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Hello and welcome to jasonnewland.com. My name is Jason Newland and this is Stress and Pain Relief podcast. Now please only listen when you can safely close your eyes. Thank you for listening and while you're listening remember that you can change your physical position at any time because comfort is number one and that's the reason you're listening isn't it really to feel more comfortable.
Now I'd like you to get yourself prepared to feel more comfortable by sitting in a comfortable supportive chair or lying down on a flat surface that's comfortable as well such as a bed or sofa something like that and I'm just going to talk to you I'm just going to ask you to imagine something and I'm going to use the term discomfort when referring to either feelings physical feelings or all physical feelings either pain or stress or tension.
So when I talk about that I'm going to use the word discomfort or uncomfortable feelings instead of because it's an interchangeable recording in the sense of this is here for helping you to both relax and reduce stress levels as well as chronic pain. Now I'd like you to imagine you just you are where you are now you know you're either sitting down or you're lying on your bed and to be fair that doesn't take a lot of imagination does it because that's the reality.
So I'm going to ask you to just focus on your body and just get a rough idea of how you feel physically and unlike some of the other recordings I've done recently on this podcast I'm not going to be focusing on one particular area of your body I'm going to be focusing on all of the stress in your body and mind.
I'm going to be focusing on all any kind of chronic pain or physical discomfort in your body or in your mind the whole lot so not focused on just one part okay so just get an idea of how you feel just focusing on the different parts of your body maybe starting with your face your head and I imagine if there's one part that's particularly more uncomfortable than others that may be the first part of your body that you focus on which I think is kind of natural to do that especially
as that is probably the reason you're listening to this recording because there's a particular part which is unpleasant just you know let's be let's be honest it's an unpleasant feeling and you'd like to reduce that feeling to make it more manageable more comfortable now the first thing we need to do really is just to acknowledge to your body that the fee those feelings are there so by relaxing feeling calmer and thereby reducing any feelings of discomfort we're not going to ignore them we're going to acknowledge that they're there and that
they have been there for a reason that they're there to help us and when you start thinking in that way when you stop thinking that because it's it's very easy and natural as well I would say to almost feel as if your body is turning against you you know it almost as if it's attacking you in some way by causing this physical discomfort or emotional discomfort because obviously pain and stress affects us sometimes even more emotionally and mentally than physically so when we talk or when I'm talking about about your
body I'm also talking about your mind as well I'm talking about your whole being this whole experience that you're currently having you know this is this is now this is in this moment where you are but to change your perspective in the sense of being able to have some gratitude towards the stress and the physical any kind of physical discomfort to be able to thank it for for doing all it knows what to do it's trying to help you it doesn't you know the the different parts of the body don't
necessarily know what it needs to do to get your attention the fact is that when you relax relax your body does its own healing we don't consciously do the healing that's an unconscious process and it's our brain that does that our brain sends and it just creates those conditions for our body to heal it's a very natural automatic process but stress tension can get in the way it could be like a roadblock to it stopping those it's almost like um lately there's been environmental people blocking the motorways and stopping sometimes
ambulances can't get through it could be a little bit like that the stress that increases stress increases chronic pain the chronic pain sensation is increased by stress causing that roadblock for the healing from the brain sending the healing down and is that roadblock which is caused by the stress it's almost not we don't cause it ourselves but that healing needs to get through just like an ambulance on a motorway or a road needs to get to the patient or to the hospital so by thanking by thanking the stress the tension
the feelings the physical sensations by just saying thank you for all that you do that roadblock starts to dissolve because it they know that you they've now got your attention the physical sensations in your body have your attention which is what they want which means they start to relax because all they want is your attention they want acknowledgement and they think they're doing the best thing for you they're doing this for you because you are them you know ultimately your body everything your body does and your mind does it's doing
it for you it's just sometimes the process isn't the right process just in the same way when we're driving somewhere we might go it might go down the wrong road or take the wrong the wrong journey and end up lost or just get there late but the intentions correct the intentions right the intention is to get to that destination destination we'll eventually get there but it might be a very painful journey so you know it's easy to maybe even you know consciously not know the best way around something the best
way to accomplish something and our bodies and our minds sometimes are like that the pain in your body wants your attention it wants you to know it wants you to acknowledge which means it increases the physical sensation gets larger the stress the tension increases until we acknowledge it now you could say well i acknowledge that you know i've been taking painkillers or i've acknowledged it the stress levels are ridiculous of course i've acknowledged that but this is a different type of acknowledgement because we're taking time out of the day we're
