(Short Voice) #33 BODY SCAN Let me bore your pain away Jason Newland 7th May 2025

Hello and welcome to jasonluland.com. My name's Jason Luland. Please only listen when you can safely close your eyes. And this is Let Me Bore Your Pain Away.

So only listen to this recording when you know the cause of your chronic pain and you have permission to listen to it from your doctor or professional medical healthcare practitioner. This is not a replacement for medical medicine. Medications are not a replacement for medical advice.

It's definitely not medical advice. All this is is just me waffling on about subjects pertained to chronic pain. That's pretty much it.

And if it's useful, some people find it useful, then brilliant. It's really that. I mean, this is kind of an extension to my, what I would say probably a family member, a close family member to my Let Me Bore You To Sleep podcast.

It's the same kind of process. I've got Vinny in the background chomping on a bony thing. There may be background sounds.

I mean, there probably will be because downstairs are still having their bathroom fitted. They've been doing it for about 17 years now. And sometimes I exaggerate, but I never have done so far.

Never exaggerated. I never exaggerated about a thousand times a day. And I was thinking, this is one of those recordings that the more you listen, the more benefit you get.

Potentially. And it is what it says, like just it can be used as a distraction. And I don't know why I'm explaining at the beginning of every recording what the recording is, because I don't do that with the Let Me Bore You To Sleep recordings.

But I guess even though this is the 33rd one that I've done, there's still a degree of newness involved in it, I think for me. And potentially, there's a, there's going to be people that haven't listened to these recordings before. So it's kind of just, hello, if you're new, just letting you know what it's about, I guess.

So I've done 32 in the past. This is the 33rd. And I kind of just choose a subject related to helping people with chronic pain.

And then I just chat about it. So today, I'm going to be focusing on the body scan. What is a body scan? Where did it originate from? Different types of body scans, and how it can be useful.

I'll talk about my own experience doing body scans. And how I found it useful. So it's one of those things, you know, just gonna, I'll go into it.

Maybe try and come from different angles. He's been very noisy back there. And it does happen sometimes.

But hey, what can I do? He's a, he's a little sausage. Oh, I didn't say the word sausage. Shouldn't say the word sausage.

He hasn't heard it yet. But he yeah, he gets excited by that word. A bit like me and chocolate.

I hear the word chocolate. Whatever I'm doing, I get distracted like that. Did someone say chocolate? Oh, so I think he likes the word chocolate as well.

But he's not allowed to eat chocolate, of course, being a doggy. And so I'm going to go through the body scan. Now, this could be like a distraction, you might find that when you listen to my voice, your mind starts to slow down.

You feel more relaxed within yourself, you know, your muscles relax. Especially today, because we're talking about body scan, which is a really good way to relax. So yes, that's what I shall be doing today.

So what is a body scan? I guess not everyone's gonna know what it is. I did the body scan long before I learned what it was. I didn't know it was called a body scan.

And I kind of, I found out when I joined, I started going to a Buddhist center in 2000, I think it was November 2002, roughly. And I, it was a Wednesday night. I was going through a lot of panic at the time, I was having anxiety attacks.

I didn't really know what they were. And I had been to the doctor and he told me what they were, but I just didn't. It was just beyond my comprehension what was going on.

It just didn't. It was weird. Beyond weird, I just didn't know what to do with this new, you know, thing that's popped up.

And I kind of thought to myself, maybe I need to learn to relax. I need to do something physical, something, I need to be proactive. It kind of sounds weird, doesn't it? To relax proactively, it's almost like you'd think relaxation would be just really easy.

Which I find it to be now. Perhaps back then, not so much. So I went along to this group, this Buddhist center, there's a bunch of people in there and I didn't feel at all relaxed because I was around all these new people, very friendly.

But still didn't know anyone. The meditation that we did was mindfulness. It was mindfulness of breathing.

And then they would do alternative weekend, alternative week. So one, and they, yeah, one week it would be mindfulness of breathing. The following week, it would be metta bhavana.

So mindfulness of breathing is a meditation where you just focus on your breath. You just focus. Yeah, that's it really.

