Living Spinefully

Hello Friends,

Over the past week, I have been more intentional about taking care of my spine and my body through trying to eat more regular meal and treating my body to movement of some kind on a daily basis. My favorite movement by far at the moment is walks around Schiller Park and German Village, appreciating the spring trees and beautiful homes. I have also been using my elliptical and doing some basic body weight strength exercises. I have to gently refocus my mindset back to patience at tims, including reminding myself not to criticize my body for not adjusting fast enough. My life has changed a lot in the past month, but I am so grateful for the time I choose to spend taking care of myself. I can be patient in taking care of my body one day at a time, knowing that today is the only day that I have control over.

The next attitude of mindfulness is beginner’s mind, as contrasted with expert mind. Expert mind is the tendency to bring past knowledge and experience to every new situation. Of course, often this is helpful and necesssary, as we learn and grow as humans by applying what we already know and building off of it. However at times an attitude of “I already know what to expect” gets in the way of openness to the nuances and unique details of evey experience.

As humans, we see what we epect to see and come to the conclusions we already believe through selectively focusing on some details and ignoring others. This process probably has many names, but the name I know is “emplotment” – as in creating a plot for our lives. Humans are programmed to make sense of our lives through stories. One of my grad school professors used constellations in the nigh sky as an example of this process. There are billions of stars in the sky, just like there are billions of data points in our lives. But somewhere in the history of time, humans chose to focus on certain stars and ignore others to crete a picture that made sense to them – the big dipper, orion’s belt, the little bear etc. Since then, we have looked at the sky and seen these patterns, even though many of those stories don’t have cultural significance to us. In the same way, we create stories about our lives by stringing together certain experiences and omitting others, often based on beliefs we have about ourselves and the world. An attitude of beginner’s mind approaches new situtions with a conscious effort not to apply preconceivd notions, allowing the individaul to notice more stars and create their own constellations.

With regards to chronic pain, I think about how I typically approach my pain with an expert mind. I’ve noted it’s frequency, location, and severity so that I have information to report to my physical therapist or doctor. To an extent, I have to do this in order to be an advocate for myself in the healthcare system. And so everday, when I feel pain, I have the tendency to label it the same way -“oh, that’s my back of the knee nerve pain flaring up” or “oh that’s the pinching sensation in my left hip.” This attitude gives me distance from the pain that allows some degree of avoidance. My mind is comfortably in control, making judgements and assuming expertise about my body, without actually taking much time to communicate with it. Through this process, I reinforce the narrative that “my pain is always present and I’m so scared of what that mean for my future.” But what we know about avoidance is that the longer we avoid something, the more scary and anxiety provoking it becomes. My “expert mind” actually results in becomig more emotionally reactive to my pain.

So how do I encourage a beginner’s mind attitude when evaluating chonic pain? I have to zoom in. I have to get comfortable witnessing and observing the pain as if for the first time. This is, of course, the opposite of what I want to do; what I want to do is typically to turn on the most engaging tv show, take some extra pain meds, and lie on a heating pad until I feel better. Run away, distract, ignore. And while this response may be helpful in particularly bad flare ups, it continues to reinforce the belief that pain is dangerous and must be avoided at all costs. Sometimes, for my baseline, manageable level of pain, it might be helpful to get curious. I have been working through a course on mindfulness for pain management (on an app called Headspace) that focuses on just this concept – zooming into the pain, getting granular in describing it in as many sensory details as possible, and thus reducing how scary and uncertain it is. Taking time to consider: What temperature would the pain be? What texture does it have? Where is the epicenter of the pain and where are the edges of where it can be felt? If the pain were a color, what color would it be? What picture does the pain paint in my head? How does the pain move? Sometimes when I do this, I come up with strange descriptors that just feel right to me, but logically don’t make sense. For example, describing my pain as feeling “hollow” or seeming “sour.” (Does anyone else do this??) And as uncomfortable and vulnerable as it is to view pain up close, it’s also helpful (in my experience at least) in recognizing that 1. the intensity and flavor of my pain is always fluctuating and changing and 2. the pain is not always so scary and unmanageable that it has to be avoided at all costs. The really cool part??? Neuroscience research has found that doing these kind of practices actually helps soothe our nervous system and can reduce how intensely we feel the pain. Our bains are AMAZING.

My practice this week is to try to give three sensory descriptors of my pain as a I become aware of it, no matter how strange or seemingly unreasonable it sounds. By observing these nuances, I hope to start to put together another story in which I can choose to explore pain, knowing that it is not always as scary as it seems.

Thanks for reading,

Laura

References Louw, A. (2013) Why Do I Hurt?: A patient book about the neuroscience of pain. Headspace – Pain Management Course. https://patch.com/california/palmdesert/calendar/event/20221111/1950824/night-sky-star-observations