You know what it’s like……you have a pain or an illness and you get fed up and you want it sorted. And you search for the answer, and you search some more, and nothing seems to work…..and you get a bit (a lot?) desperate. What to do?
Yesterday we did a long Skype call with my son, who is travelling and has just come out of a ten day (10 days!!) silent meditation retreat. He wanted to share his learning with us – and also to tell us that if he ever thinks he wants to do it again we mustn’t let him! He said it was the single most difficult thing he’s ever done.
And part of what you do on this (non-religious) retreat is you sit cross-legged all day watching your breath and feeling large amounts of discomfort/pain. When you go to the teacher the teacher will say about any of your symptoms that you must observe them and accept them.
How does this relate, I wondered, to the Lightning Process and its ability to train people to resolve pain issues.
We believe that pain and symptoms get much worse the more we get anxious or feel hopeless about them. You may have experienced this yourself. The more you worry the worse it gets.
Worry can set off your Stress Response (your Flight or Fight system), get the adrenalin going, and off we go – a vicious cycle.
The Lightning Process offers tools to calm down this response if you feel you want change.
But as you do this, a certain amount of Acceptance is also necessary. Acceptance of yourself, kindness towards yourself, and Acceptance of how the pain and symptoms have been. Getting into a fight with yourself or your pain won’t help.