Have you ever tried meditation? I don’t mean going to a monastery and sitting with your eyes closed for 5 hours a day. I mean simple meditation, just sitting in your home? Im sure if you are reading this article you are suffering from some form of physical pain and you are in need of relief. It could be chronic or acute but it is bothering in some way or another. Meditation can certainly help you! Using meditation for physical pain is not really a common practice. Its not often spoken about at all and connecting the two might seem a bit different but hear me out, you might just help yourself.
First off what exactly is meditation? Meditation has many different definitions but they all point towards the same thing, going inwards and completely accepting each moment as it is. Meditation is not controlling, its flowing. Its not swimming against the river, it is swimming with the river. Its being aware of our reactions to ourselves and allowing it to be there as it is. Its dropping control and allowing the life force to flow within you uninterrupted. This can give us a deep rest beyond what you have experienced before. No responsibilities, just to flow with the river of life which is your whole system.
Now you may ask ‘why would meditation be related to my physical pain?’ ‘How can it help me?’. Great questions! This is precisely what this article is about. I am going to explain to you 5 different ways meditation can help you with your physical pain. So get excited and get ready to expand your horizons beyond.
So how does meditation help you?
MEDITATION RELAXES YOUR MIND
This is one of the most common things known about meditation, it relaxes your mind. Meditation can bring you into a state of flow which is very relaxing. It goes beyond the minds daily thinking and focuses you right into the present moment. You are not worrying about the future or the past while in that flow. Im sure you are worried about your pain and you have fear surrounding it. Maybe you feel like ‘how am I going to get back to my sport’, ‘I can’t move my body the way I used to be able to’, ‘Im never going to be able to move again without discomfort’. All of these fears are related to the past or the future. As meditation brings you into present moment awareness these fears can be helped indirectly by not being in the past or future as much.
Furthermore, fears such as these can also be helped by facing them directly inside your mind, as well as the sensations and responses that is coming up inside your body. This can allow you to overcome them by facing them directly. Meditation allows the space for us to do this which builds your strength, courage and character. Once you face these fears and ideas they wont hold as much power as they once did, therefore taking a ‘heaviness’ or ‘burden’ off your body and allowing it to focus on healing which will directly help your pain.
Allowing your mind to relax will directly effect the anxiety and stress levels around your pain. This will have surprising effects on the level of pain you perceive within your body. As stress and anxiety is a form of pain in and of itself which can be very much connected to your actual physical pain. We cannot talk about meditations effects on the mind in regards to pain without talking about its effects on the physical body.
MEDITATION RELAXES YOUR PHYSICAL BODY
The mind and the physical body are very connected. You cannot talk about one without talking about the other. The mind body connection has been known about for a long time. Whatever happens to the mind is going to have an effect on the physical body and vice versa, whatever happens to the physical body will have an effect on the mind. During meditation when the mind lets go and accepts things, the body follows. This in turn relaxes muscles, joints, tendons and ligaments. This relaxation response will help ease and relieve the pain that you are feeling. When the minds activity decreases the physical body can do what it does best, heal.
If you have ever practiced yoga you will have noticed the body and minds strong connection. When you stretch your tense muscles the mind begins to relax and flow much more easily. This allows you to come into the present moment in a more natural and fluid manner, without forcing anything. As you are focused on the sensations of the physical body, the mind naturally quietens. This is why if you have ever done yoga or some other forms of exercise you will hear the phrase ‘getting of our minds and into our bodies’. This is exactly what meditation helps us do as well, especially body scan meditations that focus on the raw sensations of our bodies. This will directly help with our pain as we feel whatever is coming up and give it some love and attention, beyond the minds scope of destructive thinking.
Moreover, the physical body is actually an extremely sophisticated organism that can heal itself beyond imagination. Your body is a great survivor! Think about its regeneration skills, healing our skin when we get cut, healing broken bones and torn ligaments. Its maintenance skills, temperature control, the heart beating and lunges breathing are all regulated by the body on a second by second bases. Everything is monitored and constantly working to get in balance. You don’t have do a thing, only fuel the body with food and water. If we can allow our minds to get of our way and to fully immerse in our bodies natural powers, this will have great effects on your pain levels and your ability to heal thyself. Meditation can provide the space for us to move towards that particular direction.
