Chronic Pain reinforced with a Self Harm Pattern

I thought it about time I actually educate myself on chronic pain after finally admitting to myself that if I just ignore it, its not actually going to go away. In a nutshell, chronic pain is caused by my body becoming hyper sensitive to a so called threat (most movement of my right side…lol), my brain is interpreting these situations as threatening and producing pain responses that are way out of proportion. That kinda explains why the pain is a real experience and yet on some level I have a deep knowing that its just not appropriate. Also with repeated pain (caused by my refusal to accept what was going on and continuing with my strong Ashtanga practice) the boundaries between aspects of the pain response – sensation, suffering and stress – all get blurred. This is quite frankly exactly how I feel – mixed up, confused and perplexed internally.

So with any sort of movement to my right side, my mind-body detects this as a merest hint of threat and then mounts a full on protective response, manifesting in painful sensations, tightness and reinforcing my protective muscular holding patterns – I notice I unconsciously clamp my right arm to the side of my body. This could be the result of the trauma injury to my ribs but I suspect this was learnt at a very young age when my dad dropped me on the floor of our boat…humph!

In addition, this isn’t helped by some other patterns that are also playing out. My unhelpful response has been to get angry and frustrated with myself and beat myself up for getting it wrong…AGAIN!!! Sadly my way of getting a release has been through inflicting more pain upon myself. I have self harmed since I was a teenager, just to find a release from all the anger. I also complicated the boundaries further between pleasure and pain further by exploring some pretty extreme BDSM. I finally found a healthy outlet in a strong Ashtanga practice and this worked for many years. However, its like putting a band aid on the problem and not really dealing with the underlying patterns. I am not really sure when Ashtanga became another way to reinforce the self harming pattern.

Since my decision to go strong asana cold turkey, I thought I would do a nice gentle restorative practice. Needless to say, I approached this in the same way – straight in to a full on stretch response which I had to breath through lots of intense sensations, I couldn’t get comfy and yep the stretch triggered off pain in my ribs again. Then came the anger, frustration which lead my straight downstairs to the kitchen drawer to get a knife to cut my wrists before I even knew what I was doing. Luckily I am very vain, so don’t like to leave permanent marks, so a few bashes of my head against a wall and I felt much better. Until all the remorse and guilt arrived coupled with the pain. Not happy days.

The solution I believe requires a two pronged approach. I need to unlearn my over protective mind-body response. Yoga calls these memories of the mind-body that influence how we experience the present moment Samskaras. Science uses the word neuroplasticity, to describe this process of learning from past experiences. I realised I am good at strength based work and doing and yet neglect the relaxation and as my dear mentor Christopher Gladwell said to me last night, “Claire, yoga is 50% relaxation.” I am in short terrified of relaxing. It is currently one of the hardest things I find to do. Funnily enough relaxation has been shown to be healing for chronic pain – go figure huh!?!

Deep relaxation of the central nervous system allows for rest, rejuvenation and healing and it also unravels the mind-body samskaras that cause chronic pain. I have learnt for me, knowledge of what is going on really helps me. I am not exactly chuffed at having to learn to relax, but I refuse to continue to perpetuate this cycle, now I have this awareness. So, I have found myself a detailed explanation of some deeply nourishing restorative asanas and also what they ideally feel like – as you can imagine strong sensations of stretch aren’t part of this. I also found an interesting breathing technique which uses healthy distraction, which I now remember I used in my Ashtanga practice when it was a beautiful, orgasmic-sensation rich practice.

Secondly, I need to address the self-harm pattern. Anger and frustration are clearly triggers and I think the mental warning signs are the thoughts of “I am so stupid, I have hurt myself again, “When will I finally get it?, I don’t know what I am doing, I am really messed up” and it goes on. I have purchased Rudy Hunter’s Self Love and Loathing mp3, which has been designed to correct self-loathing and increase self-love. I will post my progress and let you know if these methods work.

Do you keep falling down the pot hole of repeating patterns?

