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Baking, Smiling and Eating pain

By Pain Coach on Friday, September 3rd, 2010 | No Comments

Living well with pain is a bit like baking a cake, or cooking a really great meal. Whatever ingredients we use and how well we prepare them and work with them determines the quality of the cake or the meal, and even more importantly whether or not its delicious or not!

Same with working with pain. If the ingredients of our living a great life with pain recipe are say, loving compassion, strength and courage,  peace and power,  will and perseverence, joy and pleasure, then whatever pain comes we bring those qualities to cook with our pain. If we are contracting in pain,  bringing stillness and a deep out breath again and again will change it. What happens to your pain cooking process depends on you. What you bring to it determines the quality of the meal, (or pain)  you get to eat.

Its the same as cooking a good meal, we can cook our pain.

No matter what you might think about, this it’s simply true. If you bring a smile to pain, and cook all along the through the cycle of your pain with a smile, it will change it.  The smile produces something good to eat. You get to smile with pain. Sound’s weird. It is compared to the normal way we deal with pain, with a grimace, and ouch, and crying out. That’s real too. I know it, yet try both. Little by little, gradually  bring a gentle smile to your pain, and see what happens next….

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Freedom with Emotional pain

By Pain Coach on Thursday, September 2nd, 2010 | No Comments
Freedom with Pain principles apply to emotional pain too….
A dear family member dies, or a marriage or relationship break up happens, or  a friend gets injured in a terrible  accident, or you just have a fight with someone you love and care about…
Emotional suffering comes in so many guises. Yet knowing this one deeper truth can reduce our emotional suffering, pain and anguish tremendously.
Turn and face  your emotional  pain with friendship kindness and strength knowing the deeper truth that you and the other are not actually seperate. It just appears this way. Don’t believe this appearance.
We are one living being. We are intimately connected. Every single thing we do impacts every thing else. We’ve just forgotten it.
Remember when I hate another, from this deeper level of Oneness,   I  am actually hating myself , hurting myself. Beginning here grounded in the truth of our shared humanity, our shared oneness how could we ever harm another. It’s just plain foolish.
We are One – live this today, treat others others like  you would like to be treated and see what happens next…..:-)

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Empowering Attitude towards Pain

By Pain Coach on Monday, August 30th, 2010 | No Comments

My attitude towards pain and suffering determines whether I grow and mature and become empowered through pain or stay stuck as a victim to pain. When I can eat, gently, slowly and mindfully, and sort of  chew my suffering and pain the freedom of the potential of who I am is revealed.

This freedom can be as strength, as courage, peace, love stillness or any quality or virtue. It seems that the depth of the suffering, the intensity of the pain has a direct and intimate relationship to the intensity, the vibrancy and the vitality of the quality that arises. Whether it be love, sweetness, openness, the more I am gentle, courageous, fearless and loving in the face of the pain,the more the qualities of presence seem to intensify. The pain drops away when there is less resistance to it. It sounds obvious and it is is true but when I can deeply breathe in the pain, allow some space around it. It lessens. When my body relaxes, when pain is causing it to contract, the pain itself is freed.
In allowing pain to be, not wishing or wanting it do go away, there is a natural acceptance and flow. A support arises. That support is intimately connected to breath. It is not easy, to breath in pain. The natural and instinctive reaction is to contract. So we need to learn how to train and retrain ourselves again and again to open, breath and relax in the midst of pain. We need to retrain our mind to stay present in the moment, to not push away the present pain. Accepting what is here now is a key, towards the easing of the contraction, the tightness and the instinct to push away. The more we push away the harder the worse it gets. The more we want the pain to go, to stop, to disappear the more intense the contraction.
It’s a double blind. I certainly don’t advocate bring it on.or I can handle it, give me more philosophy. But if you are dealing with any type of pain, physical, emotional, mental or spiritual, there is a subtle difference between not pushing the pain away and not inviting it either.
What works is to stay calm, to breathe, to bring all my courage, all my gentle sweetness, all my softness and kindness and loving compassion into the present moment to bear the pain.
This is the way in which I can eat pain. With gentleness, I masticate the present moment. I chew it with whatever quality and virtue I can muster in the moment.
It is not easy, it is a difficult and rocky road, especially dealing with any intense, searing pain. The primary orientation is softening, allowing the pain to be. Gently repeating the softening again and again moment by moment. Breath by breath. The repetition then become like a dance or a mantra, and eventually a pathway a doorway a journey towards a deep and boundless peace.
I learn to rest, can rest, deeply rest in the midst of this war, this conflict, this gripping all consuming pain.
posted by Daniel Feenstra at 2:30 PM

