This is something I just wrote about how to heal chronic pain: first for a Facebook post, now as a blog post and, then, because of the deep and powerful substance, as a future book chapter.
If you read it, I hope it brings you value.
Much love,
-David
💛💙💜💚🧡❤️
How to Heal Chronic Pain
So many of us have called for this.
So many of us are still calling.
Physical pain. Emotional pain. Spiritual pain. When will it end?
There isn’t any other place to be. You are in your body. You will always be in your body.
Leaving your body – even just 10% – as your mind wanders, your spirit plays, and your awareness flutters around everywhere but the place it needs to go.
Trauma isn’t fun.
Until you MAKE it fun.
The point of Trauma is not to avoid making the same mistakes again (even though that’s important).
The point of Trauma is to teach us about ourselves.
Trauma is a lesson unlearned. It is an emotion repressed, an experience repeating itself in an endless loop.
And again.
And again.
And again.
What is Chronic Pain?
Trauma means we haven’t resolved something.
“Chronic” means we haven’t resolved something.
Is it possible trauma and chronic pain are linked?
Is it possible one causes the other?
That they can exacerbate, synergize, intertwine in an endless web of pain, causing us distraction, distrust, and destruction of ourselves – only to escape that awful moment finally coming FULL to the surface and OVERWHELMING us because we couldn’t deal with it last time?
B R E A T H E.
Breathe again.
Suffering
Trauma is an opportunity.
Avoiding pain does not cause suffering, it prolongs it.
Suffering is not pain.
Suffering is not BECAUSE of pain.
Suffering is perspective.
Pain and suffering are not eternal bedfellows.
Pain is a neurological signal.
Suffering is the story we tell ourselves. It keeps us in victim mentality, harboring Limiting Beliefs, giving them weight, and being a victim…
Over and over again.
Excuses. Explanations. Extremes.
What about… experience?
What about finally just simply and truly experiencing the source of the pain utterly – learning all we can about it, seeing every aspect that we have ignored – and just doing what needs to be done?
If your leg gets cut off, that means a tourniquet. If your bone is broken, that means a cast.
If a heart is broken
Does that mean a therapist?
“Bones take 6 weeks to heal,” the mainstream doctors say.
“Shallow cuts on the skin take 1-4 days to heal” based on your immune system, circulation, etc
But emotional scars…
Those samskaras, those patterns of cause and effect, those chain reactions…
Those may never heal.
Until we decide for them to.
Being (un)aware
The problem with being cut off from our bodies (in terms of awareness) is that, unless something happens automatically (like breathing), it often… doesn’t happen.
You don’t eat by accident.
You don’t drink water by accident.
But do you seek and receive nourishing love, filling your heart with yumminess and warm connection, filling your blood with serotonin and oxytocin?
Do you have it available, in all the ways you want and need?
Or do you push it away, relegate it to something you will (hopefully) experience “Later”… and focus on your “Priorities?”
Materialism isn’t about worshipping stuff.
It’s just about putting stuff, achievement, and the physical world OUTSIDE our bodies (or for some of us more vain types, outside our organs) – about putting all these things before our inner world.
Spirit? Sure. Mind? Definitely. The embodied part of our body/mind that is our emotions?
The subtleties of our organs because their pulse, you know, tells us how they’re doing? Not like a 5000-year-old system of medicine is based on this or anything…
So. This is already quite a long post. If you found it valuable and interesting, please comment below. I know this isn’t a place for channeled-in-progress book chapters… but occasionally…
I’ll post something super long like this that, in a very real possibility, will make it to a soon-to-be-released book, my publisher be willing 😉
For those of you still engaged:
Understanding Pain
My problem with pain (my = ego personality of David as of this writing, which of course is a different one, even if slightly, from that which exists now, in every now) – my problem with pain is that it simply doesn’t go away.
I feel it in my body. I feel it in other bodies. I feel it in my heart, and I feel it in my mind.
It lessens, sure. Extremes no longer overwhelm or last as long as they did. So many of the sources, physical, mental and spiritual have been completely wiped away, resolved and re-absorbed or released, forgiven and sometimes (more often this will be) seen with gratitude, for the gifts they inspired via compensation.
Evaluating Your Shape
I’m in better physical shape than I have been in over 10 years. I love mah muscles! (Photos coming soon, paparazzi). I’m in better mental shape than I have been in over 8 years. I’ve been meditating every day, practicing regular Qi gong, Nei gong, Yoga, Kundalini, Tantra, have been more present, more grounded and more real.
