Exercise - The Mind-Body Connection
(Note: These exercises are not treatments. They do not heal. They assist your body and your mind in pursuing their natural inclination to alleviate discomfort. Persistent or recurring pain may be symptomatic of conditions about which you should consult your physician or medical professional.)
Hypnotic anesthesia is a field which holds a great deal of potential, but which is as yet not fully explored because the lure of pain killers has been so great. Yet there are ways of using our minds to relieve our suffering which you might try, because they give you more control over your mood as well as your body.
As a simple test of your powers, just begin thinking about an itch inside your left ear. Think of that itch deep inside that ear, too deep down inside to scratch. It actually begins as a sort of tingle. Or maybe it feels as if a little ant were crawling around in there. Or a centipede with hundreds of hairy little feet, crawling, creeping along in a circular motion, round and round inside your ear. You'd love to touch it, but you don't want to give in. So you try to ignore it. But now it really itches. Maybe it makes you swallow hard. See how long it takes you, focusing on that part of your body, to develop an itch you finally have to scratch.
Now, here are two more useful exercises. The first one will help you one to numb a painful area, the other could help you dissolve a headache.
Glove anesthesia
Sit quietly and become aware of your breath. Breathe deeply, slowly as you can, a deep, long inhale and then a release. Then twice more.
Now, allow your right hand to become very heavy and still. Allow it to become like a block of wood, almost as if you couldn't move it, almost as if no blood is running through it. As if it weren't even your hand. Maybe there's a strange sensation in your wrist or up your arm to your elbow. Maybe your fingers are tingling or even throbbing as your hand grows so heavy it feels like an artificial limb. Take as long as you need to allow that hand to feel somewhat detached, deadened, heavy.
Now imagine that you've placed that hand into a freezing mountain stream or into a bucket of ice water. Make it numb. Make it so numb that if you stuck a pin in it, you wouldn't feel a thing. The icy water moves around it so vibrantly that it almost hurts, it is so cold. Keep it in that stream or bucket of ice until it is so numb, it is a frozen block of ice, itself.
Now actually place that block-of-ice hand on any other part of you, your cheek, your thigh, and transfer the numbness. That is how to anesthetize a painful part of your body. I have done this work with cancer patients and they have found relief without drugs for hours at a time.
Dissolving a Headache
Generally when we have pain like a headache, we spend our energy resisting it, which causes it to tighten up like a fist and get worse. I have had some success helping people do the following. Close your eyes, get comfortable and relaxed, count your in and out breaths slowly five times. Then imagine yourself being inside your head, where the hurt is. Imagine not fighting it, but being with it, calmly, gently, recognizing it, saying there you are. I'm sorry you're hurting. Then begin to picture the headache as a tight red ball. With every breath that you inhale, imagine filling the ball with air and starting to dissolve it. You exhale and breathe out some of the atoms and particles that make up that tight red ball. You inhale and the ball begins to soften, become less red and hard, to break up into a mist. You exhale some of the gasses. You inhale again and dissolve it further, watch and feel it becoming filmier, more pink, more diffuse. You exhale and release more of the pink fog. Every time you inhale, your breath turns the ball of pain into a more diluted pink fog, exhaling it from your body easily and gently. This relaxing action may actually affect the capillaries carrying the blood to the area , evening out the flow of blood and perhaps releasing the headache. Inhale and dissolve, turning the headache into a fluffy pink cloud. Exhale the smoke and let it go.
Excerpted from Journey to Alternity.
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