(music) Pain Dissociation Let me bore your pain away #30 Jason Newland 28th April 2025

Hello and welcome to Let Me Bore Your Pain Away. My name's Jason Newland. My website is jasonnewland.com. Oh, it's a really groovy place to go to.

All my recordings are on there and you really should visit. It's a lovely place to holiday. Oh yes.

And please only listen when you can safely close your eyes. And what else? If you've got any questions for Q&A Friday, there's a form you can fill in on my website. And I do have a Facebook group called Jason Newland's Boring Group, which you can join.

There's a link to that on my website as well. And lastly, my YouTube channel is at Jason Newland. I forgot what it was for a second.

So yeah, all my latest recordings I also upload to YouTube and all the podcast episodes so you can listen to them there as well. Oh, that is everything I think. Yeah, it's everything.

So today, today, today, I hope everyone's well. As I said, this is the Let Me Bore Your Pain Away. These recordings, it's just me talking.

I usually focus on a specific kind of thing. And I go from there. Just depends.

It all depends. So what I do, I do quite a bit of research for these recordings. When I say quite a bit, I do a little bit.

Try and look through some of the research papers and the books and stuff that have been written over the years. And also, you know, try and include some up to date information, as well as me just chatting and discussing some kind of techniques that you could use if you wanted to. Or you can just so now.

So also need to just add, this is not a replacement for therapy or medical advice. Only listen to this recording when you know the cause of the chronic pain and you have permission from your doctor. Okey dokey.

Basically, just me chatting, just me chatting. And if it helps, great. You know, and I think it's a little bit like the Let Me Bore You To Sleep, which is very similar to Let Me Bore You To Sleep in a sense of me just waffling on.

A little bit more focused on this one, on this one, a little bit more focused, because I do try and keep bringing it back to the subject. However, I think that over time, as with the Let Me Bore You To Sleep, you get used to my voice and you kind of get used to feeling a certain way, feeling relaxed, feeling calm, feeling comfortable. Your mind slows down, your body relaxes.

There's a sense of peacefulness that can come over you and you may also find that your mind drifts. So you know, these are kind of things that would be natural. It's probably no different from really in the same way kind of, if you listen to a favourite piece of music, it brings back maybe the feelings that you have about that particular bit of music.

So I'll give you an example of my own there, Total Eclipse Of The Heart, or Down Under, Do You Come From A Land Down Under, that one, or Africa. Okay, that wasn't a very good example of that one, but Toto, Africa, that one. So those songs give me a sense of, I get a sense of well-being when I hear those songs, because they remind me of, you know, that period when I really first got into music, the early 80s.

That's when I, I liked music before that, but I kind of really got into music, like late 70s, early 80s. With the late 70s, I was kind of, I suppose, following my brother's leads in a way, you know, I was kind of into what they were into, trying to copy them maybe. But in the 80s, I went in my own direction, because I liked stuff that they didn't necessarily like, because different age groups.

So I was the only one in my family that loved Shakin' Stevens, absolutely loved, he was, he was the king. But no one else in the family loved him, they all knew that I loved him, and they accepted that, but no one else, I'm not saying they didn't like him, but no one was the kind of fan I was. In fact, in fact, I should have gone to see him in concert, that's what a big fan I was, but I never, never even thought about it.

I don't know if I'd wanted to have gone to a big place with lots of people, lots of people. So what I did, this is, I did this, I think, a couple of days ago. I went on to chat to EPT, which is my little assistant, my little study assistant.

I just asked, please list all books that discuss chronic pain relief in detail. So I went through a few books, and then I said, can you now list them all together? So they did. So the core books.

So what I did then, let's dive into book one, which is Hypnosis for Chronic Pain Management, Therapist's Guide by Mark P. Jensen, published 2011, Oxford University Press. So Mark P. Jensen, Hypnosis for Chronic Pain Management, Therapist's Guide. I think I've got that book on my bookshelf as well anyway, because I've got pretty much all books.

