The Pain Companion Blog: insights and resources for moving beyond chronic pain

Giving Pain the Space it Needs to Heal

12/15/2021

What's our first response to pain? To pull away, to avoid it. What happens when pain is in our bodies and we don't want to feel it any more? We contract and tighten around the pain in an effort to pull away from it.

This is a natural response, but counter productive.

When we tighten our bodies and contract around the pain we are unwittingly inhibiting the flow of healing to the places that need it most.

In my latest video, I describe a meditative exercise to release contraction in the body and allow the pain the space that it needs to heal.

Watch "Giving Pain Space to Heal"

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Using Breath to Heal

11/25/2021

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When we're in pain we so often find ourselves breathing shallowly, even holding our breath, in an effort to not make the pain worse.

This is an almost unconscious response to pain, but it is not really helpful in the long run. We need our breath to move through our bodies with more freedom in order to relax more, sleep better, and, ultimately, to heal ourselves.

In my latest video, I introduce the idea of using the breath for healing in very easy, non-intrusive ways.

The first exercise, Releasing Breath, is geared to help us become more aware of how breath helps us heal, and gives a very simple method of using the breath to ease pain.

Watch on YouTube

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What Pain Requires to Heal

11/11/2021

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In order to finally heal my chronic pain, I learned I had to turn my ideas about healing pain on their head!

At first, I tried to push pain away - that's natural - but it wasn't leaving, it took up residence in my house like a wounded animal - hurt and growling in the corner.

A different approach was in order. Instead of trying to force pain to leave, I came to understand that it requires a different kind of attention - a kindness, an understanding, a patience - just as I would offer an animal or child in pain.

I finally understood that the way I treat my pain is, ultimately, reflective of the way I treat myself.

For more, watch, What Pain Requires to Heal on YouTube.

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Living Past the Sadness of Chronic Pain

10/16/2021

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The time I spent in chronic pain often felt like lost time, like I was losing my life to pain.

I felt like I had not only lost the present, but also feared I would be losing my future too.

Over time, I learned to see pain as a landscape I was passing through and not a forever thing.

I also had to learn to make new meaning from living through something that required me to go deep within myself to find the strength to carry on.

I talk about these things in my new video: Healing the Sadness of Chronic Pain

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Feeling the Fatigue of Living with Chronic Pain?

10/3/2021

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I found living with chronic pain hugely tiring. Everything took more energy, and BEING in pain was exhausting in itself. If you've been living with pain for awhile, I'm sure you've felt this way too.

There are several kinds of tired. We feel physically tired, of course, from sleep deprivation and the amount of energy it takes for our bodies just to deal with the pain and try to heal while we're also attempting to live our lives within all that.

We feel mentally tired because we're having to address our regular daily concerns of finances, family, work (or lack of it) and added to that are medical appointments, trying to plan for the future in a lot of unknowns, our worries about healing (or not healing), and the whole disability and/or workmen's comp and/or insurance system maze.

We feel emotionally tired because we're trying to keep as positive as we can and maintain hope in the face of things that may not look too bright right now.

All of these kinds of tired are a lot to carry all at once. In the next video, I read Chapter 12 of The Pain Companion: Physical and Emotional Exhaustion and give you simple, practical methods of chronic pain management that ease the physical and emotional exhaustion and fatiguing drain we feel when we're in chronic pain.

I hope you find these useful!. You can view the video here: https://youtu.be/4snDboN8xyY

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Welcome to The Pain Companion Blog! Reflections and sound advice on living with chronic pain - a peaceful way station on the path to greater well being.
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