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A common traditional approach to dealing with pain is to provide a distraction. This seems to work better for short term pain than for long term (chronic) pain. People have long sought and found substances to dull pain. Again, the short term use of these substances is less dangerous that long term use. But even with short term pain, there are some draw backs to medicating or distracting. Pain is there for a reason. It is a signal that something is not working as intended. When we cover it up, we rob ourselves of the opportunity to learn from the pain what it is trying to share. A story from Steve can illustrate this:
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Steve took an course in Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) . One of the early exercises was a Body Scan. Every time the body scan reached the left calf, he noticed a mild pain there. This pain entered his consciousness when attending to that specific part of his body and left as soon as the scan led to the left knee. He was curious about this experience when it happened the second time, but became concerned after the same thing happened with each body scan.
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His wife, a physical therapist, did some tests on his leg and ruled out some frightful possibilities, and determined that he was not stretching out before his fast paced walking. About the time he started the MBSR course he had also begun to drastically increase the pace and distance of his walking. This was apparently causing a regular strain on that particular set of muscles. He began stretching before walking, something she had been encouraging for decades and he ignored, thinking he didn't need that. He was just walking.
Some stretching helped to make this pain go away. It is likely without the early intervention enabled by the early noticing, through the body scan, this problem could have grown to become more serious, and more painful. |
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Steve had long experienced leg cramps and when he did, others would know. He recognized a long time earlier that the often prescribed pushing sharply into the cramping muscle tended to leave the calf sore and sometimes bruised after the cramp dissipated. He began to gently massage the cramp instead and discovered that the cramp dissipated about as quickly and without the aftereffects. People still knew he was cramping.
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In the MBSR course, he was introduced to the idea of paying close attention to your pain, accepting it, with less passion, with more curiosity. Experiencing a leg cramp he began to apply this approach. It was a totally different experience. The pain was not nearly as disturbing to him and not nearly as noticeable to others. He also began to notice more clearly the things that correlated with cramps: the shoes he wore for different tasks, standing on concrete for a period of time (especially with the wrong shoes), standing on toes to load or unload the roof rack or paint or work on something just out or reach, not stretching before doing some of these things that didn't seem to call for it. With a more stable exercise routine, better diet, some weight loss, a regular practice of yoga, and more keen awareness of when to shift positions when stressed, the cramps are rare now. But the lessons about paying attention to his own body, including the pains, have remained. |
Mindful awareness of physical pain is not a beginning point. A regular practice of meditation and other mindfulness practices is an important foundation to lay first. Among many other things, our members are guided into a greater readiness to develop a different attitude and approach to their pain.
