Pain is the body's wake-up call. Although we often fail to notice minor stresses and strains, most people notice pain as the body calls out for attention. Our typical response to pain is to try and suppress it or get rid of it. However, there is another, more powerful way to work with pain: by feeling it instead of avoiding it. It may not seem like it at the time, but pain exists in our bodies as a way of getting our attention back to ourselves. Pain is one of the pathways our body uses to spontaneously and automatically remind us to notice a physical or emotional threat we may have been avoiding. This noticing and feeling directly into our bodies, even our pain, is what I call embodied self-awareness, or more simply, "body sense".
Body sense is the ability to feel sensations and emotions in the present moment without the mediation of judgement or thought. In fact, whenever thoughts of any kind come into our awareness, we immediately go offline from our body sense; we are not in the moment.
Present moment body sense is like a booster shot for the nervous system. When we become aware of feelings, including pain, it means that the self-regulatory network of the brain can be activated as a single unit of neural integration. This integrated network is exceptionally powerful because it can find the most optimal form of functioning across neuromuscular, digestive, hormonal, cardiovascular, and immune systems leading to a reduction of pain and ultimately a return to healthy functioning.
Body sense is one of the oldest, most powerful tools available for healing. It is as simple as noticing the aroma of good food, feeling your feet on the floor, or sensing the warmth and softness of touch. Body sense calls us to the present moment, brings us back to ourselves, and wakes us up to what our body really needs. Body sense is also elusive, mysterious, easy to forget and difficult to rediscover. It takes practice, discipline, and concentration.
Below is a quick and helpful body sense exercise you can do in your spare time:
Find a quiet place to sit or lie down, coming to rest inside of yourself. Let your body sink into gravity as much as you are able. Locate the painful area and feel the boundaries of the pain. Is it, for example, the whole leg, just in the thigh, or localized to just above the knee on the inside of your leg, etc? Your headache may be just behind your right eye, or just over your left ear. Shift your awareness between painful areas and adjacent non-painful areas. Notice the differences. Let the non-painful parts talk to the painful parts. This is often enough to start the pain to move or soften.
Now forget the pain and focus on your breathing, the sense of your body connecting with the surface on which you are sitting or lying, or on some other constant and reliable presence that feels safe, stable and supportive. These are your resources. Other resources could be the non-painful parts of your body, the trees over your head, a clock ticking, someone's hand that you are holding for support, a bodywork practitioner who is touching you, a stuffed animal, or a mental image of a person you love. Make sure you can locate these resources reliably, because you'll need to come back to them anytime the pain becomes too much.
Now, localize the pain again; then access your resources. Practice going back and forth between the pain and the resource. Finally, with you resource in mind, come back to the pain, and this time, go into it. Really try to feel it. You may not be able to do this at first. your pulse may quicken, you might cry or sweat, your breathing may become shallow, and you may gasp for air. This is your sympathetic (arousal) nervous system's response to feeling threatened. Come back to your resource. See if you can let your parasympathetic (relaxation) nervous system help you settle down. Try again. This is a process. It may take multiple tries and multiple sessions. If your resource stops working for you, try a different one. You can have a whole collection of resources - no limit - if that helps.
~Excerpt taken from an article written by Alan Fogel, PhD, LMT in Massage and Bodywork, March/April 2011
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