Massage by Virginia

“There is a Taoist story of an old farmer who had worked his crops for many years. One day his horse ran away. Upon hearing the news, his neighbors came to visit. “Such bad luck,” they said sympathetically. “May be,” the farmer replied. The next morning the horse returned, bringing with it three other wild horses. “How wonderful,” the neighbors exclaimed. “May be,” replied the old man. The following day, his son tried to ride one of the untamed horses, was thrown, and broke his leg. The neighbors again came to offer their sympathy on his misfortune. “May be,” answered the farmer. The day after, military officials came to the village to draft young men into the army. Seeing that the son’s leg was broken, they passed him by. The neighbors congratulated the farmer on how well things had turned out. “May be,” said the farmer.”

The point of this parable, of course, is that nothing is good or bad, but thinking makes it so. Things happen in life, but it is the story we attach to them that can bring us additional suffering, as was discussed in the previous entry. And emotional suffering (along with other factors, of course) can have an impact on the type and degree of pain we experience.

The idea that pain may have an in-organic cause is new to a lot of people. Sometimes the easiest way to understand it is that pain is often stress-related. Stress can be defined as wanting things to be different than they actually are. When we can’t be present with acceptance of what is, that creates a situation of stress which can lead to or exacerbate physical pain for many people.

David Morris concludes his article “Belief and Narrative” with this observation: “Knowledge of the complex ways in which cultural beliefs, values, and narratives shape pain is as important as the science of neurons and genetic markers. It constitutes a valuable resource for clinicians in a multicultural environment in which pain is the symptom that most often initiates the doctor-patient visit. It suggests that clinicians might help patients to enhance beneficial beliefs and to identify–and possibly alter–beliefs and narratives that seem to make their pain worse.”

What Morris seems to be suggesting is that the medical community’s current focus on the organic causes of pain, and attempts to quantify what is largely a subjective and emotional experience, limits what could be a more nuanced and holistic understanding of the experience of pain. Indeed, if the medical community has a focus on pain relief, it is most likely influenced by the fact that pain is what gets most people to the doctor. And, in addition, most people perceive the problem to be resolved when they are no longer in pain.

Of course, we can also add to that the prevailing belief that one must experience additional pain to resolve the earlier pain. But the reason the emotional factor is important is because to truly resolve an issue we must go to the root of the problem, to the source. Treating the surface symptoms doesn’t necessary resolve the core issue. Thus, problems are likely to recur, even with medical intervention, if the core issue as not been addressed.

I think what we’re really talking about here with pain is a paradigm shift with regard to how we approach pain…it’s not the pain that’s the problem, it’s our wanting to avoid the pain and get rid of it. If we can begin to view the experience of pain differently, as a message, we can begin a journey toward relating to our experiences in a new way. One of the keys is by shifting out of the dualistic mindset of either-or, good-bad, as the story teaches.

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As a massage therapist, I am amazed by how often I hear statements like this: “Don’t worry, I can take a lot of pain. I’m tough. Plus it’s gotta hurt in order to feel better, right?” Not necessarily! This myth seems to have originated in the fitness industry. It’s a persistent misconception, and it speaks volumes about social attitudes toward wellness.

I suppose the easy answer is that these people are simply closeted masochists, eager to suffer in a socially sanctioned way. But it’s not that simple. People are generally only willing to suffer if they think something good will come out of it. I think it’s more to the point that there’s some pervasive belief in our culture that through pain, success of some sort is achieved. Or that any success worth achieving is bound to be painful.

An interesting article by David B. Morris in The Scientist entitled “Belief and Narrative” discusses the cultural dimension of pain. Morris observes, “’No pain, no gain’ is an American modern mini-narrative: it compresses the story of a protagonist who understands that the road to achievement runs only through hardship.”

If there’s some validity to those previous ideas, it also follows that those things that are good for us (or will lead to some increased “achievement” in some area of life) cannot be pleasant, or enjoyable. Nutritious food must be taste-less or unpleasant. Exercise must be onerous and painful. Massage, too, must be painful in order to be beneficial. So it sets up an expectation that anything that is in the name of health, healing, fitness, or general wellness is likely to be, in short, unpleasant.

Morris goes on to explain the importance of narrative related to pain, in terms of “the patient’s own story.” He notes that pain is largely a subjective experience and that a variety of social and emotional factors have an impact. For example, “Chronic lower back pain is often impossible to trace to an organic lesion, such as a prolapsed disk. The narrative that describes pain as a reliable alarm system justifies countless unnecessary surgeries. It cannot, however, begin to explain why the two strongest signs predicting that an American worker will develop chronic back pain are job dissatisfaction and unsatisfactory social relations in the workplace.” In other words, many times pain has a non-organic cause, and continually searching for an organic (ie medical, physical) cause of pain is an increasing source of frustration for a lot of people I see in my line of work. Often pain is related to other factors and it’s hard for people to understand that at first.

There is a Buddhist aphorism that goes something like this: “Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.” This is an homage to the idea that in life physical and emotional pain are unavoidable. They are part of the experience of being here, and being in a body. But the suffering part, that is the part within our control. We can directly impact the experience we have by the stories, the narratives, we create around our experiences. The Buddhists would say that when we try to avoid pain, that is when we suffer the most.