A Taste Of Agony Teaches A Lifetime Of Lessons

The benefits of body work and boundaries - Part 1

Every post, I share my weekly self-care routine, driven by a passion to enhance life satisfaction, health, and personal growth. However, my commitment to self-care was born from a less pleasant motivation – managing chronic pain that haunted me for over two years.

My pain took form as a relentless, debilitating tension around the neck and shoulders, limiting mobility and inflicting piercing agony during head movements. The tension also had a proximity effect, tightening the surrounding shoulder and head muscles. This cascaded to other areas of the body; for the muscular system, nerves, ligaments, and fascia networks are all intricately interconnected.

As my condition intensified, I developed some type of calcified cartilage in my neck, resembling a thick cord of metal that snaked from the base of my skull down through the neck and into the left trapezius. Every stretch produced sickening bone-crunching cracks. At one point, a section seemed to snap, resulting in a protruding lump of bone that jutted out of my neck.

The enduring pain was indescribable. Countless hours over years were spent trying to hold my focus steady and not lose my shit. Adding frustration to suffering: no medical practitioner (in fact, NOBODY) had any understanding, explanation, or solution to my problem.

Pain: An Urgent Call to Attention

Though at times it felt like a torturous existence, I realize now that this chronic pain was a gift. Grappling with this condition forced me to inspect and evolve every aspect of my life: nutrition, exercise, relationships, work, emotions, stress, trauma, belief systems. It drove me to fearlessly experiment with any healing modality I could find. This journey has been intertwined with a profound spiritual awakening, an expansion of consciousness, and experiences that can only be described as miraculous.

What if I told you that pain isn't merely a physical phenomenon? Sometimes, it's our unearthed emotions attempting to resurface. Recall a moment of intense anger, fear, or anxiety. Did you notice a corresponding tightness in your chest, quickening of your breath, queasiness in your stomach, or a tensed muscle?

Our bodies are constantly communicating with us. Gut instinct is a decision guide - nudging us with a bodily sense of right or wrong. Pain is a cry for help - telling us that something needs to change… urgently. But are we listening?

When left unchecked, the discomfort we ignore accumulates into a permanent state of dis-ease. Whether it be diabetes, cancer, or chronic pain, the origins of disease often begin with the suppression of emotions. It’s alarming how much of the physical illnesses we experience in modern society are rooted in this, yet we mostly ignore this fact when it comes to treatment.

What is Body Work?

Body Work is a category of therapeutic techniques that focuses on the human body to improve physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being. A common theme is cultivating the “mind-body connection” as well as the electromagnetic fields that surround us in order to:

• Reduce stress and ease pain

• Improve flexibility and range of motion

• Promote relaxation

• Improve posture and alignment

• Develop greater body awareness and self-awareness

Modalities I’ve explored:

Mainstream body work: physical therapy, massage therapy, fascia work, hot baths, cold plunges, saunas, sweat lodges, muscle scraping, exercise

Alternative medicine / Traditional Chinese Medicine: acupuncture, acupressure, chiropractic adjustments, yoga, qi gong, cupping, dry needling, electrical muscle stimulation, sensory deprivation tank, red light therapy, psychedelics & plant medicines

Talk Therapies: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, somatic therapy, EMDR

Energy Work: reiki, theta healing, rife electromagnetic waves, nature

For anyone interested in learning more about these practices, I’d be happy to share my experience and perspective. Feel free to leave a comment or send me a DM.

What I’ve Learned

• Trauma in the body needs release: western medicine tends to focus on numbing and suppressing pain, attacking the symptoms of disease versus the root cause. A holistic practice includes a purge of what’s inside that is causing an imbalance. Body work facilitates the incremental movement of this gunk out of your system.

• We’ve lost awareness of our body: In today's world, we've become detached from our bodies, ignoring their subtle cues and trusting aggregated data and external narratives over embodied intuition. Reawakening that connection is key to identifying your real problems.

• Gradual is powerful: We humans tend to be obsessed with quick fixes and instant gratification, but these often have hidden costs. Healing is a process that requires patience and perseverance, working with the natural rhythm of your biology.

• Mindset Matters: What you believe is what you will experience. I’ve written before about the power of the placebo effect and its profound implications. There’s a reason why only certain modalities work for certain people. Your body responds to what you believe will work for you. If there’s any doubt in the efficacy of a practice, your chances of success diminish - and vice versa.

• Find the right practitioner: The process of healing is communal - there is an exchange of information, ideas, medicine, action, and energy. The person who facilitates your journey can dramatically impact your outcomes. Ensure they possess a deep understanding of their particular modality and how it relates to your condition. Make sure they operate with integrity - prioritizing your well-being over profit, status, or ego.

• Balance input and output: Our bodies operate as complex systems where emotions, biological material, and energy flow in and out. This flow can get blocked, clogged up, and create all sorts of problems. Purging is one thing, but filtering out bad stuff in the first place is even better.

That last point shifts the focus onto the importance of boundaries, which I will delve into in Part 2 of this series.

In the meantime, check out related posts on the mind-body connection in my 3 part series:

Thanks for reading! If you like my creations, you can sub for free, upgrade, comment, or click the ❤️ or 🔄 button. It goes a long way. I appreciate you. 🙏

What I’m Doing This Week

Gratitude

I’m grateful for the precious time I have with my children in their youth - a fleeting, bittersweet treasure.

Lesson Learned

You can’t attract something better into your life until you’ve cleared space for it, no matter how bad you want it.

Listening to

Signals by Júníus Meyvant

Watching

PhD biologist Rupert Sheldrake eloquently explains a variety of scientifically researched phenomena that demonstrate how the mind extends beyond the physical boundaries of the brain. Aided by the brilliant whiteboard visuals from After Skool, this is a fun brain buster with far reaching implications.

Reading

‘Calculated Betrayal’: Snowden Slams OpenAI Over NSA Ties

I urge you to avoid OpenAI products at all costs (ChatGPT, Dall-E). What was originally a not-for-profit, open-source project focused on helping humanity co-exist peacefully with AI, has turned into a for-profit, closed-source, reckless race to AGI.

Our data is valuable. Yet it is being exploited to an unknown extent, with unclear motives, little transparency, and zero accountability. Compounding the concern is the newly announced integration of OpenAI into Apple iOS, dramatically broadening the data harvesting.

The time for open-source, decentralized solutions for mobile devices, AI, operating systems, etc is fast approaching.

In the meantime, I would recommend the following open-source alternatives if you are actively using OpenAI’s tools. They are functionally equivalent and rapidly improving. There are plenty more beyond that.

ChatGPT: Mistral, accessible via HuggingFace, Vicuna
Dall-E: Stable Diffusion - Dreamstudio, DALL-E FLOW

Self-care

Meditation, ocean, cold plunge, swimming, pushups, jogging, journaling, nature, volleyball