I haven't got all chronic pain books, but I think I've got all the hypnosis books for chronic pain that have got like hypnosis and chronic pain in the title. I've got most of those, I think, if not all of them. So apparently it says here, this is the most, probably the most important textbook specifically dedicated to using hypnosis for chronic pain.

Now, the good thing about, I'm not like pumping myself up, that sounds weird, but you know, I can see something and I kind of know what it means, and I can explain it without having to explain to me from the book. So the science and principles, overview of chronic pain, psychological, psychological aspects, or physiological and hypnosis basics. So what I was interested in is some of the things that they're talking about.

So the key stuff that they're focusing on for me is techniques, pain dissociation, altered sensory experience, time distortion. So I've talked about time distortion as well, which would be in the past, it's kind of shrinking painful episodes into smaller timeframes. And this is ideal if you're not driving or you're not doing something that needs your attention, because ultimately, you would not go to sleep.

But you kind of wouldn't really necessarily be aware of the time when the discomfort was there. And then you'd kind of become more alert at the end of it when it's kind of gone. So in a sense, time distortion, I mean, in the same as you know, when we go to sleep, we wake up, there's no really any way of knowing how many hours we've been in bed, you can guess by how light it is outside, or if you've got a clock next to you.

But it's not really a guess is if you've got a clock next to your bed. But you can't, you know, sometimes I don't know about you, but I'll wake up for a bladder emptying session. And it might feel like I've only been in bed for a little while.

And I've made I might been in bed for three or four hours. Other times, I might think, oh, it's got to be at least five in the morning. And it's only I've only been in bed for an hour.

So it's just changes. It's hard to really, I guess that is time distortion in a way. So pain blocking imagery.

So I did something like this the other day as well. Using things like shields, filters, clouds, lights, etc. I was talking about having a cast, like having a cast which protects that part of the body.

And I was talking about is something I used to do. Not not for chronic pain necessarily, but definitely for my own safety as far as I suppose germs and it's gonna sound a bit weird. But in the past when I've been sitting on the bus, I do a few different things when I'm sitting on the bus.

Nothing illegal. I'm talking about in my mind. And I would imagine that I was surrounded by a bubble, like a protective bubble.

So that if there's anyone around that was coughing or sneezing or breathing, most of them were breathing, but just to keep their germs away from me. And this is long before any kind of international incident thing that led to people wearing masks. I mean, this is like 10-15 years ago.

And it just eased my tension caused me to feel more relaxed by imagining that that barrier was there. And it wasn't just a barrier from germs and stuff in my mind. It was also a barrier from negativity.

But then I realized I kind of added to it. And I started sending healing energy to other people. I imagined it raining down on them, like sprinklers, like a smoke alarm sprinkler thing.

Because I realized I was focusing too much on me. And realizing that actually by sending out healing to them will be more beneficial to me than trying to keep them out. And sometimes I actually imagined that I all had bubbles around them, each being protected.

But at the same time, filling up with healing energy. Now, I realize it's sounds a bit wacky, maybe. And it's just a match.

It's imagination. That's all. But I found it helped.

I did. So you got empowerment, where you think about things that help you to feel more in control. I guess being reminded that you have a lot more control over how you feel than maybe you realized before.

And if you listen to this, and you're an adult, you'll notice anyway, there's more control. Now, over maybe how you react or how you feel, then you maybe did when you was little, when you was a young kid. Then there's muscles, whatever, look, what's the other thing? That's weird.

I've just clicked on the wrong page. What other things have we got here? I was all right until a second ago. Now it's just all gone.

It's all disappeared. Really, it's very, okay. So post hypnotic cues, teaching the brain to automatically dial down pain.

So I've done recordings on that. It's something, a lot of that has to do with expectation. And expectation can be very powerfully affected by previous memories and previous physical feelings.

