I want to talk about healing past pain. By this, I mean bringing to mind previous experiences that have left some sense of frustration, anger, sadness, or other sense of feeling hurt and doing what it takes to be free from them. As I’ve gone through my self-improvement work this year, I’ve periodically realized how much past pain I have and how much it can stifle me in the present. In an effort to heal that pain, I’ve used some of the life hacks I’ve learned, especially those I got from The Power of Now. I’ll talk about what I did yesterday that seemed to help.
Since I had the day off, I had plenty of time to do this, although it only ended up taking ten minutes or so. Still, I’d rather have all day to do this and be able to go at my own pace than have almost no time and rush through it. When I felt ready, I got into the same position I use for my morning routine: I sat on the edge of my bed, feet flat on the floor, fingertips touching, glasses off, and eyes closed. As usual, it took some time for my thoughts to settle. I waited patiently as I slowed my breathing and did an exercise about loving-kindness to help put myself in the proper mindset. Then I focused on each part of my body, starting at my feet and working up to my face, and made a conscious decision to release as much tension in each area as possible while still sitting up straight. This gave me a strong awareness of my body and helped take attention away from my thoughts, quieting my mind. Once I had gotten into a state of presence, I proceeded.
I thought back to a recent painful experience and went to work. It helped that I had previously wished happiness, in line with the aforementioned exercise about loving-kindness, on two of the people involved. I reframed the experience in my mind by thinking of a possible alternative explanation for the incident (a misunderstanding rather than a purposeful decision to cause pain), reminded myself that I don’t have to let others control my feelings, and used several big breaths to send my negative emotions deep into the ground. That made me feel lighter and more relaxed, which is how I feel whenever I’ve let go of something that’s been weighing me down. I stayed like that for a short time and then opened my eyes, donned my glasses, and went to the computer to start writing this down while it was still fresh.
While I’ve done similar things in the past to deal with pain, I think this strategy is going to be more lasting in its effects. As long as I forgive whoever caused me pain in the past and truly release that blame along with the accompanying emotions, this should help me a lot. I plan to start doing this regularly, focusing on whatever pain is most prominent at the time. Every day might be too much but I should be able to do this several times a week. Just as I’ve benefited from cleaning my room and getting rid of a lot of material junk, I think it’s also important to get rid of the mental junk that’s dragging me down. And if I get to a point where I feel like I need qualified professional help to do this, I’ll seek it out without hesitation. I hope you’ll also seek help if you feel it necessary, whether you try out what I did or not (although if you do try it and it helps you, please let me know). I’m interested to see how my life will look once I’ve been doing it for a long time. If it does produce lasting healing, then I’d like to see it or something similar catch on and help a lot of people heal their pain and find freedom. The world would drastically change for the better if that happened and I hope to be around to see it.