Just focus on your breath. Don't try and control it. You just focus on it.

I found that the easiest one to do. My throat's going weird today. I need some water.

So I found, yeah, I did find the mindfulness of breathing, the more simpler one. The metta bhavana was, again, it was in stages, but it was focusing on sending out well wishes, sending out good feelings towards people. And I, yeah, I struggled with that one.

I'll be honest, I did. Yeah. Yeah, I struggled with that one.

Struggled with that one for years, in fact. But the mindfulness of breathing was the easiest one. But before every meditation, the meditation teacher would do a body scan, which was almost my favorite part.

So it would just be starting, you'd be sitting there. Some people would be lying down. If they got physical stuff, they can't, if they can't sit.

Some people would be on a cushion. There'd be people on chairs. You know, just have whatever's most comfortable.

And I would, yeah, the meditation teacher would focus on just basically starting at the top of the head and moving down to the feet. But not asking us to relax, not asking you to relax your forehead or your eyes, but just to focus on the different parts. Notice how they feel and accepting how the different parts of your body feel.

Which I guess may in some circumstances seem almost alien. And it did to me in some ways to accept something that you perhaps don't like. So for example, I'm just trying to think if I had a knee.

When I first got there, I tried to meditate sitting on cushions, which was painful. I gave it up after about two years, three years. No, I'm sitting on chair from now on.

It was, yeah, it was 2005 that I decided no more cushions. I just, it got to the point where I had about 16 cushions, all kind of balanced on top of each other to try and make it easier for me to feel comfortable when I was sitting. And one day I fell off and yeah, made everyone laugh and it wasn't good, disturbed the meditation.

Literally I was up nearly as high as a ceiling with all these cushions. But I decided from then on to sit in a chair, although I missed looking down at everyone. Literally I could meditate and look at everyone tops of their heads, it was weird.

And so I really used to get problems with my knees when I was trying to sit on the cushions. But it was only during the sitting, you know, sitting cross legged, not in a full lotus position, because I did not have, I've never in my life had that flexibility, not even as a kid. Well, okay, as a very young kid, because I used to be able to bite my own toenails.

So I clearly did have flexibility. But as a, it might be a hip thing, I don't know. But I don't, I've never had the, as a like a teenager onwards, never had wonderful flexibility as far as being able to do the splits or anything like that.

Just haven't been able to do it. And I used to do karate and stuff, even like kicking head height, I could do it. But it was, you know, a lot of the other people could do splits and they could pretty much, yeah, be a lot more flexible with their legs than I was.

I just, it's the way we're built, isn't it? It's just my body type. I'm more built for eating pies and watching television. Oh, that's a joke.

But yeah, it's, I'm not, it was a bit difficult. So my knees would hurt during the meditation. And it was quite difficult when we were doing, for me, I found it a bit difficult in a sense of an annoyance.

The idea of going through my body, and then focusing on my knees and being fine with how they were, just accepting that that's how they felt and not trying to change how they felt. But something did happen is, which was, it kind of surprised me that they would, the physical discomfort that was in my knees would diminish, would reduce, sometimes quite dramatically, almost like it didn't matter anymore. And you might hear some banging downstairs.

But if I waited until there was no noise downstairs, then I would not, I wouldn't be doing any recordings to be fair. So that's not, you know, it's not much use. I'd have to wait until five o'clock, four or five before I could do a recording.

And, you know, it's 11 o'clock in the morning, the afternoon, it's 11 o'clock in the morning. And I want to do something useful. So here I am.

If the noise is annoying, then just turn off and there's other things. I've got so many recordings that don't have hammering. I don't know someone with a hammer downstairs banging.

You know, so that isn't my normal background sound. Perhaps I should have on my website like non-hammering sounds and hammering sounds. So people enjoy the sound of building work going on in the background.

They can listen to those recordings maybe. But I was surprised, this is what surprised me about the body scan, which kind of became my favourite for me. And I would have been quite happy to just done a body scan and nothing else.

Because it helped me, first of all, get in touch with my body and to move away from my mind. But in touch with my body in a different way to how I'd been experiencing it recently at that time. Because of the panic attacks, I was very, very nervous and very concerned about any kinds of feelings I had in my body.

