Good evening everyone. I hope you all are well. My name is Charlotte and I'll be your chairperson for this evening.

This evening, the webinar vet is pleased to offer our week 2 session, a focus on the valued living and the role of sleep with the fabulous Dr. Mike Scanlon, who'll be leading us on a journey to enable you to live well and better manage pain. Mike has worked in mental health for over 25 years, setting up services as a clinical lead, and as a therapist.

Mike is widely published and continues to work on a consultancy basis across the UK and internationally. As per our last session, please ask any questions by submitting them in the chat box, and we'll be able to discuss these at the end of the session. I will now hand over to Doctor Mike to start tonight's session.

Thank you so much as always. So, yeah, welcome to tonight's session, and we actually have quite a. A meditative session tonight, but the joy of it is, is that all my meditations tend to be, especially for vets, all of my meditations, tend to be short, because I want you to be able to, Access, the, the, the meditations, perhaps even, you know, in the middle of a busy day.

So if they're more than about 6 or 7, maybe 8 minutes, you know, I, I, I just know how busy everyone is in the veterinary profession, and I think people would struggle to do it. So I really hope that you enjoy tonight's session. I know it's, it's, it's a nice session for me actually, because it's, it's really good to explore the two meditations.

And have a bit of a think about how they're different as well, which is what we do. And as was said earlier, we are, tonight's session does focus on. You know, as the, that whole thing about recognising that what pain sometimes does and living with pain is, it makes us values inconsistent.

And what I mean by that is that, you know, it pulls us away, pain, from living closer to the stuff of life that really matters, because, you know, our brain wants us to overfocus on pain because it sees it as being such an incredible threat. And so our job is to sort of recognise it and. You know, what we, what we're doing a lot of tonight is making the emphasis about, not to get rid of the pain at this stage, because in fact, the more you try to get rid of pain, the more you're sort of telling that danger alarm mechanism in your brain that you're in trouble, because you're, you're sort of getting into a bit of a fight with your own brain.

And if we are sort of, I wish this pain would go away and, getting stuck with that, it's more likely that what we're, we're actually doing is we're initiating that alarm pathway of pain, anxiety and discomfort. So, a lot of what tonight's session is about is trying to teach the brain that, do you know what, there is pain, but I'm safe and there is no danger. And because of that, maybe.

I can just let go of some of these avoidance strategies, and I can start to move towards in my life, the stuff that, that, that, that really matters. And that's where we're, that's where we're going tonight. So I was, I kind of became aware that .

One of the things that, I ought to be really, encouraging is for vets, particularly, you do have access to the Vet Life organisation, and you have that 24 hour, 7 day a week, helpline, and you can. If you do get into a place of struggle, because you have such a, a, a great, . A great organisations such as this supporting you guys, I would really encourage you guys to use it.

I would also say that we are going to have a little think about medication today and a, a brief foray into some of the pain medications. And I would say that if you're finding that your pain medication doesn't seem to be helpful, or you're finding that you're, as a great many people do, over worrying. About running out or you're becoming over fixated on the pain medication, which is a huge, huge issue right the way across the NHS and most developed countries these, these, these days, it, it's becoming, you know, a, a, a massive issue for health authorities everywhere.

Then, as a rule of thumb, if you've got a prescribing advisor. And most practises are able to access a prescribing advisor for you. I would always recommend asking for an appointment with your prescribing advisor rather than the GP.

They've just got more time, and very often where medication is concerned, more specialist knowledge as well. So there So just curious really about how people have got on with the body scans that we sent through last week. We sent through the body scan.

The standard body scan, which is, you know, where we sit and we just rest our attention with our, whichever part of our body is causing discomfort. And we also, sent out the body scan for pain, meditation last week. .

And we also had a look, and actually had a practise with a somatic tracking exercise last week. This week, what I hope to do is to. Do a sort of double meditation with a break in the middle.

So I'd like to do the pain, body scan with, with us, live, and then go straight into a slightly, different, a new version of the somatic tracking. And my . My interest, I suppose, is if people are able to come on and use the chat function, it'd be really interesting to see, whether people have experimented with both, because ideally, on a course like this, that's what we need you to do, because some people will absolutely fly with body scanning.

But for others, it'll be the somatic tracking where they get the most dividends in terms of. Helping them manage pain so much better and changing their stance towards their pain. So tonight, we're going to be having a go at.