Following on from my post regarding my journey with chronic back pain, much as happened in the short space of time.

I was chatting to the infinitely wise being and one of my mentors Christopher Gladwell about how I keep repeating the same pattern of over-doing it and re-injuring myself causing pain and suffering. I am sure most of you have heard the Buddhist pot hole anaology used to describe patterns. Well my pot hole is the pattern of over doing it and the result of falling down it, is injury and back pain. I was asking why do I keep falling down the pot hole and when am I going to stop falling down the bloody hole (insert me saying this in an angry frustrated voice…lol)? His reply?

“When you start paying attention to the warning signs!”

Simple and obvious at the same time. That then leads to the next question. So, what are the warning signs that trigger my pattern of over-doing? Well, those warning signs for me are the mental thoughts that trigger this behavioural pattern of pushing too hard. Thinking back I can clearly remember the thoughts of “I should do more”, “I should be able to do this”, “If I don’t work hard then I will get fat”, “I must do this or I will get stiff.” Then I automatically decide to over ride any physical feelings of tiredness, muscle pain etc and I then force myself to perform yoga asana or some sort of physical movement practice. Hence, I will ignore these physical warning signs and so I overdo it and end up in pain. Then comes the reinforcing cycle of beating myself up for falling down the pot hole again and all the emotional upset that comes with this. Plus the pain diminishes my appetite, so I don’t eat properly, which perpetuates the cycle of not healing. Phew, no wonder I feel tired.

So I challenge myself this week to pay attention to the mental shoulds, musts and I am also taking a week off asana practice on the sage advice of Christopher and my somatic educator Jonathan Hunt . I am terrified of this, but also aware that I am aiming to re-pattern my body with my somatic exercises and I am probably confusing myself and reinforcing habitual patterns with my current asana practice. I managed this morning just to do my somatic exercises (pay attention to the judgement of the word just!) and I had a few twinges so Jonathan advised me to do only two of the somatic exercises. Honestly, that immediately triggered panic in me “only two, that’s not enough” were my exact thoughts followed by “maybe I will do a few other movements.” So sneaky these pesky patterns. However, I am proud to say that I will just do the two he taught me. This is super challenging for me, but I am paying attention to the warning signs and I can clearly see the pot hole in front of me and this time I intend to walk around it!

My journey to heal chronic back pain

I have been suffering from chronic back pain for over a year now following lower rib subluxation and it has finally started to shift using Hanna Somatic movement, which is great, obviously! However, I am not helping the healing at all. As soon as I can, I go back to doing some strength based asana practice and I overdo it and manage to land myself in pain again. I had a wonderful session on Friday with Tanya Fitzpatrick who did a trauma release session with me around my back. I cried a lot, let go and got relief from the pain and my body felt looser. Afterwards the tension seeped out of my stomach muscles (I was told I was fat as a teenager and since then had sucked in my stomach muscles and over time they had remained unconsciously partially contracted) and I was in a lot of pain for about 1.5 hours. After that it was a much nicer freer feeling in my body and my diaphragm moved freely so I could actually breathe properly – ahhhh this was blissful. I won’t go into the detail of the contraction patterns in the body, but my ribs were glued down as my lovely QL was so contracted.

So this morning, my body was super tired and I did my somatic exercises and felt quite good. However I set in my mind that I wanted to do The Wiggles movement practice taught to me by a fabulous teacher named Christopher Gladwell. I clearly remembered the point when doing some twisting that my back twinged and I made the same only decision that I wanted to do the movement and that it will be ok. Errrr, nope that same old decision led to the same old result – pain and suffering.

It brought up a whole load of emotions and icky stuff. I got so angry at myself for being so stupid and also being so stuck. Logically I can’t understand why I keep making the same decisions. There must be some interesting unconscious stuff behind this. I am clearly holding on to this pain and injuries. I wonder if there is some deeper pain I am avoiding, or its just my conditioning, as we aren’t taught the art of letting go.

