The Benefit Of Pain
Yes, Virginia, there is a benefit to pain...and there is no reason to continue to have pain! If you are waking up in the morning with pain, there is something wrong! iw want to help you get to the bottom of it! Amazing to think of pain as a teacher, but that is what I do. Even suffering, if done with the intention to benefit all sentient beings, can reduce the length and intensity. When I know the moment of pain or discomfort is information and will pass, I listen, modify my position, my thoughts, my feelings. Pain decreases. I have that ability. So do you.
What exactly is pain? Physical sensations we call pain is actually a lack of oxygen (O2) to the tissue. Oxygen deprivation at the cellular level causes ischemia or death of that cell. Without an oxygen exchange, carbon dioxide (CO2), builds up as a toxic gas and is stored in the larger spaces of our bodies, generally the joints. (Do your joints pop and crack? This can be caused by CO2 release.) In order to keep oxygen moving to the tissue, we must keep the larger body moving! This is one of the many reasons the Trager (tm) approach is so valuable as a healing modality.
Trager gets you moving, physically and literally! Since there is no separation between the physical and the emotional body, I find old patterns of thought and emotions are also released during a session. This happens because some of the emotional pain you feel could be old memories stuck in the celluar or physical body. The physical body has healed, but the memory has become stuck in the tissue. When clients have an old memory resurface, they may actually have to get angy, cry or just feel sad when this happens. Some want to talk about it, some don't.
When this occurs, I just take a pause, and encourage them to be comfortable and do whatever it takes to support them.
What about chronic pain? Pain that is chronic in nature can move out just as swiftly as occassional pain, but often takes longer. The problem with chronic pain, is that a sort of unravelling has to occur to get to the original cause. For instance, if an injury that created knee problems 20 years ago is still bothering you, your body has successfully found ways to take the weight your knee usually holds and re-distribute it to other area, hip, low back, up to the neck etc. We are grateful for this, as it allows us to go about our busy lives. As we get older, however, the compression of time and gravity, create structural problems. We need more time to regenerate cellular tissue so we begin to feel the effects of this patterning.
At this point, I work gently with the whole body to lengthen muscles that may have become shortened, and find a more balanced re-distribution of weight. Eventually, no matter what the age, your body can adapt again, this time in a more balanced and free-flowing way. Why not try a session and see if your body responds as well as I think it will!
NO MORE PAIN! Make this your mantra. Please feel free to send me your thoughts on the subject!
