Use Intuition to Help Relive Pain

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I think alternative medicine can do much more than she realizes...

but I think this is still a good concept to explore...

Other comments?

Be Well,

Misty L. Trepke

http://www..com

 

How to use intuition to help relieve pain

 

The Language of Healing

How to use intuition to help relieve pain.

http://www.beliefnet.org/story/130/story_13034.html

 

By Dr. Judith Orloff

In our society we're too often separated from harmony with the

natural world and ourselves. Healing is something we do when we get

sick, not a way of life. Determining your stance on how you handle

illness is pivotal, whether you get sick or not. Why? Because it

crystallizes your priorities—not just about health issues but about

how you face everything. How you cope with getting ill is how you

cope with any stress. The difference may be that when your health is

poor, the volume is turned up and your limits are stretched.

As a physician who specializes in teaching patients to listen to

intuition—the body's own voice—I know how this can help you act on

pain faster, and heal it. Intuition is a potent form of inner wisdom

not mediated by the analytic mind. It's a still, small voice inside

that we all have, though many of us haven't been taught to recognize

it. You may experience intuition as gut feeling, a hunch, a knowing,

or a snap-shot-like-flash. Pain is a type of intuition, a way of

relocating you in your body so you know something is out of balance.

 

You can't heal your body unless you're in it. Most of us check out

of our bodies from the moment we get sick. We feel pain and

discomfort, we get scared, and we withdraw. We're out of our bodies

so fast the last thing on our minds is to rally every ounce of

awareness and energy to the part of us that most needs attention.

Let me explain why this helps.

 

First, the more love and consciousness you bring to your body when

it is ill, the better chance you have of mending it. Second, if you

resist discomfort, it will persist. If you soften around it, it will

lessen. In the Journal of Perinatal Education, Lamaze, a breath

technique for softening pain during natural childbirth, has been

documented to ease many mothers through labor. Success comes when

the mothers relax with the pain instead of clenching around it.

 

Intuition can help you act quickly on acute pain. Perhaps you're

going to discover you have appendicitis. The first signs are agony,

curled in a fetal position on your bed. Your body is sending out a

frantic intuitive SOS. Something's really wrong. The quicker you

listen and head for the emergency room, the quicker the problem will

be diagnosed and solved. You find you need surgery and there's no

way out. Next thing you know, you wake up in recovery, sans

appendix. You made it. Your acute pain obviously had a purpose. It

got you to the hospital, fast. Acting on your body's intuition can

prevent the excruciating pain and potentially fatal complications of

a ruptured appendix. I've worked with stoic or macho patients who've

needlessly endured severe pain and suffered dangerous consequences.

Part of loving ourselves and honoring intuition is to heed

the " danger " messages we receive. Sometimes, in cases like

appendicitis, when you yourself can't improve or repair the pain,

intuition gives you the message to get help.

 

Some pain is short lived. You have it. It is treated and then gone.

Even with this kind of pain, however, there's no question that

informed attention is an asset. From the onset of a health crisis,

focus your intuition. Pay attention to what your gut says and listen

to your inner voice. This can get you past all-too-human

resistances. For instance, people frequently die of heart attacks,

failing to heed the warning of their angina. Intuition combats

denial. By turning into pain, you'll get a more incisive take on how

to deal with it.

 

Along with listening to intuition, there is a different strategy and

that's lovingkindness. It's especially helpful with chronic pain,

but is important in acute situations, too. Whatever your situation,

the lovingkindness approach never fails. It involves conscious

softening. Releasing resistance and fear. Not forsaking the body.

This is where you begin.

 

So often in medicine we have it backwards. We attempt to repair the

body without consulting it. Pain has its own language, intelligence,

and rhythm. Pain is absolutely alive. It will speak to you, not in

the usual sense but on an intuitive level. My patient Meg is using

this technique for chronic, inoperable back pain. She told

me, " Whenever a dull ache begins to feel sharp, that's my body's way

of telling me to slow down and also do yoga. If I listen, I can

prevent the pain cycle from worsening. "

 

To deal with your pain, first, open up communication. Odd as it may

seem, use meditation to ask your pain for help. Healing is

collaboration, an opportunity to learn from a sometimes demanding

but most enlightened master. Approach your pain with deep respect—

without hatred or blame or remorse. Pain can literally sound like a

person living inside of you and using its own unique voice.