I repeated my somatic exercises a few hours later, but this time using Rudy Hunters energetically embedded mp3 Holding On. The idea is that he teaches you to hold on tighter so you realise how awful it feels and let go and there are of course some interesting energetic work embedded in the track. While doing this, I realised that I was doing much more mental and emotional holding on to the back pain, as I was holding on physically. In Rudy’s 30 year experience he says that if pain has been going on longer than 6 months there is some sort of emotional component locking the problem in place. I would have to agree on this one. I might have overdone this also, as 2 hours later, the pain is back worse than ever and I am feeling nauseous . I seem to be obsessed with fixing my body and always end up overdoing it. Another pattern?

Those Pesky Body Image Patterns…

Just when you thought you had dealt with an old pattern it rears its ugly head to send you right back in to those old thoughts, feelings, behaviours. They seem to ingrained in us and they cling on to us for dear life.

This week has been challenging for me in many ways, but mainly the surfacing of lots of old body demons, such as I hate my body, I feel fat and ugly and as a nice confirmation I have also broken out in spots. I have had to scale back my yoga practice as I am now breathing properly and find I don’t have much strength to sustain the postures and my long, slow breath, so the breath takes priority. I hadn’t realised that I still had all those old body issues. Clearly it is possible to suspend our reactions to our old patterns by stepping away from the situation that caused them in the first place, but this doesn’t seem to work in the long term. For me, when my yoga practice is strong and my eating habits are spot on (or very minimal food is consumed), I feel great and my old body stuff doesn’t seem to matter anymore. Until I can’t practice (like now) or my eating habits change (far too fond of bread, cake, chocolate and flapjacks these days) for whatever reason the old demons rear their heads again.

The solution? I know that’s what you are all after. Well I am still working on that one and there are multiple bodies I am addressing this on – mental, physical, emotional and on a soul level.

On a physical level, it’s by doing my best on the eating front and also the exercise front, but also watching my reactions when I “fail” by eating seemingly inappropriate food or by not doing a full Ashtanga practice or whatever that means. Self punishment is never helpful and only seeks to embed the patterns further. I work on my mental body by making a conscious decision not to feed these unhelpful thoughts with life energy and saying thank you for sharing. Thoughts only have power should we so choose to give them life. Another fun method I am using is changing the unhelpful thoughts in to an affOrmation, such as “Why is it so easy for me to lose weight?”

This is all great stuff, but I also need to address the root issue. According to lots of the yogic material and speaking with other yogis from their experience, the only way to deal with all those deep-seated issues is to tackle them in the depths of meditation, scorching the seeds of the patterns in the fire of awareness.

One of these wise yogi friends (and fellow body issue image sufferer and former fattie) suggested that I sit in meditation every day for 10 mins and focus on letting my body become completely still and so the mind will follow suit and then that’s when all the crap floats to the surface. What to do with this crap? He advises to disconnect with it by witnessing and asking myself “is this thought useful?” If the answer is yes, then keep it and nurture it. If not gently, tell my mind that I can let that one go and move on. It’s not a quick fix or earth shattering process, but in my experience the consistent application of a simple process yields results. My friend reliably says this process works and it brings about a clearing of the mental processes over time. I shall test this one out.

Is there a quicker and easier way of healing with the explosion of energy and soul clearing work? As of yet I am unable to answer this question, although I intend to find out. In all these healing modalities, awareness is the first step and meditation often gives you the space to observe what is really going on in the unconscious mind. Firstly one must realise, one still has an issue and mine was cleverly hiding from me. It’s useful to work with a therapist as they can see your blind spots.

