(5 hours) #36 WATER AND ICE - 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 point of this is for this podcast is the technique or the recording will be aiming at both stress and chronic pain.

So whatever you're listening for, whether it's either or both, this will be aiming at both. And the reason for this is because the same techniques work for both. So a technique, a relaxation technique focusing on a particular part of your body will not only relax that part of your body, but it will reduce the chronic pain in that part of your body.

So this is like a double, a double bubble, double whammy, whatever you want to call it. So I'd like you to get yourself comfortable sitting. If you're already sitting in a comfortable chair that supports your body, just remember you may fall asleep through boredom.

That's possible. If you're lying down on your bed, make sure that you know, remember you can change your lying position whenever you choose. This is about comfort.

There's no need to be a statue. You can just move as you please. And also remember that if you're lying down, there's more chance that you will fall asleep.

Simply because you're lying down and the mixture of lying on your bed and my boring voice is a very possible, you know, it, it does often create sleep within people. I've been doing this for nearly 16 years. And I know my boring voice in a bed that will send people to sleep quite easily.

So, but this isn't about sleep. This is about relaxing and reducing chronic pain in a particular part of your body. Now, some people might think, well, stress and pain is a different thing, completely different.

Well, I'd say not necessarily. First of all, having stress and tension in a part of your body can be painful. It can be everyone, if you think about it, we all know that.

If you have, I've had stress and tension in my, the back of my neck before, and it's painful, it hurts. Tension and stress can cause cramping, you know, muscle spasms, and things such as, what do they call it? Legs moving on their own, things like that caused by stress, which is not only uncomfortable physically and emotionally, but also can be painful. So I forget the name of it, irritable legs, or there's a word for it.

So is also the simple fact that a big contributor to the pain and the discomfort caused by chronic pain is stress and tension. So when you take away that element, or at least reduce that element, you're reducing the physical discomfort that you're experiencing before. There's no other way it can be.

It's as simple as a recipe for a cake. Unless you put in the correct ingredients to make a sponge cake, if you change what you put in, you know, if you missed out the egg or the milk, or if you missed out the flour, or, you know, you'd have a different thing at the end, miss out something and something else remains. Take away something and something else remains.

So, you know, if you think about it in a way of cooking, things that people add to the taste, if you don't add that, the thing will taste different, and it might not taste right. In fact, that tiny ingredient may actually be the difference between it tasting bland and tasting amazing for some people. And that's just a small thing taken out can make that difference.

Now, reducing the stress levels of that area, that part of your body, is not reducing a small thing. It's a big, very big part of it. And with chronic pain, as we know, you know, difference between acute pain and chronic pain.

Chronic pain, generally, is something that quite often people have, when they don't need to have it. It's of no use. Acute pain is useful.

It's important. It's something you need to have. And acute pain, probably at some point, saves all of our lives.

During our lifetime, acute pain is there to say, you have to get to grab our attention. I had appendicitis as a kid. My little brother had appendicitis.

And he, you know, you can't ignore that pain because it can end up very serious. Now, my brother didn't ignore it, went to the hospital. They told him there was nothing wrong with him.

And his appendix burst. And he ended up getting sepsis. He survived.

But that pain is there. It can't be ignored. We can't ignore acute pain.

But chronic pain, although it can be a result of disease and illness, things like arthritis, people with arthritis don't, you don't need the pain. Maybe you need it at the beginning. Maybe it's important to start with, in order to get to the doctors and get to find out what the problem is.

You know, maybe treatment is necessary. But generally, once you know what the condition is, those physical discomforts are not required anymore. Because you're now aware of it.

You can be careful. And take it easy with that part of your body. And that's really all that your body wants.

It just wants you to be careful. When you break a leg, you don't put any weight on the leg. And if you do, you'll be in absolute agony.

Initially, you'll be in agony, you know, for whatever. But that pain reduces quite quickly. After the first day or so, it reduces gradually to the point where after maybe a couple of weeks, you can sit down even a week even you could sit there and maybe not even notice it.

And then a two or three weeks later, it's almost like it's not really there anymore. You can feel it. But it's not painful.

It's it's maybe feels weak, it maybe feels there's a feeling because you know what it is. It doesn't bother you anymore. You know what caused it.

You know, you got to keep your weight off your leg. And it's also something that doesn't, it's not really going to alarm or worry. Most people know providing it's a straightforward situation, a broken bone heals and then you're fine.

Sometimes you need physiotherapy. Generally, you know, you're usually fine. I've broken a few bones over the years.

And I've always been fine afterwards. So there's no stress or tension really related to that. So there's no chronic pain required.