I'd go into kind of panic mode. Once my mobile phone went off, it was in my pocket. Well, it was in my back pocket, I think, because I was at work and it was on vibrate.

And it went off. So I felt this vibration in my bum. I went into full blown panic attack, like instantly.

And then I realised it was my phone. I laughed. Well, I kind of laughed.

I wiped the tears away. I found it funny. The panic attack ended as instantly as it started.

Which made me realise that actually, I was allowing external events to affect me, even when I'd got it wrong. And also, I was expecting, I was constantly at that time expecting to have these feelings, to have, I was expecting the panic attack to start at any moment at that time I was. And I would probably say that's pretty much all I was thinking about, mainly at the time, for a good couple of years.

So it went on for a while. Mainly 2003. That was the worst one.

And then 2004. And by the end of 2004, it, I kind of got a grip of it a bit more. But it took a while to get my head around how to deal with it and everything.

And anyway, this isn't about chronic, this isn't about panic attacks, but there's something to be said about expectation. I was expecting it. So I got it.

And then it started, you know, something in my mind, kind of thought, what if I expect something different then? What if I expect to feel good? What if I expect to feel relaxed? Because I was literally, I was kind of, you know, those ships in the old days, and they have someone in the, what is it, the peephole, whatever, you know, they'd be right in the crow's nest. That's with a telescope looking around. That's almost like I had that.

Constantly someone looking, part of my brain looking for the next panicky moment. And, you know, if you're looking out, if you've, I suppose, if a ship's already been attacked by another ship, and managed to survive and got away. So the person in the crow's nest is going to be looking out for ships in a very serious way.

So everything they see is a potential ship. So they might just see, it might be a, a whale jumping out of the water. And then I think ship to ship.

All ahoy, I don't know what, they're turning to pirates now. So apparently they're pirates. But it's kind of, it's that expectation.

And I've known people, I'm sure you've probably known people as well, that tend to fear the worst. They expect, well, some people are proud of that, aren't they? I expect the worst, therefore I'm never disappointed. Have you, you must have heard people say that in the past.

I know I have. And it's, I understand the concept. But it's very negative.

And someone that expects the worst all the time, are more likely going to get the worst. And even if they don't get the worst, they're possibly going to experience it as being the worst. If they're expecting disappointment and expecting negativity, that might be all they're going to see.

You know, I saw this YouTube video, and it might have been a skit, it might be, it might not be real or anything. But this, this woman buys her daughter a car. And it's like a BMW or something.

And the daughter is in America, so the daughter is about 17, maybe 16. Because you can drive quite early in America compared to where I live. And this, the daughter is having a go at the mom.

So the mom's got a birthday present for her daughter, maybe I think it's like a 17th birthday. And the daughter starts having a go saying it's the wrong color. It's the wrong color.

Yeah, and oh yeah, because it was a, it was an electric car. She didn't want an electric car. It was one of the famous electric cars.

I forget what they're called. It's that not don't want one of them. I want a BMW.

That's it. I want a BMW. But this is better than a BMW.

I want a BMW. This is more expensive than a BMW. I want a BMW.

And it's the wrong color. And the it looked quite real, to be fair, based on how the the mother was responding. Because it was Yeah, I mean, it might just been scripted kind of comedy video.

I couldn't tell you. But I've I've known people that have been like that. Not on that extent.

I've not known anyone not known anyone to like get angry because they got a car that I mean, I don't drive but I'll still be happy if someone bought me a car just for the fact that what an amazing gift and someone would go to that effort to do that even if I couldn't drive. Which I can't. But it's you know, it's like, what? How can you not have gratitude for that? Wow.

I remember Yeah, years ago, I, I got some was it? It was Iceland. So I used to go to Iceland a lot. This is the shop supermarket.

And I had a club card thing with them. And I was building up credit and whatever. And they sent me a voucher for 25 pound, which is pretty good going to be fair.

That's, that's a lot of money's worth of shopping to get 25 pound voucher back. After I think by two or three years, I think it took to get that. And I didn't have much money.