EFT works on your emotional body and I know can help with emotional eating, cravings etc. Energy clearning work, such as taught by Art Giser certainly makes you feel better and lighter and when you feel better you are much less likely to fall back in to old patterns, emotional over eating etc. There is also soul clearing work such as offered by Sidra Jafri or Michelle Manning-Kogler, I believe would help heal any ancestral issues, past life issues, contacts and traumas that would have triggered body image issues. A deeper exploration of ways to heal body image issues is calling to me…

Confessions of a shit yogi…

I had been struggling with energy levels and concentration in my Ashtanga practice or a while now. So finally I plucked up the courage to ask for Eli and booked myself a private lesson. Still this is definitely a step up in my levels of deservingness as I have never allowed myself a private lesson before.

Did I get what I expected – nope. Did I get what I needed – absolutely.

The first major insight was my breathing. My breathing was shallow and I breathe an Ashtanga breath all the time – meaning I breathe into my rib cage as opposed to my belly. Apparently normal breathing is belly breathing and breathing all the time in the ribcage stimulates the sympathetic nervous system, so one can end up feeling anxious, flighty, emotional and digestion and pooing doesn’t work very well. Errr that describes me to a T!!!

My ujjayi breathing wasn’t long or loud enough and my inhale is much shorter than my exhale. So I had a lot to work on in my practice this morning. I delayed going to bed last night so I would be tired and have an excuse not to practice. I used to be so enthusiastic and super excited about practicing and these days I dread it. I am constantly anxious about having enough energy o get through it and too ashamed of myself for being so weak and feeling this way. Since I got injured two years ago I hadn’t been able to figure out what needs tweaking in my practices bring that feeling of joy and experiencing a moving meditation.

So today was a massive challenge on so many levels. I found it hard to maintain my breath, esp long slow deep breathes – my breath was often ragged, shallow and my inhale still shorter than my exhale. I had a tendency to hold my breath when emotions arose. Oh boy did they arise. My eyes are filling with tears as I write this. I spent lots of time balling my eyes out and stopped after the first sitting posture. I wasn’t that physically tired, but I guess my edges are currently emotional and mental. I am mentally exhausted trying to make myself do stuff. I struggle to know what is my body saying no and it being really tiredness and being a mental avoidance – the ego is afraid of dying and will do anything to avoid it. Breathing is a very emotional experience and I had forgotten this, so I am grateful for this reminder. Maybe it’s a chance to learn to be kind to myself and go gently. The approach of a lover rather than a warrior.

I also realised how much I have brought into the concept of what a good Ashtangi is – one that does a full practice (primary, second, etc) no matter what. So the past few days I have only managed 40 mins and I feel like an utter failure. I am now anxious about putting on weight and I don’t even want to eat but yet I find myself comfort eating. I hasn’t realised I was still using yoga as a way to still infuse my anorectic patterns.

I intend to now practice with a sense of enquiry rather than a grim determination. How can I practice in a way that brings me joy and allow the body to express itself on a particular day avoiding harsh judgement from myself or others?

Maybe it’s a collective thing – it seems like many of us are addicted to pushing ourselves – I am not sure it serves us anymore.

Finally, I did a fab Quantum Soul Clearing class last night and one of the things we cleared was not allowing myself to be happy and opening up the idea of what can I do that brings me joy (in the past its been mostly pain and suffering)? What happens on my mat is a reflection of what goes on in my life. My instinct says I am clearing out the old to make way for a new way of being and doing that brings me joy.

The 21 Day Challenge…Can You Reverse the Equation to Happiness = Success?

Let's Create a Ripple of Positivity...

I recently listened to an interesting TED talk where the psychologist Shawn Anchor challenges the outdated model the once we are successful we will be happy. He suggested reversing the equation as if you are happy then this increases your creativity, concentration and effectivenss – studies have shown that happy sales people are 37% more effective.  When you are happy dopamine floods in to your system, which has two effects, one it makes your even happier and two it turns on all the learning centres in your brain enabling you to adapt and respond to the world in a different way.

The good news is there are 5 simple ways you can re-wire your brain so you can work harder, faster and more intelligently.  So for 21 days, I challenge you to do the following:

1. Every morning before you turn on your computer, write down 3 new things that you are grateful for – at the end of the 21 days your brains retains a pattern of scanning the world for a positive first (most peoples brain’s are conditioned by society to scan for a negative first).

