Edward’s Diary Entry 141: Awareness and Pain Control?

I had a bad shoulder. My self-diagnosis was: Nerve pain from cervical 6-7 over right back shoulder down arm almost to elbow… (this was confirmed on a visit to the doctor). I had this for over a week, after sleeping in a strange bed and pinching my right arm, and continuing morning yoga anyway to see if it would go away. It would come and go – mostly coming! – and for several days, I only found occasional relief in certain positions, which were hard to find. A hot water bottle first time helped, thereafter it didn’t. An electric heat pad didn’t work. An ice pack helped at first, and likewise failed at the next attempt. Nothing seemed to work. Lying with bare torso on a cool stoneware floor helped one night, in several postures and even applying pressure to the arm. At least it provided enough relief to go back to sleep again.

However, this was over a long weekend. Upon resuming normal morning and evening crosslegged practises and exercises, I unexpectedly found some relief.

At first, sitting crosslegged with palms held upward on thigh was as painful for the right arm as it could get, on a pain level of 0-10, about 4 (up that day from 2-3 at other times). I started the exercise, using earphones and a recording: one thought on inhalation, a second thought on exhalation. The first minute and a half was even more painful, as the head is supposed to be tilted slightly upward with eyes closed so that the focus is between the eyebrows. That was difficult at first, so the tilt for today was at a lower angle. After the first few minutes, with Awareness firmly and solely on the sound, the thought, the focus and the in-breath, slight hold and out-breath, the “pain” had disappeared…The “sensation” of the place in the mind (let’s say the head) is higher than the pain location, above the normal thought process, seemingly superior to the sensation of Identity and Memory, and so it stands alone in quietness and gave me a total absence of any “pain”. This Awareness may be minutely aware of some discomfort in the rest of the body (legs or ankles), or some ease in the rest of the body (left arm OK). It may be aware of sounds outside in the pauses between sounds. But with proper focus and the single thoughts, one at a time, there was no more sensation of pain, not even discomfort. You can call it good relaxation if you want. The last few minutes of the exercise switches from single thought to “dwell phase” with the sound of a flute first, and then a chant in Hindi, whose translation I am vaguely familiar with. Here, the discomfort and pain began to return, and at the end, after finishing, I had to raise my right arm above the head to relieve the returning pain, having found that position rather comfortable beforehand.

And so I repeated the session straight away. This time, exactly the same thing happened. There was pain to begin with, and after the first minute, “pain” had gone. It came back only vaguely after the whole 17 minutes.

And so I said, “third time pays for all” and repeated the session for the third time. The pain went away till almost the end. I raised my right arm anyway and then placed it sling-like in front of me. I had proven it to myself. The “pain” sensation can be conquered by stepping outside the normal “thinking mind” and using simple intensified Awareness to remain in a calm, concentrated place that is not down in the basement of Memory of pain, or Identification with pain and discomfort, but higher and brighter than this, where Consciousness begins to rise above the mundane and the tumult of the world.

That’s where we ought to be. Everything is nicer and calmer there, as I have proven to myself in this experiment. Of course, those two single thoughts were important as well: on the in-breath, “I am not the body”, and on the outbreath, “I am not even the mind”. No wonder it worked. We are more than body and mind. This exercise, already mentioned twice on this blog, in Clingers and Tweaking, has been on my agenda since January 9th, 2017. And I do not fail to find it ever more challenging and beneficial as I continue its practise. You can go deeper and deeper every day.