And it was my friend's birthday. So what I thought, you know what, I've got nothing to give him, really, I'll give him this 25 pound voucher. Because then he can go and get some food.

And like, back then. I'd say 25 pound, it would, it's not necessarily going to buy a whole week's worth of food, but it would have, it would have been probably at half the week's food. You know, it would have been 25 pizzas, the worst case scenario.

Because I used to do pizzas for a pound back then. This is probably about six, seven years ago. And so my friend, okay, happy birthday, there you go.

He had someone else in the room with him. And I'm literally just, I think I might have gone to the toilet. And I come out and I hear the other person saying to my friend, how much money do you think you can get from it for that voucher? So they were looking, I don't know, my friend, I think if I hadn't been there, my friend might have gone for it as well.

I don't know. I said no. But basically, they just wanted to sell the voucher so they can get some cash.

So they probably sell the voucher for like 10 quid. That's like, or 15 quid or whatever, you know, it's like, I just, I found it unbelievable. Even now, I'm still talking about it.

I think gratitude. I don't know. Anyway, expectation.

It's easy to be disappointed if we expect to be disappointed. You know, if with that attitude, with the sound of banging downstairs. I love the sound of building work.

I don't know about you. I do find it a little bit distracting, to be honest with you. Vinny got given a bone yesterday.

It was a lamb bone from a neighbour. And he's had an upset stomach since eating it. I had to take him out to the garden three times.

It's honestly his tummy and he won't eat. He won't eat any food. All he wants is the bone back.

I took the bone away from him. It had food on it, you know, so he ate that. But he's really upset his tummy.

And now he's just rested. So hopefully, later on, I'll put some food out for him. But he's not eating it, not touching it.

So I'm hoping he'll get his tummy will get back to normal. And I know that's not relative to what we're talking about. But what I did find though, this is this is a bit strange.

And this is I think it was 2004. I was meditating on my own upstairs because I worked in a shop downstairs. That's when I had the vibrating bum experience.

And it was a gift shop. So I was upstairs in the Buddhist centre in the I was in the shrine room just meditating. So this would be kind of about this time of the year 2004.

21 years ago. Wow. And so I had this pain in my knee.

Just like normal doing the body scan. It wasn't bugging me as much. I kind of got used to it.

Because I knew that as soon as I stood up, shook my legs off, shook my legs off, but you know, like, just let me legs kind of stretch out a little bit. I didn't ask for help with that. But but it got some weird looks I imagine.

But then my knees would be fine after that. Just, you know, took a took a couple of minutes to just get back to normal. On this occasion, my knee for some reason it fascinated me.

And it was only one knee, it was only my right knee that was really problematic. The left knee was just not really bothering me. So I'm doing the body scan as I always did.

Sometimes I just do the body scan, I wouldn't do anything else. Sometimes I just do the mindfulness of breathing meditation and nothing else. But I'd always do a body scan first.

So I'm doing the body scan and I'm focusing, I get down to my knee. So I'm focusing on my knee. And I start to get curious.

And as I focus, it's like I'm visualizing the knee. I can see my knee enough times over the years. I've had to wash it a few times.

You know, so I know what my knees look like. So I received, I focused, I focused, I'm getting distracted by the sound. I focused on my knee.

And what I was noticing is that it wasn't quite as solid, like this physical sensation, this displeasure, this unpleasant feeling, whatever you want to call it. I'm trying to you know, avoid using the P A I N word. And I noticed that it wasn't like, what is it? It's a feeling.

So we have feelings, we have physical feelings, we have emotions. But there was emotion connected to that feeling. Because if there wasn't, it wouldn't bother me.

Like logically, if there was no emotions connected to that physical feeling in my knee, I wouldn't even be focusing on it. It would not affect me one little bit. Without the emotions, the physical side is just, it's just physical, isn't it? It's just a feeling, just a sensation, physical sensation that can be interpreted in different ways.

I mean, look at a baby or a little toddler, falls over, looks at the parent or the adult that they're with, to find out whether to cry or laugh. It's that simple. It's the same physical sensation that they've got.

