More mental and physical health tips from journeys past & present.
Introduction:
Have you ever woken up from sleep with a sharp pain in your ear? One so sharp, so intense that you can’t even lift your head off the pillow without quietly (so as not to wake your flatmates) shreeking in pain.
This is something that’s happend to me many times and continues to happen to me to this day. I’ll have to look into it sometime but for now I’m using it as part of the inspiration for this article.
In addition to this pain I also recently landed on my tail bone in a BMX accident at a skate park. Something like the accident in this video except I didn’t hit my nuts on the rail. Doing that would have meant possibly feeling more pain but for a much shorter length of time.
Hitting my nuts would have probably stopped hurting on the same day or by the end of the following day at the latest. This pain has now lasted me almost a full week and although it has improved it’s still sometimes almost as painfull as the beginning at least when I sit down for too long.
But this time when I woke up in need of the loo at 4 something am on a sunday morning, I was for a moment unable to get up because of that random ear pain I mentioned. That was when I remembered something from a past spiritual journey in my life. The Buddha in the storm. This was a technique I developed to help me when I was going through an emotionally turbulant time and experiencing mental health issues. I wanted mental stability in a time when my mind basically felt like there were a bunch of hurricaines flying around in it.
I remembered the calmness and self control exercised by Buddhist monks and thought, how could I be more like that? Well, I didn’t travel to the himalayas to become a buddhist monk if thats what you’re thinking. But Buddhism was the inspiration.
I remembered the Buddhism teaching that there is a potential for enlightenment within everyone. An enlightened you inside you, if you like. So, I tried to visualise that version of me that was already enlightened inside my minds storm.
Back then this helped me overcome my emotional turbulance and at least start to gain better control over my mental health. This time it helped me get my head off the pillow not by making the pain go away, but by helping me deal with the pain.
To such an extent in fact that I am now also able to deal with the pain in my tailbone and sit down and stand up almost like normal. It’s the same type of calm that people experience after having meditated. A sense not of ‘it will be ok’ but of ‘it is ok now’. Not through some absence of pain but in spite of it remaining.
Now there’s no way I’m going to have such an experience and not share the techniques with other people! Why keep something to myself if sharing it can benefit others in the same way as it has benefitted me?
So that’s exactly what this article is going to be. A way for me to share some more techniques that have helped me in the past and are still helping me now to improve my mental and physical health.
I hope they help you as much as they are helping me! :)
The Buddha in the storm:
As I mentioned earlier, this is a technique I came up with when I was going through some emotionally and spiritually turbulent times and now it’s helping me deal with physical pain.
So here’s how it works.
I visualise or imagine whatever stress, pain or trauma I’m going through at the time as a storm in my mind. Then, within the centre of the storm I picture a Buddhist monk version of myself. A monk that has attained enlightenment, and so, is not falling prey to the storm or showing any signs of being affected by it at all.
Calm emenates from him, he is visually at peace at a time when I and many others wouldn’t be. Then, I breathe. A few deep breaths and I switch my perspective of him from 3rd to 1st person. I am him now. Not enlightened myself but borrowing the parts of enlightenment that will help me in this present moment.
You don’t have to do exactly the same thing. Whatever you imagine that helps you cope better with your situation is fine. Some of you might imagine a loved one or a child or a pet. Some of you might imagine a place either real or imaginary that brings you the same calm.
Whatever it is, picture that and then make it an intrinsic part of yourself. Assume no distance or separation between you and the image in your mind.
Also, it’s important to note that this technique does not actually make the pain go away. It may lessen it slightly but really it helps you handle it better. Part of this is achieved by first acknowlageing your pain and accepting it as a reality, but a reality that is at least to some lesser or greater extent a creation of the mind.
I talk more about this in my other article on mental health tips which I reccomend you read after this if you haven’t already. It features some other techniques that have helped me overcome or better cope with mental health issues.
Cultivating patience with prayer beads:
This is something I partly learned and partly came up with myself. It was inspired primerily by Buddhism but at a time when I was Muslim. I didn’t want to go around praising Buddha at a time when I believed in the Abrahamic God.
The Buddists use mantras to help them meditate and sometimes use prayer beads to the same end. I wanted to use that to help me cultivate patience in a time when I was living in a very volitile environment.
As I was Muslim though, I adapted the technique to use the arabic names for God in place of any sanskrit Buddhist mantras.
I basically used the Arabic names of God to count my way around the string of beads whilst paying attention to my emotions. Whenever I noticed a rise in anxiety or impatience I stopped, took a deep breath and started again from the beginning.
Over time this really helped me cultivate patience with the people I was living with at the time and I would recomend anyone going through similar experiences or anyone who generally has issues with patience try and adapt this technique to their own lives.
For example, if you’re not Muslim you could use the Buddhist mantras, or simply count your breaths and omit the beads all together. Maybe something simple like counting 10 breaths at a time or to make it even less complex simply observing your breaths like in a normal meditation.
Essentially the core aspects of the exercise are as follows:
Cultivate an awareness of your current state in the present moment.
It may change from second to second but follow it as if you’re watching a car drive along side you whilst sitting in a bus.
Acknowlage whatever you’re feeling, positive or negative.
Whatever is most troubling you right now, acknowlage it. Regardless of whether it’s anxiety, depression, stress, pain either physical or emotional. Acknowlage and accept whatever feelings you have right now.
Don’t run away from them. Accept them with full knowlage and awareness of their mortality. Remember the saying ‘This too shall pass’ and try to use meditation and breathing techniques, as well as grounding techniques to surf the turbulance like a wave. This way the pain will no longer completely be something you have to bear but will itself will carry you to it’s end.
I’m not saying it won’t still hurt but you will be able to deal with it better.
Embrace the permanence of impermanence.
Change, is the only thing that never changes. It’s one of life’s few indisputable facts. Given a long enough time period, anything and everything eventually changes be it people, planets, ant hills, stars or even the universe itself. The same is true for whatever situation you’re going through right now.
Once you are able to adapt or use these techniques yourself you will be able to handle almost (almost) anything! It won’t make you invincible or impervious to pain but it will hopefully help you better cope with anything life throws at you.
Hope this helps you as much as it has helped me!! :)
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