(5 hours) #34 YOUR THINKING AFFECTS YOUR BODY - Stress & Pain Relief (Jason Newland)

Hello and welcome to jasonnewland.com. My name is Jason Newland and this is Stress and Pain Relief podcast. Please only listen when you can safely close your eyes. Now the purpose of this podcast is to reduce your stress by using the same technique.

You can either reduce your stress or reduce the feelings of chronic pain. Or both at the same time if that's what you choose. Okay so that's the premise behind what we're doing here.

So what I'd like you to do is decide you know you may be listening to this to reduce your stress levels. You may be listening to this to reduce your chronic pain levels. Now it's important to find out the cause of your pain before listening to any recordings to help you reduce the physical sensations of pain.

Because pain is there often for a reason as a warning. Now chronic pain isn't. Acute pain is, chronic pain isn't.

But there's not always a big difference between the two as far as chronic pain really is the point where you know the cause of the pain and it's no longer needed. Because you'd know the cause of it. So whether it's due to an ongoing disease or chronic you know some kind of issue like that.

Let's say crumbling bones, osteoporosis which is what my Nan had. Now it causes pain but it's a chronic pain condition because it's continuing you know it's technically not going to go away and potentially going to get worse because with age and the progressiveness of the disorder. But once you know the reason and the cause behind the pain and the reason it's there is to protect you, for you to be careful.

So if you've got like my Nan had crumbling bones in one of her shoulders which meant it was a warning for her to not really to not pick stuff up with that arm. You know to not use that arm really and she was very elderly she didn't need to use that arm. She had the other arm but when she used it it hurt.

But even when she didn't use it her shoulder hurt, hurt it you know still had pain there and she didn't need that pain because it was there as a warning and she understood like most people do that have chronic pain they understand that they don't need that pain because they've had the warning. It's like someone with a broken leg that pain is to warn us not to use the leg.

We need medical assistance and the pain although a lot less sticks around for a few weeks is as a warning not to walk on it not to put any weight on it.

Now these days we know that we get casts and we get told by the doctor not to put any weight on it for six weeks. But you know in thousands of years ago perhaps people didn't know that they didn't have that knowledge. So the pain prevented them from putting weight on it so they would avoid putting weight on that leg at all costs I imagine and therefore survived and therefore didn't cause problems to their physical status, didn't cause irreparable damage to their leg.

That's just a small example of the use of chronic pain. A lot of chronic pain actually has in itself no use anymore. It's outdated, it's like an outdated belief system.

It's believing something and I won't say it in case there's kids listening but you know believing something that you know you really believed in when you was maybe six years old, seven years old but now maybe you're in your 30s or 50s or 40s or 90s even. You don't believe that anymore because you know it's not true. Well chronic pain is a similar kind of thing.

It's outdated, it's not needed anymore in a sense of for the condition that may be causing the chronic pain because you know what the cause is. You don't need, you don't need it, you don't need to be reminded. I've got, I've actually got an injured shoulder on my right hand side, my right shoulder.

I had it for about 16, 16 years and it was an injury and then it turned from being chronic pain, acute pain into chronic pain and I just had to be careful with it. There's certain things I can't do. It's a little bit, it's a lot better than it used to be but I decided a long time ago that I wasn't gonna have that pain anymore.

I wasn't gonna put up with it because I didn't need it. It was doing nothing for me, reminding me to be careful. It's almost like the shoulder was trying to remind me not to bash it again, not to injure it again.

Like I purposely injured it and you know like well I got no intention of injuring my shoulder again. It's almost like the shoulder doesn't trust me anymore you know. So I decided to put that shoulder at ease and to really relax that shoulder to the point where it's almost like it now trusts me to just be careful and so far I have and you know I'm sure that it doesn't really work that way but I like kind of like the idea that maybe we can almost make friends with the different body parts that we have.

Make friends with the stress, the stressful parts or the parts that have chronic pain. Make friends with those parts and say hey you know I realized that maybe you're concerned that I might hurt my lower back. I've got lower back issues and myself and maybe I might make it worse by doing stuff or might you know but I want to assure my lower back that everything I do is going to be to help and I'm not going to be bending over and picking stuff up wrongly.

I'm not going to be putting undue pressure on my back. I'm going to be looking after it and caring for it which I do now but I didn't used to but now I do and for me it's almost like making friends with the lower back calling a truce almost. It's like okay I didn't treat my lower back properly when I was younger.

I used to lift heavy boxes and I'd bend my back when I did it. I didn't keep my back straight, didn't bend my knees, any of the the correct ways of lifting stuff and I knew how to do it properly but I didn't. I cut corners and I'm left with a deteriorating back.