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Drugs, a clear mind, and pain relief

By Pain Coach on Monday, August 30th, 2010 | No Comments
Recently during a bad period of serious acute pain I made the decision to stop taking all the narcotics ( morphine etc ) and just do the marijuanafor pain relief. I did that, i started to just accept the fact that pain was probably not going to go anywhere fast and the sooner I could make friends with it the sooner I would be more at ease with this type of pain in my life. The dope was basically putting a barrier of cotton woolaround the stabs of pain, it didn’t make it go away but it did certainly make it easier to be with. Yet at the same time I was having a real struggle with being stoned 24/7. Basically my routine was to take the dope when I woke up in the morning and again as soon as the pain was present. As the pain was mostly 24/7 I was basically smoking quite a lot of dope to just try and alleviate the pain.
Yet through all this I was not enjoying the cloudy, foggy, stoned state that was mostly what my waking state would be. I decided I would really try and go to the next level of weaning myself off the dope and welcoming the pain just as it is. Regardless of how bad it was. This was the second phase of the process. It took some trust and gradual practice as I was basically afraid that I wouldn’t be able to sleep and would just get exhausted all the time. My intuitive sense was that things would work out OK. I just needed to trust the process. The process of welcoming pain. I did gradually just stopping the dope altogether. Each day I found I could gradually be with the pain with more openness, and less resistance. I still would find myself getting completely exhausted, just going from my bed to the toilet and back again was a big deal. Lying on the bed was also painful and difficult. Over the next few days and weeks things just gradually seemed to get easier and easier. The pain lessened and seemed to find its own way through me.
Yet what I am really very curious about and interested in, is that as soon as I started to allow the pain to be here, another intelligence seemed to get activated. This intelligence seems to have a life of its own, and when I respond to it and follow it, it does its thing. In this case its thing was to guide me back to the pain practice that I have shared with many people over many years. That when we welcome in our pain, when we allow it to be, when we make friends with and accept that if may just be here to stay, it too can be a path, a portal and a transition point to a whole new way of living with pain.
Then my life becomes a journey of how to live in Freedom with Pain rather than how to get free from pain. This simple shift in orientation and the practice to breath it in when it is here, is completely trans formative, and can and actually does have a direct impact and effect on not only my own pain, but also can bring me into contact with a deeper wise intelligence that can help me make sense of the pain, even when it doesn’t make sense!

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Finding what’s deeper than my Pain