MEDITATION HELPS CIRCLE ENERGY AROUND YOUR BODY
As we know our bodies are very sophisticated from a physical standpoint but we haven’t mentioned the energetic body and how it effects our physical bodies. What do I mean by energetic body? Our energetic body is energy that we have behind our physical bodies. There is a specific energy resulting from every thought and belief we have. There is a specific energy resulting from every action we take. This can either allow our energies to flow or stagnate. If our energies stagnate in a specific area for a long time that specific region can become blocked causing complications such as pain and illness. Of course this is a complex system, one system of thoughts or beliefs may move energy, while another may stagnate. Every person is different in this way. That is why meditation is important to look into ourselves at our own specific energies.
Meditation can allow us to move the energy right around our bodies. This can help free up energy for the body to circulate around and therefore reduce energetic blocks or stagnant energy in certain areas. This directly effects our pain as stagnant energy is redirected and circulated throughout our bodies, giving the body an energy boost for healing. Meditation allows us to go into our bodies and our energy fields. Taking us away from the anxious mind that causes a lot of strain for the body.
Furthermore, you might ask what specifically causes these energy blocks? Repression is a big culprit. Repression is not accepting what is. Not accepting your thoughts, body and belief system. As a result of this a part of the mind rejects another part of the mind or another part of the body (or both!). This causes a lot of tension and overtime energetic blockages appear in certain areas of the body. Meditation can help us with this repression in a big way by teaching us to accept things more as they are. This requires a lot of introspection and learning about yourself which comes to my next point.
MEDITATION HELPS YOU TO SEE THINGS FROM A DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE
During meditation we create the space where we can learn a great deal about ourselves. Our minds become one with the life force and we become centred. Our sense of self-awareness becomes heightened. This heightened self awareness allows us to look within at our particular reactions to what is. When we see our reactions we are more likely to see things from a different perspective as we are looking from the ‘outside in’ rather than the ‘inside out’. When we look from the ‘inside out’, we cannot see the inside at all as we are so heavily immersed in the activity. Whatever the activity may be. It could overthinking. It could be talking down to yourself. It could be not accepting your pain. In contrast, when we look from the ‘outside in’ we are looking with a sense of detachment. We are just watching the brains activity as if you are watching an interesting film in the cinema. This opens the flood gates for introspection and learning about oneself.
Learning about your reaction to pain is very relevant to your harmonious relationship to pain in the future. You may ask ‘What is learning about my pain going to do for me?’. This is a question that a lot of people ask at the start. Learning about your pain will give you the space to question your relationship with pain. To question your previous belief systems around it. This in turn will directly work on your relationship with pain and therefore directly work on your reaction to pain. You may say ‘But will it get rid of my pain completely?’. It will allow you to have a more balanced relationship with pain, so when it does come up, there will not be an overreaction within the mind. This in turn allows the intelligent body to do what it knows best, to heal. What is healing exactly though, both within the mind and the body? This is very much related to the last but not least way meditation can help you with your pain.
MEDITATION HELPS YOU TO FULLY EXPRESS YOUR NATURAL SENSATIONS
Full expression of your natural sensations is healing! When we fully express our sensations repression becomes obsolete. Ive already mentioned repression before but what do I mean by expression? During meditation as our self awareness heightens we become reintroduced to feelings, sensations and thoughts that we wouldn’t otherwise have experienced in our busy general lives. Why is this? This is because meditation allows everything to come up, there is no distractions that we face. This is in direct contrast to life in the outside world where multiple distractions exist.
Dealing with our inner most sensations that have been stuffed in a corner can be quite intimidating at first, but these sensations are just another part of you that you have ignored and often repressed. Expression of these sensations means to allow it to be there without stuffing them in a corner or distracting yourself. What does it specifically mean to allow things to be there? To feel your sensations without any objection. To feel fear, to feel sadness, to feel pain. This is expression and it allows you to view things in a less threatening way than if you repressed these sensations. As well as allowing the body to perform its healing work with minimal resistance. You are directly facing these sensations with no distractions. Allowing them to be there within your body, without the rejection they commonly face.
Meditation gives you the platform and the space to do exactly this. You come face to face with the raw sensations of whatever is going on in your life at this particular time. This is a brilliant thing for the self development of your spirit. It allows for expansion and improvement. It allows for you to face your pain directly, to learn and heal.
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Nathan writes blogs on Spirituality, Philosophy and Energy healing. He is a meditation teacher and Reiki master who has a passion of helping others go deeper within themselves.
