Overcoming Physical Pain with Mindfulness
Ok, so I have a crazy story. Two of my teeth have been sensitive to cold foods for the last 10 months ever since I got a crown. If I drank cold water, doesn’t even have to be icy, my nerves on those two teeth shot straight to my brain in instant and lingering pain. It happened if I ate a cold salad. And if I ate ice cream. I only consumed cold food in the right side of my mouth for almost a year.
This morning, I woke up with a grape craving, took them out from the fridge, washed them and popped one in my mouth forgetting to put it on the right side of my mouth. The familiar freezing pain came over my teeth and gave me a 2-second headache. Right after, a thought came to me that perhaps this pain could be controlled with my mind, and I decided to try popping another grape but this time placing my attention not on the two teeth which I anticipated pain on but on the teeth opposing them right below. I noticed that somehow the pain was significantly less — as if my teeth wanted to hurt but I blocked off my desire to listen to their pain and therefore they stopped trying to send the signal! I tried another grape but this time allowing the same anticipation of pain and focusing on the two culprit teeth, and surely enough the pain came right back. Then I tried another grape placing a focus on other teeth and the pain wasn’t there again. I have been chewing cold grapes for the last 15 minutes on the left side of my mouth in complete awe and joy, because I have been chewing free of pain. WTF?!
I was sure before that I’d have to get dentist to fix this issue. Maybe my teeth got sensitive because they shifted after the crown. Or the bite wasn’t right and needed to be adjusted. Or something else. But not my mind’s own doing!!! In a sense, the higher the expectation of pain, the more the mind dramatized it. Similar to how people’s allergic reactions become stronger if they panic during the allergic reaction, my teeth hurt as soon as my mind remembered it should be hurting and looked for the pain! I’m so excited about this realization. In retrospect it shouldn’t be a surprise because of some other experiences I’ve had with using mindfulness to change my physical experience.
Running
I never was a great runner. I played 3 varsity sports in high school without ever getting over the dread of having to run even a basic mile. Here’s what it sounded like in my head while I was running during practice:
Oh my God, how much longer will this be? My legs are tired. I think I feel the lactic acid coming in. It burns. How should I breathe? Maybe I should slow down my breathing? Breathe more deeply. Maybe I have asthma. Maybe my lung capacity is just less than average. All I hear are my footsteps…stomp stomp stomp. This is so boring. Breathe through your nose. No, let’s try mouth.
It was in incessant chatter. And my runs were torturous to me. I never could figure out why even people in less good shape could still run better than I could. I could only run short distances because I ran out of breath in just a few minutes.
After developing a meditation practice, I can now run 3 miles without running out of breath. In fact, I enjoy these runs. The difference is that I now cut out the chatter of not just my mind but also of my legs and lungs. When my legs hurt, I’d ignore the story it told about pain and soreness. When my lungs felt like they were working too hard, I’d ignore that story and let them calm down. I knew that I was physically capable of running 3 miles (why wouldn’t I be?), and therefore refused to perpetuate the stories being told by my mind and body about why I needed to stop.
Shivers
My friends and family know that I have cold hands and feet. Because I complain about them. I’m one of those girls who gets cold and bundles up at the office. I live in San Francisco, which means I’m always cold.
I heard a story a couple months ago about a 12 year old boy who hurt his arm while playing outside but insisted to his parents that he could continue playing. When his parents later took him to the doctor and learned that their son’s arm was broken in 2 different places, they were shocked. The doctor said, “You have to be careful with kids. Sometimes, they don’t know pain.” Really? Pain just happens, right? You don’t have to get acquainted with it before you recognize it, right? Right???
I wanted to test the assumption that cold is just cold and instead view it as an interpretation. Just like pain in the end is an interpretation that inflammation or your arm not moving like it did yesterday is a bad thing. “Brr, I’m cold” is an interpretation of a 5–10 degree temperature change. I tried not wearing or zipping up my jacket when I normally would, and meanwhile place my attention on not having stories about why a lower temperature wasn’t good. And guess what? I can now walk around San Francisco in a relaxed and happy way instead of death marching, staring at the pavement.
So what does this all mean? Begin taking notice of your physical discomforts and discovering whether there’s a mental story you’re applying to perpetuate the fact that it’s uncomfortable. Then see what happens when you don’t let those thoughts play a re-run every time you encounter that discomfort. You just might find that what was previously an unhelpable physiological reaction loses its power when you don’t feed it. Just as an experiment. It might not fix everything, but I’d bet it’ll fix some! The body and mind are an amazing team :).
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