So by listening to this recording, let's say, for example, you feel more relaxed. That's the very least really that I would hope that you'd benefit from is you'd feel more relaxed, feel calmer, your mind would be a bit slower, maybe your body feel more peaceful. And you may have a sense of well-being, maybe more of a sense of positivity even, which is quite nice.

But then the next time you listen to my recording, whether it's a new one, whether it's the old one, whether it's one from 10 years ago, or one from, you know, a new one that I do, or even a different kind of podcast, you'll almost be expecting to feel relaxed. And when you hear my voice, there's that, maybe that expectation that when you do hear my voice, you'll feel calmer and your mind will slow down. Maybe you'll drift and your mind will drift and absorb the just absorb anything that is useful for you that I say, because I'm going to be saying a lot of things and some of this is going to be a bit pointless.

But some of it might really be useful. And that can just be absorbed into your mind, and potentially shape the way that you feel about your body and your physical sensations in a more positive way, moving into the future, as well as now. So other things, strengths of some of these things, so you got highly evidence based.

And so these techniques are evidence based and not just made up random stuff. I do make up a lot of random stuff as well. But I like that I like that idea of trying things out.

Because it's never ending, you never, we're never going to run out of ideas. And that's why I've spent 19 years doing this stuff is because I never run out of ideas, there's always something new that I can try. Doesn't mean it's going to be perfect.

But it might be really good. It might be useful. And that's the name of the day useful.

Does it help? A relaxation equals chronic pain relief. You know, that's just, again, that's based in science, not an opinion. So when you relax, your focus changes.

In the same way as when you listen to me, your focus changes. And it would do regardless of where you were, what you're doing, how you were feeling before who you're with. You know, even if you was at a birthday party, and you decided to go and sit in the garden and listen to this, you're going to feel very different to how you felt when you was at the party.

You're not going to notice necessarily the other people as much as you used to, when you was there, even though it might be the same volume level of the people of the party of music maybe. But as you listen to my voice, you would go more inward, more focused on how you feel, calmer and more relaxed and peaceful. Everything I do, I try and make practical and user friendly.

And the exercises, whether they're my exercises or ones that are just copied, and I don't really take credit for anything that I say, because I don't know how much of it is unique and how much of it is just stuff that I've remembered from books I've read or lectures I've listened to or whatever. But hopefully it's useful. If it does come from somewhere that I know I do try and give the source.

Like today, I'm giving a source from this book. But even if I go through a technique, because I can go through any of these techniques probably without even looking at the book, just with an outline of it. But I will probably do it differently.

I'll add my own little spin, which means I might not be doing it properly. But hey, customisable. I think the point is, you can use these in a way that suits you.

Because you don't have to do anything. You don't have to listen to this. It's not compulsory.

So the fact that you remember that actually you're choosing to spend your time, and time is very valuable. You're choosing to spend your time listening to my squeaky voice. It can give you a little bit of comfort.

A little bit of relief. You know, that this is your choice to listen. And you're choosing to listen because you're expecting to feel more comfort, more peace.

And that's useful. So, and so the potential weaknesses of listening to this, I'm not sure. Taking on a role as a therapist.

And it's not the same as a one on one session. If you was in a room with someone, and going through this stuff, it'd be different. I mean, this might be better than that.

I don't know. It depends on what you shouldn't be. It should be better if you're in a room with a therapist.

But this you're probably not going to get. It's not going to be the same. You won't be sitting in a room with a therapist, just rambling on like this, because that's, this isn't professional.

This is not a professional way to do it. This is relatively unfocused, in a sense of, I'm not asking you to do anything. I'm not trying to control your thoughts, or manipulate you, you know, even in a positive way.

I mean, I'm not trying to get you to focus on this. Now do this. Now, one, two, three, four.

And even if I do read out, you know, an exercise, you can do it or not do it. I might go through it and I'm going to do this and I'll do it or not. It's up to you.