A body scan and a slightly different, a motion focused. Somatic tracking exercise, which I will record live tonight. And so you guys would be able to access the one we actually do tonight.

So I've got . I wouldn't call it studio equipment by any means, but I've got something set up so we should be able to record tonight, which would be good. So if anybody cares to just share or any thoughts about how you did with those two, we've had Sophie come back and said I'd done body scans before, but somatic tracking was new and I really enjoyed it and felt it was helpful.

I, I, I love it, you know, I, I really think it's, it's, . It, it's a very exciting, relatively new way of meeting pain. And, there's so much research, about at the moment, and so much interest in somatic tracking.

And I just like the whole stance, so we will have another look at that, and I'm glad, Sophie, that you got something from it. So, you know, if you do get a moment during tonight's session, and you would like to just, share with me. How you did, what your experience was, then that, that's always, that's always, useful.

Justine's just come back and said, I've found the somatic tracking for migraine pain. Yeah, absolutely. The one I use for migraine pain is a sort of neuroplasticity, version of that, which is really aiming to get right inside our brains and to change our brain's response.

And yeah, well done for finding that. It's good. So one of the reasons why, I suppose, some of you, may be on the course tonight, because very often when I run these courses within the NHS, and, I've had a great many of them now, and because I'm such a geek, they're always being updated and new stuff coming in and looking at the evidence base for.

What's current and not necessarily jumping on, you know, the flavour of the moment. I like to make sure that we have a good evidence base. But something I've noticed is that a lot of people that come on, when they do start to really warm to the course and feel able to, ask for advice and, talk about their experience, which is a great part, I think, of this is, you know, do use that chat function, is that for some people, It really is, worth partnering up and, looking again at what medication you're taking for the pain on two counts, really.

One is that, am I taking it sort of habitually and do I actually feel that it, it helps at the moment? Because, Sometimes we get very, very used to a pain medication and we no longer get the same levels of efficacy from it. And also, just about my stance really.

And if you're somebody that's taking opioids for your pain at the moment. It, it just might be worth having a think about whether it's as effective now as it was when you first started to use . Opioids, because the opioids themselves, .

You know, our, our brain does get very used to them. And because it's so linked into the threat response, sometimes our brain will sort of work around the usefulness of the opioids. The other downside, of course, is that as we get more used to using opioid medication, our brain sort of loses its ability to, make use of natural endorphins.

And For me, probably the most important. Reason for keeping an eye on the medication you use to try and help with your pain, is that . Because we're using opioids, what can sometimes happen is we reach this sort of disassociative state, which means that we stop connecting with some of the emotions that are linked to the pain.

And the problem with that is, is that sort of . Heightened alert that we get, that sense of being always on edge, can get very, very stuck. And so even if we're taking an opioid, our pain continues to increase because we're not dealing with the sense of threat.

So Finally, and we are looking at this, that we do know that just using opiates, opioids for more than a few weeks can impact on your ability to get good restorative sleep. And I'm not sure how many of you are aware of this, but, the very recent primary care guidance from the National Institute for Clinical Excellence. Excellent said that where pain is concerned, persistent pain is concerned, antidepressants should be considered first line.

I know, staggering, isn't it? What a shift. So rather than using.

Pain blocking medications for somebody, you know, we, we might use paracetamol, we might use over the counter, remedies when the pain is acute, and we might carry on using it for a little while, but when we ship up at our GP and we're telling them that this pain has been around for quite a while now, then nice guidance is very clear that first line from primary care should be the GP should be looking to prescribe an antidepressant. Because of the anxiolytic qualities of a very good antidepressant now, and lowering that sense of threat may well have interesting. And positive outcomes for the .

For the pain, so, . Yeah. What I'd say is, if you're looking at this and you're thinking, you know, Mike talked about those prescribing advisors earlier.

Nearly all of the clients that I work with on a 1 to 1 basis for psychological, management of pain, who've been to see their prescribing advisors, as I think I said this last week, do spend 40 minutes, up to an hour, sitting and looking at options and discussing. In detail how we can make that your pain medication work more effectively for you. And so I would say that this isn't a journey you should think you're on on your own here.