sitting or lying down not doing anything else except firstly giving attention acknowledging that the feelings are there and they're there for a reason and then thanking your body thanking every part of your body for all it does for you because the um the i don't know how many things our bodies do for us but the amount of things are automatically done by our bodies for us you know the main things obviously heart pumping the brain working the spinal cord sending messages to the different um it sounds like a little bit
gossiper doesn't it i have a very gossipy spine sending messages you know all these things the blood flowing the it's actually amazing what our bodies do for us and this is an opportunity to say thank you an acknowledgement of this amazing process and in that acknowledgement and thank you is saying thank you to the stress and attention and maybe the pain for for alerting you for letting you know because if the tension wasn't there to warn you that things needed to maybe change maybe there's certain aspects of your life styled
that need addressing i don't know only you can know this but once the stress starts to rise it can warn you it's like a warning that maybe you need to do some things different maybe you're just letting you know the stress levels are getting too high really or the chronic pain may be there to be warning you to be careful with that part of your body maybe you do need to seek some medical assistance or just be a bit gentle with yourself once you acknowledge that once you hear and listen
to those messages that your body has given you then just like an email you can delete it like a voicemail you just delete it once you've heard a voicemail you don't keep it you just get rid of it don't you because you've addressed the issue because you've heard and maybe you've decided to make some changes maybe you have made those changes but your body hasn't been told it's okay the stress levels are still rising but maybe you've made changes to your your workload or you know you've made changes to your
life and the stress levels have still been rising too high so maybe all that really needs to be done is to thank your stress for being there for warning you but it's okay now it's all right it's all sorted now thank you for what you've done but you've addressed it you don't need don't need that anymore but please you know you can let your stress levels know please warn me in the future if i need to relax more if i need to if i start going back to how i was
before maybe maybe i was too stressed and doing too much but right now i don't need that i don't need the stress right now it's all sorted i don't need those warnings from you anymore or talking to the physical discomfort you could say i know the cause you know i've for myself my lower back i know that it's a part of my body that i need to be careful with thank you for warning me thank you for for looking out for me thank you for caring and this might it probably
sounds really silly but you know what why not i mean we listen to our body so why shouldn't our body listen to us just say to your body maybe your whole body or maybe just part of your body it's up to you just say thank you thank you for warning me thank you for caring thank you for helping and it's not even so much about the words it's about the intention it's about thinking it it's about feeling it it's about being aware that actually you don't need those warnings anymore they're
no longer necessary because if you're addressing the issues that were causing tension and stress anxiety or yet physical pain if you're addressing those issues then that warning is no longer needed if the fire the smoke alarm goes off in your home the first thing you do you don't just turn the fire alarm you don't just turn it off you find out what's caused it with my case it's burnt sausages usually so i go in the kitchen i make sure that it's safe you know make sure take them out the oven
maybe open the window in the kitchen close the kitchen door then i turn off the smoke alarm in the hallway so done in that order the smoke alarm can relax now if i turn the smoke alarm off then open the door to the kitchen more smoke is going to come out of the kitchen and set the alarm off again which means i might go out close the door again turn the alarm off then go back into the kitchen open the door the smoke comes out again keep setting it off i
might do that three or four times and then i realize if i saw the issue out the smoke alarm will only need to be turned off once and then it'll stay off because it's done its job it's warned me about a potential issue and then it can relax so i can go in the kitchen turn the oven off make sure everything's safe open the window to let the smoke out of the kitchen and then come out of the kitchen closing the door behind me and then maybe open the window in
the bathroom maybe in the bedroom if depends how much smoke there is if there's a lot of smoke i'll open as many windows as possible i'll even go into my neighbors and open his windows and which is silly really it's not true and then i turn the smoke alarm off and it doesn't come back on again so if you think of you know the stress or chronic pain as being like a smoke alarm once the issue is attended to focused on once you realize that there's certain things you know with
chronic pain issues there's certain things i can't do with my lower back if a car broke down outside my house and someone asked me to help them push it i'd have to say no not because i can't physically do it because i can but it's going to cause me a lot of pain to do that whilst doing it and afterwards because it's going to irritate my lower back in quite a big way so by listening to my lower back the warning i notice certain things not to do which means my
lower back can just leave me alone and have a degree of comfort and relaxation but as soon as i start using my lower back that smoke alarm goes off which in the you know with my lower back is very very unpleasant so it's about listening to our bodies listening to our minds i guess but just saying thank you thank you for all you do i mean our bodies are amazing absolutely amazing i don't know much about anatomy a little bit i know where my hands are but you know it's just
phenomenal just on a molecular level the things that our bodies do that we have no conscious control over no conscious awareness over even amazing so having some gratitude it seems like a really obvious thing to do like a sensible thing to do anyway that's the end of this recording i hope you found it useful and enjoy feeling relaxed
Paragraph spacing and recurring name or title errors have been tidied. Because this began as a voice transcription, an occasional word or piece of punctuation may still be incorrect.