Hello again and it's Estelle here
with Module Two of Meditation
for Pain Relief.
Now if you remember what we spoke
about in the last module
we did go into quite a bit about
stress and the effect of stress on
pain and what I wanted to talk
to you about today is
the relationship between the
mind and pain and specifically
our focus.
So what we focus on we tend to
amplify in our life.
The more we focus on something
positive the more positive things we
experience, the more we focus
on negative things the
more negative things we experience
and pain is one of those examples.
So basically
if we look at two different examples
of focus
and pain response.
So take myself for example,
when I tend to be under the
pump in terms of a deadline
that I have usually the ones that
I set for myself
then I'm often more likely
to experience pain symptoms
and an example of that is
when I am stressing out because
as I said, I've got this deadline
that I've imposed on myself and
because I'm stressing out and trying
to get through too many things
and probably getting interrupted
as well which causes more stress
when you are trying to focus on
one thing, then you
know for example I might reach
for something that's just out of my
reach and strain myself
to go towards that.
Because I'm in a negative mind frame
I'm likely to pull a muscle to or
experience some sort of pain or
maybe drop something on my foot
because I'm in a rush, under stress
and I'm actually not focusing on the
task at hand because I've got so
many things going on in the back of
my mind.
Now you know that's one experience
of pain.
Another experience or an example
of something that is
positive in terms of someone
who's experiencing pain.
So if you go to a nursing home for
example I don't know if any of you
have elderly folks in your family
that may be in a nursing home and
they you know they love to have a
visit from you and you know
your kids or their grandkids
and if you go to a nursing home any
any time of day, any day of
the week you'll probably see a lot
of the old people there
who are actually in a lot
of pain, experiencing a lot of pain
and it is a terrible thing, but
what they tend to do is they tend to
focus on their pain a lot.
If you've ever sat in a waiting room
at the doctors or visited
a nursing home you'll see that
elderly people do have a lot
of issues to deal with
in terms of their physicality,
physical symptoms but they also
do tend to talk about them a lot.
Now I don't know why that is but
it tends to be a thing, okay.
What if the grandchild comes to
visit the residents on any given
day and you can
see the change in the physiology
of the elderly people
and you know the pain that they were
suffering a moment ago suddenly
disappears as they scoop the child
up and pick it up and you know
give it a hug and give the child
a cuddle and and they're just so
happy to see them.
The whole physiology change.
The pain symptoms that they are
experiencing and talking about
just five minutes before no
longer in evidence.
So that's just an example of
the way that our focus really
does have an effect on the pain that
we experience.
And you'll notice yourself that when
you're in pleasurable emotions
you tend to experience pain less
and you could say that's the chicken
or the egg thing but I
would contend that the more positive
emotions that you can experience
during the day has a lot
more of a beneficial effect
on your pain symptoms.
Now another example is a child.
So you know if you've ever observed
a child that's fallen over like a
toddler for example and one of
the first things they do is they're
in a bit of a shock you know that it
happened but both the parents
rush over and make a fuss
about the child, you know there's
that moment where the child just is
in shock and then
notices the parents are coming over
and making a big fuss and the next
thing you know the child starts
crying because
I think he feels that he's supposed
to. He may have hurt himself a
little bit, but you know I think
children look to the adults
around them for cues on
how to behave.
I'm not going to say that's all the
time. It's just to you know it's
just an example that I'm sure a lot
of people can relate to.
So what I want you to do out of this
exercise is to
notice when
your pain symptoms are worse.
What you thought patterns before
then? What were you thinking of?
What we should focus?
Now. When we talk about stress
there are actually two types of
stress. The first type of stress is
a good stress.
And I hear you say I thought you
said stress was bad for your pain
symptoms but let's differentiate
the two types of stress because some
stress is actually good.
Good stress is called eustress which
is E U S T R E S S.
And the EU comes from the Greek
and that means good.
So good stress is what we'll
talk about first.
That's responsible for motivating us
to do the things that we tell
ourselves we want to do.
So it results in
excitement and it results
in us motivating
ourselves to to do things like
go for a job interview, climb a
mountain you know go bungee
jumping even.
You know I'm not one of those people
that do that bungee jumping stuff.
I've got a fear of
heights so it's not going to be me,
but you know if there's something
that you're excited about and you
need to be motivated through, that
stress that you feel or that
excitement that you feel is actually
eustress.
So when we experience eustress
it's generally a good thing.
On the other side of the coin we've
got distress and distress
is the one that we're talking about
in terms of exacerbating
our pain symptoms or making our pain
symptoms worse.
Now when we talk about distress,
distress is not eliminated
through coping or adaptation.
And what that means is that you know
it tends to build up in our body.
And when we experience distress
it can be internal distress or
it can be external distress which
means we can be doing it to
ourselves or we can be doing
it through, you know we can be
experiencing it through
circumstances around us
that are internal.
And the stresses that we feel can
also be real as in external
stressors or they can be imagined.
So you know we make things up in our
head about situations
and it can even be when we observe
things in the external world
we make up a story about them and
that can cause us a lot of stress.
So while something isn't physically
harming us the story that we've made
up about it causes us
to have this stress response.
And that causes the release of
chemicals in the brain, such
as cortisol and adrenaline and
other chemicals.
The release of these chemicals in
the brain can lead to an increase
in pain symptoms.
Now did you know that 75 percent
of the population experiences
some sort of stress, and
by stress I mean distress,
every two weeks.
And out of those 75 percent of
people 50 percent of those
will experience moderate to high
levels of stress.
So you can imagine what that's doing
in terms of pain symptoms
but it could also lead to increased
risk of heart disease, stroke,
high blood pressure and other
symptoms such as increased
incidence of back pain, headaches
and migraines.
And so it's super important that we
start to find ways to destress
the distress.
And when we destress
or we find ways to
alleviate stress in our lives
then that's only going to help our
pain symptoms.
And also just ouur general health.
And one of the most proven ways
to release stress in the body is
through meditation.
And meditation has the
happy benefit of actually
having no side effects.
Now if you sit still while you do
your meditation you might get pins
and needles in your foot.
But that's probably about it!
In terms of the benefits to our
health, science has been studying
this for some time.
I'm going to put some studies in
links to studies with meditation
and its actual effect
on pain management below in
the notes below this video.
So this idea of using meditation for
pain management does have solid
science behind it.
Make sure you come along to the
Facebook group and share what
your what your focus and
what your experience of pain is.
Okay.