(Long Music) #6 let me bore your PAIN AWAY (Jason Newland)

Hello and welcome to Let Me Bore Your Pain Away. My name is Jason Newland. Please only listen when you can safely close your eyes.

And just to let you know that there's an additional speaker on this podcast called Vinnie, the little dog that's in the background on the floor chewing a bone. So if you don't want to hear him chewing a bone then I suggest you turn off because he will be in the background chomping away pretty much for the duration. It's either that or putting him in the bedroom on his own and he doesn't like that.

So you know the only other way is to do these recordings as if he's already asleep in the bed and then I can close the door quietly and do a recording. But he likes to be with me pretty much most of the time. So that's the way the cookie crumbles as they say.

He shouldn't be too like really loud. He's not like he's going yum yum yum yum. He's not sitting there with a knife and fork like singing a song.

It's just crunching and he has the occasional drink as you can hear probably lapping away. Which maybe that's why they call him a lap dog because he is kind of a lap dog. He's pretty pretty small.

Anyway also apart from only listen when you can safely close your eyes only listen to this when you know the cause of your chronic pain condition. Now I'm going to be talking about chronic pain and it won't necessarily be particularly interesting possibly my presentation. You know it's an opportunity to let you know some useful hopefully useful tips and tidbits or whatever based on neurology and neuroscience and neuroplasticity.

Is it neuroplasticity? Plasticity yeah if I could say the word that'd be good wouldn't it? The brain plasticine and so you do need to know the cause and this is not just for my recording but for any any recording or video or anything that you watch or listen to to help you to reduce physical pain. Find out the cause first. It's very important and I'll give you an example.

It's a very basic example but it's a good example. Two would be you know pain in the chest. Obviously I say obviously but hopefully obviously for everyone you get that checked out.

Make sure it's not an emergent situation and you get to the hospital and check it out. Another less obvious would be a pain in the stomach. Could be appendicitis.

You don't want to be masking that pain and then have the appendix burst. My brother had his appendix burst and it wasn't pretty. He's making some weird noises.

I had appendicitis but mine was kind of if anything I exaggerated the pain so I could have time off school. But there you go. So some people do question well why do you why have I got to see a doctor or you know make sure I know the cause before.

Well it's not even a case of really covering myself because I'm not making any money out of this but it's covering you. It's making sure that you're safe and that's the most important thing. So I'm just going to talk.

That's all I'm going to do. I'm not going to focus on any particular pain relief technique like maybe I would do with a chronic pain recording normally. Now I've done I don't know how many of these let me bore your pain away recordings I've done.

Only a couple. I've done five. I've done five.

So the first one was in the 18th of August 2022. The last one was October last year 2022. So I've done five different recordings.

So for some reason there's only the 10-hour ones on there. I don't know why that is. And this is like a follow-up from the number four because number five is danger signals, no pain signals, not pain signals.

And the number four is a follow-up from the fourth one was the pain. The brain has no pain. So this is kind of a continuation of that.

Not everyone's going to necessarily know this but there are no pain signals in our brain. The actual physical brain. So someone could have brain surgery once they have local anesthetic in order to you know get through the skull.

That's not the nice not particularly nice bit but once they're through the skull there's no pain. There's no pain sensors in the actual brain itself which I find kind of ironic considering the pain the brain rather creates the pain in the body. So if you stub your toe for example or say you drop a brick on your knee why would you do that? But so you feel the pain in your knee or in your toe but your knee is not creating the pain.

That signal like quick as a flash before you could even know it moves up through your spinal cord to your brain and your brain sends a signal back instantly to give you pain or not give you pain. I think a good example is a little kid because when we're when we're older we we get used to is chewing is actually annoying me to be honest. Stop making so much noise.

Blimey. I've been moaning too much. He's just had a pig's ear now he's got a bone thing.