 

We each deal with pain differently. As a physician, there are some

classic types of coping mechanisms I've seen that can work against

the healing of pain. Pain can often become a metaphor for your life

and beliefs. Type 1 is The Blamer, the person who blames herself for

bringing on the pain, or blames someone else for causing it. Type 2

is the Victim, the person who says, " Why has God done this to me?

This pain is tormenting me. I'm being punished for no reason. " Type

3 is the Complainer. This person may be suffering terribly and seeks

experts for help, but doesn't accept the pain as a messenger or a

helper in some way. She lets everyone know her misery, a difficult

dynamic for family and friends. Type 4 is The Stoic, the person who

silently suffers, and doesn't reach out for help. Stoics often were

never given permission in their families to express their feelings;

they may feel " weak " or ashamed for showing vulnerability, so they

try to push though pain.

 

In contrast to these types, what I'm suggesting is a new model for

dealing with pain that can point the way toward wellness. In my

model, harmonizing with pain and illness will relieve them, not make

them worse. Also, see pain as a teacher with a message you can learn

from. I know this goes against much of what we've been taught.

Still, the fact remains that each of my patients who've trusted

enough to explore this in therapy have experienced significant

reduction in pain or improvement in an illness, even when all else

has failed.

 

I never lose sight of how relentless chronic discomfort can be. I

know personally the nagging pain and ongoing fatigue that can come

from irritable bowel syndrome. If I don't eat well and get plenty of

rest, a cycle of irritable bowel can be set off which can be

debilitating. When the pain comes, I tune in, try to consider it a

spiritual riddle containing layers of meaning. Sometimes the pain is

saying, " This person is bad news. Get out of the situation, " or

sometimes it says, " Cancel all social engagements and rest. " In the

same way, I suggest you look to your body for answers.

 

This is a very different philosophy from just swallowing a pill,

sitting back, and waiting for the pain to leave. If this is new for

you, try it once, and see the results. No one wants to have pain,

but sometimes we may be timid about trying something different. The

beauty of listening to the intuitive language of pain and showering

yourself with lovingkindness is that you will get results. Feel into

the pain or illness. Listen to it. Learn from it. There's no

guarantee your distress will miraculously lift, though it might.

What will happen is that you will enter into a relationship with a

force that will provide clues on how to heal.

 

Breathing Exercise

The use of breath for pain relief is hardly alien to Western

culture. Based on the principles of Lamaze—which helps laboring

mothers breathe through childbirth—we stop resisting pain and

develop compassion for our bodies.

 

Here is a meditation I suggest based on a Buddhist exercise called

Tonglen.

 

Relax into the discomfort. Don't try to rid yourself of it. Just let

the pain be.

 

Visualize your discomfort. Does it have color? Texture? Emotion? Ask

the discomfort, " How can I ease my pain? "

 

Focus lightly on the pain. Feel it completely. As you inhale, breath

all your pain in. Visualize it as a cloud of dark smoke. Let it flow

through your body. Now picture every last bit of your pain purified

by love. As you exhale imagine love as a clear white light. Send it

back to the area of pain. Breathe in pain. Breathe out compassion.

Breathe in pain. Fill the pain with the healing breath of

compassion.

 

For most of us the premise of this meditation is radical. It says

that by actively engaging pain, we can transmute it, a form of

mystical alchemy never to be misconstrued as succumbing to weakness

or admitting defeat. Harmonizing with pain will relieve it, not make

it worse.

 

Judith Orloff, M.D. is the author of the bestseller 'Dr. Judith

Orloff's Guide to Intuitive Healing: Five Steps to Physical,

Emotional, and Sexual Wellness' (Three Rivers Press) and 'Second

Sight' (Warner Books). She is a psychiatrist and practicing

intuitive in Los Angeles. To learn about Judith's books and

workshops visit www.drjudithorloff.com.