{"id":368,"date":"2013-12-05T18:46:17","date_gmt":"2013-12-05T13:16:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ipi.org.in\/blogs\/?p=368"},"modified":"2013-12-07T20:35:42","modified_gmt":"2013-12-07T15:05:42","slug":"zumba-and-the-yoga-of-pain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ipi.org.in\/blogs\/zumba-and-the-yoga-of-pain\/","title":{"rendered":"Zumba and the Yoga of Pain"},"content":{"rendered":"

moonlight sonata mp3 10-19-11<\/a>\u00a0(it’s probably best to listen through headphones. If you want to use this as part of an “experiment” – try listening starting at the line below, “and I started watching”. \u00a0You’ll probably find at first that your attention seems split, with the music almost as a kind of distraction. \u00a0At some point, if you just keep gently attending to the words and not fighting or struggling with the music, you may find your attention widens and the music and words flow together. This open, wide attention is a very good foundation for “listening” to pain. I could have chosen a more bland “New Age” type music which might have seemed easier to use – most pain management guided meditations use that kind of music – but I thought a more complex music, particularly one you’re likely to be familiar with, would be more of a challenge. I often find that kind of challenge helps to push me past my usual learned habits of attention)<\/p>\n

PART I: Zumba<\/p>\n

It started when I was almost 52.\u00a0 I had been slender most of my childhood into my early 30s.\u00a0 Somehow, as grad school approached, the weight increased, and I found myself in 2003 almost 35 pounds overweight and with a blood pressure of 160\/100.<\/p>\n

I immediately set to work \u2013 didn\u2019t want to poison myself with too many BP pills.\u00a0 With weight training and cardio, I managed to lose 25 pounds and kept it off for most of the last 10 years. \u00a0And for the last year, the BP has been under 135\/85.\u00a0 But there was still those last 10 pounds –<\/p>\n

I tried many things over the years, but nothing seemed to work.\u00a0 Recently, I started the 5:2 intermittent fasting diet \u2013 not only started losing weight, but my BP has been more stable than in years (average 130\/80; often down as low as 115\/70 \u2013 just one pill, a diuretic, and my doctor is encouraging me to stabilize the BP enough so as to get off medication altogether)<\/p>\n

I tend to be a bit \u2013 well, stubborn (\u201cfoolish\u201d might seem a more appropriate word, as you\u2019ll see in a moment) so I upped my exercise routine considerably. I started doing the most advanced \u201cFitness Blender\u201d exercise routines (see www.fitnessblender.com<\/a>; over 250 videos to choose from).\u00a0 I found a high intensity interval mini-trampoline routine on youtube, and incorporated that for cardio. And I figured, \u201chey, what the heck, I\u2019m 61 but I feel like I\u2019m 31, I can do that hardest Fitness Blender routine: burn up to 1000 calories in 88 minutes. \u201c<\/p>\n

But was that enough?\u00a0 Oh no, we started Zumba classes. For those not familiar with it, this fellow, Carlos, from Colombia, South America loved to dance, and loved music from all over the world.\u00a0 Over the last few years, he has created a world-wide franchise of dance\/exercise classes, mixing music from Latin America, the Middle East, India and Africa, among others. And I have to say, they\u2019re really good. We did six classes in the last few weeks, and loved it.\u00a0 And it was kind of cool being the oldest ones in class and still keeping up.<\/p>\n

And I did the 1000 calorie Fitness Blender routine last Wednesday, and we went Thursday morning for what was probably the toughest, fastest Zumba class we\u2019ve taken. I woke up Thursday morning with an ache in my lower back, but heck, I\u2019m \u201creally\u201d 31 (in spirit, though 61 in chronological years:>) and I figured I could just take a hot bath, and if the pain was gone, I\u2019d be fine.<\/p>\n

The pain was gone and after class I was fine.<\/p>\n

Friday morning I woke up, and I couldn\u2019t lift myself up in bed. I\u2019ve had a few brief bouts of back pain before – but nothing like this.<\/p>\n

PART II: THE YOGA OF PAIN<\/p>\n

This was the kind of pain that you\u2019re lying down and you know it\u2019s going to hurt so much when you get up that even if you have to go to the bathroom \u2013 badly \u2013 you spend a few minutes contemplating how you\u2019re going to deal with the searing pain you\u2019re going to experience as you attempt to lift yourself up from a horizontal position.<\/p>\n

It was only the second day that I realized we still had the cane that Jan\u2019s mother had used when she was having spells of dizziness \u2013 that helped a lot when getting up from being seated or lying down, but it still hurt a lot.<\/p>\n

The first day I did a lot of different things \u2013 application of cold to the back, hot baths, and lots of attempts at deep relaxation. My mind was so numb from reacting to the pain it was hard that first day to do much in terms of relaxation, though.\u00a0 But I did try as much as possible, while sitting in the hot bath or with a cold compress against my back, to \u201cdive into\u201d the pain sensations with my attention, just allowing the pain to \u201cbe there\u201d without resisting or trying to alter it in any way.<\/p>\n