He's he's happy though plus we're having a little bit of a he's put me basically I told him off early because he was barking because there was people cleaning the hallway downstairs and and he was you know he's barking to let me know and to warn people off I guess. And I told him off because I was asleep while I was in bed trying to sleep. And since I've been up he basically put me on the naughty step.

So I've had some time out. He's kind of not really talking to me. So I'm having to suck up a little bit by giving him treats.

Hopefully he'll forgive me. So yeah. So you've got this situation we learn as adults we learn we connect things don't we we just connect things.

I'm not talking from an expert. I'm not an expert on anything. But it is a simple fact that we connect things.

We have expectation towards a certain thing happening. And I saw this video. And it was talking about it was it was about chronic pain.

So it's a subject I'm very interested in have been for 25 years. So it's just something that I've read many books on the subject academic books as well as actually help people with hypnosis in person to person quite a few years back and made quite a few recordings over the years as well and videos. So I'm interested in the subject.

So I was watching this YouTube video. It was either last night or this morning. And they were talking telling a story about a man who was he's actually a chronic pain expert.

I forget his name to be honest. But there was this this lecturer was talking about this man. And he was walking pretty much just with some shorts on.

He might have had a t shirt and shoes. I don't know. But you know, the idea is he's walking through this jungle or something.

And he he feels like a sharp scratch on his ankle and he just like ignores it just a bramble. You know, that's what he thinks. And he continues walking.

And then he collapses and wakes up three days later in hospital. And he'd been bitten by one of the deadliest snakes in the world. He didn't realize.

And because his expectation is he probably been doing that for years and years and years. And get scratched and it's just just a scratch. It's a bramble.

This is it's a stick, which is a bit sharp, you know, it's just like nothing. So his expectation meant that one of the probably the most painful things that could happen to someone didn't give him hardly any pain at all. It was a mild discomfort, because he didn't believe that it was anything.

So basically, even though because his brain didn't know what it was, it was just a feeling on the skin. Obviously, the teeth would have gone into the skin, but it was a feeling. And the signal went to his brain, because his brain is so used to ignoring such a feeling, sending a signal back down to the ankle.

Nothing, nothing to worry about. Not important. And it happens in a flash, literally.

I know I'm saying the word flash a lot, probably because I just watched the movie Flash. It's instant, it's quicker than we can even imagine. It's just so quick.

And we're not aware of it consciously, not consciously aware of how this stuff is moving through our nervous system, up our spinal cord, into our brain, and then back down the spinal cord again, to the part of the body. And then the thought comes like, and then it's almost like, well, there's a feeling. It's nothing.

It's just a scratch. And that was it, because there was no feeling, there was no pain, really. Well, as I said, he collapsed, and he woke up three days later.

He's fine. He survived everything, which is good. I wouldn't tell the story if he hadn't survived.

And plus, the next bit wouldn't really be, well, that wouldn't be useful, really. Just tell me about someone that died. How's that going to help? So I've also got my own story as well.

It's not about snakes, but it's about, it's more to do with anxiety, but physical feelings, and expectations, and how we can have faulty feelings. And that's what this next bit is. He was, for some reason, I mean, I would never go back in a jungle after that.

I wouldn't have been in a jungle in the first place, but I'm pretty sure I wouldn't go back after having gone through that. But he did. Anyway, so he's walking, this is like a few months later, or the year, the year after, I don't know.

And he feels a scratch on his ankle. In fact, he does, he feels an enormous pain in his ankle, like really, really, really, really huge pain, agonizing, and he falls down onto the ground, clutching his ankle, absolutely terrified, and in agony. And he looks down and he's been scratched by a stick, a little branch with a little sharp bit, which just scratched him, that was it.

So there's that expectation that he'd learned from that one experience. And he probably didn't even realize that he was expecting, or maybe not consciously expecting, but ready to have that feeling again. And maybe in his own mind, wanting to have the correct warning, because ideally, you get bitten by a snake, you want to get medical attention instantly.

Now, he didn't get it instantly, because he didn't realize he'd been bitten. He luckily survived. But his brain mistook the information and responded incorrectly.

