Mind Journeys

Meditation, not medication

Meditation

The calm of Meelup Beach, near Dunsborough WA

I have been teaching meditation to groups on and off for 30 years. I am always astounded by the depth of response that people make. Meditation usually feels good, and people often love the sense of freedom that meditation opens up for them.

I divide meditation into three levels: progressive muscle relaxation, meditation (guided imagery) and contemplation (openness to encounter). These labels are very artificial. Other people use these labels differently. But I find my labels of the three levels helpful enough. In any case, as you go on in your practice of meditation, you will find the three levels melting together.

For those of us with chronic pain, however, it is helpful to see three ways in which meditation helps our pain.

Firstly, the muscle relaxation reduces pain. Whether our main area of pain is caused by muscle tension or not, we all increase our pain by the way we hold ourselves to compensate for the pain, or we put some muscles to extra work for which they are not ideally fitted. As we relax muscle groups in this form of meditation, other muscles around them also relax. On some days, we will find our whole body very deeply relaxed, on other days, not so much. But even limited relaxation reduces pain.

Secondly, the guided imagery assists our mind-body system in locating and managing our pain. Our brains have a map of the whole of our body, and significant interchange takes place between this map and where our pain is. The part of my brain where my thoracic spine is represented sends and receives messages from the spine. Using imagery about the specific area of pain opens up healing possibilities for the brain.

At the third level, in contemplation, the relaxed mind-body opens itself to the possibility of encounter with something other than itself. This ‘something other’ may be a spiritual reality, or it may be the ‘collective unconscious’ where we meet at a deep level with the whole human race, or it may be a construct of our minds. We will describe and understand this encounter according to our beliefs. But the ability to open ourselves to a spiritual power much greater than our own increases healing possibilities, including the relief of pain.

MINDFULNESS

The other powerful aspect of meditation is the way meditation cultivates ‘mindfulness’, or a sense of the presence of God. Meditation does not focus on the nature of God, so much as on the reality of presence. For the 17th century Carmelite friar, Brother Lawrence, cultivating the presence of God at all times, even in the dreariest drudgery of the monastery kitchen, was the secret of his happy life.

Being totally in the present moment removes from us the nostalgia for the past and anxiety for the future. In meditation, we are reminded that we are as we are at this moment. This moment is the only moment we have to live. We cannot live in the past. We cannot bring forward the future to live it now. We are alive in the present.

Much of the sting of our pain can be taken away if we limit it to the present. We are experts at remembering how painful our bodies were. We are superb at looking into the future with fear at how much pain we will have to bear. But if we practice mindfulness, we have to live only with the pain we have right now.

The best way to learn meditation is in a group. Churches, Buddhist and community centres often offer classes in meditation. Before you join, you need to find out enough about them that you feel comfortable with them. You will be entrusting yourself to the leader at a time when you are surprisingly vulnerable.

Also check out whether they will make allowances for your health difficulties. While there may well be a level of physical challenge in meditating, it should not be so rigid that you do not have the opportunity to learn.

In the next three posts I will teach you (1) how to relax your muscles and reduce pain, (2) how to meditate and use guided imagery and non-imagery to banish pain, and (3) an exercise in ‘contemplation’ in which you will be invited to allow a power greater than yourself to take away some of your pain.

The past is another country

The past, I find, can be extremely seductive. Someone somewhere in my extended family has a photo of my brother and I aged about 10 and 7 respectively sitting on a large Clydesdale horse. The photo reminds me, of course, of the hours Barry and I spent playing on that huge horse. The horse was too high to climb on, so we would lead him over to a strainer-post, and climb onto the large post. From there, we would try to mount the steed. Success came only after two or three attempts, because by the time we climbed up, the horse had plodded off, and would have to be rounded up again.