As part of my course, as part of this course you're on this, this next, 5 weeks, is, you know, contact your GP if you're not comfortable with the medication you're taking, if perhaps you're finding that. You know, you've been on it for a long time, and, once, once it, it feels like maybe it's time to come off. And Greg's just asked, do the number of receptors, of pain receptors reduce if you, stop the opioids, .

Greg, I'm gonna take that question to my prescribing advisors and check that one out, but I will check that one out for next week. So, I will get back to you on that next week, because I would, I think I'll, I'll go to their expertise on, on, on that one, because my knowledge base, I'm gonna be really flat, honest with you, is, not so sure. So I will check that out, Greg.

So leave that with me if you don't mind. Just checking out that sort of stuff is, is of course so important. Just, I just got a quick note, just because not everyone can see that question.

Greg was just asking if you stop opioids, do the number of receptors then reduce, just so everyone is aware. And obviously wants that answer, we can get that back to you as soon as the light gets there. .

Yeah, well, I'm doing some training with the With with the prescribing advisors, . Friday, it's just an hour's training, so I will choose that opportunity to nab them and ask them that question. So thanks very much for that.

Now, we're gonna go into the. Body scan meditation, but I'd, I, I'd like to, look at and share with you the body scan. The standardised sort of body scan that we might use for pain, not the more active one.

And then, once we've done a body scan, and we've experienced that, I'm then gonna go in and, go straight into a somatic tracking exercise, so that you can experience, one sitting next to the other and get a difference of, get a sense of how different they are and how you might use them, At different times and for different outcomes. So with any of the meditations that we're going to be doing, and both are meditative exercises, what I would say is, it kind of works best if we. Close our eyes or soften our eyelids certainly and maybe focus our attention on a spot on the floor, but ideally just allowing our eyes to close fully.

And before we start, just making sure that by body language alone, that we're giving our brain a hint that we're actually OK as we're doing this. So simply by sitting and looking dignified, our brain can and will. Just get a sense of.

Being OK. That we Calm That we're not under any threat because that sitting dignified with that mindful half smile, just beginning to push its way onto our face and allow us to relax as we do it. Is I think a big part of body scanning that sometimes gets forgotten.

So Let's stop. So as always, we want to centre our attention. To begin with So I'd just love you to just take your attention.

Outside And listen For the sounds that you can hear. Outside of wherever it is that you're meditating. And quietly just label what you find.

And gently your attention. In to the room that you're sitting in and really listen. And get a sense of any sounds.

Even if it's just the computer humming quietly. And then direct your attention right in. And find your breath.

And switch on that noticer part of the brain and see if we can't focus right in. And connect with the sound that we make. As we breathe in And as we let go of our breath just breathing.

And I'd like us to take our attention, please. To the very top Of your body And we're gonna go scanning now. For pain And we're gonna scan from.

The top of your head All the way down to your toes and then once we've scanned the body we're going to come back and rest our attention on wherever the pain is most prominent tonight right now. And we resist any temptation to go straight to where your brain tells you, well of course it's there, because that's where it always is. We're not gonna Be pushed around by our brains to do that because we're doing this in a spirit of curiosity.

So let's go curiously. And explore Wherever that pain is sitting. So initially we take our attention to your scalp.

And we just Scan our attention over the scalp. Down over the forehead. Above the eyes.

Into our cheekbones. Finding the jaw. Softening if we need to.

Gentling back up the back of our neck. And right into the back of our skull. And easing our way back down again.

As though he were shining a light on each part of the body. As we travel through it and around it. And we take our attention.

And we go searching. Around the Neck And the shoulders. A collarbone.

We do that for both sides of our body. And if we find pain we just. Smile Quietly say to herself, and there it is and move on.

Because maybe it's sitting somewhere else as well. So just curious. And we continue to scan and we take our attention down.

And we moved down our back. All the way down to the lower back. And we come back up again and we check our fronts of our body.

Let me just check our ribs. Chest. And Our tummy.

We check our Hips. The thighs. We have a gentle.

Shine of the light into our knee joints. And our ankle joints. The tops of our feet.

And the arches of our feet. And we gentle our attention and just check out our toes as well. And as we sit having Kind of scan down the body.

Let's take our attention to where We've discovered our pain sets. And let's just rest our attention. Without pain And this is mindfulness.

And when we Meeting pain With mindfulness It's very passive. We're not trying to change anything. We're not trying to make anything different at all.