By Pain Coach on Monday, August 30th, 2010 | No Comments
I know this might seem like a massive and difficult step and far away from where we are when we are caught in the midst of our pain. Yet it is true and possible to move into a relationship with pain that is liberating and freeing, when we accept where we are, when we allow where we are to be here, another dimension can open and reveal the inherent beauty, freshness, bliss that is this present
moment unfolding now.
Including pain, rather than eliminating pain can become the doorway to the region of living in freedom with pain. Living in freedom with pain, we gradually move to a presence centric way of life rather than a pain centric way of life. The presence of this moment becomes the center of life, rather than the pain of life being the center of my life. Presence centric means spaciousness becomes a place where I can rest and be, rather than some limitation in my own contracted sense and view of pain.
Remembering to deeply breath in the midst of pain, is a portal, a doorway to living in freedom with pain. Our breath can bring us directly into an intimate and delicate sense of life, that is always right here, right now, that is always available right here, right now. I don’t have to change anything, go anywhere or solve anything. I can just open up to my own breath as the way into the dimension of freedom with pain. I can allow and trust that this breath will inform me as to what needs to happen next. Breath and breathing becomes a guide to a spacious freedom to be with pain. Breath and relaxation with whatever type of pain is here becomes the friends that I need to keep near, to allow to be with me, all the time, 24 / 7 when I am in pain.
When I am in touch with my breathing in a deep and rhythmical way I am in touch with the depth and rhythm of a deeper dimension of life than my personal physical pain. I am in touch with the depth and rhythm of a much deeper rhythm of life that I am a part. Of which I am an intimate part, of which I am supported, held and loved, as a part of this great rhythm of life. I learn to breath and connect with the great rhythm, I learn to trust that this can and will and does support my life, support all life, not matter what comes my way. Be it pain, be it pleasure. I am intimately connected to the depth of life through my very own breath in this moment now.
Try it, enter deeply into your own breath, enter into spaciousness the next time you are in pain.

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Don’t Tough Out Pain

By Pain Coach on Monday, August 30th, 2010 | No Comments

Why tough out pain?

We need to discern clearly what is what in each situation that we find ourselves when confronted with pain. In acute trauma I’m all for pain relief. Modern medicine has done wonders for this type of situation. Why put up with pain when we don’t need to. It’s masochistic. I regularly find myself in situations dealing with very severe pain, about 8-9 out of 10 on the pain scale. In those situations I use morphine to deal with the pain, and I use the power of my own pain practice to be with the pain, relax, breath and stay open to the pain.

The most recent was a urinary tract infection earlier this year. I was staying on an island, about an hour ferry trip and car journey out of Auckland. The pain started, and I know this pain well, it just gradually increases in intensity until I can hardly walk, over about a 1-2 hour period. Well the pain began, and I headed straight down to the emergency doctor on the Island. The surgery was busy so I had to wait for about 30 minutes before getting any relief. In that situation I used my pain breathing practice while I waited for the doctor. I saw the doctor explained my history and situation and received an immediate intra-muscular injection  of morphine. Within 15 minutes I was relaxed and in relief. I then had oral antibiotics for the tract infection and was back on the mend within a few days.

What I didn’t do was try to tough out the pain. This just doesn’t work. We need to really deeply check that we dont do this with our pain. We need to be kind to ourselves. Pain is bad enough in small doses, for those of us who have a lot of it, we need to learn to be really kind to ourselves and do what we can to alleviate it where we can.

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Common sense and pain relief

By Pain Coach on Friday, August 20th, 2010 | No Comments
Last night I had some friends for dinner, they brought there 7 week old granddaughter with them because the baby’s mum was in real pain. She had mastitis, which is when the ducts block when breastfeeding. It can be excruciatingly painful, and was so for my friends daughter. Anyways we obviously got to talking about pain.
One of the difficulties in this type of situation is getting relief. The young woman concerned was  having panadol for relief. Now for any real serious type of pain panadol is just not going to cut it. It won’t work for real pain. The sense I have in this type of situation is this. When we are in pain, we do whatever we can to relieve the pain. We don’t just grit our teeth and bear it. We get help. We get the relief we need. This is often missed when dealing with pain. People often just put up with it and put themselves and often others through unnecessary suffering by not doing what needs to be done.
In this situation what needed to be done was getting some stronger pain relief. That was my advice to my friend, to get her daughter some strong pain relief fast. The facts were the young mum in pain was already on antibiotics and had stopped breast feeding, so there was no risk that the pain relief was going to impact the baby. Common sense would then say, deal with the pain. Get relief.

