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Pain
lobster
Crusty Veteran
I am on personal retreat at the moment. For the first couple of days I was in quite a lot of tooth pain. Interesting how overwhelming it is.
The pain gave me the opportunity to explore various solutions:
- Meditation on the pain. Bollocks to that. I would rather take an aspirin ...
- Medicine Buddha practice much to my surprise was unhelpful. Oh Buddha!
Yoga, slight distraction if involved in more intense practice. I personally found the mudra helpful
https://www.completenaturecure.com/vaata-naashak-mudra/Acupressure. That offered some relief. Again I feel focussing on a pain or elsewhere was a distraction.
- Hypno-therapy. This worked and allowed me to sleep. Good stuff. I find Micheal Sealy very soothing ... I found it difficult to start with but the distancing from the pain did happen ... and then ... zzzz ?
What works for you?
0
Comments
Acceptance.
And Ibuprofen.
yeah tooth pain hurt like hell. i just bear it with improper speech--cuss like hell.
@paulyso -- The George Carlin Sutra is invaluable: Shitpisscockcuntcocksuckermotherfuckertits .... sowa ka.
I don’t think the improper speech helps much... my money is on the ibuprofen.
thank you genkaku.he is epic!huge smile and chuckle!
yeah kerome. i wish i knew ibuprofen as teanager and young adult.what dumb-ass i was.now i know!
Thanks everyone
It was the intensity that was distracting. Sitting with it meant it came to the fore. Even though the hypno-therapy worked. The first half an hour of the session was not easy. I was relaxing and told to acknowledge the pain. Ow! However eventually the suggestions kicked in and the pain was there but did not hurt. Amazing.
Pain is awareness or attention. A hard master.
The hypnosis relabled my relationship to the pain.
For joint pain, I find self-Reiki to be very effective - that or a hands-free variant I've developed. Head pain - like severe migraine - doesn't seem to respond well to self Reiki - if anything it makes the pain worse, and I think this is partly because it encourages focusing on the pain - clinging to it? - rather than detaching from it.
Mercifully, I have not had any tooth pain for years, but I have very occasional severe migraines, which are as intense as anything my teeth have ever inflicted on me. When suffering one of these, I've found it useful to search the mind to find the spot where the pain does not exist, and to keep awareness in that spot for as long as possible. This requires some very intense concentration, but it really gets rid of the headache after a fairly short time. I'd like to patent it, but don't have headaches often enough to really get it down to a system.
Sleep is the best cure for me, works for migraines too. And having a damn good dentist, mine is Spanish and very strict on the cleaning regime! He mutters darkly in Spanish at times, it's a bit Bunuel
Acceptance? I would rather take morphine.
Yep well deserved from Cructacean karmic stupidity ... 
Unfortunately, none available. No aspirin. No Ibuprofen.
The pain was karmic. Too vigorous brushing with a new tooth brush, a whole packet of sweets and an extra hot sweet chilli sauce at breakfast.
Plus a bit of pain is a good practice opportunity for my Hell Realm Tours™️
New mantra: must be good, must be good (that'll scare the demons)
... while waiting for the mantra to work ... happy to report am indulging in mild pain acclimatisation via yoga ...
Carl Jung said that pain does not come from this moment, but it is an accumulation of our past experiences and the anticipation of what is yet to come. Jung often associates this with emotional pain, but since emotional pain lodges in the physical body, the pain we feel today is an accumulation of both our past physical and mental experiences. The practice of yoga, which is a self-reliant healing system, is one of the great tools available to us to reduce not only our current pain, but future pain and suffering as well. As Patanjali states in the Yoga Sutra 2.16 Heyam Dukham Anagatam: it is the suffering that is yet to come which is to be anticipated and avoided.
https://www.elephantjournal.com/2012/01/good-pain-vs-bad-pain-adi-amar/
Chilli for breakfast??️! Hell realm tours is right! ?
I do not LIKE pain.
If it is not too bad, I can somewhat open to it and relax with it. I found my natural childbirth techniques worked well for giving birth. And mindfulness for some other discomforts or pain.
But when pain gets TOO acute ... nothing seems to work except to keep my mouth shut because the kids waiting in the E.R. waiting room don't want to hear someone screaming from around the corner. And that doesn't mean the pain is reduced .. it only means I'm not upsetting children.
For about a year I had a chronic wrist injury. My wrist would dislocate at least once a day and I would click it back it. Until the pain stopped recently I didn't realise how much agony I was really in. The only pain killers I could have knocked me out so I couldn't take them during the day. To make it worse I am right handed and it was my right hand. Best of all. Doctors said there was nothing to do about it. I have allergies to Asprin and other medications, they dont give codeine here anymore! So no pain killers for me except pandol. I nearly slapped the GP when they said that panadol. Like really??? I was taking Tramadol and was in tear, waking up screaming during the night. And take panadol? Seriously?
The pain exacerbated depression that I already struggled with. But thats the problem. the struggling with it. That only makes things worse. If you are stressed or tense (which happens with pain) you tense your muscles more making some pain worse.
In my case there are 2 types of pain and its not always a physical pain. More what ifs. What if this lasts forever? What if this never goes away? What if I cant use my fingers again? What will I do for work? What if I never play Piano again (i have to play piano, without it a part of me dies). Those questions caused the pain that made it unbearable. Once I started noticing that thinking and tried to stop that thinking I could tolerate the physical pain.
Have you tried Ti-Training? This is another way of dealing with physical pain. I have just started it and it does seem to work. Even though Im in the early stages. Not sure if its good for child birth, I haven't done that yet!
Welcome back to NewBuddhist
Never heard of ti-training. Is it like ti-dieing
Ti kick boxing?
http://newbuddhist.com/discussion/comment/532835/#Comment_532835
No! its nothing like kick boxing! You should google it.
Its when you focus on the area of pain in ur body, notice it. Then you move to an area of your body where there is no pain and focus on that. Going back and forth between the pain and not painful areas.
When focusing on painful area you breath space into the area, kinda think about it fading around the edges and eventually the pain should reduce if not go away completely.
I have be told to do it for emotional pain as well as the physical pain. Seems to be working so far.
Because I run distance, I try - when things get hard - to practise radical acceptance.
"Hello pain, have you come to visit me again? Welcome!"
And I try to relax (best I can) into the pain, discomfort, and boredom of running.
I also try this with anxiety.
I can't say whether it really works or not; maybe it's just more mental distraction?
And I've not tried it with something as demanding as toothache; just lower level pain and suffering.
Some people run into pain ...
Ay carumba!
When I was running, too many injuries. Now I am doing yoga again. The first time I taught yoga a bee got trapped and confused in my hair, crawled in my ear and stung me. I taught the class. By the end of the session, the pain and swelling was completely gone. It was only a short class but an intense martial art yoga ...
https://www.yogajournal.com/lifestyle/yoga-combat