PAIN IS A FEELING TOO

PAIN IS SUFFERING

PAIN IS LIFE'S ARBITER

PAIN IS INEVITABLE

 

SOME HARD RULES TO DEAL

WITH ACHES AND PAINS

 

1     The body has its own pharmacy - let it do its work first.

2    Sit down upright and breathe slowly through the nose.

3    For 5 minutes.

4    Up goes levels of oxygen and serotonin calms you.

5   Slowly massage the back of your neck if you have a      headache with more slow breathing

6  If you have a backache lie down on your back with knees bent and breathe for 10 minutes - let the body do its work.

Remember most people who go to bed with backache wake up without it.

7  Learn to enter the pain zone by paying attention to it with slow breathing.

8   Let the body do its work first which takes a little longer because you need to be more relaxed and not tense.

9  Learn to do meditation - go to just sitting - it really helps.

 

Whatever you think about pain - your pain particularly - it can be a pretty tricky area for diagnosis.

 

For me - the general and specific aches and pains that people regularly experience in their joints and articulations are actually to be found in their connective tissue in the muscles.

It is mostly the result of chronic tension and stress leading to poor posture and maladjusted alignment combined with  normally bad habits that result in a negative relationship with and response to pain.

This often leads to a low pain threshold - one in which a person responds to pain more quickly than normal people do and reaches for the pain killers.

 

Unexplained pain is just so common and often just comes and goes.

 

In our mega medialised society we have lost the art of dealing with pain by giving the body and brain a chance a relieve it first or at least make it more manageable.

 

It is a well known fact that prescription drugs are the cause of rising numbers of deaths in our societies and it is caused by patients demanding that their doctors give them something - mostly to take the pain away.

 

60 years of training and teaching martial arts have had their wear and tear effect on my knees - especially the right one.

10 years ago I was offered a partial knee replacement and I just felt I should be able to work on them and reduce the pain.

My high Vitamin C protocol helps with a rise in collagen in my blood.

I use a transdermal Magnesium spray or gel on my knees each morning and I massage them in a variety of different ways to keep the patella moving.

My knee flexion is better today than it was 10 years ago.

Massage increases blood flow which raises the levels of oxygen to the area, so I do the same with my hands.

The ligaments in both the middle fingers of both hands have been injured and they all began to shorten causing the fingers to curl inwards.

I knew there was a surgical procedure to cut them and stop them curling in but that would reduce the strength of my grip and I didn't want that.

So I began to put the tips of my thumb and fingers together in a pyramid shape every day which was partially successful.

Then one morning during my meditation my shoulders felt they needed to be back a bit further to maintain my upright posture essential for long sitting, so I sat on both my hands for about 20 minutes.

Apart from the stiffness in my fingers as I slowly closed them into a fist gently afterwards - I was amazed by the result as I opened them up again.

Not quite straight - but they didn't look as if I was about to give someone a back scratch.

So, on the right track. 

I sit on them most days now for a few minutes at a time and all my fingers are now straight.

 

And then I came across Mitchell Yass - a physical therapist from Miami.

He was saying and writing that all general aches and pains came from the connective tissue in the muscle and were all caused by an imbalance or misalignment in joints, ligaments and the muscles themselves.

Get this alignment right and the pain would go away.

His book arrived a few days later and I began to understand what he was talking about and applied his suggestions to my knees.

I have adapted them slightly over the years but my knees are much stronger and less painful now as I exercise my quads every day and cycle for about 45 minutes every other day.

 

There are limits to medicine as I have said elsewhere on this site.

 

So we need to find another way to accept the various levels of pain that we feel much of the time as we age.

 

During the practice of Aikido there are many techniques of immobilisation that at first are extremely painful. Over time they became less so as I got used to the movements involved and I blended in with them more easily.

The odd thing is I became resistant to the pain and each technique applied on me had to be pretty precise to work.

I just got used to the pain and was prepared for it and blended into the pain zone.

 

In the 80's I used to get horrendous migraines.

I was told that I ate too many bananas - which I did at the time - so I cut down.

In one of my meditation sessions I asked myself the question - "Why was I getting these amazingly painful headaches I had never had before?"

Two days later I was driving out of London over Blackheath Common - the pain was acute, causing me to feel sick.

Blackheath is a big Common so I pulled over and found a quiet place to sit it out.

It was a pretty balmy evening with the sun setting behind me in the West wnd a cool breeze flowing through the open windows and cooling me.

I slowed my breathing right down. 

A few minutes passed.

And then for no particular reason (I thought) I felt I had to enter the pain zone.

So I began to search for it....

 

And it took me to the reason why I was getting them.

I had taken on too much and I was failing.

The resultant stress was causing them.

I removed the stress and have never had them since.

 

 

#letgoofthefear is a campaign I began on Twitter in April 2020 promoting high levels of immunity to counteract infection from any virus.

 

We should now get a campaign going that says #achesandpainsarenormal.

 

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