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Spaciousness, breathing and pain

By Pain Coach on Friday, August 20th, 2010 | No Comments
Noticing that inside this very breath is the opportunity to find a spacious freedom. Often it seems so much life is contained inside a small space. There just isn’t that much space to move or breath. Yet the fact is that this very breath can become a doorway to a spacious, vibrant and beautiful life! No matter what. Whether I am experiencing pain, or pleasure, the fact is that every moment I am breathing, is the very opportunity to open to the alive presence of life.
When we view pain as an opportunity to connect with our inherent aliveness we find the doorway into a place beyond our pain which is free from it, yet is still able to include it.
This seems like some sort of magical entry into a spacious realm where pain can co-exist with freedom, while we are still in pain.
One way of entering into this realm of freedom with pain is through our breath. Recently I received a little card from dear dad. He is suffering quite a lot as he goes through the final stages of his life. He is incontinent, often treated badly by the staff in the rest home where he lives, yet he still has such a deep and profound awareness of the freshness and aliveness in his own breath. He is a able to maintain contact with this life force in his own breath as he goes through the process of his life dropping away. As he goes through the process of his life ending and the suffering of his body, of his pain, of his having to wait long periods of time for nurses to come and attend to his needs. Whether its changing his continence pads, or attending to his pain, or to turn him over, or to pass him something he cant reach in his bedridden state…..through all this Grace comes and gives him the taste of the beauty of his very own breath.
In his pain “full” state he is able to maintain contact with the freedom and beauty that he is as a Soul. This freedom and beauty of his very own nature is the freedom, freshness and beauty of life that he is living in the midst of his own deep physical suffering.
Not only does he suffer from his body function difficulties but he is also suffering from the fact that he can’t be in his home. He so deeply wants to be living with the wife he adores and loves in the home he loves and knows is his home, yet he can’t. In accepting the place, the room, the home he lives in where he is in his rest home, he is finding is own freedom with pain. Not being able to live in the home he loves with his wife whom he adores. Yet somehow there is magic and intelligence in this life that he is living now. In this life where he is now. There is something beautiful and rich right in the heart of this very life. He is recognising this. That in the midst of the very pain and suffering of where he is there is something more. Something more is recognising what is already here that is beyond my pain. What is already here with my pain. What is already here can be a spacious, fresh, aliveness, an awareness that becomes richer, more substantial and real than the very pain itself.

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Welcoming Pain

By Pain Coach on Friday, August 20th, 2010 | No Comments


One of the most useful things we can do in our relationship with our own personal pain is to welcome it in.

It sort of sounds bizarre and is obviously a really difficult thing to do. Yet in practice it simply works.

Over the last month I have had a real life experience of having to practice this method with my own pain. About a month ago I woke up, sat up in bed, and suddenly was in severe back pain. It built over the day, until the evening when it was around level 8-9 pain. It was quite a shock as I hadn’t been in that level of pain for a few years and was basically in the normal reaction to pain. I did all the usual things that people do when they are suddenly in pain. The first response is to try and get immediate relief. Which is sort of normal and natural. My natural bodies response is I just want it to go away because its darn painful!

One of the major challenges that I had with this pain, and I know it can be a common one for many people, is that I didn’t know what was causing the pain. This makes it even more difficult to deal with the pain because i simply don’t know when it will stop or go away. Not knowing this brings me really in touch with my own fear of pain. Fear and not knowing make it really hard to just be with the pain.

My initial response was to just wait it out and see what happens. I initially thought that the pain was result of my spina-bifida condition deteriorating. I have a tethered spinal cord and the cord itself is supposedly decaying. I was told in 2005 after unsuccessful surgery tountether the cord that I may only have 6 months left walking then the cord would basically decay and I would lose the function of my bladder, bowels and walking. Well this sudden onset of pain brought me face to face with the fact of this happening now. Only worse, I wasn’t just not able to walk or having trouble passing urine, or having a bowel motion, but I was in really bad pain.

I waited for a few days and my partner and I went through a very difficult process of wondering how we would cope with situation. Ideas of ramps being put in the house, and just how I would function on a day to day basis were discussed. All my partners fears andanxieties arose about how she would cope with the situation. Yet as we worked through them some sense of grace seemed to be continually present, that somehow things would just be OK, and everything would work out.