We're finding in our pain. And we're sitting with it. And we're conscious of the need.

To meet it with a sort of equanimity. And calm It is What it is And we sit with it. We get a sense of it.

And then when we're ready We let go of the pain. And we gentle our attention. And we find our breath.

And we Just place our attention firmly on the breath. And we stay with the breath as we Take a gentle breath in. And gentle breath out.

And we Find a curiosity about. So where does my breath begin? Does it begin in my tummy?

Am I a thoracic breather? Does it begin in my chest or does it begin just underneath my septum? So we go find where your breath begins and we follow it.

And we notice that it stops being an even breath. And just segues into an out breath and we breathe out. We take one more breath.

And we stay with it. If our mind starts to wander, we smile. We remind ourselves we're just breathing here.

So back to the bra And when you're ready, We let go Of the attention on the breath and We automatically keep breathing. It's what we do. And we once again take our attention and we escort it back.

And we sit And we rested. With our pain Noticing any urges to make the pain. Better Or to go away.

To lessen in intensity. And just smiling at that because that's not what we're doing. We're just Getting used to sitting with the pain.

And acknowledging it. And when we're ready Just building that mindful muscle of being able to take our attention away. From the pain And find our breath.

Once more And Noticing that We can play this game. We can enjoy this. Engaging with greater mastery over where I choose to attend to.

My breath. Or The pain. My breath Or the pain and we can sit.

And build that sense of Choice And when we're ready smile. Very gently. And just come back to the room.

And we open our eyes once more. So Well done, everybody. And this is a meditation that we just really need to practise.

You may remember my slide from last week, which was, reminding us that there is now a very good evidence base that. Body scanning, just body scanning. Of the two forms, the body scanning specifically for pain, which will.

Do the . The other pain meditation next week or . The one we've just done just now, and what the findings were were very clear that it gives us this greater ability to live well with pain and to reduce the emotional difficulties associated with our pain just by becoming very, very good.

And building a body scan practise. It's the only meditation. That you actually need to do.

If we're working with pain because the body scan is where so much of the evidence base. Sis So We move. From body scanning.

To Somatic tracking. And I, I kind of, this is a well used, a well used image really, a well used metaphor for pain, but it is that sort of. Sense of what we get sometimes from the somatic tracking is that sidling up to our pain.

And just sort of. Moving next to it and. Just providing that sense of reassurance.

And what we absolutely know is the slide says that. If our brain is restored. And it's more comfortable.

And it's less reactive to the stress and to fear responses then. What can happen is that we start to . Actually experience an improvement in our pain experience.

So during somatic tracking. We just being Curious and reassuring. With our brains So we're going to do.

A somatic tracking now. That Explores and becomes curious about the thoughts and the emotions. That a company Our pain So once again.

Let's get ourselves into a comfortable position. And another short meditative experience. So somatic tracking of emotion and thought.

That accompanies pain. And We begin this. Meditation.

By very gently. Just Allowing our attention. To be guided to wherever.

Our pain is sitting. Right now And just shining that torch of inquiry. Torchlight of curiosity.

Where are you? And how are you? And getting a sense.

From last week's somatic tracking of Not only where your pain sits, but The size of it. Whether there's colour Whether when we connect with our pain. We get a sense of sound even.

Or texture And just sidling up. With curiosity and compassion and warmth And finding that pain. And flexing that muscle of curiosity.

Leaning into the pan. And when I connect with the pain. What is the emotion?

That arises Is it sadness? Is it frustration? Is it envy?

Is what we find. Resentment. And we noticed the urge to pull away from that.

And we smile. And move towards your pain. With that wonderful curiosity.

And when I find the pain. And the emotion that shows up. We want to dampen down the frontal cortex.

And we can do this very simply. By naming the emotion we find. Ah, This is Fear.

This is resentment. This is Frustration And we sit with it Both the emotion And the pain. As we lean in.

To the pain. We find that mindful half smile of acceptance because There is nothing here. To be afraid of.

This is just pain. Just emotion. As we lean in with that.

Curious superpower that we need to harness. Quite, is there a thought? That bubbles up Out of this pain when I connected.

And we smile when we. Connect with the thought and is the thought I just want you. To go away And we smiled at that.

Hm. And we allow the thought. But we've applied some curiosity, and how is that thought working for me?

