My Life With Pain

I've had carpal tunnel or RSI for over a year now.  The pain can be frustrating, and often takes a toll on me emotionally, as well as physically.  It's no fun.  My goal for this blog is to keep a chronicle of my "adventures with pain" as I work through it.  Of course, my goal for my life is to get to a place that's relatively pain free again.  I want to be able to go out on the weekends with my camera and visit some of my favorite places on the beaches, instead of sleeping nearly all day Saturday because my hands and arms hurt too much to do anything else.  I'd like Sunday to be more than laundry and just the bare essentials to get me through the next few days.

First, let's meet Team Pain all right?
Dat - my acupuncturist at Living Room Acupuncture.  We have an interesting relationship, we're learning a lot from each other. -read this post about my decision to stop accupuncture.

Palmer Chiropractic College

Rich - my masseuse at Inside and Out Body Therapy

Dr. John Kabat-Zinn whose Mindfulness Meditation for Pain Relief I have just started using.

As you might suspect, I have a busy schedule.  Work, seeing Team Pain almost every week (Rich only gets to see me every two weeks) and, starting next week, the Elementary Stats class which is the last class I need to graduate with a BA in History.

Because I use my hands all day at work, it's hard to think of coming home and doing even more typing!  What am I thinking?  I miss being creative and I kinda miss blogging.  This is my attempt to do both and chronicle (as I said before) how I work through the pain.

So here's one thing I've been thinking about since I left work today.  In one of his guided meditations, Dr. Kabat-Zinn talks about trying to bring my pain "center stage."  To acknowledge and embrace it, so to speak.  "It's already a part of your life ..."  I tried this at acupuncture on Monday and pain was not having any of it.

I pictured my heart as a big, comfortable space with a stage.  There's a big heavy burgundy velvet curtain across the back of the stage, like the ones at old movie houses.  The lighting is warm and there are comfortable places to sit or stand or ... be.  Then, per Dr. Kabat-Zinn's instruction, I picked a part of my pain to bring into my stagey heart (or hearted stage).  But big purple left hand pain was uncooperative.  The more I tried, the more I lost focus on my breathing and my mindfulness.  Fine, I thought, it doesn't have to be perfect, there is no right, there just is.

"What if?"  I thought on my drive home in the hot September sun in poor air-conditionerless Car, "what if, instead of trying to drag purple left hand pain into my heart I took my heart to it?"  The story that grew out of that question, while not a sitting (or lying) mediation with mindful breathing, gave me a lift.

I imagined myself taking a beautiful brocade blanket and going into a comfortable dimly lit room where purple left hand pain was standing.  Slowly I made my way over to it and sat on the floor in front of it.  (Picture an open left hand, palm out, thumb on top and fingers slightly curved.)  I nestled into the part of purple left hand pain's palm nearest the wrist.  I just sat, and nestled in, covering myself.  And big purple left hand pain and I just were together.

This will be my meditation practice for the next few days.  Let's see what happens when I take my big heart to where the pain is instead of trying to force the pain to move into my heart.  It could be the beginnings of a beautiful friendship!