What wasn’t working was that the pain was continually getting worse and I was basically living in agony. I was completely in the mode of I do not want this. I just want it to go away. It is overwhelming and just too much. Not only could I not get out of bed without being inexcruciating pain, with what seemed like a white hot stabbing knife shooting up my spine, but I couldn’t pass urine without the same thing happening. It was literally like being in a nightmare. I had morphine tablets handy and took some of those to help alleviate the pain, yet it didn’t actually make that much difference. I called my doctor and he suggested getting in an ambulance and going up to the hospital. Knowing the system and having my own sense of the situation I couldn’t see the point. I knew they would only provide pain relief and could probably not operate to solve the tethered spinal cord problem as I had been told in 2005 that there was nothing further that could be done.

The sense I had was that I had to deal with this myself and find my own solution to the pain. Well at this time the solution seemed to be drugs. I started taking morphine, and got some other drugs that my GP recommended I try. I took these and basically entered into a drugged up state, yet still finding not much relief from the hot knife like stabbing pain which wouldrecur whenever I moved position or sat in one position too long. I also had the intuitive sense to try some marijuana as I had heard that this can make a real difference to acute pain. I did and then was basically in state of stoned and drugged suppression of the pain for quite some days. After the 7th day or so of finding little relief from the pain and getting a little tired of being drugged, I gradually woke up to my own pain process of welcoming the pain in.

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Listening for the Quiet Guidance Behind Pain

By Pain Coach on Friday, August 20th, 2010 | No Comments


Its sort of known. We hear about it. And wonder about it and hear the stories of other who have suffered greatly and in their suffering found great joy, or a depth of peace that transforms their life.
That is the all this message is. To point to that. To gently and delicately suggest that inside the depths of suffering there is some extraordinary key. That key opens the door to a world that is free of suffering, while being in the midst of it. Where there is a palpable sense of support, of softness, of open alive freedom. Of simple relaxation, of the field in Psalm 91 where I may lay down and rest.
This is my story,my life, my journey through pain to stillness. Through the exploration and experience of my relationship to pain is where I have found freedom. Like many keys to the mystery of life on the surface it just doesn’t make sense. On the surface the statement that pain and suffering can be a path, a way, a master key to joy, happiness and liberation seems bizarre.
This process has not been consciously designed, but seems like some intelligence beyond my understanding has placed me in this body to have these experiences. I didn’t consciously look for freedom inside the pain, or looking for relaxation or the alleviation of pain.
Through my life, through the situations, the experiences, the events that just unfolded I was fortunate time and time again to be placed in the heat of the kitchen, in the frying pan. Not through choice, I hated it, I hated the heat of the kitchen with a fury. I hated the suffering, I hated the surgery, the pain, the cutting, the needles, the torture. Again and again as a small child, and teenager I learnt to accept it. I learnt to find a way through it where I could relax. Where I could open, where there was trust, even in the midst of it. This has been my path and my journey, and continues now. I was given the opportunity time and time again to either crumble and dissolve or enter through the ground of the experience into the ground of love.
I did both. I crumbled and dissolved. I screamed. I fought. I smashed things. I hated. I vocalize hatred to those I loved. Ultimately I was directing my hatred towards the source of all this pain, not just the physical pain, but the ultimate betrayal of being left alone. The complete and utter injustice of that. Of what felt like repetitive torture with no end, with no reason, with no cause. Why was the call from within my soul.
Why me? What have I done?
Alone again and again throughout my childhood. Tortured by strange people, those situations and events repeated themselves and I resisted with all my might. Each time the news came, or the illness, or the advice that something had to be done, that I had to go to hospital, to have yet another operation. I fought like hell, I hated with a vengeance, I crumbled. I dissolved into a puddle, I gave up.
Somehow through that fact, that surrender, that giving up, the murmur spoke to me.
Relax. Trust. Rest in this black, dark night…

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