I have decided to work with Howard Schubiner’s unlearn your pain program. I’ve wanted to recommend this work to clients and what better way than to have experienced it. I have known for years that my lower back/leg pain was exacerbated when I began to rush and feel that I couldn’t do enough. I practice noticing it and slowing down and/or acknowledging the emotions that are flowing. Schubiner explains how nerve pathways that were established when we had tissue damage in an area become sensitized and fire up as pain with very little stimulus. Or maybe no physical stimulus, emotions alone can trigger the very real pain sequence. Most of us don’t like feeling negative things but our bodies have a need to, as self-balancing organisms we try to feel express and transform the energies as they arrive. An area of pain with heightened sensitivity is a convenient route for the pain to find expression.
On day one I did some inventories of current and old stress and personality traits. Next I made some idea web clusters and free association writing. My surprise for day one? As I was writing I noticed my left hand began to scratch and pick at my navel; not a habit I have. Notice something unusual? Pay more attention. Then I remembered sitting in the bathtub as a child and picking at the dirt that found its way into the little curved crevice scars of my belly button, my once life line. I remember trying to make it look clean and perfect. Yet it was, I was, so clearly imperfect. Tuning into this feeling gave me a touch of compassion for the child who sat with that experience. Stopping and noticing awakens the simple messages that our bodies are sometimes screaming at us. More on this journey to come.
Check out www.unlearnyourpain.com