And they're quite able to feel it. But they don't know how, what emotion to attach to it yet. As an adult, we've learned, you know, kind of, which things to attach which emotions to.

But then I suppose, we can relearn and change those connections and decide. And maybe, you know, maybe turn, maybe turn back the time to get in touch with that toddler's brain in that moment and thinking is, I mean, you can look down at that part of your body or you can, you can look at it as a toddler would look at it. Is it, is it dangerous or not? Is it a danger signal? Or not a danger signal? Or is it just a feeling? And if you know the cause of it, and you know that it's not dangerous, and you're fine, and you know to look after yourself and you don't need that, you don't need that physical sensation.

Like a toddler is told that when the parent smiles, or laughs, the toddler laughs and smiles and runs and maybe carries on playing. And they might have a big old scuff on their knee, blood squirting out. I'm joking.

Well, that's not funny. But I'm just saying, the kid doesn't care. All the kids, all the little toddler wants to know is, are they okay? But they don't know if they're okay, they have to kind of get it from the adult.

Or maybe their older sibling. Or a teacher, whoever, you know. Great, and now a plane.

This time of year, we have these aerodynamic heads that like to, I've had this for 10 years, they like to fly up high and then just drop down like that. And for some reason, they always have to fly just above this building. Okay, it might not be just above this building, but it's my little airspace.

And I don't necessarily own it. But I like to think that I've invested some time into the airspace, this little bit of just, you know, just this little bit of air. Perhaps don't have to fly in it.

This has turned into a moaning session. So I've realized as I was focusing on the knee, what is this? I'd also been reading a book, John Kabat-Zinn, which is, oh, what was it called? He used to call it non-catastrophizing, something like that. And so he was into mindfulness meditation.

So I was into like, I got very interested in chronic pain from a long time ago, from the early, I'd say about 1999. I'd never really had anything to deal with myself. I got my arthritis in my lower back, and I got a shoulder injury that it was a shoulder injury.

And now it's, it was a problem for many, yeah, for blimey, well over 10 years. But it's not really much of a problem anymore, which is good. But the thing that I noticed when I was focusing on my knee, when I was meditating, was it wasn't static.

It wasn't really. It's like, what was it? Is it real? If it's real, why can't I hold it in my hand? Why can't I just pick it up? If it actually exists? I mean, I know my knee exists because I can pick it up. I can't, I mean, technically, I just can't just pick it up, you know, hasn't got a handle on it.

But I can, you know, put my hand on it, I can feel it. I can get that physical sensation. And I kind of put pressure and I'm doing it now, actually.

And for anyone looking through the window, be like, I'm just fondling my knee was talking into a microphone. But then, to be fair, they can't really be thinking that I'm a pervert, because they're the one looking through the window with the binoculars, aren't they? Sitting in a tree. So yeah, they're the weird ones.

But I noticed that not all of it was uncomfortable. Not all of it was unpleasant. There was different sensations.

The more I focused on the knee, I realized that parts of me felt fine. So I part your body feels fine. Maybe part your body feels really, really pleasant right now.

You know, listening to my voice, my boring squeaky voice, maybe it sets off a sense of calmness. Comfort, especially if you listen to me regularly, something happens is I don't quite know what it is. My superpower of being just tediously boring with all my pointless stories, maybe I don't know.

And it seems to have the effect of slowing down the mind, the thoughts. Relaxing your body. And there's a place, I think, in your mind, I can kind of get in touch with it if I close my eyes.

And I look up a little bit with my eyes closed. And there's a certain feeling that it's very kind of serene. It's almost like a maybe like a cloud of safety, or like a bubble or a room or a cave, something where everything is left behind.

You can just step into this or step onto that cloud. And even the man with a hammer downstairs doesn't affect it. Things that may be bothered you before don't don't seem to matter anymore.

When you're in that state of comfort, calmness, looseness. So I noticed that I kind of got into that zone a bit. And I started focusing on my knee.

And I noticed, I've also noticed that Vinny staring at me, literally staring at me. He's looking at my knee. That's weird.

He's trying to catch a fly. A fly has been tormenting him for the last two days. I don't know if it's the same one because I've got the window open.

