Who likes pain? As soon as it appears on the scene we go into overdrive searching for ways to get rid of it and this just adds to the stress and often makes it worse.

"Why is this happening to me? What did I do to deserve this sore knee, this headache, this back pain?"

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We tend to ask ourselves these questions when we are in physical pain. We usually think of pain as unrelated to us, as if there’s nothing we can do about it except learn to live with it, and perhaps alleviate it with pain-killers.

Physical pain creates lots of mental stress: when we hurt, the pain and the suffering is all we think about. Pain fills our mind, and we stress out. And since we don’t know what to do about the pain, more and more pain management clinics open.

I’m going to risk being regarded as a weirdo, and make the following suggestion:

Look at pain in a different way. Treat it as a messenger who is here to tell you something, to give you a message. See pain as a teacher, as your body’s way of giving you information.

Take pain as a signal to relax and reflect

"Are you crazy?!"

Before you commit me to a mental hospital, let me tell you why I believe the above is true:

The message of pain

Physical pain is the result of emotional pain, and emotional pain is the result of a certain view we have of the world around us. Let me give you an example:

Two years ago, my foot suddenly started hurting so bad I couldn’t put my weight on it. It was nighttime, and my kids had to help me get to bed. The following morning I woke up and wanted to go to the bathroom, but I still couldn’t walk.

Since I know from my work as a kinesiologist that pain is merely a messenger with a message for me, I sat myself down and checked with myself what could have caused the pain.

Breathe, relax, reflect …

I remembered that a few hours before my foot started hurting, I went to my Aikido lesson – a martial art I wrote about in my last article. During the lesson, the teacher worked with me, but I just couldn’t do the technique the way he thought I should.

So he stopped the lesson and started shouting in front of all the students that "some people just won’t understand what you show them and are incapable of doing even the simplest things". I didn’t say anything, but I was definitely HURT.

The emotional-physical pain connection

I was hurt emotionally, and several hours later, I also hurt physically. I was in so much pain I couldn’t put my weight on my foot.

When I sat down in the morning and put two and two together, the physical pain and the emotional pain, I realized that in order to rid myself of the physical pain, I must do something about the emotional pain. And in order to rid myself of the emotional pain, I needed to see why I was hurt emotionally.

Why was I hurt when the teacher told everyone I wasn’t good enough in Aikido? Admittedly, I’m nowhere near as good as he is. I’ve been practicing for two years, while he’s been in this business for twenty or thirty years. I was doing my best, and that’s what counts.

I realized that he was angry out of frustration, and he was frustrated because he couldn’t explain what he wanted me to do. This frustration was his own business, and so was the anger that resulted from it.

His frustration. Not mine.

True, he shouldn’t have yelled at me in front of everybody, but it was still because of his issues, not because I was at fault. In short, the whole event was about his issues, not mine.

Realization and transformation

What I had to do was realize this, and decide whether I wanted to keep taking his classes or not. Should I keep walking down this road, or look for another teacher?

So I realized that the anger and frustration were his, and decided to keep taking his classes. And you know what? A couple of hours later, I could walk.

I hadn’t taken any pain-killers. "All" I did was deal with why I was hurt emotionally, and I found a different perspective from which to look at the event, one that would allow me to feel all right about it.

The pain disappeared as soon as the cause for it disappeared.

It was there to tell me something, and when I had dealt with what it had come to tell me, it was no longer needed, so it simply went away.

When we regard pain not as an enemy, but as a friend or teacher who’s come to point our attention to some emotional issue, it stops being a cause for stress.

Pain is our friend

Instead, we can thank it, and sit down to figure out what it’s come to tell us. What should we pay attention to? What do we need to change in our life?

I do this all the time, and my body "speaks" to me all the time. When my body has something to tell me, it signals in the only way it can – through pain. When something hurts, I understand that I need to see what’s going on, and when I do it, the pain leaves. So I say "thank you" – I thank the pain for pointing my attention to where it is needed.

When we adapt such a view of our pain, we can remove another stress factor from our life. But not only that – we can also transform pain from a stressful, non-understandable enemy into a loving teacher.

Try it for yourself

The next time you are in pain, stop for a moment, take a few deep breaths in and instead of rushing to grab the nearest available painkillers, direct your attention inwards and ask yourself "What is this about?"

If you sit quietly, often an answer will come up that points the way to a release of some kind

It can take practice but learning to listen to the body is a very important step towards maintaining good health. You will be surprised at the amount of wisdom that is contained within the body

Tapping to release stress and pain

Another technique that is easy to learn and apply is the tapping technique called EFT, otherwise known as Emotional Freedom Technique.

EFT is based on the finding that all negative emotions, (e.g stress) come about as a result of a disruption in the energy system of the body. The energy system can be disrupted through all the traumas and mini traumas that happen in our lives and so tapping with eft works to unblock the disruption and rebalance the energy flow which often results in instant relaxation and pain relief at the same time

This technique is easy to learn and apply and if you go here >> Instant Natural Pain Relief you will be able to pick up a free video which shows you how to do the tapping in an easy follow along session

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