So people that have a broken leg, three years later, they're generally not limping around with chronic pain, because they don't need it. Because the stress levels are practically non-existent. They're not worried about it, not even thinking about it.

It heals and then they move on with their life. So tension and stress really exasperates any kind of chronic pain condition. And if you take it away, or reduce it, it's almost not needed.

And then you've got the feelings of stress and tension, that uptightness, even without a chronic pain condition, that uptightness, that even almost like restrictive breathing sometimes, that comes with tension, that comes with extreme stress and anxiety. And when you relax, and you can already have relaxed, just listening to me, even though I'm talking about chronic pain, this isn't just about chronic pain. This is about, in reality, this is about relaxing.

That's what this podcast is about. It's about relaxing. It's about letting go.

And the benefits are so vast, that I couldn't fit them all into the title. The benefits of relaxing are endless. In fact, relaxing can transform your life in a way that you wouldn't even believe.

And I'm not talking about instantly. I'm not talking, you know, you're relaxing now, and then tomorrow, your whole life will be transformed. It's a gradual process.

It could happen overnight. But it's a gradual process. By transformed, you get better sleep, your digestive system would work better, because for two reasons, you're possibly making clearer decisions about what you eat.

You're also eating slower, which is better for your digestive system, because you're calmer. So that part of your life may change. Your mind will be clearer.

Because when you're relaxed, the more you're relaxed, just things start to feel lighter. We stopped taking ourselves quite as seriously as perhaps we were. That's not to say that we're always taking ourselves seriously.

I'm sure we've all got a sense of humor, we like to joke around and stuff. But sometimes, when it comes to health, when it comes to other people, how other people maybe act and behave towards us, when it comes to our own physical sensations, and health, it can feel quite hard not to take that stuff seriously. But there's different ways to take things seriously.

You can take it seriously because it's important, but not allow that seriousness to cause more tension and stress and anxiety, worry. Worry, as we all know, is of no use. It's natural, but it's not useful.

And I think with worry, there can be a certain degree of shame if we don't worry. You know, if someone's going into hospital that we care about, we feel we need to worry about them, worry about how they get on when they're perfectly safe. It's a routine situation and they're going to be fine.

So instead of expecting them to be doing well and for it to go absolutely fine for them, there's that little bit of shame thinking, well, I should be worrying. Should be worrying about them, which then adds extra stress and tension in your mind and your body needlessly. When actually, if you're sitting there thinking about the person that you care about, having that operation or the medical procedure, and you're thinking to yourself, they're going to be fine.

And you visualize them being well and it going absolutely perfectly. You're still thinking about the person, you're still caring about the person, that it's in a positive way. You're going to feel good.

And the way that you interact with that person is going to be positive, which is going to help them feel better. And in the moment that you're positive, the one thing you can't be is negative. Can't be both at the same time.

You can't feel relaxed and stressed at the same time. It's impossible. Two complete opposite feelings.

And relaxation is is the more natural feeling and stress and tension and anxiety. Relaxation is the more natural feeling. You just look at a baby.

And of course, babies are full of all emotions and babies can get anxious and upset and, you know, screaming and shouting and stuff. But if you study a baby over 24 hours, they spend more time relaxed, maybe even sleeping, than they will being anxious about stuff. Or being, you know, being stroppy or, you know, moaning.

They'll spend a lot more time maybe laughing, being interested in what you're doing or what they're doing. Maybe a mobile phone, looking around, just chilling, completely relaxed. We were born with that ability and it doesn't leave us because it's too strong.

It's inbuilt. So, to be tense and stressed, you have to work up to that. That takes effort.

Relaxing takes no effort because all you're doing is unwinding. All you're doing is just letting go of stuff. So if you think of a tightrope walk, you know, tightrope, I don't know what you call it, between two, yeah, between two posts, there's a tightrope.

Is it tiedrope or tightrope? So, you know, you could walk across it. I couldn't, but some people can. Now, it could be a 10 foot walk or 20 foot walk across these two posts.

And it's only three foot off the ground. So it's not scary. It's not, you know, you're not going to hurt yourself.

You're not going to fall or anything. We might fall, but it's three foot. We might be a foot off the ground.

The difference between how we naturally feel relaxed and that built up feeling of tension that we've kind of caused ourself is the difference between just walking on the floor and trying to walk on that tightrope. Firstly, there's no reason to walk on a tightrope. You've got the floor there.

You don't need it. So someone that decides to walk on a tightrope is purposely adding stress to themselves, to their body, to their mind, causing themselves to worry. Are they going to fall? Are they, you know, and all that stuff.