But it's just me going through some things. So the pain dissociation technique, that's the one I'm going to focus on today. From that book.

Now, it's not from that, but I mean, it is from that book, but it's not, it's not an original idea. It's something that's been around for probably centuries. But it's something, it's very powerful.

And dissociation can be, it can be really easy. For some reason, for children, really, really young people have a tendency to dissociate a lot easier. And imagination to imagine things that, you know, it can be a little bit easier for really, really young kids.

So hypnosis, for example, now I'm not going to, I'm not doing hypnosis here. But hypnosis really could be useful. So if you're, if you're a child that needs, that could do with using help with hypnosis and stuff, then seek out a professional hypnotist or hypnotherapist.

And maybe or if you've got a clinical psychologist that does hypnosis, and I'm pretty certain as a young child, you can sit in a room with them as well. And it could be something really useful. I mean, this, this isn't aimed at, I mean, it's aimed at anyone that wants to listen to it.

It's not aimed at children, it's not aimed at adults, it's just aimed at whoever wants to listen, generally at adults, to be fair. But whoever, I don't know if little kids who want to be listening to this. I can't imagine anyone would want to listen to this really in a way but all the positivity.

So pain dissociation. It makes sense, really, doesn't it? So you're focusing, there's different ways of doing it. You can focus on something else.

You know, when you're watching a movie, you're listening to a song, you're having a conversation with somebody, maybe you're traveling in a car and it's not so much dissociation from what you're doing, it's, you're focusing on something else. So instead of focusing on that part of your body that you may have been focusing on before, you're now focusing on an outside external stimuli or stimulus. So right now it's my voice.

And you might be thinking, his voice is so squeaky. Why is it so squeaky? It's like a little squeaky dog's toy. What's going on? He can't be human.

And yeah, I am kind of, I'm kind of an alien. But you know, I don't know. I'm waiting for the movership to come back and get me.

Hasn't yet. So you've got different ways. I mean, you can move that physical feeling mentally and imaginatively.

So it no longer dominates your consciousness. And that's one of those things is we get more of what we think about. Whatever you focus on is what you're going to get more of.

And it's just standard. We all kind of know that really, don't we? You know, if you're gonna, if you, if you focus on your right knee, or if you, let's say you, it could be anything kind of like, sometimes Vinny does a big old fart. And because I'm focusing on it, it's all I can smell.

That might not be a good example. But there's this car on locally where I live, and they parked on the pavement. It's a big car and you can't literally have to walk in the road to get around it.

It's bugged me a little bit. It has, it's bugged me. It's bugged me.

And there's a couple of people in wheelchairs that can't get past. And I probably wouldn't even notice it. I might be not all.

But I got talking to this, this man in a wheelchair, and he said he had problems with someone that was parked on the pavement and he couldn't get past. And I don't think it was even his car, but it kind of connected the two together. And whenever I go past it, I've been having this negative feeling.

But today I thought, you know what? What's the point in that? It's nothing I can do about it. There is nothing. Because the law doesn't prevent them from doing it.

It's against the law to park on a pavement. But there's no fine. There's no, there's no, there's nothing for it.

It's like proper against law in London, and you will get towed away or whatever. But outside of London, generally, it's just one of those laws that the police don't do anything about. You're not allowed to, but do what you want, is that's kind of the attitude.

So I just let it go. I don't focus on it anymore. I focus on something else.

I'm focused on it now though, aren't I? But sometimes focusing on that, when I'm focusing on that car, I'm not thinking about my lower back, where my arthritis is. It's weird, but I don't want to replace that with something that's also negative, or that might have a negative kind of feeling, or an unpleasurable feeling rather. There's nothing negative about my back.

It's just a physical thing. It's not negative or positive. It's just it is what it is.

It's something to deal with, isn't it? And there's so many ways of dissociation. The move in the pain, that's something I find interesting because I learned some of this years ago. I'm talking when I first got into hypnosis and NLP in 1998.