To fight with a sense of making something. Forcing something to go away which Chooses to stay. And we sit with that emotion and we name it.

And we curiously find, is there a. Better replacement even. For that aversive push away, he thought.

Let's try. Do you know what This is just pain. This is just pain.

And when we're ready Very gently we let go. And we gentle our attention back. And we open our eyes.

And we've come back to the room. Now, I'm sure you've recognised that the . Difference is that with the somatic tracking, what we want you to start to do is to practise some somatic tracking and.

Just When pain, distress happens in your lives during the day. When you notice that you're engaging with your normal avoidance strategies to make pain go away or to deal with the stress that the pain makes you feel. Literally just stop, you don't need always the audio tracking, but if you want to, that's fine as well.

And just mindfully explore. And examine Your pain. And your discomfort Making sure that at the end.

We finish with. I'm OK. I'll be fine.

Or we just remind ourselves that Do you know what? I'm safe here. You know I am in fact.

Pretty safe here. These are just neurons firing. I'm OK.

These sensations are not dangerous. And they can't harm me. This is just my brain.

Communicating with me. And we do need to get real benefit from this stuff, to practise the somatic tracking, find. Which of the Different somatic trackings that we're going to be doing over this 6 week course really works for you and to pull aside time to do a 6 to 8 minute somatic tracking exercise so that you can.

Find your own version of that. Literally for 2 to 3 minutes when pain. Shows up So I'll leave that with you guys to notice as well.

That body scan is very passive. But rather lovely And the somatic tracking is more. Curious, it is more interventionist.

And which one Works for you. So tonight's. Session Is aimed at.

Working with pain as we're doing, but it's also aimed at recognising that. Ideally, We need to be moving the way we respond to pain. To Getting to a place where.

Essentially We're back in touch with the people. In our lives who really matter. And the stuff within our life.

That really matters and I guess I'd like you all tonight just to. Sit Allow in this question. Currently The way you're living your lives at the moment.

Is pain Getting in the way of or overinfluencing. Your ability To live a values consistent life where you are. Attending as you would want to to the people and the stuff of life that Really matters to you.

Just allow yourselves to peruse that. Because Maybe The biggest dividend that you'll get from spending 6 weeks. Working with pain.

Is by the end of the 6 weeks. You find yourselves. Much more.

In touch with the stuff of life that really matters and mindful of attending to the people. In your lives that really matter and Mindful also. Of when your Attention to your pain.

Pulls you away from The stuff of life that really matters. And In your booklets, there's an exercise. There, and it's called the Life Balance tool.

And if you get. Literally 5 minutes. At some point in the week before I see you next week, have a look at the life balance tool and have a bit of a play.

And it can help us, you know, to work out whether. Our life is currently in balance, or whether we are. Negating And abnegating ourselves.

From the stuff of life that really matters because we're placing too much emphasis and too much importance. On making pain go away. Strange concept, isn't it, but so, so important.

And as part of that. We do need to start being a bit more emotionally agile with pain. I just love this stuff.

So when we've had a difficult day. And the pain has Got in the way and we've maybe made mistakes or we haven't been able to work for as long as we would like to, or we haven't been able to. Exercise as vigorously as perhaps we would want to.

And we hear ourselves saying and using language when we think about a day and how the day has gone, and we, we hear us, I, I know I do this. God, I'm so useless today. Or, oh God, I'm useless.

Oh When we've needed help. We've needed support, we've needed. Other people around us to give us a bit of a hand, because the pain has been interrupted and difficult.

And we hear ourselves labelling ourselves as a burden. And it's at those points that we need to catch that, you know, literally catch it like we're swiping a butterfly out of the air with a net. And we catch that language that we're using with ourselves.

And we look at it And if possible, we change it. So I'm useless moves to. Do you know, today's been difficult and yeah, I felt a bit useless.

So much better than I am useless. Today's been difficult. And I felt useless.

So I'm a burden, perhaps moves to, well, today I needed a bit of help. So at times I felt like a bit of a burden. And just recognising that just because we feel like doesn't mean that we become that which we describe.

And my classic is, you know, I felt that that I just couldn't cope. No, no, no. Today was difficult, and it left me questioning.

My ability to cope. So as part of our pain journey. We need to start letting in.

