Dissolving Pain by Les Fehmi

Author:Les Fehmi
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Shambhala Publications

8

Dissolving Pain

Each of us literally chooses, by his way of attending to things, what sort of universe he should appear to himself to inhabit.

—William James

MARY ANNE HAD the pain and other symptoms of multiple sclerosis when she came to see us, including foot drop (weakness in the front lower legs, foot, ankle, and toes), muscle tremors, and leg drag. MS is an autoimmune disorder in which the body’s immune system attacks the myelin sheaths (the casing that surrounds nerve fibers), causing them to deteriorate. Nerve fibers transmit electrical impulses within the brain and between the brain and spinal cord and the rest of the body, including the muscles and organs. As the sheaths break down, they harden into a type of scar tissue, and the messages between the nervous system and the body go awry, causing, among other things, motor problems.

Open-Focus training cannot repair the deterioration of the myelin sheaths; that’s a breakdown in the body’s structure. Instead, Mary Anne came to see us for the stress and anxiety she suffered, caused by her concern about her symptoms and other issues. As she worked with the Open-Focus exercises and learned to dissolve the pain in her legs and elsewhere, she began to notice that her other symptoms started to diminish. The foot drop and leg drag, for example, occurred much less, and her tremors were often only barely noticeable.

“Sometimes I have the symptoms, and sometimes I don’t have them at all,” she told me one day, very pleased. Over time, she found that she was able to live in Open Focus and stay pain-free. She adds, “I used to have to say to myself, ‘Open your focus, diffuse your attention,’ but now it’s reflexive, and it’s very much a part of me.”

Learning to Merge Awareness and Pain

Have you ever carried a heavy suitcase for a couple of blocks? You might notice that while you carry the bag, your arms, shoulder, and neck are strained, but you really feel the pain after you set the suitcase down. It’s similar to what happens with Open Focus.

We all carry tension and pain in our muscles and throughout our body, but we often don’t feel that tension and pain in our day-to-day life, keeping it successfully submerged below a conscious level. One of the reasons we are so attached to narrow-objective focus is that it successfully represses the pain, at least in the short run. And we would keep directing our attention away from our pain, if it didn’t eventually surface into conscious awareness.

Once we move into diffuse focus, though, we crack the shell around the pain, breaking the narrow-objective-attention loop, and we start to feel the pain, which is a necessary step in dissolving it. It might not surface as pain per se, but as tension or one of many other kinds of feelings, from muscle tremors to tingling sensations, waves of pleasure, or emotionally charged memories.

As I mentioned, sometimes moving into diffuse attention is enough for pain to simply rise up, be experienced, and dissolve on its own.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.