And it's caused, they cause it themselves. They have to build up to it. They have to create it.

And they're doing that by trying to balance on this little bit of wire when actually all they've got to do is just hop off, land on the floor safely on their feet, those 20 inches or whatever, and just walk. And instantly all the tension is gone. All the stress is gone.

All the anxiety is gone. All the physical discomfort that they might experience, all the mental discomfort while they were doing that. Now I'm sure that people do it for a living or do it professionally, reach a level of bliss probably, complete comfort when they're doing it.

But that wouldn't be the average person. I've tried to, I think most people have tried to do that, haven't they? Try to, even just trying to walk on a piece of wood on the floor, a thin piece of wood on the floor, walking along it compared to just walking on the floor. The stress levels build up doing that.

So we create that feeling of increased tension, but then we just jump off the piece of wood, walk on the floor, stress gone, relaxation instantly takes over the body because that's our natural state, to feel calm and safe walking. Just, you know, it's our natural state, easier to get to, much easier because you don't have to do anything to get there. And when you're relaxed, the part of your body or parts of your body that maybe used to feel a level of discomfort, whether through tension, stress or otherwise, just let go.

It's almost as if they start to get confused after listening to me droning on with my boring voice for 20 minutes, 25 minutes or whatever it's been. And it just doesn't seem to be there anymore. And like, why? It's changed.

But nothing's been done. I've just listened to this weird man on a podcast talking about tightropes and walking on bits of wood. What's he been on about? Is he drunk? I don't know what he's going on about.

And then those changes happen. Like instantly something changes. And why? How's it changed? How come I feel relaxed? He hasn't told me to relax.

I don't think relaxation, feeling calm, feeling peaceful, physically and emotionally is your natural state. It's natural. Everything else is added.

Everything else is created. You don't have to create relaxation. It's already there.

It's already reachable. Always. It's just sometimes we make so many layers of other stuff that we forget that actually underneath is the relaxation.

So it's just like in the winter, some places like a pond or even a river will freeze over. And people skate and do all kinds of stuff. But they forget that there's water under there.

The water doesn't go away. And it's always reachable, literally. Bash on the ice a little bit and the water's there.

In fact, you're skating on the water because it's just ice, frozen water. So maybe that's part of the issue is ice. When relaxation and comfort gets distorted in the same way as water gets distorted and frozen, which is not its natural state, water flows.

Water's wet, it flows, it moves. Ice is a different type of being, you know, it's a different way of being for that water. So maybe if you do that analogy with discomfort, stress or tension, pain, whatever, that's the water turned into ice and it becomes inflexible, becomes hard, spiky sometimes, difficult to maneuver.

When you start to just allow yourself to let go, decide to give yourself 20 minutes to listen to me or to just sit there on your own, just closing your eyes, you allow the sun to shine on that ice and for it to melt. And what happens when it does melt, you can look at the pond or you can look at the river, point to me which bit was the ice, which bit of water was the ice.

You can't, because it's all part of the same thing.

So that feeling in one part of your body, let's say like the ice, it melts and it becomes lost within the rest of your body. It's a feeling that could be a very discomfort, you know, it could be really horrible. Once it starts to spread, like a, you know, you could put a whole bag of salt, not, you know, like a, what does salt come in? Like a container, a little container, you know, imagine you could put a whole one of those into a water jug and you won't be able to, it's like, oh, you won't be able to touch it.

You could pour one in a bath and, you know, you could feel it, you can smell it, you can get in the bath, you can feel it on your body, the salt working because it's quite healthy and, you know, it can affect you, help you relax and stuff, I guess. But if you pour one in a river or even in a swimming pool, you don't feel it, you don't notice it, you don't smell it, you don't taste it.

It's absorbed and it becomes part of the rest of the water.

It's almost, it's still there, but it just seems to disappear. And that's what happens, I guess, with discomfort. It just disappears when you relax.

It disappears because that ice or that salt just moves and dissolves into that relaxing water. So it's untraceable, you can't pinpoint where it is, it's just gone. So the more time you decide to allow yourself to relax, the more peacefulness you have, the more clarity you have thinking-wise, your mind slows down, allows you to choose what you think about.

Instead of having all these demands, things slow down, the more calmness increases and you feel peaceful, emotionally and physically. And healing increases. Emotional and physical again, that healing spreads through your body and your mind.

And you can feel amazing. So relaxed. So calm.

And I'm going to count from five down to one. And with every number I count down, you can become twice, twice as relaxed in your body and in your mind. Twice as relaxed in your body and your mind.

Now, five, four, three, two, one.