A little bit more self compassion and the most simple and obvious way to do that is to be very on top of the linguistics we use about ourselves because where pain is concerned, pain can influence us to be so critical, so unkind in the language we use about ourselves, and as part of this course, I just love it, guys. If you start catching yourself. And smiling And finding a more.

Compassionate language. A more nuanced way to describe yourself. Because as the slide says, where pain is concerned, language matters.

And it really does. At the end of week one, I. Just shared a slide with you that was making very clear that from.

All of the evidence we have from good fMRI studies exploring pain and sleep, we absolutely know that if our sleep. Is not great. If we're struggling to get restorative sleep.

If we're struggling with, sleep latency, I struggling to get off to sleep, or we're waking early. Then It is known to be a factor that exacerbates the brain's. Threat response, and in doing so, think back to the Moseley film we talked about last time, the pain is weird stuff.

As soon as we're letting more threat in. We're triggering a greater pain response, because we need to recognise that that protector within, as I like to think of the amygdala, the Wizard of Oz, as we looked at it last week, becomes so much more triggered. When we're struggling with our sleep.

So a big part of any. Psychological pain cause is going to be. A quick look And a focus on simple stuff we can do.

To improve our sleep. So the 6. Maintaining factors that are always there in somebody struggling with insomnia over the many years I've been working in this business, is the first one is just really simple, and it's poor sleep hygiene.

You know, I need to get a bit more work done, so I'm, I, I need to work until 10 o'clock tonight, but I'm, I'm dropping off. So I go and make myself a strong coffee. Absolutely not.

. My bed is uncomfortable. Simple stuff. And sometimes just making one or two changes to sleep hygiene.

Can make quite a difference. Worrying, particularly worrying about how much sleep I get. Is a great maintainer.

Buying into very unhelpful. And inaccurate beliefs like Do you know, I'm operating tomorrow and if I don't get a good night's sleep, I'm bound to make a catastrophic mistake. No, you're not.

Because you're a wise human being and if you actually felt that your judgement was affected or you weren't performing as well as you want. You probably wouldn't do. The operation and anyway, we know that our brain gives very unhelpful, vastly exaggerated, inaccurate beliefs about sleep.

And as part of that we only notice the deficits. We never noticed the fact that I had a bit of a rubbish night's sleep last night, and boy was I efficient today because that happens too. And sometimes the safety behaviours that we indulge in paradoxically say to our brain, I'm terrified of not sleeping.

And as a result of that, we start to almost misinterpret the legacy of a bad night's sleep. So ideally, Over the course of this 6 weeks. My job is to help you guys, if sleep is an issue, to just reverse.

Some of those maintaining factors. So Have a look at this and I'm just gonna wonder whether between now and next week, you could just take not whatever you do, don't take more than one. But could you reduce your caffeine intake?

We know that alcohol, if we use it to help us sleep. Paradoxically means we get less restorative sleep. Could you, cut back on caffeine?

To the point where you probably don't even drink or take any caffeine past 2 o'clock in the afternoon. Could you make sure that you turn your bedroom into sleep friendly environment, you know, switch off. The television early.

As part of a soothing pre-sleep routine. Start to glide about the house rather than charge about the house before bed. And really importantly, go to sleep when you feel tired, don't.

Wait until you're exhausted. Because the threat response will kick in then because the brain hates exhaustion. As the knights.

Short and then we get more sunlight, get out there. And ideally, you know, if you're not a good sleeper, try not to nap, or if you have to nap, nap early. And where possible.

Exercise in the morning. So if we have a look at that list, is there just one? One thing you're gonna make a commitment to, do you remember hope, fantastic hope with commitment, transformational.

Is there one commitment you could make this week? That might improve your sleep hygiene. Have a think Find some commitment there.

Choose something easy. And I'm gonna ask you all please to. Start letting go of the stuff of the day.

Start retraining your brain at bedtime, at sleep time to let go of the stuff of the day. And in doing so by practising. The leaves on a stream meditation just before you drop off.

So I shall be sending the URL for this meditation through. And if you're struggling with sleep, please, please, this, this meditation is an absolute godsend because so many people I've worked with, I bump into them 4 or 5 years' time, and they smile at me and. You know, sometimes I'm afraid I don't always recognise or remember people, particularly when it's been online therapy.