I think it was around 1999 that I learned this technique. It was about moving the physical discomfort, or that physical feeling. Let's call it feeling because it may have changed anyway.

The physical feeling from the part of the body it's currently at to a different part of the body. And this is based on, I'm pretty sure it's Milton H. Erickson, but it might have been another hypnotist. And they said to their client or their patient, right, so it's difficult.

The patient was saying it's unbearable and I can't handle it. Where would you be able to handle it? And the patient said, what do you mean where would I be able to? He said, well, you said it's in her lower back, which is causing problems like walking around or whatever. Where would it not be a problem? In fact, I think this patient might have said, I wish it was in my finger.

So he said, do you prefer it to be in your finger? She said, yeah, I don't because it wouldn't bother me then. It's in my finger, so what? It's not going to affect my mobility. It's not going to affect my day.

It's just going to be irritating. I can handle irritation and I'll be distracted anyway from that by other things. Irritating, don't bother me.

But what I've got at the moment does. So what he did is he got her to move that physical feeling from, let's say, her lower back, just move it into her finger. There's different ways you can just imagine it moving out of your body and just moving into your finger.

And you can rehearse this feeling. You can imagine different feelings where you can just take a little bit at a time. And the weird thing about it is, so let's say if I focus on my right finger, the end of my right big finger, is it a big, I don't want to say big finger, because the big finger is the middle one, isn't it? First finger, the one next to the thumb.

So if I focus on the end of that, it's weird because as I focus on it, it's a little bit pulsating, just a little bit. So if I move the feeling, I don't want to move the feeling, if I focus on my lower back and, you know, maybe you focused on the part of your body that you wanted to, if you wanted to, you know, it's up to you. But so if I focus on my back, on my lower back, then I focus on my right finger, just notice how my right finger feels.

And I'll focus back on the body part. Straight away, it's changed. It's really weird.

It's weird. It's all, I don't know, don't ask me why, but it's changed. It's still there, still something there, but it's changed.

And I focus on my right finger again. And it's, there's a different feeling in my right finger, but it's not, it's not unpleasant. It's just a feeling that wasn't there before.

Like, I don't know, like maybe a heaviness or tightness, maybe it just, just feels a little bit different. So I'll move back to my, to the body part. So if you move back to your body part, focus on there.

For some reason, there's not a lot to focus on. And that'd be understandable if it was my groin, but this is my lower back, like, it hasn't shrunk. There's not a lot there though.

It's not, not a lot going on. So I'll go back to my finger again. Focus on that.

It doesn't feel pleasurable, I'll be honest. My finger doesn't, it doesn't feel, it doesn't really feel horrible either. It just feels a bit different, a little bit different.

It's, I guess it's a unique perspective. It's gonna, it's gonna have a different physical sensation to my lower back anyway. It's almost like the nervous system is confused by the focusing on one to the other.

And the idea, even though I'm not actually trying to move it, really, but the idea of moving it from your body to your finger. And it's a feeling, it's almost not numbness, but a little bit of, a little bit of fizziness. I suppose, kind of like pins and needles a little bit.

And I know there's like obviously nothing to worry about it, because I'm, I'm the one that's caused it, aren't I? So I go back to my back again. So you go back to your body. By the way, you might hear some shouting in the garden, but it's because it's a beautiful day.

And the sun gets the shouters out. The shouters. This is weird.

I focus it on my back. It's almost like it's hiding from me. And as I, here is a weird thing.

Every time I go back, go back to your body, it kind of seems to bounce off onto your finger. Like that focus goes straight to the finger. It's like it's becoming harder to focus on, on my body, because it keeps bouncing back to the finger, the focus.

I'm just moving my finger around a little bit. It just, it does feel different, the end of it. But it's, yeah, it's weird.