Being the elder, Barry would always ride up front and “steer’ the horse. This involved patting it on the side of the head, talking to it, and occasionally pulling the appropriate ear. The horse took it all patiently, just kept plodding on. I begged and begged to be allowed to sit up front. Eventually Barry had an idea. “I will steer the horse under the branch,” he said, “and I will grab the branch. Like he always does, the horse will keep plodding on and take you under me and I will drop on behind.”

My brother reached up and hung from the branch. I squashed down as the horse plodded on. But I couldn’t squash down small enough. In fact, the tree lifted Barry off the horse only a couple of inches. Barry was committed; the horse likewise was committed to keep walking. I tumbled off the back of the horse – quite a fall when you’re 7 years old and the horse is at least 17 hands tall! I looked up and Barry was still hanging from the tree. The horse was still ambling away. In the end, Barry too had to drop down, so we were both on the ground, and I had missed my chance to sit in the front! Despite my disappointment, it was so funny – especially as Barry got his come-uppance by being stranded 20 feet up in the air.

I’m glad we have that photo. It keeps the memory alive. I was lucky. I had a happy childhood – even as brother number four – and it’s pleasant to reminisce. But it’s also a distraction. Once I think of that photo, I start thinking of many associated happy times with Barry, with the horse, with the family. I’m in another world apart from the present.

At first glance, the past looks like a good place to escape when you are in great pain. And it can be. But the past is also a dangerous place. It can become, on one hand, an addictive escape that prevents us ever facing up to the real challenges of the present moment, until they escalate totally out of control.

On the other hand, the past has pleasant memories, but it is full of unexpected pot-holes. Just as we recall a pleasant event from our childhood, the memory sparks off another memory of being bullied, or being embarrassed, or of committing some act that even now catches us with an intensity of guilt.

While there are past experiences that do need attending to in order for healing to take place in the present, most of the incidents in our past are past, and should stay there. Bringing them back into the present just adds one more level of pain to those we already put up with. We can do without that.

Living in the present doesn’t mean forgetting the past; it means being mindful of the journeys we take there. Living in the present means we keep good hold of the coordinates of this present moment, so that when we visit the past we do it with awareness – both that nostalgia can be pleasant, but also that it is past, and has no direct connection with this present minute, this present day.

The same goes for the future. I can imagine wonderful things happening to me sometime soon. I can look forward to my daughter’s wedding. I can imagine the satisfaction I will have teaching a course next month. I can dream about being a famous author. But I must do so with awareness, mindful that the future, like the past, is full of dangers. We can worry about finances, especially when we are off work. We can project our disappointment if we cannot meet the travel plans we have made because of pain.

When we visit the land of future, the danger is that we will stir up unnecessary anxiety, just as when we visit the past, we trip over unnecessary feelings of guilt and shame.

Of course we must plan. But we plan with awareness that we are in the present. The future will never arrive. The present moment is the only moment which we can experience.

Jesus of Nazareth expressed it with realism, “So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.”

Indeed. The present may be full of trouble and pain, and we need to live it. But we do not need to make the present moment harder than it is by letting our imaginary journeys into past or future add to the sum of pain we experience now.

No Sex, Please: We Might be Sore

SEX AND PAIN
Definition of sexuality:
“Being so attentive to another that you tend to merge with that other.”
Those words, with capital ‘O’s, could equally be a definition of spirituality.
“Being so attentive to an Other that you tend to merge with that Other.”
For some mystics, sexuality and spirituality are aspects of the same reality: the purpose of human life is to “get out of oneself” and merge with the larger Reality. Saint John of the Cross, for example, lusciously described his prayer life as sexual pursuit and mutual seduction.

The Bible regards human beings as in-breathed bodies, that is, spiritual bodies: not spirits AND bodies, nor flesh AND soul, but just one united package. In classical Christian thought, no division can be made between body, mind and spirit. To emphasise one aspect (say, the spiritual) over another aspect (say, the physical) depreciates the essential wholeness of the human person. So for Christians, having sex is never purely physical, because the human beings engaged in sex are spiritual, emotional, thinking (etc!) bodies. Having sex should be making love. If it is not, the act is expressing hate, or showing indifference. The physical act is inextricably linked to the greater human reality.