But wanting to help, not realizing that it was the wrong information. And what happens as soon as he sees the branch? The brain then knows, the signal goes back to the brain, you know, it's just a little stick with a little sharp bit, and all it's done is just scratched the skin. The pain goes away, instantly.

And that's something quite amazing, really. Don't you think? It's to be in absolute agony, and then nothing. Because you realize that you're fine.

It's a little bit like some of the old movies. You ever see some of the old Western movies where maybe a sheriff would get shot in the chest, and he'd go down and like, oh, and he'd be doing his last speech, like, tell Mickey Mouse, I love him and whatever. And then someone opens his coat up and sees that his whiskey flask has stopped the bullet.

So the bullet didn't even go in him, and he's uninjured. And then he gets up, and he's like, oh, oh, okay. So, you know, guaranteed not only would, I know it's a film, but he would have felt the physical sensation.

Maybe not being shot if he'd never been shot before, but he'd have believed he had been, clearly. And he really thought that that was it. Therefore, he behaved in a way that he thought we should behave in that situation, probably based on what he'd seen previously.

There was an old, I think it's a carry-on movie, Kenneth Williams. And he, he basically falls, although the caravan starts to fall down a hole that he's in, and he gets knocked unconscious. But there's a tomato ketchup jar that tips over and drips all over him.

So when he gets woken up, he's covered in this red stuff, and he thinks it's blood. And you know, he's in pain. Until he tastes it and realizes it's ketchup, and he's not in pain anymore.

Again, it's a comedy show, but it's a comedy film. But if you think about a little kid, before they've learned all the things that we've learned, all those associations that we learn, connecting things together, that aren't always true. You see a little kid, I'm talking maybe three years old, and they'll fall over.

And I've seen it so many times. And a fallover, and the parent or whoever the adult were there with, they'll look at the adult to know whether to cry or not, to know whether to be in pain or not. Now, if the adult goes, I mean, of course, if the child is actually injured, you know, then that's a different thing.

But if there's just no injury at all, and it's just a little bump, and you say to the kid, oh, and you laugh, oh, you silly Billy, and you laugh, and they'll, the amount of kids that will laugh. And even if there is a little bit discomfort, they don't care. But when the parent or the adult goes, oh, no, like, it's the worst catastrophe that's ever happened ever in the world.

The kid will howl, cry, be filled with pain. Now, as we get older, we don't necessarily look outwards for that. Because we've learned loads of different ways to associate things.

I mean, I've fallen over, and quite a few times, and I wait to see whether or not I've hurt myself. The last time I fell over, I fell down the stairs, and I fractured my back in two places. And to start with, I wasn't sure.

You know, I wasn't sure. I had to check myself. I was like, okay, I can breathe.

I'm not sure if I'm hurt, because I stayed still. I could feel something. But then I moved, and I couldn't move.

I meant my friend helped me get me up. By the way, I don't fall over all the time. I'm not that bad.

So, as an adult, I'm able to take a little bit of time out, and look, you know, a few seconds, even, and engage from the physical, how I'm physically feeling, which is just, I guess, we all do, really. We don't look to someone else, necessarily. Now, I say that, but my friend observed me slipping over.

I think he's the one that planted the banana skin on the stairs, but I'll never find that out. And I looked to him to start with, I guess, to, because he could see if there was any blood or anything like that. I did cut my hand open, but that's just, that's all there was.

And that was the only thing I was really looking, because I couldn't see for myself. I can't see what my face looks like, or my head, unless I look in the mirror. But even then, to be fair, I don't, you know, I put, generally, when I look in the mirror, I have my hands over my eyes.

Just, it's like a horror movie. So, I don't, you know, I wasn't sure, but I knew how I felt, and that was the main thing. Now, at this point, you might be thinking, you're just rambling on.

