Eliminating Pain

I readily see things posted on the internet from well intentioned people and places.  New age practices and even modern medical interventions tend to only focus on eliminating pain.  Yes, I understand if you are experiencing pain or chronic pain, you are probably so tired of dealing with it that you want to do anything just for relief.  While this may be a necessary step for you, it is short sighted.

If your goal is to only "eliminate pain", you are missing the bigger picture. While none of us like pain, it is there for a reason and learning to connect the emotional with the mind is far more important than focusing on eliminating pain.  When you go in and connect the pain with the emotion and the message the mind body interface is trying to share with you, you will do far more than eliminate pain.

We can interact with our biology and our physical body in ways that we generally dismiss or ignore.  Our culture teaches us that we have to go to someone to rid us of pain and physical problems in our life.  Unfortunately what our culture does not teach us is that we can do so much more with our physical body than we ever thought was possible.


As a human population, we generally ignore our body and we ignore the mind body interface.  Yes, some people may meditate and do various spiritual based practices that help, but often they are missing the big picture as well.  When we ignore the body, our body amps up the messages that it is sending.  It is trying to get our attention, but we keep walking through our life in an unconscious way.

As we stay unconscious to the pain, which many people do in our culture, we stay oblivious to what is really going on in our body.  We miss the subtle clues and connections.  We miss the larger moments of truth in our life.  We generally become someone walking around with their head in the clouds.

Eliminating pain should not be the goal.  The goal should be asking, why is this pain here?  What is going on in my life that is bringing this about.  Often times emotional experiences or stress bring out these moments of pain. Many times they are connections to traumatic experiences or repetitive stress in our life.  They can even be a reaction to some experience that we never deemed to be significant.  It isn't the experience that is so important in this process, but the emotions and connections that arise when the pain is felt.

When we begin to connect what is going on in our life and the experiences we have been through with what we are physically experiencing now, we will begin to change our life in ways we never thought possible.  I'm not speaking from a hypothetical viewpoint.  This is my own experience that I have gone through and I know there are many others out there that have done this as well.

Eliminating pain only puts a band-aid on the real problem lying below the surface.  Yes, you might get relief from the pain and think that it is all gone, but in many ways you are only fooling yourself.  If you shut off the message of the mind body interface, then at some point the body will get your attention again.  The more we ignore it, the more it has to work harder to get our attention, thereby consuming more of our energy.

While you may not agree with me, much has been written on this subject.  Peter Levine talks about this in his book, Freedom From Pain and so does Dr. John Sarno in his book, The Mind Body Prescription.   Both share with you that when you interact with your own biology, you will find a more comprehensive way to not only eliminate pain but enhance your life through the mind body interface.

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Blog Post And Images (c) 3/6/13 by Don Shetterly

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