That's strange. So that's sort of something you could do, moving it, detaching, shifting, or even distancing the physical feeling from you. So you could just imagine stepping out of your body, just leaving your body behind, and just stepping out.

But the version of you that you step out, still your body, but you've left that one part of your body behind, and you just move away. I guess almost like waking, kind of like astral walking in a way, kind of like an out of body experience, but not really. You're just moved away from that physical feeling that you had before.

And you just move away from it. Have some distance from it. And this can work for lots of different things as well, can't it? I don't know about you, but there's been times when sometimes just having some distance, some physical distance from a situation, whether it's a person, whether it's a relationship, whether it's a job, whether it's where I live, and just sometimes a little bit of distance.

Even if it's just a couple of miles, just a walk around the field, a little bit of distance can really be useful. Now neuroscience, because this is all based in, I think with neuroscience, the weird thing about it is, what's already been used for decades and maybe centuries has now been proven to work scientifically. It's always worked for those it works for.

But now neuroscience, now it's kind of come along the last 20 years or whatever, and can almost explain why this stuff works in a scientific way. When before, and I kind of still have the attitude, really, it works, it works, it works, brilliant. But I do realize, and I am more interested in why and how than I used to be.

So I tried to include factual information in these recordings around things like neuroscience and scientific studies. So neuroscience has shown that attention amplifies, so to say focus or attention, amplifies whatever physical experience you're focusing on, which means you get to choose what you focus on. And there's never only one physical feeling occurring.

There's always more than one physical feeling happening at any one time. You've got a whole body. So with me, for example, my lower back, I've got my arms, got my hands, got my legs, got my back, the upper back rather.

I've got my chest, my stomach, my shoulders, my face, most of that stuff's fine. So if I was to focus on my jaw, for example, and it's a little bit harder to focus on my jaw when I'm talking, but it still does, it still relaxes even when I'm talking, when I focus on it. And the feeling, the attention amplifies the feeling.

And because I guess I'm fairly relaxed anyway, especially when I make these recordings, because I don't think it would really work that well if I was all tense and stressed. I mean, it defeats the object, doesn't it? And I think that would come across. And I'm fairly, fairly calm when I do these and when I talk.

And personally, it says like neuroscience shows that attention amplifies a physical experience. I would agree. However, I'm going to add an however.

Because I'm not saying I know more than neuroscientists, because obviously I don't. I might know some different things, but I don't know. I'm not an expert on anything.

Apart from eating cookies, I'm really good at eating cookies. I could win a gold medal at eating cookies, not quantity, but I'm just really good at eating them. When it comes to meditation and something like a body scan, I've noticed over decades that just by focusing on the different parts of your body, they start to relax.

So, I think it's not just that the attention amplifies the physical sensation, but it's also dependent upon how or what you're thinking when you're focusing on that particular part of your body. So, if you're focusing on discomfort, for example, and that's what you're focusing on, and that's what you're thinking about, and that's, you know, then it's going to get stronger and it's going to amplify. But if you think about, in the same way as if you think about a part of your body that feels relaxed, and you're focusing on how relaxed it is, it's going to become more relaxed.

But then if you think about, you focus on a neutral part of your body, so maybe you're doing a body scan. I've done quite a few body scan recordings where you're just listening and I'm going through the different parts of your body, starting at the top of your head, your forehead, your eyes, and I won't ask you to relax those parts of your body. And you might literally have just sat down or just laid down and only begun to listen to me at that point.

So, you're not bored yet. You might not be in a position of, I might not have bored you into submission of feeling relaxed and calm. But by focusing on a neutral part of your body, a part that doesn't really, it's not feeling particularly relaxed or particularly any other way.

It has a tendency of relaxing. But then when you're doing a body scan, you're focusing with the intent of comfort and peace. Coming from a perspective of positivity, kindness, kindness towards yourself, feeling well towards yourself.

