And good evening everybody, and welcome to session 4, where a lot of our focus today, a bit later on in the. In the presentation is looking at this issue of choice of behaviour, choice of what we do when pain is activated and. We meet pain, perhaps with less mindfulness than we would ideally.
And that, that's really hard to be mindful when you're right in the middle of struggling with pain, and I get that, I really do. And I still think that finding a mindful response to it, where you do something that works both short term. And long term, and that might just be, along with the somatic tracking, the body scanning, is that I create enough space in my mind to recognise that what pain sometimes does, because the brain wants us not to think.
The brain wants us to react because, remember, it perceives, pain as threat. So it's beginning to look at that and then really exploring how we might start to work with some of the thoughts that bully people that live with pain. So, yeah, you, I think we all kind of know each other now.
Those of you who've been on other webinars with me will know me well. And I've got to know the vet community really well. And I've been doing these sorts of webinars on a variety of topics for a number of years.
And I guess that, that pain is, is something that's very dear to me. I've got a new PhD student now. I, I nearly said I just picked her up today, but I was just asked to work with her today, who's exploring psychological pain and issues of that.
So, you know, it, it, it just is a really interesting time to be, exploring this, particularly as we, are in the grip of this pandemic of opioid addiction across the whole of the UK and across America, across a great deal of the countries. In the Western world and probably farther than that, I would suggest. So it's a really interesting sort of area.
As always, I think it's important just to remind you guys that, you know, don't suffer quietly, don't suffer silently. Again, tragically, was in touch with, a Swedish, veterinary, organisation today. And they were, and, and the, chat I was having with them.
Was just beginning to, get over their struggling because a member of their fraternity, a member of the veterinary industry there just recently took their own life, and I, I think that, you know, this is a tough profession, and, we, we do need to so, so look after yourselves, and it was a very sobering chat I had today. And it reminds me of the importance of this slide, you know, if you're feeling that, you know, you do have, particularly, I think, in the UK, you know, we, we, we do have vet life, and I would really encourage you to use that. Never, never feel that you're alone, never struggle more than you actually need to go seek help.
So, . Always useful, I think, to remind ourselves of what we could. Be choosing to explore.
And I think right from the day one of this, this course, I've been encouraging you guys to sort of sit with that philosophy of find out what works and do much more of it. And it's about beginning to get an idea of what does work for you, and what works for you may not work for somebody else. But if you can just move away from a course like this and make change so that you, develop new ongoing good habits, good psychological strategies to deal with, The difficulty of living with pain, then a course like this can be absolutely transformational.
So it really is, find out what works and do more of it. I was encouraging you guys to use the bold technique just a few times each day, and my recommendation these days tends to be, when you stop and make a drink, or if you're lucky and someone makes a drink for you, use that opportunity to do a quick reflective bold. You know that breath, observing self, lean in.
Is this the me I'm, I'm wanting to be? Do I like the way this version of me is behaving, thinking, interacting with others? And beginning to explore and find out, you know.
Am I going to take the somatic tracking forward when the course finishes? And I'm gonna keep that work going, you know, am I going to sign up for an Alan Gordon, blog? They're great, where Alan does a lot of the somatic tracking, regularly.
I, I listen to them as well and find them very useful. Am I going to become a real body scanner? Because some people will find that just by becoming absolutely adept.
At body scanning, sometimes to just sit with pain without responding to it, and other times to more masterfully just shift our attention from one part of the body to the next. Massively important, I think that 3rd bullet there. And just to stop and think, you know, if I.
I am able to be less bullied by my experience of pain. Does it open doors that allow me to . I suppose it's, it's reconvened with those areas of our life that pain sort of pulls us away from sometimes, and that might be family, it might be friends, it might be your own fitness, it might be, spirituality.
But just getting a sense of, you know, at the moment, am I overfocusing on the pain? And allowing my preoccupation with pain to get in the way of leading that meaningful life. I'm hoping that a lot of you are experiencing some real shift with your sleep, because we know that there is that completely .