Whenever my awareness was clear and calm enough to do this, the sensations changed in interesting ways, but for the most part, in terms of my attitude and overall state of mind, the first two days were mostly spent in simple recognition of the state of my mind and body without being clear or focused enough to go any deeper into the pain.<\/p>\n

Around 1 AM Sunday morning, I couldn\u2019t sleep and went to sit up in a chair with a heating pad against my back. My mind was still quite foggy, but it was clear enough that I was able to focus my attention somewhat more than in the previous 2 days.<\/p>\n

And I started watching.<\/p>\n

This was when it got interesting.<\/p>\n

As the attention came to rest on the pain sensations, all kinds of interesting things started to happen.<\/p>\n

There was enough inner quiet and calmness that the emotional reactivity \u2013 the feeling, if it were verbalized, that \u201cthis is terrible, what\u2019s going to happen to me, this shouldn\u2019t be \u2013 lessened considerably.<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s the changes in the pain sensations themselves.\u00a0 Watching without emotional reactivity, just \u201cbeing there\u201d with the sensations, the whole sense of them being an identifiable object \u2013 \u201cpain\u201d \u2013 over \u2018there\u201d \u2013 starts to lessen.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a part of the mind \u2013 one that develops quite soon when we\u2019re toddlers, that is the beginning of our ability to speak \u2013 that very rapidly labels every aspect of our experience.\u00a0 And when the emotional reactivity lessens, it starts to become possible to see \u2013 it\u2019s really kind of a feeling rather than a seeing; or maybe an intuitive knowing might be a better way of putting it \u2013 that the mind almost instantaneously labels (though not necessarily verbally; it\u2019s like a grabbing; a mental shaping that occurs) the pain experience.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s even more interesting when this subtle mental activity is noticed, is that it is so intimately tied up with a sense of \u201cme\u201d, over \u201chere\u201d, entirely separate from that \u201cpain\u201d, over \u201cthere.\u201d<\/p>\n

And when the labeling, the grabbing\/shaping activity lessens, the sense of \u201cme\u201d, \u201chere\u201d lessens simultaneously.<\/p>\n

The \u201csimultaneity\u201d is particularly important.\u00a0 If inner calm and non-reactivity is maintained, along with complete absence of even the slightest attempt to control or affect the sensations in any way, it starts to become evident that rather than separate, the \u201cme\u201d here and separate \u201cobject\u201d of \u201cpain\u201d over \u201cthere\u201d are inseparably connected.<\/p>\n

And if this inner calm and non-reactivity can still be sustained, a very interesting thing happens, to both the object and subject.<\/p>\n

The \u201cobject\u201d of pain changes dramatically.\u00a0 Ironically, this happens because nothing was done in an attempt to change the pain.\u00a0 What appeared to be a solid \u201csomething\u201d dissolves into a bewilderingly complex array of ever-changing patterns of energy (well, not really \u201cbewildering\u201d \u2013 it\u2019s only confusing if a part of the mind tries to grasp, label, conceive of what is happening in ordinary conceptual terms).<\/p>\n

And what appeared to be a solid \u201csomething\u201d over \u201chere\u201d \u2013 at the subjective end \u2013 turns out to have been a complex array of ever-changing patterns of thought\/feeling\/memory\/reactions, etc.\u00a0 In other words, energy \u201chere\u201d and energy \u201cthere\u201d \u2013 an unbroken, non-separate field of varying patterns of sensation, thought and feeling \u2013 all in relationship to an immeasurable, unbroken field of awareness.<\/p>\n

******<\/p>\n

After almost 90 minutes of this sustained attention, the pain level dropped considerably.\u00a0 Something appeared to \u201cunravel\u201d in the muscles of the lower back, almost like a spontaneous chiropractic adjustment.\u00a0 There was significantly more range of motion, and overall, except for occasional periods of intensified pain, the pain levels were lower.<\/p>\n

I continued to do cold and hot treatments and various forms of careful stretching, and have had two chiropractic adjustments. I\u2019m happy to report that on my first day back at work, I was able to walk, bend and lift fairly normally.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s interesting to reflect on how dramatically an inner stance of simple, calm attention can change one\u2019s experience.\u00a0 And it\u2019s also remarkable to reflect on how this same calm, inner stance can have equally dramatic effects not only on physical pain, but on virtually every aspect of one\u2019s life.<\/p>\n

And that quiet, inner calm \u2013 it may be misleading if it\u2019s thought of as a sort of dull, quiet neutral state. There\u2019s a quality of tremendous warmth and caring, what might almost be called a kind of \u201ccompassion\u201d towards the pain.\u00a0 And it has a kind of boundary-less quality \u2013 almost embracing the full range of experience rather than being an \u201cobserver\u201d separate from what is observed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

moonlight sonata mp3 10-19-11\u00a0(it’s probably best to listen through headphones. If you want to use this as part of an “experiment” – try listening starting at the line below, “and I started watching”. \u00a0You’ll probably find at first that your attention seems split, with the music almost as a kind of distraction. \u00a0At some point, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ipi.org.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ipi.org.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ipi.org.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ipi.org.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ipi.org.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=368"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.ipi.org.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":377,"href":"https:\/\/www.ipi.org.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368\/revisions\/377"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ipi.org.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ipi.org.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ipi.org.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}