Weekly Letter: A Pain Series (Part 5)

  *Weekly Letter is the letter I include in my weekly yoga studio newsletter.*

Part 5: Applying it to practice

The practice asks you to monitor pain on different levels: mental and physical. And sometimes they blur or get confused.

I once had a student who would say ‘ow’ every time they felt sensation. We would be doing postures and they would say ‘ow’ all the time. The smallest movements would facilitate a response. It was making practice difficult and so I had to change my approach to figure out what was going on. So I asked, “are you feeling pain or are you feeling sensation?”

They thought for a moment, ‘I’m feeling sensation.’

“Is the sensation warning you of pain, or are you feeling the work of the body?”

As soon as we created more categories for their experience, we were able to have a more productive practice. They would feel something and instead of backing out of the posture, they would think about what they were experiencing and qualify it.

The yoga concept of tapas discusses the transformative process and how the process often has an element of intense friction to it. But it’s the friction people don’t want to stay for. They feel the challenge and shy away or come out of a pose early thinking something is wrong, but they actually were just feeling the work.

How far down the path of exploring your discomfort would you go in order to emerge on the other side?

Charles Duhrig writes about the addictive process in The Power of Habit as a cycle of a habit is the Cue>the response>the reward. At some point, the sensation of work became the cue, the response was to stop and the reward was to no longer feel that anymore. But what if the effort IS the reward? Or maybe, the effort is the cue that you’re on the right path to the reward?

But what is the reward of yoga? As students, we know the reward concept of Samadhi (bliss state), but few are working toward this definition. Maybe as we close out the year, its time to redefine what your reward of the practice is.

Your friend in exploration,

~Carmen

Weekly Letter: A Pain Series (Part 4)

 *Weekly Letter is the letter I include in my weekly yoga studio newsletter.*

Part 4: Pain Messaging

Somewhere, during our cycle of life, early on and now, we are given strong messaging to stuff our pain down. To mute it. Some people stuff it so completely they create an entirely new sensitivity to what it all means. They can change the shape and definition.

Some people turn their pain into anger.

Some people show their pain by inflicting it on others.

Some people hold their pain so deeply within, when it begins to bubble they are surprised.

All the these instances are people being given the message that pain is bad. The other implied messaging is: “You should be happy.” Pain is bad and happiness is the goal.

If a person is in pain, to be happy is a far reach. And you can even argue, that pain and happiness are not on the opposite side of the same scale.

The opposite of pain, is likely, no pain.

The opposite of happiness, may be no happiness. Lack of happiness doesn’t mean despair, it could be contentment. Also, happiness can turn into pain.

Renunciant practioners would pray and meditate to merge back with Brahman and get off the cycle of reincarnation. The practice was an attempt to shed all the labels and burdens of society. They didn’t acquire things to leave a mark on the world, they ate a healthy diet to keep their systems clean more connected to the earth. Everything they did was an attempt to not leave a residue.

Their merging back with Brahman was to merge back into everything. Think of it in a similar way as, ‘ashes to ashes, dust to dust.’ In the practice of yoga, peace isn’t actually the goal, nor is happiness, it’s the unburdening of story, the ego mind. A process of removing labels, identity, and to see the difference between them and the essence of you, the soul.

Be well,

~Carmen

Weekly Letter: A Pain Series (Part 3)

*Weekly Letter is the letter I include in my weekly yoga studio newsletter.*

Pain Origins -Part 3: Mental/Emotional

If only small children had the language to express the nuance of mental and emotional pain. We may have had the word ‘gaslighting’ far earlier.

Unfortunately, the child experience of mental or emotional pain is a quiet one. This population, depending on the age do not have the language or the experience to explain themselves (nor the confidence). Thus quieted by their lack of words, the child learns to silence their pain. Maybe they lose themselves within their own fantasies or disassociations to best handle the experience, but they quietly learn to stuff it-no matter the size and possibly creating their own coping mechanisms.

For how can it be pain if they can’t see it? What little Golden Book talked about the confusing world inside?

In today’s world, there are many children’s books that talk about feelings, not long ago, there were few if any. The adults of today (you dear reader) have been given only a few choices on a vast spectrum of emotions. And I presume, if you’re reading this, you’ve left yourself open to the possibility there may be more to yourself than you realize.

Thank you in advance for considering these ideas,

~Carmen

Weekly Letter: A Pain Series (Part 2)

 *Weekly Letter is the letter I include in my weekly yoga studio newsletter.*

Pain Origins: Physical Pain

I grew up in the 80s-90s when ‘stranger danger’ was strong. I used to think the phrase came from The Cure’s Just Like Heaven, but later realized the phrase was ‘strange as angels,’ and not Robert Smith’s wonderful voice saying ‘stranger danger.’ Listen to it, it’s close.

I doubt many children were using Smith as a measure of warning, but instead were having their hands pulled from hot stoves and curious fingers away from outlets (I never stuck my finger in an outlet, but opted to put my Cabbage Patch Doll’s fingers there as a proxy…that backfired, literally) or being warned about paneled vans and candy. I was too, I suppose. But also, pain wasn’t something we were taught to be afraid of. You scrape your knee or fall off the bike, I was more afraid mom was going to grab the red spray from hell (Mercurochrome) than anything I inflicted on myself. It’s amazing how many times the presence of the bottle dried my tears! [Nevermind, Mom, I’m ok!]

It might have been the Mercurochome that gave pain a scale on what I would admit to or not. Only recently at Prompt Care when they asked me to scale my pain, did I notice the chart on the wall. I sat there staring at it curiously wondering if the nurse would think it weird if I snapped a photo with my phone.

This country kid is tempted to rewrite the pain chart to include things like: tangled in rusty barbed wire, grazed the electric fence, fell out of a tree (again), went into the blackberries without my bibs on. All sensations I can still remember quite well.

Even now as I type this, my middle finger glistens with liquid bandage from Sunday’s home maintenance tasks and tribulations. My future as a hand model long gone with all the scars and home-healed bones.  

What’s more, I can only describe pain from my own perspective. There is no way for me to understand someone else’s pain-to know what another’s experience has been. Like you, I can relate, but only so much. So if you feel this is written within a narrow frame, I agree. I would invite you to write or explore your own path.

The overall intent of this exploration, is to ask us all to think a little deeper about our pain experiences.

Thank you in advance for considering these ideas,

~Carmen