Pain or Expectation?

By -



When Ackerman writes on touch she mentions that "our fear of pain contributes to it. Our culture expects childbirth to be a deeply painful event, and so, for us, it is" (102). 

The idea that we could control the amount of pain we feel just by changing our mindset fascinates me. I once had a friend who dislocated his shoulder while diving. We drove to the hospital and after many hours of waiting they informed him that they would just pop it back in. Steve had the choice of being awake or being put under. I was very uncomfortable with the thought of just hearing and seeing his shoulder being returned back to its natural resting place and couldn't even image his thoughts as he would be the one feeling it to. To me the choice was obvious. But much to my surprise Steve said he'd been practicing meditation and that he would be fine without any medication. He told the doctor to give him a minute and then to proceed. What I saw next amazed me. My friend simply closed his eyes, started breathing deeply and seemed to go off into another world. After a minute the doctor took his arm, counted to three, and forcefully twisted. The pop was enough for me to squirm. Yet Steve didn't even wince. He opened his eyes like nothing had happened. His body started shaking from the shock which is apparently a very common reaction but Steve was as calm as I had ever seen him. I asked him how he did it and he claimed he just "went to another place". (I have since read articles that describe this very phenomenon of using meditation to avoid the feelings of pain.)

 In our culture, childbirth is depicted in movies and TV as the most painful experience a woman will ever have. There's always LOTS of blood curdling screams and sweat and tears. But does it have to be like this? To me it's very comforting to think that the answer could be "no". Coaching women to view the experience has one to embrace rather than one to fear, breathing techniques, acupuncture, and other means of stimulation can make a woman's experience a much more pleasurable one. That way, a new mother could focus on the more positive senses: hearing your new baby cry and take its first breath, seeing your new child for the first time and trying to determine who's nose it has, and holding them close.

So next time you're in pain (either physical or emotional), try this guided meditation. It helped me once! There are also many others on YouTube.

http://www.meditainment.com/pain-management/


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The most primitive sense

By -
Image
Smell the Flowers by Kirsten Star Smell, to me, is the most primitive sense. When most mammals are born, they immediately can recognize their mother’s smell and form an attachment to that smell. Mammals like puppies are almost entirely limited to only the sense of smell until they develop more of their other senses. The sense of smell also becomes the most primitive when considering humans and the phenomenon of perfume. For years, humans hunted certain animals for the purpose of obtaining the musk produced in the anal gland. This musk in small doses can act as an aphrodisiac when put into a perfume even though it has incredibly primitive origins. Though most of Western culture has an aversion to smells considered gross or undesirable, the wealthiest of women are still willing to pay heavy prices to spray a smell once obtained from the anal glands of other animals. The sense of smell is not something that humans can control and adjust but rather it is only changed by evolution over
Read more

Cannibalism and Symbolism

By -
Symbolism plays an important role in religious ceremonies because people cannot have the divine being where they want him all the time. So they start creating ways to be in touch with God. Such as in Christianity, eating bread is symbolized to be eating God-made flesh. There are similar rituals in Judaism where they eat the food of God. A big difference between taste and the other senses is that the object that is being sensed is internalized, whereas all the other senses use an external sensation. Taste cannot extend anywhere like the other senses can. This allows the humans to have no barrier between the divine (symbolized as food) and themselves. This is the closest they can get to God, but internalizing Him.  This thought of getting the closest they can to someone by ingesting and gaining power from it led my mind to wander to the thought of serial killers that also happen to be cannibals. I know that it might be a stretch, but there are some similarities. I als
Read more

Wrap-Up Post

By -
Image
Alright, let’s tie this up in a nice little bow. I genuinely did not know what to expect coming into this class. The extent of my knowledge of the senses comes from elementary school when we had to make it a little song to get the information through our tiny heads. Beyond that, everything seemed pretty cut and dry. We have five senses. We need to use all of them to survive. It’s as simple as that. I did not know how there was enough to talk about the senses to fill an entire college course, especially one specifically regarding the relationship between the senses and religion. But the fact that we were barely able to fit all the content in before the semester ended proves just how wrong I was. Let’s talk about why that is and what some of the things I learned were. First off, even the most basic assumption about the senses, that there are five of them, was questioned immediately. The sixth sense may not have been as clearly defined as the other senses, but there was certainly a lot to
Read more