I mean, what is the point of this? Ah, okay, I forgot to point out what the point was. And I possibly should have said this at the beginning, gauge your chronic pain condition, gauge your level of discomfort, let's call it discomfort, what it was at the beginning. When you press the play button, when you first heard me, my squeaky voice say, my name's Jason Newland, only listen when you can safely close your eyes.

You know, remember that far back? Yeah, that's about three months ago, I started this recording. Sorry about that. So, the idea, kind of, of these, let me bore your pain away, is, it's very unconventional.

It's not like anything else you'll hear, unless, of course, it's very much like something else you've heard. Then it is. But other than that, you're not going to hear anything like this anywhere else.

And it's probably a good reason because, maybe because it's rubbish, I don't know, possibly. Oh, dear. But I do do the Let Me Bore You To Sleep recordings, and it's over 1000 recordings.

And this is kind of an extension of that. But focused, really focused on the subject of relieving, reducing your physical discomfort, so that you are able to let go of it, either consciously or unconsciously, either on purpose or by accident. You know, it might, this recording could be a distraction.

It could even be an annoyance, you might be thinking, oh, this is what the heck have I, I'm never going to get that time back. True, you won't. But how are you feeling physically? How are you physically feeling in that part of your body that compared to how you were before? And the idea is, by the end of this recording, you will feel more relaxed, you will feel more comfortable in that part of your body.

And you may not realize or understand why. Because it doesn't necessarily make sense. That listening to some random man, possibly the other side of the world, talking absolute rubbish, potentially, it might seem like that.

How can that be useful? But it's not about looking at it intellectually. Plus, I don't have the ability to do that. I can't even spell intellectual.

Intellectual, I-N-T. I don't even know how many N's are in intellectual. Three? I don't know.

So it's about how you feel, not just afterwards, but during as well. And the more you listen, this is some of the feedback that I've received over the last 17 years that I've been doing recordings for chronic pain, relaxation, sleeping, or various different things. The feedback I've got is that I suppose I kind of wear you down.

So even if you're sitting there or lying there thinking, no, I'm not going to relax, I'm not going to relax, I'm not going to relax. Nothing this weirdo says is going to make any difference to me. Eventually, you just give up and let go.

And you relax. And when you relax, you physically feel more comfortable in all parts of your body. I liken it to, imagine a swimming pool without chlorine in it, just with nice water, clean water that you could drink.

I know you probably wouldn't get a swimming pool like that because most swimming pools have chlorine and they have almost like they look blue. Mind you, I think it's the sides that are blue, isn't it? It's not the actual water. I'm not sure.

But imagine a swimming pool, you know, just a normal size swimming pool that maybe you'd get in a hotel or even a huge one that you get in a leisure center. And it's just full of normal water, tap water, bottled water, whatever. And you could drink out of it, you could put a cup of water cup in there and just drink and it's fine.

Of course, if people have been swimming in there, then you wouldn't want to be drinking out of it. But especially if I've been swimming in there, because that would be my monthly bath. But yeah, you really wouldn't want to, the water would not be blue either.

So, but anyway, you could drink out of the water because it's just water. Now, if you had a cup of water and you poured in a spoonful of salt, you won't be able to drink that water. It would just taste disgusting.

And that's almost the way we think of physical discomfort. It's almost like it's stuck in one place. That feeling is just in one part of body doesn't, you know, and it's it gets a little bit isolated.

Now, if you have that bottle, that cup cup with the tablespoon of salt in it, and you just pour that into the swimming pool, just leave it for a few minutes. I mean, you know, full enough to leave it for more than a few seconds, actually. Try as you may, you would not be able to taste that salt.

You can go to each corner of the swimming pool, you could swim from one end to the other with your mouth open. Why would you do that? But you're not going to taste any salt. And you may think, what are you talking about? A swimming pool with salt in it? What the heck's that got to do with anything? Well, you may, you may ask that.

And I forgot what my point was. Now, the point is, your body has lots of different feelings, lots of different sensations. And when you start to spread, allow those feelings to spread all the way through your body.