Spiritually, I’m the best I’ve ever been. This is interesting, because in the last 5 years, during intensive study and multiple awakenings, I’ve had peaks. I’ve felt for long hours what was described as advanced states of enlightenment, and willingly (and sometimes just based on the requirements of day to day living in the lifestyle I choose) allowed myself to shift downward on the continuum of consciousness, to better functioning the material world.
This “releasing of attachment” (read: I was attached to the idea of becoming and staying a glorified version of the state of being called enlightened) – this releasing was probably the best thing I ever did.
Whether you want to call it becoming practical or taking the bodhisattva vow (I did both), I am now able to access many of those significantly higher states more often, sometimes at will with less than 10 minutes prep time.
And I’m also able to just “be” in a world where I don’t need people to be overtly spiritual.
Because of this, one of the strongest reasons for me to “leave my body” and explore the spirit world – an experience that led to many curious studies and private tutors – the reasons I did these things, at first, was to avoid pain.
Tying It Together
Pain is just a nerve signal.
It doesn’t always mean something is damaged, or something is wrong.
It doesn’t always mean something needs to be dealt with right away, or severely…or (deep breath) expensively.
I’ve been a hypochondriac for much of my life, a (limiting) belief system with easy traces in genealogical experience (Grandmother on my mom’s side was in holocaust concentration camps for two years)…when you’re very young and growing up around people with certain patterns of expression, you’re bound to pick up some if not all of them – that’s how we learn by observation starting as babies, after all.
When we develop rational minds starting around age 7, we begin to have the agency to change our minds and our motives, our intentions, actions and – if we practice mindfulness – reactions.
But not hitting someone who took your toy is not the type of reaction I’m talking about.
Saying “OMG something is wrong with me I’m in pain! I need to move heaven and earth to fix this thing that’s wrong with me! I’m so bad and “OMG I feel so guilty/evil/ashamed/angry/terrible” blah blah blah self-judgment reactions to any type of pain whatsoever.
Psychosomatics: The study of how our minds affect our brains and bodies.
The understanding that if we try to not see, heal and integrate the old wound, we clench and tense to hide it. Both in our skeletal muscles and in more subtle tissues of the physical and energetic bodies.
Tension over time causes dis-ease. Whether that’s a muscle cramp or inflammation, if it’s near your heart or intestines, it’ll mess up the nervous system there. Same for the muscles near the nervous system of your brain. (Yes, we have 3 nervous systems – or at least large clusters of neurons. Google it if you aren’t familiar with the enteric nervous system. Prepare: mindblown).
So releasing this tension [caused by anything] can release the source of pain. It requires dealing with the original wound – WHATEVER it is (a moment in your past, etc) – and then your energy body, nervous system, tissues, muscles and skin can relax. (Hint: anti-wrinkle remedy).
SO.
Chronic Pain Healing Process
It’s not that more damage has been happening to my body.
Quite the opposite.
As I heal the damage (and don’t get me wrong, there has been a lot of it, majorly across muscles and organs that I’ve been fixing) – the damage on all levels, and release more, building my capacities in all ways that are worked on… I notice more.
This pattern has shifted from the wound of hypochondria (as a reaction to other wounds and sensations – now using the other meaning of wound other than what was mentioned before. Did I ever mention we need to abolish synonyms?) – hypochondria as a “Something may be wrong, look EVERYWHERE because something may ALWAYS be wrong” —— shifting that to a “Oh. My awareness has expanded. I notice certain things there. In category A, I’ve created the issue with my imagination and obsessions. Time to work on that.
“In category B, I actually do have a real physical/energetic/emotional wound. That’s causing the suffering – at least in this moment. Time to work on that.”
The wound of emotional trauma (Samskara) can be released. Most often, if that wound is deep, many other emotional and physical wounds – read SYMPTOMS – go away.
These symptoms can be muscle cramps. They can cause physical pain, but THEY ARE NOT THE SOURCE.
The samskara is.
Chew on that.
Breathe.
Eat something, if you need to.
This is heavy stuff.
Learning about samskaras can activate them.
If you get triggered, release it. Just look up.
“Tapping to release a trigger”.
On Youtube. Or look up.
“Wim Hoff breathing exercise”.
And do a short video.
Put some cold / ice on your forehead, or back of your neck, to pull blood away from your amygdala while your skeletal muscles revert some of that blood to the place of the cold.
The Options You Have
Now that the trigger has passed (if it hasn’t, repeat above. This stuff WORKS FAST.) – or perhaps one never arose – consider your options.
You can invest your time and your money working on the symptoms.
Or you can invest in the deeper wounds.
It may be that the symptoms of physical dysfunction are very real and need to be properly treated. I’m not saying to not do that. Definitely take care of yourself.