Yeah, Powerful link, I think, between sleep and pain. We know that the same thing exists between being able to reduce the stress in our lives significantly, helps us significantly impact on our, our, our experience of pain as well. And stress and sleep, as we know, very much sit together.
So, You know, have you tried the cognitive shuffling yet? Are you still waking at night? If you've tried it and it, it's working for you, fantastic.
And are you, this is, cos this is a real core of it, isn't it? Are you getting a bit better at when the pain shows up, meeting it with that curiosity. Almost questioning it, you know, like we do with the somatic tracking.
You know, why, why have you shown up right now? You know what, why, why would you be sort of prompting me, why, why is pain? Pushing its way in right now.
And sometimes we find it's because we've overdone it the day before, and we explore that a bit next week when we look at pacing and mindful pacing when we live with pain. And you'll notice the bottom. Slide out, one of the prescribing advisors finally got back to me and, was able to share that, indeed, as I think we all thought, that as soon as we actually start to come off, opioid medication, Very, very quickly.
I was quite surprised by that, that you get that abnormal elevations, particularly in the amygdala, start to reduce literally within 1 to 2 weeks from opioid reduction. So there is something there. Yeah, Greg, I think it was you that was asking about that, yeah.
When I noticed my back pain while operating, I changed my focus from the surgery to concentrate more on improving my physical posture, and it works. Yeah, you're bringing mindfulness to perfect, Greg, aren't you? You're, you're mindfully responding by recognising that, so you, you're actually almost tracking a paint.
You're doing your own version of a somatic tracking. You're finding it, you're realising there's a choice, and the choice you're making there, Greg, is to actually just make a shift to my posture. And just in making that shift to my posture, I'm experiencing an alleviation of pain.
It, it, it, it, it's just where we need people to be. And sometimes, you know, with pain, I work with people and they say, do you know, Mike, I suddenly realised that I'd been hunched over my desk for the last 33 hours. And I'd been in pain, but had done nothing to shift or to get up to walk about.
And so increasing our mindfulness is going to help with our experience of pain. So That fits beautifully, actually, because the somatic tracking that I've already sent the wonderful dawn from the webinar that which she would kindly has agreed to send out tomorrow with the recording, is a somatic tracking where we combine. Sitting with the emotion that shows up when we connect with pain.
With Gently leaning in. With a wonderful level of curiosity and just checking out the thoughts that are bubbling up linked to. The pain I'm, I'm in right at this moment now.
And then, very much in the spirit of Greg's post earlier about, you know, recognising that there is choice. And sometimes the choice is really, really simple. It's just, you know, I can just change position.
Sometimes I can breathe into where the pain is. Sometimes I can do, I can meet that pain with curiosity, you know, but it's recognising that choice of response is huge. So our first meditative.
Experience tonight is a slightly more advanced, slightly. More involved episode of somatic tracking, and one that a lot of my clients really, really like this because they like that sense that. When we live with pain, it can be so helpful to remind ourselves that from the moment we wake up in the morning.
Until the moment we drop off to sleep, there are choice points throughout our day, and most human beings miss, most of the choice points that show up, and that's fine. However, if we live with pain. Becoming better at recognising choice points and choosing which decision to make that's going to allow me to live with my pain without overwhelming me whilst accepting its presence.
Boy, can that make a difference. So If we get ourselves into a comfortable position. And some people prefer to keep their eyes just a little bit open and maybe just focus on a spot on the floor.
For others it helps concentration perhaps to allow the eyes to close fully. And to get ourselves into a position where Our body feels supported and held. Is important here.
And whilst it's supported and held, so the chair we're sitting in needs to be supportive. It needs to be holding our, our body the way a. A lake is held in the sort of basin of the earth, our, our, our body needs to be held similarly.
And this allows us the freedom to go exploring. Using the somatic tracking. So if we're sitting comfortably and feeling dignified and.
Ready to go exploring. So We just begin By finding our breath tonight. I'm bringing a curiosity to this process of breathing.
Whether we're breathing in through our mouth or our nose. Doesn't matter. Whether our breathing is relaxed and calm.
