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Painful Dharma
lobster
Crusty Veteran
There I was watching The Twinstitute (what fun)
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9540892/
Which would be better for pain relief, swearing or meditation?
Swearing releases adreneline, meditation relaxes into the pain ...
I knew my unconventional wrathful mantra would come in useful ...
Anybody else watch this?
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Comments
I can state with confidence born of long experience that meditation is preferable. A lot of the distress caused by pain is nothing more than the minds reaction to that pain. When the mind drops away, what's left of the pain ceases to be a problem.
I like to curse as much as anyone, but cursing provides a temporary and ephemeral relief at best, and is useless for chronic pain. Maybe more useful for toe-stubbing and suchlike.
No time to check out the link, maybe later.
i sometimes chant the C word when meditating.
i dont really.
seriously, meditation is just essential. on a simple, logical, commonsensical level, it's far better to step back and look at something rather than blindly react to it. buddhist or non buddhist, most fairly rational people understand this. Buddhism and mindfullness deepens it and makes it priority. which is nice.
swearing is just humanity doing its thing and i don't it has many positive benefits.
Neither ...Just pop a pill...
On a more serious note ...
I think meditation works best for dealing with long term chronic pain...
A quick WTF adrenaline rush for rapid relief may work well when it comes to things like toe stubbing & finger jamming...
I dunno, I was just thinking about this while chopping wood and carrying water, and maybe cursing can be actually useful in very restricted circumstances. Take toe-stubbing for example - almost at the very instant your toe hits the rock, you can curse. I don't know about anyone else, but when I jam my toe a good one, it is likely to be at least 5 seconds, probably more, before I can convince my mind to step away from that outrage.
Mikao Usui, the guy who founded the Reiki movement, is said to have stubbed his toe badly right after he received the Reiki power on a mountaintop. An interesting question might be, did he curse first, or did he immediately double up and do Reiki on his toe? Would anyone care to do an experiment?
Apparently, those who rarely swear, but use profanities when pain strikes, are more able to relieve that pain through that profanity, than a person who regularly and habitually swears.
I suppose it's a mental release, which becomes numbed through over-use....
From here.
It may come as a surprise ...but I rarely swear ... in fact in the real world, people who know me think that butter wouldn't melt in my mouth...
However many moons ago I was on a working holiday in the UK and got a job with the GLC (Greater London Council) in one of their parks...One of my work colleagues was a Cockney ( Cor blimey...well who would have thought... a bloody Cockney working in South East London) ....Every second word out of his mouth was a swear word... F this F that and the C word normally accompanied the F words....
And when I think back, all I can say is he must have either been lacking in the vocabulary department (needing sentence space fillers).... or been in a awful lot of pain...
I should also add that he didn't use the C word in front of me...only when he thought that I was out of earshot ...
It's interesting how some words are singled out to become taboo bad/unwholesome and others good/wholesome...
A History of Swearing
And according to Steven Pinker, there are five possible functions of swearing—
Abusive swearing, intended to offend, intimidate or otherwise cause emotional or psychological harm
Cathartic swearing, used in response to pain or misfortune
Dysphemistic swearing, used to convey that the speaker thinks negatively of the subject matter, and to make the listener do the same
Emphatic swearing, intended to draw additional attention to what is considered to be worth paying attention to
Idiomatic swearing, used for no other particular purpose, but as a sign that the conversation and relationship between speaker and listener is informal
It's funny how the mind works
It was a fascinating experiment using identical twins. One trained in Shakesperian swearing for a month, one in Shaolin meditation. They then had to undergo tattooing on the soles of their feet and an arm in icy water. There were other experiments: weight loss by exercise v diet. Quite extreme.
I have been known to do both. I'm an awesome multitasker ??
Seriously though, sometimes when anger gets extreme (thankfully not often these days), the swearing helps calm me down and then the meditation kicks in.
I had never heard of swearing for pain relief. Yet it is of course something we all instictinvely do as a response.
The meditating twin was more able to deal with pain more effectively incidentally.
It lead me to consider what is also effective or complimentary for pain relief?
So @lobster.... it would seem that all one needs to do is make up a word add a rude meaning to it ( so no one else will be offended when they hear it) and after a while this word will give short term pain relief if said when pain strikes..
After all....a swear word is just a word like any other word...vibrations which I guess have the power to interact with the psycho-physical vibrating bundle of energy flux called self...
So positive vibrations ....got to have a good vibe so to speak ....
Ay caramba! As Bart Simpson would say.