So, that has an effect. And the more, I don't think many people are going to listen to a recording, a mindfulness recording or a body scan recording recording without having a degree of expectation that they're going to relax, that you're going to relax all the different parts of your body. It's kind of implicit, I guess, in the actual recording.

Well, in the same way as if you focus on a part of your body and you're thinking differently about it. So, if I focus on my lower back and if I'm expecting it to feel worse, it's going to start feeling worse. If I'm expecting it to loosen and almost like all the fibers are just, I just had a little disturbization there from a neighbor.

But then he started barking. And what it was is he's put sausages, his uncle from across the road, or across the hallway, had gotten some sausages. The thing is, it gives you an idea of his mentality, doesn't it? By the way, he's my little Jack Russell.

He's begging for one, right? He's already got one. He's dropped it on the floor and he's come for more because he tries to get as many as he can. So, then he can just enjoy the feast.

There you go, there's another one there. You're not getting any more until you've eaten them. Right.

I'm not 100% sure what I was talking about, but I'll try and get back to it. So, we're talking about focus, really. If you change where the attention goes, the brain lowers the intensity.

And because it changes, I guess, how the pain or the physical feeling is mentally coded. It's in the same way as some people, without getting weird, but some people enjoy a degree of or enjoy things that perhaps other people wouldn't when it comes to romantic encounters. And when I think about that, I'm thinking hot wax is one thing that comes to mind, which in a million years, I would not.

Well, not in a million years, but actually, to be fair, I don't know anymore. But yeah, generally not something I would do. But some people love it, and it's a different feeling to what it would be.

Because I'm sure if someone just poured hot wax on them while they were waiting on a bus, and they wouldn't enjoy it. They probably wouldn't be sitting on a bus, dressed in bondage gear. But yeah, anyway, let's move away from that.

So, feelings change, they feel differently depending on the situation and the scenario. Alright, Vinny's hassling me again. Alright, you want to know a sausage, you're not having the whole pack bin.

You've been so good, you've left me alone. The music downstairs is now a lot louder. And he's been in and nicked some biscuits.

He's a little thief, that one. So, if you move it with the dissociation, I mean, it can be dissociation when you focus on something completely separate. You know, if you're focusing on a telly, or you're focusing on drawing a picture, you're focusing on music, or maybe playing a musical instrument.

It can change how you physically feel because you're not focusing on that part of the body that you were before. But in a sense of literally moving the physical sensation elsewhere, to a different part of your body, where it feels less harmful. As I said, like moving to your finger, or to an object outside of the body.

So you could, for example, imagine in your mind, you can move it into a balloon, or a hot air balloon, and just watch that balloon float away. Or you can imagine moving it into a rock, and chucking that rock into the sea, or off a cliff, giving you that distance again. You can imagine moving it into a visual container, something like a box, or a cloud, a flowing river.

I quite like the idea of the flowing river, because anything you put in there, it would disperse, wouldn't it? Because it moves very quickly, but also it would just disperse, and it couldn't feel the same, and you wouldn't be able to get it back, you know, not easily. So if you drop that physical feeling, dropped it in a fast flowing river, it's kind of just gone off. Or imagine in the clouds, just moving into a cloud, but then you move it up, take your eyes off the clouds for a second, and then you look back

at the clouds, where is it? Which cloud was it in? Because the clouds are moving, they often look very, very similar to each other, maybe different sizes, slightly different colours, but they're moving.

Maybe sometimes it seems like the clouds are moving to the right, and sometimes it seems like they're moving to the left. Sometimes they feel closer to the ground than further than to the ground, further away, and it's kind of weird. Also sometimes, you know, it feels windy here on the ground, where we are, the clouds don't seem to be moving at all.

But other times when it's really, really mild, just not even a really light breeze, and the clouds are moving quickly. So different ways it tricks, it tricks the sensory pathways into disconnecting emotional issues connected to the part of your body. So that, I guess that kind of that signal of danger being removed, realising it's not danger, it's the opposite to that.