That's OK. We don't want to change the way we're breathing. Necessarily We just literally want to find our breath.
As it is Be very accepting of it. And follow it Breathing in. And following the in breath.
Out again. Just breathing. And using our Attention on the breath.
To With each breath. Recognise that. With each breath we enter into a brand new moment of our lives.
And in every moment. There is choice And we can't expect, nor would it be wise. To go looking for choices all the time.
But it can be wise and helpful to recognise that. Choice is always there. Choice of how I breathe.
Choice of Whether I'm focusing on my breath or not. Choice of bringing curiosity to my breathing. And maybe even choice of Where I send the breath.
When I'm somatic tracking. So we let go of our focus on the breath. And we go and find.
Where our pain Actually Is residing this evening. And if we Scan from the top of our scalp down. Even if we know.
In our heart of hearts where I'm going to find the pain. Because it is always there. Let's use that wonderful muscle of curiosity.
That curiousness to go exploring. Just in case. We find pain somewhere else.
So we're mindfully, deliberately on purpose going looking for it. And the moment that we start to go looking for threat. Quietly he says to the brain.
Do you know what? He's not trying not to find it. He's not pushing it away.
This person isn't. Negating the presence of pain, they're going looking for it. They're not scared.
And when we find the pain. And we locate it. Let's just take a very gentle breath in.
And on the out breath just direct your breath. To wherever the pain is. Just breathing in To wherever that pain sits, let's try that again.
A gentle breath in. On the out breath just sending our attention with the out breath. And settling our attention on wherever we find.
Pain this evening. And a bit like That Pooh bear Christopher Robin's cartoon. It's almost this sense of what we're doing is we're Coming up alongside our pain.
And we're joining it. And with A real lovely warm sense of Curiosity. We're just checking in.
And when I find the pain tonight. Is there a motion This evening Accompanying my. Pain that I'm experiencing and.
Be curious about right now. And naming that emotion quietly to ourselves. This is frustration.
This is anger. This is dread. Just naming.
Whatever we find As we sit, And Allow ourselves to be with the pain. Noticing any urge to distract. Or to try and make it go away.
And just sitting Acknowledging Yeah, this is the pain. And this is the emotion that sits with that pain and. Then to go in and see.
And what thoughts? If I just stick with my pain, what thoughts will my brain send? I wish it would go away.
Yeah. It's not so bad now, but it might be later. Whatever the thoughts are.
Your brain Bubble up As we just sit with our pain. Our job is to just notice them and to recognise that these are just thoughts. Just emotions.
And thoughts are merely in truth. Words and pictures. They are products of the mind.
And we sit with these products of the mind. And we see them as they are. Like clouds that pass.
That are there And they move on. Like leaves that float downstreams. Like packages on a conveyor belt.
Thoughts come And they go. As we lean in And really, Explore Our experience. Of living with pain right now.
And we noticed that There are choices That we can make. We can Shuffle We can change our posture. We can bring curiosity.
To our posture and move a bit and Hold the pane and notice where. The pain is less if I move if I. Shift We can Meet the pain With that wonderful curiosity and We can go look and.
Be curious about You know the sides of the pain. Where it sits. If it had a temperature, what would it be like if it made a sound?
What sound would emit from it. And we can get a sense of. What I want to do.
With this pain Maybe I want to keep trying to make it go away. As an option Maybe I want to allow it. Make space for it.
And choose to do things in my life that Work for me. Maybe I want to. Acknowledge it.
Smile at it and accept it's there. I make a choice about what I want to do. When the meditation finishes.
And we recognise that accompanying the emotions and the thoughts. Is always a choice of behaviour. And sometimes the next stage is.
Realising that there is always at least 2 choices to be made with pain. And sometimes 3 or 4 different choices. That I can This is liberating.
And when we're ready We let go We very gently just come back to the room. Hm. And so as we As we start to.
Change our relationship with our pain as we start to recognise that we can make changes, be they postural, be they cognitive, be they emotional. Be they linked to What I'm actually going to do next then. We start to build our capacity to live better.