2. Every evening journal about a positive experience you have had in that 24 hours – this gets you to re-live the experience.

3. Every day do at least 30 mins of exercise – yep that walk to work counts – this teachers your brain that your behaviour matters.

4. Sitting practice (see my other posts for tips or sign up for the Aro-Ling 10 week e-course http://aromeditation.org/learn-buddhist-meditation.html) – this helps you to get over the cultural AHD we have been creating by trying to do multiple tasks and allows you to focus on one thing at a time.

5. Random acts of kindness – every day when you open up your inbox email someone in your social network praising or thanking them.

However, this is all merely a concept until you practice and it will become your experience.  Please if you take the challenge post comments on my site as I would love to hear how you get on…love xxxx

I don’t care: one of the 3 strategies of the ego…

Now the ego is very clever and very tricksy and I realised how I have been fooling myself for so long. I aware from my yogic studies that it’s the attachment or aversion to things, situations, outcomes etc that can be the cause of much suffering. So instead my ego has been using the lesser known strategy of “I don’t care, I’m not bothered” and any other statements along those lines (although these two are my minds favourites). So if I pretend I don’t care then I won’t worry and get stressed about things and cause myself a whole heap of suffering…seems like a good plan?

Actually, as it turns out for my psychological and physiologcial wellbeing it’s not so good, in fact it’s pretty disasterous. The problem is that underneath, I actually do care and instead I just worry away in the background and then wonder why I am not really sleeping too well, have a bit of a funny fluttery feeling or knotty feeling in my stomach. Usually I keep myself too busy so I can avoid really paying attention to what is happening in my body and mind. So I can do this for a while, but all this anxiety adds up and takes it’s toll and I usually end up getting sick. Due to my yogic practices, I tend to feel a bit rough for a few days then I can get up and carry on with the same cyclic pattern. However, not this time…yup, I have got the full blown flu. I have been in bed for 8 days now, with not much sign of improvement. So I had no choice but to stop and pay attention, especially as the raging fever and constant aches in my body meant I couldn’t get much actual sleep!

Despite feeling like crap, I am grateful for the awareness of this little trick. Now when my mind utters the words “I don’t care”, it’s my trigger to pay closer attention and I reply “actually, yes, I do care” and begin to notice how this feels in my body. At the root of the worry (mental activity) and the anxiety (physiological response to my mental projections) is my fears. These are those dark whispering thoughts of “I am not good enough, I don’t deserve it, I am a failure, I don’t fit in, I’m not clever, pretty, thin etc enough”. These fears have layers to them and at the bottom of them is a root cause of those fears. So I have made the decision to confront my fears face on…to stalk them, to hunt them down. The prey has now become the hunter. I use feelings as my method of tracking. Feelings are how the body communicates with us and by listening closely we can begin to dialogue with the body and work towards healing our shadow parts.

Is it easy….no! Paying attention to the physical responses is challenging….a massive part of me wants to run away and distract myself in my well known numbing behaviours (comfort not eating and rushing around like a blue assed fly). Have you ever sat down and really felt what fear feels like in your body? Is it a taste in your mouth? Can you smell it? Do your palms become sweaty and your heart races? Do your guts feel like they are twisting and contorting? Does every cell in your body tell you to run? What does your fear look like? I am beginning to get to know the unique pattern of mine and keeping my fear journal is helping me to recognise the signals.

Best and Yummiest Raw Chocolate Ginger Cherry Brownies

Recipe:

1 x cup pecans (these are much better than walnuts)
1 x cup dates (medjool are best)
1/2 cup cacao powder
1/4 tsp Himalayan salt
1/4 cup almonds roughly chopped
2 x tbsp vanilla paste
2 x tbsp agave (can omitt if you like less sweet taste)
6 x stem ginger pieces
1/4 x cup cherries chopped in half

1. Place pecans in food processor and combine until crumbly.

2. Add dates and combine until the mixture stickstogether and the dates look well processed.

3. Add the salt, vanilla paste, caco powder, stem ginger pieces (and agarve if using) and process until the mixture turns a nice chocolately brown. Stop processing before the mixture gets too buttery as you want some air between the pieces.

