instinct, look directly at it as scary as that may seem.

Step 2. As you watch your pain, become aware of what the pain feels like without judging it.

Step 3. As you observe more closely, try to identify the details of the pain such as it's quality (ie sharp, aching, tightness, throbbing, etc.), it's specific location (eg left low back just above the buttocks) and it's intensity (ie how strong it is).

Step 4. Look for other associated sensations which seem to go along with the pain such as those associated with depressed mood, anger, frustration, anxiety, hopelessness, etc.. If old traumatic events pop into your head during this process, it is not a coincidence. These have somehow become associated with your pain. See if you can recognize how.

The level of awareness brought about by this process is rare unless a conscious decision is made to bring it about. The obvious question that might arise for anyone reading this is "what do I do next?" The answer is nothing. Just by becoming aware in this manner, you have created a healing environment and have initiated a very powerful healing process. Repeat this exercise as often as possible and the body will take care of the rest. You will also notice that any other therapies that are done on the physical level will be much more effective than they were before.

Why Some People Heal More Quickly and Completely Than Others

There are four factors that determine how quickly and completely a person heals from injury and pain. They are, in no particular order:

1. Genetic tendencies.

2. Nutritional status.

3. Exercise status.

4. The amount of stress the person is feeling relative to the condition itself.

Genetic tendencies are a minor factor in the healing process and can be easily offset by the other factors on this list. However, there are some people who have a genetic tendency toward inflammatory diseases such as diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular disease or arthritis. Others may have a susceptibility to autoimmune diseases. The presence of any of these conditions will make healing more of a challenge.

Nutrition has an effect on the tendency to develop pain conditions and also effects how quickly and completely a person heals. If a person with chronic pain has a diet that is high in refined sugar and flour and processed foods, then there is likely to be chronic inflammation inside the body. It is also likely that this person does not have an adequate intake of healthy nutrition. The result is that the body is overwhelmed with high calorie "food" that has very little nutritional value while lacking in adequate amounts of the proper nutrients. Healing is a dynamic process and requires certain nutrients in order to have it occur efficiently.

A person who is used to exercise has an easier time participating in the physical rehabilitation required for healing to occur than someone who isn't used to it. Also, a body that is in good condition because of regular exercise prior to the onset of pain has a better chance of healing.

I have seen people who do everything right in terms of diet and exercise who still have difficulty healing from their pain. The reason, in my opinion, is that they are obsessively focused on the pain itself and think almost constantly about how the pain has effected their lives. They think about all of the activities they used to do but no longer can. They think about worsening pain and disability as they get older. They obsess about the cause of the pain and wish it never happened. There are many more that I have heard people talk about. While all of these reactions are perfectly understandable, the question is do they serve the person's goal of healing and resolving their pain. The answer is a resounding no. In the next blog, I will address this issue and discuss how to mitigate it.