Know Pain, Know Gain

We must embrace pain and burn it as fuel for our journey.
Kenji Miyazawa

Physical pain is the body’s way of telling us that something is amiss. It brings our attention into the present moment and says, “Hey, look over here, your eyebrows are on fire.” Without pain, we would most likely not make it out of childhood. The young mind believes it is invincible and would throw its skin suit into all sorts of life-threatening predicaments, if it could. Thus, the burning sensation tells the young child that stoves are for pots and pans, not hands and fingers. This allows the child to move on to new dangers, such as seeing if umbrellas make good parachutes. (Kids, don’t try this at home!)

Stress can act in much the same way. The sensation we feel when stressed tells us that we need to examine something that we are doing. One form of this feedback loop is the splitting headache at the end of the workday. A more dire warning is something along the lines of, “If you’re not going to do something about this, then how about I stop your heart from beating for a few seconds?”

If stress acts as a signal flare, alerting us to the need for an emotional rescue, why do we so often miss this not so subtle warning and continue as if all is well? When did we lose touch with ourselves to the point that many of us never stop to consider what our stress is telling us until someone in a white coat asks if we’ve met our deductible yet?

When we live in our heads, we often forget about our bodies or simply see them as means of transport for the all-important brain case that is the head. Disconnected from the whole of ourselves, we rely on rational process to sort through our experiences and solve the challenges that come our way. With all of the mind-noise, we can barely hear what our stress is saying. When a message does get through, if it sounds familiar, it is filed away in the, “Yeah, yeah, I know,” bin. This is why many of us sincerely feel surprised when the stress train runs us over.

Mindfulness helps to reconnect us to the wisdom in the body. This does not remove stress, instead, it helps stress move through the otherwise blocked channels. This allows the natural learning and healing process to unfold. Stepping out of the mind-fog, we step into present moment awareness. It is this very awareness we knew so well as children. The time when we did not need to be shown more than once that umbrellas do not have the necessary lift coefficient to prevent crash landings. (Kids, trust me on this one.)