For those in pain, sex may be painful. Doctors today even recognise this. In the 20 years following my major operation, sexuality didn’t appear to exist for pain sufferers. Doctors paid attention to the effects pain and pills had on every other function of your body/mind, but avoided mentioning the major impacts pain has on your sex life.

Nowadays, there are questions on pain questionnaires which ask you to rate the obstacle your pain causes for your enjoyment of sex, but I have not yet met a doctor willing to actually discuss the questionnaire results, which in my case document the additional pain of having sex and the decrease of enjoyment of sex. A doctor prepared to discuss sex and pain with me would be a bonus.

For those in pain, it can feel as though the physical pain is taking away the emotional and spiritual joy of making love. But that is not all. Not only is the pain a turn-off, but also body image,
disappointment and lack of control contribute to a diminished sex life.
The pain itself lessens the enjoyment of sex. The person in pain then sees their body as being less than it should be, and their body image becomes yet another barrier to full enjoyment of the other.

Faulty body image means not that something is wrong with the body, but with a person’s picture of their body. A faulty body image arises in chronic pain from not looking at the whole body. A person with chronic pain who looks carefully at their body, however, will find more that is right than is wrong. Looking attentively at what is really there is not only a spiritual act, but also a healing one.

Disappointed with their body’s betrayal, they withdraw from sexual activity, fearing more disappointment. Pills, the pain and one’s partner’s reaction to the medicalising of our lives all reduce one’s sexual response. Sometimes I’m aroused, but at other times, not. This loss of control adds to the spiralling decrease in sexual interest.
It’s easy to give up, or to give in to anger and resentment. But there are genuinely positive ways of responding.

1. Talk about these things to your partner.
Researchers have noted how difficult it is for even loving couples to talk about sex. It may be that your pain and the challenges it brings is a gift to your sex life. It can oblige you how to talk together about sex. The aim is to make love. The agenda of your conversation is how do we make love given the physical and emotional obstacles pain causes?

2. Fall in love all over again by realising how precious touch is; all touch, and not just sexual touch.
So hold hands. Gently brush your partner’s skin as you pass. Kiss when you wake up and kiss when you get ready for sleep. A sexual relationship is not restricted to 20 minutes in bed. Its joy is its anticipation of the constant presence of your lover.
Touch, too, is the precursor to massage. I am one of those who dislike massage. But a gentle touch relaxes my muscles and can reduce pain.
On the principle that ‘it is more blessed to give than to receive’, share the touching and be attentive more to your partner than to your pain.

3. Keep your bedroom a bower for intimacy (and sleeping!), and stop it looking like a hospital.
Take pills off the bedside table; put medical equipment in the cupboard; take pain diaries and exercise charts down from the walls and put them out of sight, preferably out of the bedroom. Cover hospital pillows with a quilt or colourful slips.

4. Be tolerant of your mind’s nocturnal fantasies.
Sexual dreams involving others are not necessarily temptations to infidelity. They may just be your mind working out ways of maximising your physical and emotional enjoyment of life under restricted circumstances. Learn to welcome your unconscious mind’s attempts to link physical sexuality with emotional and spiritual love. Your mind knows how important it is for you to love your body and with your body.

In all things, be attentive and open to the love of the Other. As other human beings do, make love as best you can within the limitations of what you are given.

In times of temporary or ongoing celibacy with chronic pain, the two-way definition of loving the other/Other still applies: “Be so attentive to an Other that you tend to merge with that Other.” In the 13th century Franciscan theologian Dun Scotus taught that every creature is a little Word of God: an instance of Incarnation. Every person or being to which one gives one’s loving and respectful attention draws us closer into union with God.

For those of us in continuing pain, this knowledge is a beacon of hope. We do have the ability to look beyond our preoccupation with ourselves and our pain, and look into the face of God. That’s sexy. That’s the ultimate in spirituality.

