Pain is a message

Photo by J-S Romeo on Unsplash

Hello Darlings,
I want to talk a little bit about pain for this blog. As a professional healer, I see a lot of it. It's my job to deal with pain of all varieties, the physical kind as well as the emotional, mental and spiritual kinds. 
People often come to me for the physical type of pain. A bad back, a frozen shoulder, stomach issues, joint pain, arthritis, migraines, tooth pain... the list goes on and on because our incredible bodies have an apparently endless supply of ways to endeavour to communicate with us. When a client comes to me with physical pain, their priority is usually to 'get rid of it!'. They view this pain as the enemy, something to be eliminated from their lives as soon as possible. They often hate the pain, they resist it, resent it, push it away, attempt to suppress and silence it with a cocktail of pharmaceutical pain medication.
The clue to our attitude is in the name we give these drugs, 'pain killers'. Our collective response to pain is, 'Kill it! Kill it quickly!' so we shovel down handfuls of pills, rub on numbing creams, or get injections.
When pain shows up, we panic. 'OMG just get rid of it!' we beg. We don't care what the pain has to tell us. We don't want to listen to the pain or consider why or how it developed, or what it has to reveal to us. No, we just want to kill it.
But pain is not our enemy. Pain is part of the vocabulary that our body and brain have for getting our attention. Pain is a warning sign and a messenger.
Silencing the pain with medication then believing that the problem is gone just because we no longer feel the pain is as clever and effective as believing that the fire in your building will not burn you simply because you put your headphones on to drown out the sound of the fire alarm and stayed sat in your seat.
Your body and brain use pain when all other attempts to communicate with you have failed. By the time you are experiencing physical pain, I believe you have ignored all the other messages. You've left your body-brain no other option than to start shouting louder to get your attention -- through pain.
What kind of earlier messages did you ignore? You probably ignored your body's cues in a number of ways. For example, some of us stubbornly refuse to change the way we eat despite the fact our body is giving us feedback in the form of acid reflux, flatulence, and indigestion. Some of us stay up late night after night to binge-watch TV, ignoring our body's messages about being tired and needing to sleep. Some of us stay late at work every night, fire-fighting deadlines and sales targets, despite having already had a cold, a cough and the flu this year already. Some of us refuse to take time off despite getting shingles two years running.
Some of us keep snapping 'nothing's wrong, I'm fine, stop going on about it...' at friends and family when they ask us if everything's ok because we've not seemed ourselves lately. Some of us swallow anti-depressants for months, years, rather than delve into the root of our depression and anxiety.
Pain is your body-brain's way of saying, 'excuse me, there's something here that needs your attention...' When pain strikes, it is a message that your body is out of balance. When your body is out of balance, it is a reflection of your life being out of balance. And the first step towards unravelling all this is to begin listening to the messages of your body. Open a dialogue with your body-brain. Ask, 'What is this pain trying to show me?', 'Which areas of my life are out of balance?', 'Where is my joy in life?', 'Which areas of my life are fulfilling and which are not?', 'How do I bring balance back into my life?'
Of course, as a healer, I very much want to help you be relieved of your aches and pains however the best way to give you permanent relief is by understanding the purpose of the pain. So the next time you get a headache, perhaps you don't need to take a pill and push on through that To Do list; perhaps you could just go home and go to bed. Here's to your health and happiness!

Lots of love, Zoe xx

PS I am offering guidance and healing sessions over Skype/Zoom/Facetime/BOTIM - get in touch if you'd like to book an appointment! Just click here.

PPS To add names to my free, distant healing group, go to my Facebook page here www.facebook.com/zoehendersonhealer ​