So another one might come in to join it. Perhaps they're having a party. And I started focusing on my knee, focusing on the different areas, realizing that it wasn't my knee.

It was part of my knee. And even then, it was different parts felt differently, had different physical sensations. So what I did is I tried, I decided to focus on the strongest feeling, which was unpleasant, the most unpleasant feeling I could focus on, and focusing on that, just that part.

Just, I kind of had this question in my mind, where is it? The whole idea of like, can I hold it in my hand? Well, no. Well, where is it then? Knowing, as we all do, that all physical sensations are created by our brains. So we know that.

So technically, it's not coming from the knee, it's coming from the brain. So the brain, at the time, I didn't realize that the brain was interpreting that feeling like, as a kind of a danger signal. So therefore, needed to have that physical sensation as a warning to me.

But in reality, I was just meditating. Meditating. Vinny's now farted.

Now, I'm not surprised because he had a bad stomach, but that is that is something else. Either he's farted, or someone's spraying the fields, spraying the crops in the local fields, because that is... But he seems calm, so it's good. I just want him to be better, feel a bit better inside.

He seems very relaxed now, which is nice. Little bit concerned because he's sitting on my foot. I'm focusing on this part of my knee, thinking, okay, so I know that there's no reason to have that.

I know that, yeah, there's no warning, there's no real reason, there's no benefit to it, logically. So I'm focusing on it, I'm thinking, okay, where is it then? And I was repeating that to myself, where is it? Where is this feeling? Where is it? And something strange happened, it started to move. It started almost like it was trying to hide from me, which was weird.

So I focused even more. And it was moving again, still within my knee, but kind of moving around. So I followed it.

And I kept following it. And every time I followed it, it's almost like it was taking me somewhere. And I was following it going deeper and deeper.

And I came to this point where it wasn't there. And my knee felt fine. There was no, just a normal feeling in my knee, just felt absolutely fine, as it normally would do.

And I could not figure that out. It seemed so unusual. Why was, where's it gone? I knew I didn't need it, you know, you don't need it, but where's it gone? Because, as we know, it's obvious, isn't it? If you know the cause and you realize that it's not necessary anymore, I suppose it changes the way that you perceive those physical sensations.

And that expectancy. I do find it interesting though, the whole idea of actually, we expect what's come before. So it's kind of strange, I could not find that physical feeling that I was looking for.

And I thought for a second, I've discovered, I've discovered something. Something magical. And I had a name, I was going to call it, Fine Focus Therapy.

And by focusing on something really magnifying the, you know, magnifying the magnification. Okay. In the same way is, you know, if you was to, you look at anything, if you magnify enough, you realize there's nothing is solid.

It's that, you know, things that we think are solid, and we touch like this desk, it's solid. But if you magnify enough, you realize that it's not. It's made of molecules.

And it's, there's gaps between the molecules. Doesn't mean they can put a finger for it. But ultimately, it isn't what we think it is.

And that physical sensation isn't what I thought it was. And once I realized that, it changed something in your brain, where you start to realize that actually, instead of expecting that old feeling, when I meditate, maybe I'll have this new feeling. And it was kind of like, oh, that's interesting.

And then I fell off my cushions, because I was like 16 high. And that's when I hurt my shoulder. No, that's not true.

I hurt my shoulder on a shelf. I literally stood up and banged on a shelf. It was ridiculous.

That was weird. But hey, it was something I was tired, tired, tired. It's nearly 12 o'clock.

So I'm doing my mid morning nap, I think. Especially as he's had me up half the night, in and out of the garden. He's very good.

He's such a good boy, though, really. See, he'll wait, he's so patient. And you know, I wouldn't even care if he had an accident indoors.

It's not his fault. But he won't. He holds it in, he holds it in, he just won't do that.

And he's just so good, really. I mean, he had a couple of accidents when I first got him because he got so excited that he kind of wee'd a little bit. And another time, I didn't know why he was waiting by the door.

Because he was doing that as soon as he moved in. You know, because he was waiting for his previous owner to come and get him, I guess. So he was waiting by the door, but I didn't realise he was waiting because he needed the toilet.