With pain, which is a huge focus of this course. So last week, we actually started to look at. You know, what are the barriers?
That show up And We explored Just a few of those barriers that get in the way of us living well with pain and the big one. For that is always the same. And people working in busy professions, it's finding the time.
To do my somatic tracking. And sometimes, do you know what, it's not actually that. It's the thought.
I just haven't got the time for this today. And it's not the actual time it would take that. Shows up and Provides the barrier in so much of the time it's actually the thought that shows up that we buy into and believe as though it's 100% true.
I really do not have the time to stop and spend 30 seconds meeting my pain with curiosity. I do not have the time, my brain tells me to say to somebody at reception. Do you know, just give me a couple of minutes please.
I'm just gonna do some somatic tracking before the next client. Thoughts And Sometimes our mind definitely spams us. When we're right in the middle of pain.
And this is his concept of brain spam. And it's that our brain just sort of sends us stuff. In the same way that on our computers sometimes.
A piece of spam pops up on our inbox and we find ourselves drawn to it. And sometimes if the spam is linked to threat, we not only find ourselves drawn to it, we find ourselves opening it and exploring it. And reacting to it.
An example I like to use sometimes for this is to just imagine a scenario whereby. When our session finishes tonight and you realise that you've had numerous messages on your phone whilst you were working with me tonight, and you go to look at your phone, and there are 2 messages from your bank. And all of those messages from your bank are.
With increasing levels of threat telling you that your account is in danger of being hacked. And that you must react immediately. No time to lose, you must react now and do what the text is telling you to do.
And the text is telling you that you must immediately. Send your security information. By text immediately back so that the bank can open a holding account and put all of your money into that holding account to protect it from these scammers that are desperately trying to rob you blind.
And my guess is that all of you that are on tonight are all rolling your eyes and saying, yeah, Mike, I know this one, I'm not falling for that. And I'll tell you what people do. And that's why there are so many of these scams, because people do.
Get messages that are filled with threat. And promise of . A negative future.
And because of the fear response that gets elevated and gets kicked in by that sense of threat, they immediately act on it. To their detriment. And where pain is concerned so often.
The barriers that show up that stop us from living well with pain are because our brain spams us. Remember the brain doesn't want us to be meeting. The pain signals the brain sends with curiosity.
It doesn't want us to be meeting the pain response. It doesn't want our pain receptors to fire off and for us to go, really? Curiously?
It wants us to do as we're flipping told and make ourselves safe. Because the brain is perceiving that we're at threat. And so when it sends us the spam.
And we stop and we just ask ourselves, do you know what? I'm gonna really try and at least do 3. 3 somatic trackings or body scans each day.
And I'm going to diary them in and I'm gonna. Keep doing a bold when I can when I have a drink. And then our mind sends us this stoppy thought that is, you know, you can't not now, do it later.
Or you're too busy, there won't be time, or it won't work today, you're too stressed. And The problem is, is with that sort of thought, we don't stop. And sit back and go, hang on a minute.
I'm not sure I want to dance to the tune. Of my amygdala anymore. I I don't think it's working for me.
Perhaps This is just a thought. And if it really is just a thought, then I at least have two choices. I can do as that thought says and say, next please.
Without stopping and Doing something really useful or I can say no I'm the boss of me. And if it matters to me to gain mastery over pain. To live a life That notices pain rather than focuses on it then I'll flipping well do.
My meditation, my body scan, my somatic tracking, my meeting the brain with curiosity, my bold exercise, my shift in posture. I'll do it. And sometimes We need to remember that if there is a really powerful.
Habitual thought about our pain. That really gets in the way of our functioning. We need to adopt a more stringent process with that sort of thought.
I'm talking about the sort of thoughts that get really nasty and personal about us that say, you know, this is just gonna get worse and you won't be able to cope in a few years' time. You know, you might as well give up now. Those sorts of.
More personal, hurtful, damaging thoughts. Linked to our pain And we don't need to wrestle with those thoughts, we don't need to look at whether they're likely, we don't need to look for evidence. We just need to recognise that they are just.