The Funny Bone – Nature’s Healer

I don’t find the idea of a man slipping on banana peel as funny as I used to. My response is sympathy – literally, I feel the pain with the falling man. But I can appreciate why others might find it funny.

There’s no doubt that humour can bring relief from pain. When I collapsed in April 2002, I landed on my ribs. For the regulation six weeks for healing ribs, I tried to avoid comedy that made me laugh too vigorously. Even then I appreciated in theory at least, that laughter, as the cliché says, is the best medicine.

Laughter produces happy juices in our brains; the same endorphins quickened by exercise. A good laugh generally puts our pain into a larger perspective. I have decreed (with absolutely no authority) that the root meaning of ‘humour’ is ‘human’ because humour reminds us that we are only human: quite wonderfully and majestically human at times, but at others quaintly comical.

One person’s humour is another person’s seriousness. Years ago, my brother Barry took me to the drive-in theatre to watch James Bond. It was the film where Oddjob decapitates his opponents by throwing his bowler hat like a lethal frisbee. The action may sound quite nasty, but the moment is not shown. Instead, after a big lead-up to the precise moment of violence, the camera cuts to Mr Bond for a quick quip. At least that was the how my brother and I interpreted the cinematic sequences.

You remember the old drive-in movie theatres, where you sat in your car with a speaker pulled in through the window. Quite sealed from a noise point of view, you would think, from other cars. However, my brother has a loud laugh, and he tells me I do too. The people in neighbouring cars asked us to leave the drive-in if we couldn’t be quieter. They were getting angry. It wasn’t funny to them.

For the rest of that evening, Barry and I suppressed our interpretation of James Bond, but to this day, we think we are right. But imagine the people in the cars nearby: they still think their interpretation is better.

Well, all you can do is laugh about differences like that.

I count my sense of humour as a blessing. I enjoy word-play. On dark days, I try to remember to get down from the shelf my copy of the Penguin Book of Nonsense Verse. You might like to work out your emergency remedy before your next dark day.

I enjoy satire, especially political satire. For me, the politicians’ pomposity deserves to be pricked by the weapon of sharp words. But satire may not hit your mark. You might prefer a comedy of manners like the movie Notting Hill, or the gentle humorous prose of novelist Alexander McCall Smith.

I watch one or two weekly comedy shows on TV. I prefer to choose only one or two. They are funnier for being looked forward to.

Some people rerun favourite films. I have seen The Gods Must be Crazy at least twice. That’s a 100% increase on my repeat viewings of any other movie.

Foster a humorous way of looking at the world. Humour can be a strong ally for you as it goes into battle against its twin enemies, depression and pain. For instance, just for the fun of it, turn some of your dramas into melodramas. Today, I was finding getting out of the car seat a little tricky. As I slowly lifted my feet out of the car onto the ground, then slowly twisted my body to follow, I really felt ancient and decrepit. So I put on a silly, quavery, “old man” voice. “Not many people of 105 can drive a car as well as I do,” I muttered. I hasten to add that I’m not 105! Yet.

Sometimes I make “over the top” comparisons. When I see the posture I’m pushed into some days by my painful spine, I compare my beauty to that of the leaning tower of Pisa. My sense of humour doesn’t have to make other people laugh. I just need a chuckle myself.

The old rhyme says,

“In spite of her sniffle,

Isobel’s chiffle.”

I try to emulate Isobel, and keep gurgling cheerfully.

Invitation to a Mind Journey

I invite you to join me on a Mind Journeyfor the next several weeks over the terrain of Pain and Spirituality. Each week, I plan to post a short piece designed to be both practical and provocative. There will be an exercise for people with chronic pain, and there will be some ideas on how to use spiritual resources to live well with chronic pain.

One of my chief and dearest resources is the love of my wife Rae. Her support is physical, emotional and spiritual. While I may not mention her by name in the coming posts, her unfailing support is always there in the background.