But once I realised that, you know, it's kind of about getting in sync, I suppose, a little bit. I do need to, I need to have a little lie down. So I've not really gone into like the body scan, but I have in a sense of the body scan led me to discover a way to focus.

It's like a different kind of focus. It's like focusing, but not, not focusing necessarily with your thoughts, more focusing just on how you feel. It's kind of almost like you take, you're moving away from how, from your brain, from your mind to your body.

And by accepting how your body feels, all the different parts, something seems to change. A body scan is brilliant for, well, in my opinion, not just my opinion, but brilliant for calming the mind, for de-stressing the body and the mind, for relaxing, for helping with, you know, things like anxiety, tension, stress, and also mindfulness is used to help people with chronic pain as well. So I went, I went to this thing, I think it was 2000, might have been 2006, maybe 2005, but I think it was 2006.

I went to a, it was a Buddhist meditation thing. So let me have a look. Mindfulness, Buddhist.

I'm trying to see what it's called. Cause I went to it. It's a training course.

A Buddhist chronic pain, pain meditation course. What was it called? Oh, I found it. Being a Buddhist approach to pain, wild mind.

So let's have a look. Because this is a lady that I studied with or trained with. Wait, I can't find, where is, I'm just trying to find.

Right. This was first published in 2000. So Vidya Mala, Vidya Mala.

So she founded, co-director of Breathworks, offering mindfulness based strategies for living well. And also she did the, yeah, it was a chronic pain. She, there was a name for it.

I can't remember what her name was now for the course, but I did it. So I did it like 2005, 2006. And it was very, very much based on the body scan, very much based on mindfulness and meditation, but not trying to control the mind, not trying to control the physical sensations, not trying to control the body, but acceptance, you know, being with how you feel and realizing that you got the, it's not, it's a feeling.

And when you actually focus on how you feel as a whole, like all of your body, instead of focusing on just one part of your body, which, because if you give 90% or 80% or even 60% of your attention to a part of your body, it's a physical discomfort or mental discomfort. You're going to feel crappy. You know, it's just, that's just natural.

But you can't focus on, you can't focus 70% on one part of your body and also focus on the rest of your body. It's just, you know, once you start focusing on all of your body and maybe moving that focus around as in with a body scan, moving from your eyes down to maybe your jaw and your teeth, your mouth, your tongue, your throat, maybe your ears, the back of your neck. And it's moving down your body.

You know, maybe the top of your back, the middle of your back, your lower back, your chest, your stomach, your shoulders, forearms, elbows, you know, your wrists, your hands, your fingers, your hips, your green, your green, your, I say green, your groin, that's what I was trying to say, your green groin, your buttocks, you know, and then just all the way down to your feet and your toes. So yeah, I was, I found it fascinating. Because at the time, then the flies not on my foot.

Really, he's getting excited about a fly. I I did have problems with my shoulder when I went there. But that was yeah, I mean, the shoulder should have healed at that point.

And calcium or ever been, I don't know, basically, the bones are rubbing on each other or something. And say, there's people slamming their doors. It's a lot of noise out here today.

What I'm interested in is where's my phone gone? I had a phone when I came. It's disappeared. So it's amazing.

I found it really good. The body scan is I started doing it in my own time at home, because you know, once a week wasn't enough. I started doing it because I found it calmed your mind, calms your mind.

And that's what I did it. That's what I needed at the time. But then when you calm your mind, you also calm your body, you relax your mind, you relax your body, you relax your body, you relax your mind.

And that's something I discovered quite early on, when I was doing free pain relief with people in 2006. Sometimes it was just relaxing them. And it halved the physical discomfort, if not more, just by simply talking them through a body scan and relaxation.

Without any kind of hypnotic stuff, no suggestions, just simply relaxing. Cut that physical discomfort by at least 50%. And they were always surprised.

And there was quite often now the whole, there was an old thing that people used to do. And I couldn't believe that is afterwards to try and get it back. They'd like, where's it gone? Or why is it not feeling the way it did? And they'd be like trying physically to get a feeling back that was there before they didn't want.