They become like that salt in the swimming pool, instead of the salt in the cup. The salt in the cup is horrible, tastes disgusting, unless, of course, you love salty water. That's even too weird for me.

I do, I have used salty water to wash out my mouth and stuff. In the past, I think I had a tooth out and the dentist said, yeah, do that. Use, wash your mouth out with salty water.

And what he didn't know is I actually had a bag of salt in my bag. And I had a bottle of water and a cup. And I started doing it there.

And he said, no, not here. Wait till you get home. And he said, anyway, ideally, probably warm water would be better.

So I pulled my kettle out of my bag. He said, no, not here. I said, oh, dear.

See, dentists, they just, they lead you up one path and then just like, don't know where you are with them, do you? So, I realized that with your body, you have feelings, and it's throughout your whole body. And when you just, I mean, you don't even have to pour. You can just chuck the cup into the swimming pool.

And it will spread. Not the cup, but the contents. And you won't even notice it.

It's there. Because I guess literally, it gets watered down. And it can't affect you anymore.

Because it's no longer caged, or stuck in a certain box. And I understand why you wouldn't want to release it. Because, you know, I suppose logically, if there's a pain, let's say in your knee, or there's in your shoulder, and the idea of letting that spread, and letting it loose, you don't want to go into other parts of your body and having that pain there.

But that's not what happens. What happens is it dilutes. It dilutes really quickly, like really thins out almost nothing.

It's like a paint. You know, when you get thick paints, and I realize I know nothing about paint. It's not really a good way to do an analogy, is it? If you know nothing about the subject.

But hey, I'm talking about this as well, aren't I? So the more you water down the paint, the less painty it is. It almost, you know, I've watered down some paint that I was just because there wasn't enough to do the wall. And I watered it down so much that it just dripped off the wall.

It didn't stick to the wall at all. And that's one of the only painting stories I have. I don't have many painting stories.

Never been a big fan. I've not been a big fan of painting. I really don't like painting.

But I wanted to be a painter. I wanted to be an artist. Not to be an artist, just to be good at something.

I'm still waiting to find something to be good at. But when I was a kid, I wanted to be good at drawing. And I would spend hours drawing.

And quite often the result would just be when I showed a teacher, it'd be like, Oh, really? Three hours? You took three hours to do this? Three hours? Like, yeah, but they get stuck on that. How could it have taken you three hours to do this? It's two stick people, stick figures. I mean, how three hours? I mean, even the clouds are on the ground.

When has there ever been yellow trees? Like, just, okay, perhaps I don't have the natural thing to be an artist. But I figured that by spreading out the paint, trying to get back to what I was talking about now, I could spread it out. But basically, it was no longer paint.

Honestly, it was no longer, it even started to lose its colour. Which is weird, because it was grey. I don't know why I decided to have grey walls.

But it just lost its colour. It was almost see-through. I mean, I could still see the wall.

I suppose you don't stop seeing the wall, do you? But I could still see the polka dot pattern of the wall. And it was just pointless. It kind of looked, I don't know what to say what it looked like, but it didn't look good.

It looked like some kind of weird event that just took place. So, when we start allowing the feeling to just let go, let it out of its cage, let it out of its box, no longer constrain it. I'll say an analogy.

I like my analogies, don't I? Even if they are ridiculously bad. If you think about a hosepipe, and you may be thinking, how have you gone from a swimming pool, to weird wet paint on a wall, to being rubbish at painting and doing stick figures, spending three hours, to now talking about hosepipes. It's easy.

You've just got to have my brain. It's just easy. It all makes sense.

It all connects to me. So, you've got a hosepipe, and you can stand on the hosepipe. I mean, you don't have to stand on the hosepipe.

I'm not saying it's compulsory, but if the hosepipe is turned on, even if it's just dripping, which couldn't cause any problems for anyone, just a tiny drip out the end of the hosepipe, once a minute, or once every five minutes. Now, if you stood on that hosepipe near the end, you know, like on the neck of it, let's say, for long enough, the pressure would start to build.

