Getting rid of that pain

This article highlights 3 ways in which we can help ourselves reduce or even remove small pain like backache, toothache, knee aches. I'm labelling them as Well Being 1, 2 and 3. It is to be used as a compliment to your lifestyle and any therapy or medication you may take. The cool thing is there are no side effects. You are using your own brain to remember and restore feelings of health.

Small, regular experiences of pain can be distracting at best and debilitating at worst. I'm assuming that you realise pain is an important sensation for you to notice. It is your body telling you that an area needs rest, recuperation, healing and maybe even rehabilitation. Listen to it and seek medical advice if necessary. Normally we only experience pain briefly before the body repairs itself and returns to a normal, pleasurable state of health. Of course some people do experience chronic pain or more dramatically debilitating pain as a result of injury.

People notice and respond to different sensations. People also explore themselves and their potential in different ways. I hope you can easily use these techniques to control sensations in your body. I recommend practising and playing. It's the best attitude for me when I'm curious about something new and untested. Please remember to adapt them to suit yourself. It's about self exploration, personal development and well being.

This article is concerned with small, brief pain as it is written from my experience of using the techniques to remove them. It may be useful for people experiencing chronic or severe pain too. Please let me know if this is the case. I always recall the 4 Rs with regard to my health and healing: Relaxation, Rest, Recuperation and Rehabilitation.

The feelings of pain may return for a variety of reasons. Use these techniques to reduce or remove them when they return. I hope they work very well for you too. Do these exercises if you feel happy and comfortable in doing them. Rarely, people may experience something less than comfort or curiosity and I always recommend they stop and do something else they prefer. Believing you can alter your bodies sensations to improve your feelings is a huge step in the direction of improved well being.


Well Being 1

• Remember what it feels like to have healthy normal sensations in the area of your body currently experiencing pain.

• Vividly recall what healthy sensations are like in every detail you can remember.
  

To help you, consider the following.

• Notice if there is any colour associated with the healthy feelings.

• When you make the healthy colour brighter does it increase good feelings?

• Notice if there is any movement associated with the healthy feelings.

• When you increase the healthy movement and spread it into the surrounding areas does it reduce the pain?

• Notice if there is any sound accompanying it also.

• When you increase the healthy sound does it increase good feelings in the area of your body where the pain was?

• There may be many more things you notice. Remember and record them in detail in your imagination because you will use them again soon.

• If you haven't already done so, infuse the area concerned with these good sensations of health.

• This may be enough to dramatically reduce or remove the pain.

• Remember what level of change you have made that is optimum for reducing or removing the pain and replacing it with normal healthy feelings.

I recommend you then settle into relaxation or use this technique to increase your well being.


If you still experience pain practice this next technique. It is presented in two different ways because either may be sufficient in reducing pain. Feel free to adapt all these techniques for your own benefit. The following tool is designed to reduce pain.
Use my suggestions as a guide only. If they are not reducing pain then use or explore something else that will.


Well Being 2

• Notice if the pain has an image with colour, size, feeling, sound, movement or any other attribute you think is appropriate.

• Take some time to notice what the attributes of pain are. Then begin changing them to reduce or remove pain.

• For example, reduce the colour to a thin, washed-out pastel like appearance.

• Reduce the feeling in the same way as a hand stroke across your arm gradually fades away.

• Slow any movement down so it stops.

• Lower the volume of any sound associated with this until it can no longer be heard.

• Reduce the image to the size of a pin head or so it disappears completely.

• Do this until the pain is gone or reduced.

• Then place the normal healthy sensations from the first exercise in the area of your body now free from pain.

A variation to the ending of this is:

• Take the changed feelings of pain and move them to the palm of your left hand and allow it to fall way like fine grains of sand in a strong breeze.

• Then place the healthy feelings you remembered into your right hand, sending them through your body gathering more healthy energy and revitalisation before they settle into the specific area of your body.

The third technique is similar to the last one but with an added feature. You will first rate the feeling of pain and do this again later to self assess the level of reduction of pain.


Well Being 3

• Rate the painful feeling on a scale of 1 to 5

• Make an image of the pain. Notice where the image is. Notice any colours, movements, sounds. Change them as you did in the previous exercise.

• After changing each attribute (and there may be as few or as many as you notice) rate the overall feeling on a scale of 1 to 5.

• If it has reduced but is not a 1 or 0 then continue to change the attributes further.

• If after the next scale it has not reduced further, send the changed painful feeling into your left hand and away from your body.

• Place the healthy normal sensations in it's place as in previous exercises. Again rate the level of change. Ideally it should be at 1 or 0.

I hope these suggestions for more healthy, healing sensations and the removal or reduction of pain are very useful for you. I hope you can integrate them into your lifestyle.


The suggestions I've made are based on the use of the imagination to create changes to well being using the brain and body's capacity to adapt and heal itself. They've worked well for me and I believed they would when I explored my way of using them. I'm fortunate in that I have never experienced serious illness or debilitating injury or pain.

I'm a big believer in using our own innate, imaginative skills for well being and health to compliment whatever assistance we need from our societies' medical and health authorities.
I think it's crucial to our well being that we take responsibility for our health and our actions. Sometimes we do not have a choice about what is put into our environments. We can have greater choice in how we use our minds and bodies to create the inner and outer environments we desire.

Thanks for reading
Jens