They'd literally come to me to help to reduce that unpleasant feeling. And after listening to me, they was like trying to like, oh, they'd be moving their limb or moving their neck or whatever to try and get the feeling back. Why are you doing that? But I guess, you know, when it comes to, when it comes, you know, we are in the Western world, kind of raised to be reliant, I guess, on medication, as I am, like we all are to a degree.

And I think when it comes to these kinds of things, it's often the last, the last thing that people do. It's the final thing. You know, whether it's hypnosis, whether it's some kind of talking thingy, boring thing that I'm doing, this is generally not the first thing that people do to help, try and help themselves with that physical issue that was an issue before.

Yeah, it's weird, isn't it? But I'm the same. I've had, I remember years ago, I had someone say to me, I should try this. And as soon as they started talking, they were like, yeah, you should try this.

It's really good, worked for me. It's some kind of alternative therapy or something like that, or some herbal thing. And I said, yeah, you should try it's really good.

It really helped me. I swear, as soon as they said the words, you should try this, my brain switched off. I stopped listening to them.

It's almost like I was, I might as well just put my hands over my ears and go, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah. Because I wasn't listening. It's the same kind of mode that I go into when I ask someone for directions.

You know, if I'm in the middle of nowhere, I'd sort of, if there's a car parked, someone in there, hi, sorry to disturb you. Can you tell me where the crown and whatever, you know, wherever I'm looking for, pub or, you know, going back even like 30 years, like, can you tell me where this place is, where the local bus station is, or the train station? And they'd tell me. And as soon as I said, well, if you go at a point, and I would literally internally be going blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, I just wouldn't listen.

But I needed that information. And it was useful, it's useful information that can have a, well, in the moment, it's important. I didn't even know I was doing it.

I don't know why I was doing it, didn't know why I was doing it. and I'd walk away like I think they sometimes they call up and say no that way you're going the wrong way I said oh sorry I get my luck when you point left I just tend to go right and he said I wasn't pointing left I was pointing ahead it's not left or right it's straight ahead I said you know I mean no I don't so yeah it's it's not always easy to reach people as I've not always been easy to

reach but sometimes with something like this a recording where you just got some strange English weird man just babbling on sometimes it can actually have an effect and you won't know why you won't really may not care why and you want to be going la la la la as soon as I started talking but then you may notice now or at the end of the recording do you feel differently something's changed and a lot of people will probably think like don't understand what's changed what what's happened why do I feel different won't give me any

credit even though the fact that I'm even listening to me for an hour then there's my nan did that seriously my own nan the most important person in my life she had osteoporosis so I went and did this I talked to her for about an hour to help her to to relieve that physical discomfort and it was she had it really quite bad she was elderly so bones basically crumbling so at the end of it she was like oh that feels nice I can lift my arm she can never lift her arm above her head

normally but she's like I can lift my arm that's weird oh and she said and then first of all she tries to get it back of course like you know like she was trying to get the feeling back but what are you doing then I don't know it just I don't understand why where's it gone I'm gonna look for it now like no don't look for it and you know what she said must have been the Sun the Sun must have been shining on my shoulder it says warmed it up that's why it feels better

I said okay then not the last hour that I've spent sitting here in the kitchen with you talking to you with the specific aim of relieving that physical sensation in your shoulder and in you know you kind of back area but mainly in the shoulder so that had nothing to do with it so this is even my Nan who probably cared more for me than anyone ever has possibly so even you know I know how it works it's it's natural to kind of look for it where is it and then to not kind of know

why why is it gone where's it gone why is it gone why is it changed but it's changed because you've decided to allow it to it's changed because you just by spending time listening to me even if you are internally going la la la la la la la you're still hearing what I'm saying you're still hearing the words and you're hearing the meaning behind all the words even though there's banging again downstairs so this wasn't necessarily a great description of the body scan thinking about it I think I talked about myself a bit too much

maybe but it's okay trust me it's okay so I'm gonna go thank you for listening let me know how you get on this might seem a bit chaotic a bit weird a bit strange how do you feel that is the tester do you feel more relaxed do you feel more comfortable than you did before that's the only thing that matters let me know 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 deserve to feel safe lots of love bye