Understanding pain
Emotional turned into physical
A few years ago, while traveling in Vietnam during a long bike ride, I suddenly had a weird tummy ache. We had to stop at a weird looking cafe in the most industrial part of the town. We had a very interesting experience there, but that is a story for another day. This pain would not go away and there seemed to be no explanation for it. I remember being in extreme pain and going to look for pain killers. Maybe it was periods, maybe a miscarriage, maybe some food, but no other symptoms. It felt just too weird. As weirdly as it came, it also went without me able to think about it at all.
A few months after that, I settled in Delhi with my partner for a few months. We got a dingy little house to rent and of course, we had to turn it into a home. While moving the furniture around, I got a sudden pain in my right fore arm and it was excruciating. A few doctors visits, x-rays, and nothing wrong with it. It was the first doctor to tell me, maybe its just stress. It made me stop to think what could be the reason for this? The fact that I had so much physical pain that my arm had to be in a bandage for two weeks.
Over the years, I have developed more awareness of my emotions. I have learnt to name them, be more open to listening to myself, and let the emotions really flow out when need be. Yet, when it happened this time, I was taken again by surprise.
A few weeks ago, I woke up one day with a terrible pain in my foot. The pain ran like a nerve pull from the bottom of my sole going all the way up to my thigh. The most being in the foot. I was baffled. I did not know what caused it or what could’ve caused. I took a little time to reflect and I was reminded of these similar pains that I have had before. I also remembered my emotional state during that time and how similar triggers had brought this pain. In my gut, I knew this was an emotional pain. I needed to release it.
The first step for every emotional pain is acknowledgement. Understanding and naming your feelings is half the work done. But just half. That’s when body work comes in. There are a lot of ways for body work and I am still working around what works for me and what doesn’t. My favourite way though is to meditate with it to release. There are lots of other techniques including doing a very intentional asana session that can absolutely help with such pain. A lot of different body work techniques have been developed. But all in all, once I released emotions through various ways, the pain magically gone! Like it was never there!
Have you ever been through this kind of pain and realized this is only emotional pain which is manifesting as physical? Have you ever realized it? Do share!