Thoughts and a very helpful way of doing that is to take one of those really unpleasant, usually future-based dread thoughts. If my, my pain is going to get worse and. I'll no longer be able to practise.
Very much based in the future. And sometimes Even more important is when we get a thought like because of my pain, I'm so useless these days. And what we need to do is stop.
And we need to pull together into a process. So let's take a thought like that. Because of my pain, I'm pretty useless now.
Hm. So we stop and we say to ourselves, right at this moment. My brain is sending me a thought that's telling me.
That because of this pain. I'm pretty useless. And then we count and we count to create some space between ourselves and that thought.
Just a 10, 123456789. 10. And we quietly go look again and we say, in truth, a few moments ago, I noticed that my brain was trying to convince me.
That because of the pain I'm now useless. Hm. Really?
Well, let's create some distance between that old thought. 123456789, 10. Now right in this new moment.
I'm recognising. That my brain is trying to convince me. That it would be helpful to buy into a belief.
But because of the pain I'm useless. And as we meet the pain in this new way now, and we develop that wonderful discrepancy of recognising that I, I'm not going to allow myself to be bullied by this verbal assault. Aimed at keeping me safe from my protector within.
And in working through that 345 stage process. Right at this moment, a few moments ago, right at this new moment, we can start to lessen the power of our brain to push us around. And to bully us.
And then I almost sense somebody saying, but Mike, what if that doesn't work? And I would just say That's a thought. And let's replace the but word with the word and.
And Mike, what if that doesn't work, has so much less power than but Mike. What if that doesn't work, because the but is almost saying out loud that I'm not gonna be able to do this. Yeah.
And Yeah, so sometimes as Greg is. Is saying on tonight that pain is good sometimes as it can help you adjust to be pain free. So it's positive, not negative.
Yeah, truthful, and an awful lot of the time the stuff the brain sends us about our pain, not the pain itself, but the stuff our brain sends us about the pain and the way our brain wants us to respond to that pain is wholly negative. And sometimes it's about recognising that and diffusing. The power of that negativity.
And We can't do this all of the time, you know, we, we just can't. And so what we have to get better at is recognising the sorts of. Cognitive processes that I really do need to be a little bit more on top of.
And as a rule of thumb. The pain thoughts that will diffuse. By stopping and seeing them as they are.
Possibly just brain spam. The Cognitions that we can recognise, . Are actually not true at all.
Tend to be very old. They've been around for a while, to be honest, they're all mind stories linked to pain that our brain churns out. You know, and it churns them out in a sort of stuck record way.
And those thoughts. Will diffuse beautifully. Sometimes the thoughts that we need to.
Use our thinking skills. A little bit more mindfully with, are those that pull us so deep into our mind that we lose track of what's going on around us, and we get stuck and lost within a loop of negativity. Massively for people living with pain is when we catch ourselves comparing to others or evaluating ourselves based on who I was or who I'm going to be if this pain doesn't get better or if I don't manage it better.
So evaluative thoughts, comparing thoughts can be very difficult. The very process of allowing thoughts to get us stuck in a negative future or a grim. Passed They can be diffused, they tend to be spam thoughts that our brain just sends us.
And as a dint, the sort of thoughts that are very unhelpful. Tend to have a quality about them that is they're heavy. They don't leave any room.
For manoeuvre Or they're just repetitive and unforgiving. And every now and then if we notice that we are Not engaging. With this more mindful response to pain, if we're not taking the time.
To practise. Body scanning, somatic tracking. If we're not choosing to meet our pain with curiosity.
Is that because? I'm buying into. I sometimes call them stopy thoughts, the thoughts that just get in the way and stop us from making change.
So it's the process is, first of all, we have to. Recognise I know you. That this is just a thought, you know, I recognise that.
And this thought has the power, if it wants to, to stop me from living the life I want to live. So what I'm gonna do. Is I'm gonna meet this thought differently.
I'm going to recognise that very possibly this is brain spam. You know, aimed at keeping me safe rather than. Me choosing to live a life full of meaning.