But what I’m saying is for any chronic physical or mental dysfunction, the samskara may be the root cause.
And dancing around it won’t resolve the situation.
Dancing WITH it will.
I don’t claim to be an authority on biopsychology, neuroplasticity, psychosomatics or any other category you can attribute this post to. Have I studied all those things extensively? Yes. Have
I worked on myself and dozens of others and had professional healer training? Yes.
But if this post inspired you want to do anything, please go do it.
Please, if you need it, get professional help.
Because as soon as you let pain become suffering, life sucks.
You can remove ALL the samskaras in your being and be fully and completely free.
But…
If your heart is open.
Your mind is open.
And your third eye is active (the organ in your brain which, through the pezeoelectric effect (Credit Dr. Joe Dispenza)), you are able to perceive the frequencies of light too subtle for most popular scientific instruments to read, and this light, often called chi, the energy of emotions sensed by empaths, visions of the future (or highest probable experiences, if you want to be super-logical about this and don’t have a quality Mystery school education) – a healthy pineal gland can sense these things.
And a healthy pineal gland, open heart, open mind, and expanded spirit can feel the pain of others.
Once we learn not to merge, this pain doesn’t become our pain.
We don’t take it on in our bodies and our minds.
But we can feel it.
Supporting Others
When I recently supported a dear friend with a situation that has been very intense for him, my heart ached.
He was speaking (what I perceived as) mostly from the head. But he was starting to go into his heart, for the topic at hand.
I didn’t become that pain, but I felt it.
This happens a lot with friends, clients, students, mentees and sometimes family. The more open I am to someone, the more I can feel their pain.
I noticed myself today ignoring a homeless person with a cardboard sign because I didn’t feel the capacity to hold is pain. And I was so open at the moment, I didn’t want to close so I could look at him and feel nothing.
So I prayed for him, did a few other esoteric things, but alas, didn’t have any spare cash or food or other useful items at hand to gift him. Additionally, giving material things wasn’t karmically appropriate when I asked, but that’s another deep topic…
So.
Back to you.
And back to me.
Merging
When we merge with another being – human, animal, plant or spirit – their pain becomes our pain. Their wounds become our wounds.
Merging is a deep and complex topic discussed in entire books. But hopefully, in this simplification, you get the gist.
I’m learning not to merge.
I’m learning not to feel other’s pain as my own.
I’m realizing, in the mystical sense, that “all are one” does mean that the suffering of all beings is my suffering. Philosophically, that’s all projection. Spirituality (read: reality in the higher planes of existence, where prana, souls, angels, divinities etc reside) – spiritually I know that at some deep level, the greater “I” [that is not ego-personality “I”] will never be fully healed until they are all fully healed.
Closer to a nondual perspective, all wounds exist, and no wounds exist. There is no meaning to this, and there are all meanings.
But shifting into a nondual state to avoid pain is, duh, avoidance!
So that “strategy” is not sustainable.
Especially if we want to impact the material world.
Clean the oceans.
Regrow the forests.
Transition into a globally sustainable way of life.
So if you want to make a difference in the world, you have to be in this body.
Fixing Yourself
You have to resolve your samskars, and not freak out when their symptoms cause you physical or emotional pain.
You have to decide – in lifestyle and in every moment of perception – how to respond to the samskaras of others. Whether you can feel their pain or not, you do NOT have to resolve it for them, support them in its resolution, or any other codependent patterns.
You absolutely can, of course. You can learn to be a healer and invest a lot of time in this area.
Or you can just heal friends, pets and plants. Or nothing or nobody at all. It’s your choice.
But the point of this entire post is: I am free from blaming my body and emotional wounds.
I am free from blaming them as “mistakes” I made in life.
I am free from blaming myself for their existence.
I am free from blaming others who act because of the presence of a samskara. Avoidance, angry outbursts, perceived immaturity, whatever – this is all fine. Everyone can be just who they are.
It’s not my job to fix or change anybody, but if someone would like my help, I’m here for them.
And I’m here for you.
This is not designed to be an advertisement or marketing material. While I do offer support in all of the above topics professionally, I am also happy to recommend other practitioners, books, videos, and exercises to you. Just contact me. I am here to be of service, and I will do what I can for you based on my (perceived) capacity.
I don’t want you to suffer.
I don’t need you to not be in pain.
And when you apply those same principles to yourself (hint: say them out loud, the first to yourself, the second to another person, even if just in your focused imagination) – when you apply these principles, you might notice something really amazingly astoundingly fabulously wonderfully joyfully good happen.
You will notice. You will learn how to heal chronic pain.
