A while ago, I learned of the idea of non attachment to physical pain. I ignored that idea for a while. Then, I got ill with bacterial meningitis in 2011, and as an after effect experienced tremendously strong migraines and tension headaches, such that I thought my skull breaking open would be a blessing.
During the midst of the bad headaches, I was trying to read Jon Kabat-Zinn's book, Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness. I still haven't made my way through the whole thing, yet. But, I got to the part about his program for mindfulness-based stress reduction to help those with bad health outcomes reduce the badness of those outcomes through mindfulness meditation taught to them in specific ways. A big part of the program, from what I was able to understand, was accepting the pain as just a process your body is going through, that you are observing. It's about not identifying with the physical pain as a part of you.
I figured, what the heck, I have nothing to lose from trying this myself, and if it works... then I won't hurt as much. So, I started trying to meditate while going through a migraine. I didn't see immediate results, but it didn't make things worse. I tried some more.
I remembered the studies I had read, and presented to the class about, where folks who were meditators of various times from less than a year to longer than a few decades were prodded with something like a mild heat stimuli. The ones who had been meditating for just a bit were easily distracted from the meditation by the heat thing. Those who had the most practice meditating never seemed to notice the heat thing, even when turned up a bit more. And, when asked about it, were unaware it had happened.
I knew meditation could work, empirically, and, yet, could it work for me to modulate the pain?
A week into my process, I decided to stop curling myself into a ball whenever the migraines struck. Instead, I would lie quietly on the bed, and not make a fuss over going through the process of the migraine. It helped a little bit more.
Eventually, I found I was able to go to my room, lie down, and be quiet for the duration of a short migraine. Taking the struggle and frustration at the situation out of the situation lessened my distress in the migraine overall. Now, I only get frustrated with the long migraines. The multiple day ones that tend to last for longer than half a month. I'm going through that now.
The stresses of the past week doesn't help. My theory as to why a lot of others and myself have migraines that last a while in January is because December is usually a stressful month. This past December was different than in years prior, which is a different kind of stress, so even though there were fewer folks to deal with, loved though they are, there was still a different set of stressors. So, January came in with it's usual migraine storm. And, now, with the stressor of the rioters in the nation's capitol, and the fear that induces, it's no wonder the migraine is continuing despite the medication that increases fears and yet breaks up migraines.
So, now, I'm trying to recognize that even the fears are thoughts that deserve to not be attached to and so then I won't suffer because of the frustration between how things are and how things appear in my mind's eye. My mantra when going through the non-attachment to physical pain was, and still is, "Pain is just a mental event." My mantra for this non-attachment to mental pain will be, "Not going to get attached." If it needs adjusting, then tweaks will happen. The physical pain mantra without the word, "just," wasn't as effective for me. Some folks swear by the mantra, "Jesus heals all." If that works for you, so be it. It's not what works for all, and that's okay too.
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