Pain is this amazing self-communication – whether physical, emotional, or mental. It is a STOP sign to forward movement and an invitation to explore the area of pain for healing.
Sometimes it is a muscle that has been pulled, sometimes an old deep emotion is triggered, and sometimes an old belief system that no longer works. At some point, there was usually some kind of trauma involved to create this STOP. Yet most of us have been trained to pull away and avoid pain or else to blow through it as in “No pain, no gain”. Neither is very helpful and often can add to the cause and continuation of the pain.
However, it is possible to “open to the pain” to find out what it is actually telling you. Whether the pain is physical, emotional, or mental, it is emanating from some physical location in the body where the energy is stuck. From an energy perspective, all pain is stuck energy. The relevant area of the body can not function and is in protective lockdown. That energy will remain there stuck for seconds or lifetimes – until it is released. That is why we return over and over to the same issues, emotions, or injuries. Our bodies are asking us to listen and remove the stuckness. Sometimes the energy is so stuck that there is no sensation. Those times, our bodies are so protective that we don’t even consciously know or remember what happened.
To move the energy and pain, I follow basically the same steps.
I begin with my breath and breathe into the physical location of any pain. Sometimes that is all I need to do and the stuck energy begins to dissipate. Usually, I need to go father as I am experiencing a pain that is coming from the emotional or mental bodies. What makes physical pain unbearable are the thoughts and emotions attached to it. Have you ever noticed that sometimes pain in the body is just pain and other times it is unbearable?
Opening to whatever is there, whether sensation and/or emotion, is the next step.
Sometimes it is resistance to what is there that I need to be open to. You open to whatever is there and allow it to be there. (In other words, you don’t fight yourself.) Often this is hard to do so I use The Sedona Method to keep me focused by asking myself the following four questions:
- What is here now? (i.e. can you open to all the pictures, sensations, and sounds associated with this pain/experience?)
- Can you let it go? (i.e. is it possible to let go?)
- Would you let it go? (i.e. are you willing to let it go?)
- When? (this is an invitation to let it go now?)
There are no “right answers” to these questions.
“No” works as well as “yes” and “never” as well as “now”. I keep repeating these four questions as I go through the layers until the pain and stuck energy begin to move. Sometimes it takes only a few rounds. On long term issues, the releasing happens in layers over many such rounds. Sometimes I go through layers of emotions, other times images and memories, sometimes I seemingly hit a wall for awhile.
What often keeps the pain in place is wanting to know why or to fix it. We don’t want to let it go until we understand so we can keep it from happening again, but in doing this we are holding onto the source of the pain in order to explore it further. You have to be willing to let those mental questions go. Each time you release, you are letting go of some of the pain. If you keep releasing, the answer to those questions often pops up as or after the pain has been released.
I believe that mental pain is caused by competing belief systems each of which is glued together by emotions.
I believe that we experience something which then creates an emotion. In order to make sense of that emotion, we make up a story to make sense of what happened. All of this happens in a nanosecond. In the future anytime that belief system or story comes up that emotion is attached. Likewise, every emotion has all its resultant thoughts connected to it. When releasing, we go to the emotional glue as it is much easier to chip away at emotions than every belief or thought. This approach also keeps my mind from obsessing on the details of all my great thoughts and stories which are a distraction and keep the pain in place.
In all cases, go with whatever comes up.
Frequently, the releasing moves through seemingly unrelated issues. I have given up looking for causality as that just takes you in more mental circles that keep you in pain. I just try to listen to what is here in my physical, emotional, and mental bodies, letting them lead me where they do. If the pain is beyond what I can deal with I lose consciousness (pass out) or leave my physical body (trauma). If I am still here, then I know that I can deal. If I am out of my body, then I am in an altered state and depend on Spirit and my Higher Self to take over. Working this way with pain, I have learned to trust all my bodies and my process.
What is so beautiful about pain is that it is full of information.
Working with pain may or may not lessen the physical sensation. However, working through physical and emotional pain brings you to a place where you know what needs to be done or you can manage your response to any pain. You get unstuck and the energy can flow again so healing begins on all levels. You can trust that your own process will lead you out of that stuck and painful place. What a gift – to not be afraid of yourself and trust your self and your process!
Note: If you haven’t already used the Sedona Method, try using these questions with some issue that is painful for you. Start with something somewhat simple. For more information and to watch releasing, there are lots of YouTube videos with Hale Dwoskin doing the releasing. You can also go to the website www.sedona.com There are other questions that you can also use once you get the hang of the method. I love these four as they are simple and easy to remember.