So being in charge of our thoughts and creating some skills. Which will allow us to make the behavioural changes that we need to make to live better. With pain Rather than to struggle to make pain go away.
So If we're gonna find what we found with the somatic tracking. And we find choice points and we recognise that, do you know I could do this, or I could do that. I could choose this.
Just watch out for the yeah but, yeah, but you won't have time. Yeah, but you'll be too tired. So often it is a yeah but thought.
Yeah, but what if it doesn't work? Yeah, but you've done that before and it didn't work before. And it's recognising the power of this, because the brain uses thought there for people struggling with pain to keep us stuck in this place of negativity and I suppose fear, because remember the whole purpose very often of pain is because your brain is desperately, you know, that protector within the Wizard of Oz stuff, desperately trying to keep us safe.
Forgetting that you guys are driving the bus of life, not the pain that you experience. It's really important stuff. So this week, I'm gonna ask you to have a play with .
Curiously, just check it, hang on a minute. Do I want to just see this thought as being absolute fact? Maybe I do have enough time.
Maybe I can spare the time to do this. Maybe I'm not gonna be spammed. Without Meeting at first with a bit of curiosity.
You know, maybe I am going to be a little bit more in charge of my thinking. Maybe I am going to bring mindfulness into my life by continuing to use the bold approach so that I actually recognise, bring mindful attention to the way that I am living my life. Maybe I need to.
Up. My body scanning up my somatic tracking, because science really, really is pretty clear on this now, that all of this stuff is dose effective to use a medical model word for something that's very far from medical model, but. If we go medical model for a moment, mindfulness, somatic tracking, body scanning where pain is concerned, is there's definitely a dose effectiveness link here, which is the more we do it.
The more helpful It is to our ability to live well with pain. And above all, I suppose. Is Take the opportunity that may well be beginning to present itself as we develop some mastery over the choice.
Of response to the pain that our brain sends us to actually start to deliberately on purpose. Live our lives more in touch. With what matters to us and that might be work.
It might be home, it might be pleasure, it might be achievement, it might be family, it might be spirituality, it might be friends, it might be joy, it might be . What you do at the weekend, you know. And it's about Making sure that we're in charge of this stuff.
And we're reasserting our right to make choices not to be pushed around by pain. And continue guys to use some of that. Thought work that we did today to make sure that we're not buying into .
Classically paradoxical thoughts about sleep, along the lines of God, if I don't sleep tonight, I'll be terrible tomorrow. Stop. Hang on a minute.
Where did that come from? I wonder if that's my brain spamming me. You see where we're going, so.
Stay with the programme. And build, you know, ideally the great piece of research by somebody called Dusek found that once we are actually stopping and meditating, be it somatic tracking, body scanning. In terms of the dose effectiveness, once we are up to about 17.5 minutes a day, according to DSEC, that's when we start to get some real significant, genomic changes, brain structural changes.
It takes about 3 months to actually start to experience the benefits of that. But on a course like this, we can establish the foundations for a more mindful way of living. So, I wish you real joy of the next week.
And Give it a go again. Enjoy the somatic tracking. Give yourself the time and space to do the work.
And that way, you will start to reap the benefits. So I'll just give people a few moments in case. Anybody has any thoughts, any, anything they want to share about how they're doing, what they're finding is working for them and where they feel they need to perhaps, take their attention a little bit more.
Whilst we have the time and we have the space tonight, anything at all that you feel. You need to ask or explore. OK.
So, Keep going guys, and next week, a big part of the focus is on something really important to people in the veterinary profession, which is pacing. You know, and watching out for that boom or bust, pain dynamic. And that's where we take our attention next week, really, really important stuff.
So, thank you, Sophie. Have a really lovely night. Rebecca's just saying that, I'm finding the body scanning and the sack tracking is helping me be more relaxed about my pain.
That, that's, that's the answer, you know, Rebecca, because as you're more relaxed about your pain, your brain is experiencing less threat, and with a bit of luck, quite soon, we'll start to see something of an improvement in your pain experience. So once again guys, thank you so much for joining me tonight, and I look forward to next week as always. Thank you.