It's peaceful, it's calm, it's safe. So examples, as I said, you can let a helium bloom, you can have a helium bloom tied to your wrist, and you can allow that feeling from your body to move all the way to where the helium bloom is, bloom, bloom, moving up the string and filling the helium bloom. Maybe it's an empty bloom.

Maybe that, that energy fills the bloom up. And then you can just untie the string and watch it float away, higher and higher, further and further away. Or you can imagine placing that physical sensation inside a box, a big box or a small box with a soft, thick blanket inside.

Close the lid. And notice how your body feels lighter now. Then you've got partial dissociation.

If total removal feels overwhelming, just move some of the sensations elsewhere. So you could do the same techniques, but just some of them. There's no, there's no right or wrong thing to do.

There's no, you don't have to do anything. But the idea of it, the wrapping your mind around the idea that actually this is possible, and these are things that have been done for many, many, many, many years. Like decades and decades and decades, tried and tested techniques, handed down through the years, people have been doing it for a long time, and helping millions of people around the world for a long time.

And why is it so effective? So it takes advantage of neuroplasticity, where, which is quite a new thing, really. Neuroscience isn't new, new, but neuroplasticity kind of blew my mind a bit when I first started reading about this. The idea that your brain is not set, your brain can change.

And I like to think of it like plasticine, in a sense. It can change to suit the situation. So, for example, you introduce a new skill, whether it's learning a new language, learning a new instrument, musical instrument, starting a new job.

Our brains change, our brains adapt, so that those things that may have seemed impossible before, or they might not be easy to start with, become easier. And our brains change and adapt to what we do. Our brains adapt to what we focus on.

It's quite, I think it's quite, it's quite amazing, really, that the brain can rewire its own processing, you know, of feelings. I think it's amazing. There's also that automatic loop, or the automatic attention loop.

You know, like when I was talking about my lower back, and then my finger, I kind of created a new automatic loop. And changing the old one, whether it was temporarily breaking the old one, whether just for a few minutes, but still, it changed and started to set up a new loop, because the more often I went back to focusing on my lower back, it was bouncing straight back to my finger. Also, it gives you empowerment, because you realize that you're not leaving things to chance.

You're in control. You're taking charge of your own experience. And you can actively enjoy the changes that are occurring.

So you've also got some other things you can do. You can fragment the physical feeling, but basically breaking it into smaller pieces, mentally moving them one by one. So I guess a little bit like a jigsaw puzzle.

So if you've got that part of your body, for me, it's my lower back. So that's the jigsaw puzzle. So you've got the jigsaw puzzle of my whole body.

It'd have to be quite a big jigsaw puzzle to be fair. And start to remove the pieces of jigsaw. Let's say it's like 10,000 pieces or whatever.

Start to remove the pieces connected to my back, my lower back, one by one. And just drop that in a river. It's probably not a good idea to be dropping bits of cardboard in the river, but you know, it's an imaginary thing.

And then take another piece, maybe not connected to that, but another piece is also in that area. And then just dropping it in that fast flowing stream. And then another piece, and then another piece.

And you can just take your time with it. Then another piece, then another piece. You can even focus on that part of your body, wherever you feel whether it's a bit of pressure, whether it's a physical sensation, you can just focus on that part of the body.

And imagine that's the piece that you're taking out. And drop that in the stream. So by these kind of dissociation techniques, physical discomfort is mentally moved, shrunk, softened or transformed.

And it can lead you to experience reduced physical intensity that was there before. And it can restore your sense of personal control. And you feel better, you feel more relaxed, you can actually feel good about yourself because you've made changes.

And you know that you can make changes because you've made changes in the past. And you can make more changes in the future. And that brings us to the end of this recording.

So thank you for listening. Remember to be kind to yourself because you do deserve to be happy. And be gentle with yourself because you do deserve to feel safe.

Lots of love. Bye.