And they say, Mike, it's me. And I say, hi, and invariably, if it's been sleep therapy, the one thing that they take with them and are still using 6 years later, is they still say, do you know, I dropped to sleep so quickly and so efficiently now by just letting go of those leads. So it really is a important.

Meditation to practise and to experiment with. And you know I'm back to the great Steve Dehasa. One of the ways of looking at a course like this.

Which is about personal development at some stage is. Use a course like this to find out what works. And do more of it.

And to Be curious about what doesn't work. And play with it a bit, and if it still doesn't work, do more of the stuff that does. You know, so it's providing you guys with a bit of a smorgasbord of options that we can start to take that all have the same philosophical underpinning.

Which is to move away from seeing pain as a threat. And to change our response. To the pain that we experience.

So really simply, start checking in with yourself. Just a few times a day when you notice pain threatening to push into your day. Keep body scanning, both the ones we sent out last week and.

The somatic tracking we sent last week and I'll send another somatic tracking over tomorrow as well. I'll just see if I can Check the recording I did tonight and make sure it's, it's workable. And we'll send that over to Dawn tomorrow.

And have a look at the workbook that came with the course, particularly have a play with the life balance exercise. And maybe See if If you Choose an area of your life to focus on that's an area of value. A valued area of your life just to focus on a bit more this this next week and then bring a bit of curiosity.

When I deliberately on purpose spend more time attending to this person I love when I Get back to doing an activity that gives me joy, pleasure, achievement. What impact does that have on my pain? And my mood And finally, Perhaps just make one change to sleep hygiene, but definitely, definitely.

Give leaves on a stream a go just before. You drop off. So Thank you so much for Joining me tonight.

Participating so. Apart from the opioid question which I. I will go away and Look at Does anybody have any questions?

Any thoughts, any queries on tonight's session? Anything they'd like to share, because we can all learn from each other because sometimes you think, oh, I won't ask that because I feel daft. Well, there'll be 19 other people thinking, I wish I'd asked that as well.

So, any questions at all? Choose when to sleep when you feel tired. Explain more.

OK, yeah, I will, Pat. So, so many people. Go to sleep when.

Their partner says, for instance, right, should we go up to bed now? And If the answer is, well, no, cos I'm not actually tired, and we find ourselves lying there, outside of what we call that sleep window, which is our when our diurnal rhythms are saying to us. I feel properly drowsy and it's time to sleep.

And the other time perhaps that . We should go to sleep when it's the right time to go to sleep and choosing to sleep when you need to sleep is. Listening to your sleep window, very commonly what gets in the way of that is stuff on the telly.

So it gets to sort of 9:30, 10 o'clock and we're yawning, and we're feeling that lovely, soporific, heaviness. But we're right in the middle of some Jed Mccu drama, and we can't take our eyes off it. And so we push our way through our sleep window.

And we go a bit later. Now, the problem with missing the sleep window is that that from a sleep perspective, a sleep architecture perspective, your sleep window comes around, with a surge in melatonin. Every 2 hours.

Past the beginning of dusk descending. So for most of us in 21st century Britain, any time after about 9 o'clock, we'll get that first surge of melatonin. That's telling us go to sleep and if we miss that, it'll happen again at 11.

And if we miss it again, it won't happen again until one o'clock in the morning. So we do need. To be paying attention to our rhythms.

Thanks, Greg, Greg thinks he needs a new bed. And for him, an afternoon siesta works wonders, particularly if you meditate at the same time. Yeah.

And Yeah, really good. Thank you, Greg. So, we'll go away and get those questions answered.

And Give it a real go, and honestly, by the next week, if you keep going with the body scanning, the somatic tracking. With that catching yourself and doing the somatic check-ins a couple of times a day. A lot of people start to notice an improvement in their pain experience by about week 3.

So here's hoping. And everybody, please, please have lovely weeks, be kind to yourselves. And see you next week.

Thank you very much. Good night now. Thank you, Dr.

Mike, for another great session. It was brilliant. I loved hearing how some of you shared your experiences and, your usage of the, the body scans and somatic tracking as well.

And, I hope everyone tonight can make use of Mike's tools to help, you know, better manage your pain. Thank you again for everyone for joining us, and we're looking forward to having you again at next week's session, same place, same time. And just as, Mike said, I hope you all have a lovely evening.

And, I hope you'll also get an improved night's night's sleep tonight. Me too. Take care, everyone.

Yeah, bye-bye.