4. Add the chopped cherries and the chopped almonds to the mixture and combine using your clean hands.

5. Place mixture in brownie / cake tin and press down with your hands. Refrigerate or freeze at ths point, if not using chocolate icing – but this is what really makes the brownie divine!

For icing:

1 x avocado
40ml agarve syrup
30ml cacao powder
2 x tbsp vanilla paste
Pinch of salt

6. Combine above ingredients and process until smooth.

7. Place over top of brownie recipe and either refrigerate or freeze.

I chopped these up in to small slices and decorated with half a cherry and placed them in to pretty baking cases and gave them to my friends and family as christmas presents. I wish I had taken photos of them before I gave them away. The unanimous feedback was that these tasted sooooo good, I should think about selling them!

Food and Body Image Issues….

I was chatting to my yoga teacher after class last night and he suddenly grabbed my hand looked me in the eye and with love said something along the lines of “Claire, 90% of western women have some form of body image issues and issues with food. It’s sad. It’s creative energy being twisted in to some neurotic form of control pattern. Please will you sort out your issues with food.”

Hmm, I replied in my usual “yeh but”, followed by some excuse (this time it was the vomiting bug). But really it is just an excuse. I refused to rest properly, didn’t eat well and rushed around with work and then I wonder why when I got on my mat that night I had no energy. More chapattis as Pattahbi Jois would say in response when somebody required more strength.

After a dinner of stir-fried leeks topped with cheese and a grilled pepper, no wonder I awoke with hunger pangs at 4am.  I tried to just ignore them and go back to sleep, but as I lay awake,I was remined of my teachers words. Sod the time of night or my routine, I was going to give my body what it wanted. So at 5am (my poor housemate) I was in the kitchen making pancackes. I found this amazing blog called Chocolate Covered Katie, that has lovely pudding recipes with a healthy twist. So here is the recipe I used:

1/3 cup doves farm wholemeal flour
2 x tbsp jumbo oats
1 x small apple finely chopped
1 x tbsp homemade coconut butter and handful of coconut chips
1 x tsp cinnamon
2/3 x tsp baking powder
1/8 x tsp salt
1 x tsp Pure vanilla extract
1 x tbsp agarve syrup
1/3 cup milk

Combine dry ingredients in a bowl, then add wet.  Mix, but don’t overmix.  Cook on an oiledpan (I used coconut oil), on low-medium, flipping each pancake once.

I topped mind with 0% greek yogurt, a few rasberries, sprouted ground flaxseed and drizzles of agarve syryp.

It was delicious, although too big a portion for me to eat, but I gave it a good go.  Afterwards by body felt really happy and contented.  It was a nice feeling.  Maybe this seems like a small step, but I would never normally allow myself something like this for breakfast (I usually have fruit and yogurt), especially after not doing an intense yoga practice first and even then I probably would have talked myself out of it! Maybe it’s time to do things differently….

Yummy appley yoghurty pudding

I just made this awesome pudding and it’s soooo delicious and quite healthy too:

1 x apple (I used a russet apple from my organic box)
1 x tsp vanilla powder / paste
Finely chopped crystalline ginger
1 x tsp raw caco nibs
2 x tbsp greek style yogurt (this is what makes it nourishing and creamy)
1 x tsp honey
Sprinkling of ground sprouted flax seeds

1. Core apple and put in a hand held mixer and blend to as smooth or chunky as you like.
2. Place in wine glass and add ginger, vanilla, caco nibs and yogurt and mix throughly
3. Drizzle with honey and top with flax seeds (optional)
4. Enjoy

Simple, tasty, healthy and yummy x