And it would start to build, and it would continue to build, to the point that as soon as you took your foot off, it would absolutely gush out.

And then it would go back to the drip. Drip. Almost inconsequential, almost unnoticeable drip.

That feeling, that sensation of that drip is almost like nothing. But by keeping it, let's say, in a box or in a cage, or trying to push it away, not wanting to experience it, which is the natural way to be, but not always helpful. But by trying to avoid it, it turns from a drip into this big pressure.

And the more pressure, the more uncomfortable you feel. And it gets to the point where we're just unwilling to take our foot off the hosepipe, and the pressure just keeps going, just keeps getting stronger, and stronger, and stronger. Not realizing that if we let our foot off, yeah, it will be a blast.

But it will be a blast of relief. It won't feel worse, it'll be a nice, instant relief of letting go, a release of energy, a release of that pressure, letting go of the build-up. And then you just go back to the drip.

Drip. Almost a non-event. And often that's kind of what physical feelings are like.

You know, if we try to push them away or ignore them, it is like putting your foot on the hosepipe. And even though you might be trying to ignore them because you're concerned or you were concerned about how you were going to feel, even before you felt that way, you were concerned before, and therefore you put your foot on that hosepipe to stop that dripping, worried that it was going to build into something else, which ironically it does, because you've got your foot on the hosepipe.

And then the worry that that, or the concern that that pressure, the way you're feeling is, if you take your foot off the hosepipe, it's going to make it worse, when actually it releases it.

It releases. Which gives you physical relief and emotional relief, of course, as well. Another thing of my own experience, I mean, I have stood on some hosepipes over the years, is back in 2004, I used to, I was having a lot of anxiety, panic attacks, stuff like that.

And I was, you know, it was quite, I had to leave my job and it was a pretty bad situation. And I had this little part-time job, and I was sitting at the computer in the office, and I suddenly felt a feeling in my groin. And it was like, because I was having physical feelings, just, perhaps I should be a bit more specific when I say that feeling in my groin, but in my groin area, there was this weird feeling, and it sent me into a panic, sent me literally breathless, really, like went to a million miles an hour instantly.

Realising then that it was my mobile phone. On vibrate, as the song was ringing me, because I had my phone turned off, but it was on vibrate, you know, it's on mute. And I couldn't believe it.

I couldn't believe that something that was completely, because I was expecting, that's what I was expecting, I was expecting to have those feelings, and I was almost primed to have them. So anything that came along, something that was completely irrelevant to it, triggered that anxiety feeling. And as soon as I realised it was my phone, the feelings went away instantly.

And I laughed. And I also learnt something that day. First of all, don't leave my phone down my underpants, put them in my pocket.

Secondly, if that can happen, if a phone vibrating can cause an anxiety attack with me, then those feelings weren't real. They may have felt real. But it wasn't real, that stuff that was going on wasn't real.

Because there was nothing physically wrong. There was no need. There was no use to it.

And after that moment, things started to improve. It still took a while, because I'd had a year and a half of going through this stuff. But things started to improve after that.

And I realised that I was being oversensitive to the point where an outside feeling of a vibrating phone, it was outside. I mean, it wasn't inside my body, it was outside. And I realised that I don't need to, don't need and none of us need to be at the whim of something like that.

We don't need to allow outside things to affect us in that way. We can take a bit more control and realise that things not only can we change, we do change, we all change over time. Things change, just natural.

And you can feel more comfortable, you can feel more relaxed and you can enjoy that process. The process of diluting any kinds of unpleasant feelings. No longer standing on that hosepipe, so let it just be a drip rather than a pressure.

Starting to expect to feel more comfort. Expect to feel more relaxed and enjoy realising that actually things are going to improve. Things are going to improve and you're going to feel happier.

Which brings me to the end of this very boring recording. So thank you for listening. Remember to be kind to yourself because you deserve to be happy.

Be gentle with yourself. Do something nice for yourself. Today.

Lots of love. Bye.