How do you treat your pain body?

I woke up with these words on my mind. I think it was a kind of leftover thought from my Non-Linear Movement Method (NLMM) practice last night. For those here who haven’t done a NLMM class with me before, its foundation lies in learning how to move what we’re feeling at any one time. Now, this doesn’t mean to ‘move it away,’ as we normally like to see that term, but rather to ‘move with it’ as it is in the current moment. So if we’re feeling sad, we don’t try and replace that with joy, but actually move with the sadness. Likewise with a sore knee or ankle, we just move with it as an exploration, not to fix it.

This isn’t to become a victim to these sensations or feelings or to drown in them; on the contrary it becomes quite empowering to accept our body in all its many shades and colours. We become less judgemental when we see that they are all different forms of the same energy. One of the especially rewarding parts of the practice is that you also then see how that energy shifts. It’s rarely stagnant, always changing, even without our direct input.

It’s also a very unique, personalised practice, meaning that unlike a yoga or pilates class, no one will be doing the same identical movement as no one else will be experiencing the exact same feeling or sensation as you would in that very moment.

Our definitions of pain are not all the same either; what may be pain for me may not be pain for you and vice versa. Some of our constitutions are most susceptible to mental pain, some to emotional, some to physical. Some will feel pain more in certain seasons or climates or stages of life. It’s all so variable.

The concept of the pain body was introduced to me by a doctor/therapist I saw during the years I had Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS). She asked me to draw a large outline of a person on a big white sheet of paper and then to mark on the body all the places I felt pain. Well, suffice to say, there weren’t many white blank spots left on the sheet once I’d finished my marking up!

I felt helpless when I looked at the figure in front of my eyes. She was a mess. How was I going to fix all of that?

But that thought was also my biggest problem. Actually probably my greatest pain. It was causing me hell and heartache, the ongoing constant niggling of fixing myself.

Does this sound familiar?

But over the years of my recovery, working with both her and other practitioners and practices, I began to appreciate that the first step to change is owning what’s there. Not in a victim mentality, but in an ok, this is the reality of now.

This is my pain body. How will I chose to view it? How will I relate to her?

I at least have the choice in the latter.

And I guess this was the essence of my morning wake up thought….How do you treat your pain body?

With contempt or with compassion?

With judgement or acceptance?

With fear or love?

I remember when I did my NLMM teacher training and after five days of being down on the floor on my hands and knees, hour after hour, moving and feeling, moving and releasing, I turned over on to my right side with tears gushing down my cheeks, saying to myself, ‘Geez, Sharon, you got to be a bit kinder to yourself’.

Is that not the secret for most of us?

So much of my pain body exists in my mind. It always has. This isn’t to negate physical concerns that come up, they are real, and sometimes they can hurt. But even then we can chose how to respond to the hurt.

I know I suffer from tinnitus and when it’s bad, sometimes it’s all I can focus on in my body. Everything else dims. It takes a lot of conscious effort to broaden my vision. But most of all I know it’s fear in the moment that drives my uber focus. I’m worried that it will never go away.

Ditto for when I had shingles last year. It was excruciating. The pain had me howling in the middle of the night. But I wasn’t bad because I got shingles. I got shingles because I got shingles. Adding a bad thought to it was amplifying the pain and making it more than just physical.

The thing is our pain body exists mainly because of our ego and fear. You know when we get ‘rejected’ by someone, all we can focus on is the rejection, whether it be a job, relationship, house, project etc. We lose sight of all the other things in our life because our pain body is running the show and all it sees is the bad stuff and the pain.

This too shall pass is a common saying I’ve heard over the years. And actually I feel it’s more than just a cognitive thought, it’s a bodily process. Because it all does pass if we allow the energy to flow. It stays when our energy gets stuck.

This is how practices like NLMM have assisted me. My energy stays in flow therefore so does my pain body.

I’ve had a lot going on in my emotional life the last few months. At times I’ve got stuck in the pain body, in the fear and the attachment.

But I also believe I treat my pain body with a whole lot more respect than I used to.

And I’ve been using NLMM and other embodiment practices to keep me current with the feelings and sensations within.

I’ve come far from that first pain body I drew all those years ago.

Firstly, whenever I draw one there are now many, many white blank spaces on it :-)

Secondly, when I do look at the pain markings, my response is more like ‘Ok, I see you. I know you’re there’. That very acknowledgment is all I sometimes need to do to give my body permission to be with what’s there.

As women we tend to hold a lot of pain and it’s often dismissed by the medical world. We need to find different ways to view the pain and work with it and this is such an important aspect of the work I do. In all of my workshops and sessions I look at the ways we can turn this around. And I know so many other wonderful people are doing the same. I hope to bring you more of this in the coming year.

So, anyway, welcome to 2024.

While I’ve been on break, I’ve been syncing in with the first new moon of the year, being in Capricorn. It is about setting foundations for the year and for me my foundation has been the fitness and strength of my body. This has been very connected to rounding off my first year in menopause and as I come to my anniversary next weekend, I’ll be sharing some more thoughts on this in next week’s substack blog.

With love and blessings for a graceful and kind 2024.

Sharon