How Much Pain Are You In?
Warriors, ask yourself that simple question and scale the response 1-10. A one is happy, healthy, and pain free. A ten means, well I do not know what ten means.
It could mean that you are in excruciating pain from a knee injury. It could mean that you have never felt something this painful but it is not at the highest end of your pain tolerance.
How does it compare to someone else’s, “ten.”
If your pain tolerance is higher than someone else’s, that 10 now has some depth to it. It may actually be a seven to you but a 10+ to them.
How does your pain relate to an amputee that suffers from phantom limbs syndrome? A person that wakes up every morning and has to relive losing his leg, feeling the break, and knowing all along that he does not actually have a leg there anymore.
Pain Lives In Between Your Ears
Recently, at an adaptive athlete event, I was lucky enough to be introduced to an amputee that lived that story. He lost his leg in an accident. His brain, however, would run through the accident every morning and relive the pain he felt that day. The brain never fully comprehended that the leg was missing.
Instead of recognizing the missing limb, it created a story, replayed every morning as to why that leg was not there. The only way to make sense of it was to live through the accident every morning.
Through breathwork, he was able to train his brain and nervous system to calm his nervous system.
The breath is a tool you can use to change your mental and physical state through rewiring the nervous system.
I am deeply interested in understanding the breath and its role in mental and physical health. Please check out the article I wrote on training your nervous system by clicking here.