Now I promise my back now I'll say out loud I promise my back that I won't lift things wrongly. I'll make sure that when I lift something it will be I will keep a straight back and I will bend my legs and I'll make sure that I don't cause extra harm to my back and when I walk I will walk with a decent posture and I'll put my effort in to you know do stretches and to strengthen my back.

So almost like I'm making a deal with that part of the body to say this is what I'll do.

What I need from you in return is physical comfort. No longer do I need the stress or the the chronic pain that I've had. I don't need that anymore.

I'm going to be careful and the same with stress. If we actually make an effort and say well from now on I'm going to drink less coffee or I'm going to meditate regularly. I'm going to maybe listen to relaxation sessions daily.

I'm going to spend more time being kind to myself and you can say that and it might seem weird to talk directly to a part of your body but with stress I've found often it's not just one part of the body. It can move around. I can feel it sometimes in my upper back, my shoulders, the back of my neck, my head.

Sometimes I even feel it in my hands, in my muscles, my legs even sometimes, stomach. So it can be an all over body sensation but sometimes it shows up predominantly in one part or one area so you can make a deal. You can just even if you're not saying it verbally you know like I did then like a verbal conversation with your big toe or whatever you're feeling it because it might seem silly a silly thing to do but this is about intention because your body listens to your thoughts.

Your body is affected by not just by what you do but by what you think. In fact it's probably more affected by what you think than what you do because you know as it's an experiment which I don't recommend doing but you could be taking the most relaxing drink that's supposed to cause relaxation or you could be meditating. Meditation is a good example.

You could be sitting there meditating and doing a doing a mantra and the mantra could be one mantra could be I'm feeling relaxed, I'm feeling calm or thank you, I want to thank my body, thank my mind for everything you do for me. I want to thank my body, thank my mind for everything that you do for me or I feel relaxed, I feel calm, I feel love or whatever it might be and you know doing that mantra maybe saying it in your mind over and over slowly for maybe five or ten minutes.

That affects your body, it affects your mind and it's relaxing and it's meditation.

It's a form of meditation. Now you could meditate and sit there and have the same you know same physical posture but you could be saying to yourself I feel stressed, I'm uptight, the world's against me, I feel stressed, I feel uptight, the world's against me. Do that for five or ten minutes.

Don't do it I'm saying but if you were to do it on one level you're sitting there in a relaxed position but the words you're saying, the words you're thinking are going to have much more of an effect on how you feel than the sitting in a relaxed position. So we do need to be careful what we say to ourselves and these are things that we're not taught at school and probably not even taught by parents or by anyone.

These are things that we need to we almost have to discover ourselves in life through maybe discovering a book or a podcast or some kind of spiritual training or maybe through you know just coming across a mindfulness course or exercise or seeing a documentary on YouTube or things like that but not something that we're taught from an early age.

They're actually the things that we think affect how we feel. So even if you don't say the words, if you you know if you don't say it out loud or even to yourself to the part of your body that you'd like to just relax or you'd like to you know reduce the physical discomfort so that you feel more comfort, you can have the intention. You can have that intention towards that part of your body.

In the same way maybe that you have a certain intention towards maybe your own child or your grandchild or someone very special to you in your life. There's a certain positive feeling that goes towards them. I guess we call it love don't we? So there's a a sense of love that you have connected with someone that you care about deeply and that love shines on how you think about them.

That love shines on the words you say to them or the words that you think about them. It shines on how you treat them, on your intentions and that same kind of feeling can be aimed at if not your whole body then part of your body, the part that you wish to focus on. Like right now my lower back which I focused on a little you know a bit while I've been talking in this recording, it's almost numb.

It's you know slightly itchy underneath the skin which is always a sign of well there's no pain. It's not it's not really any feeling of discomfort it's just a feeling of almost like it's not really there. The imprint is there but the actual the feeling's not there anymore.

It's almost you know when your car leaves you can see maybe the car track the tire tracks of the car but the car's not there. When it rains the car tire tracks disappear. And sometimes that's what you need inside you just a little bit of rain just to wash away those old feelings.

A bit of rain to just clear out the dust and the dryness that maybe seemed a bit a little bit too crusty and a bit stuck maybe but with the rain everything gets lubricated and moves really easily. Moves away nice and slowly allowing almost like allowing the dirt to be washed away and it's as if you can see inside your body. You can see inside that body part like there's a glass cover on it and you can see that everything's clear.

Everything's really really clear and there's nothing going on at all. Really clear and calm nothing going on. Really clear really clear really clear and loose.