(10 hours) #39 A THIRD OF THE FEELING LEFT - Stress & Pain Relief (Jason Newland)

Hello and welcome to jasonnewland.com. My name is Jason Newland and this is Stress and Pain Relief podcast. So please only listen when you can safely close your eyes. I sound, I think I sound a bit clogged up.

I might be, oh no, I might be having a cold. I'll tell you what it is. Do you ever get that, the feeling, you know when the weather changes, when it suddenly starts to, well today it started to feel colder because it's been really nice here.

I know it's the end of September but it's been really nice and suddenly the temperature's changed. It's not cold but it feels cold in a way because it's been really nice and even the heating's coming on because it's set to, you know, it's just set to automatic to come on if it's needed. Even the heating's going, oh a bit chilly.

So I sometimes when it happens I get a little bit of a a little bit of a coldy kind of feeling. Well that was uninteresting wasn't it? Why are you telling this Jason? Why? What's that got to do? Just get on with the recording will you? Okay, oh well. So as per usual I'll do a little introduction just to explain what this is.

It's a recording, this recording is to help to reduce stress, tension, anxiety and chronic pain. The same technique used for both of those things or all of those things and this is something that I kind of discovered over the years that sometimes the same technique, the same recording, the same idea can reduce both chronic pain and stress and tension. You know those physical feelings in your body, physical feelings of discomfort can be reduced using the same, whether it's a technique or idea.

Now, to start with I thought it'd be nice to just do a quick body scan generally of how your body feels. So if you focus to start with the top of your head, just get an idea and also I suppose I should say get yourself comfortable first. I mean I guess you'd already be doing that, you wouldn't just be standing in the middle of the room balancing a book on your head with one leg in the air.

You know you're going to be kind of prepared I imagine for the recording but if you're sitting down, I advise you sit down in a comfortable chair that supports your body and if you're lying down on a bed or flat surface like a sofa, there's more chance that you may drift off to sleep if you're lying down than if you're sitting in the chair. So of course it's your choice how you wish to feel comfortable.

So back to the body scan, I'm going to focus on the top of your head first, just noticing how it feels and moving down to your face, generally noticing how your face feels, your forehead, your eyes, your jaw, your mouth, your ears, your nose, moving down to your neck, the front of your neck, sides and back of your neck, your shoulders, your arms, your hands and fingers, just being aware of how they feel, noticing any feelings that are a bit more obvious, maybe a bit more heightened sensations when you notice them,

just kind of just notice it and then move on, focusing on your chest and your stomach, your sides of your torso and then you've got your back, top of your back, middle and lower back and there's the spine all the way down from your neck into your lower back, those muscles either side of your spine, then you've got your hips, your buttocks, your groin area, the tops of your legs and then you've got your whole of your legs all the way down to your feet, your toes, just noticing how you feel,

is there a specific feeling that is more stronger, maybe more pronounced than the rest and it's something that seems to happen, and I think it's just a human, just the way humans, we humans do it, is when I say notice any physical sensations, we tend to automatically focus or look out for discomfort, unpleasant feelings, as opposed to those parts of our body that feel really good, that feel maybe really relaxed, calm, maybe even pleasurable, I think for some people the idea of having a physical, a pleasurable sensation in the part of your body,

seems almost like it's a weird thing to happen, it should only happen at certain, you know, certain times, well why, I mean right now, in my, the bottom of my lower back, the top of my right buttock, feels pleasurable, it feels nice, it's a really nice feeling, no idea why, honestly no idea, but it's tingling, it's nice, it's a nice feeling, almost like I've had a really good stretch and it's really relaxed, I don't know why it's relaxed, because opposite that is my lower back and my lower back is throbbing,

it's not, it's some, yeah, it's, the thing is with my lower back at the moment is, yeah, it's chronic pain, it's a condition that I have ongoing, and I know it's there, I can feel it, but something that really changes the physical experience of chronic pain or, you know, tension, stress, is how you think about it, and right now, admittedly, I'm distracted because I'm talking, I'm making this recording, so my focus, I'm not feeling sorry for myself, I'm not arguing with reality, yeah, I'm not sort of, why, why,

why has this happened to me, I shouldn't have this pain in my lower back at such an early age, although I'm 51, so it's not really an early age for anything anymore, is it, I'm quite old, but I can argue with reality, but isn't it weird, isn't it, or I don't know, ironic or funny or strange, I don't know, we never complain about the nice feelings, it's obvious why, because nice feelings are nice, but it's still a sensation that's happening for maybe no reason, we never argue, we never moan or complain,

why am I feeling like me, my lower right buttock, or the top of the buttock, or my right buttock, I'm not moaning about it, why does it feel nice, you know, I'm not moaning that my forehead feels, my eyes feel quite, actually my eyes feel a little bit tense actually, okay, my hands are relaxed, so I'm not going to complain about my hands being relaxed, my breathing feels quite nice, the cool air, I know a lot of meditation, you know, different books and stuff, talk about breathing in through your nose and then out through your mouth,

and I do breathe out, I do breathe through my nose, but I quite like breathing through my mouth, because there's a cool air, I feel the cool air more when I breathe through my mouth, I almost feel it going, you know, into my lungs or straight away, and that's something that I've noticed, is when I relax, without focusing on my breathing, which is something that I rarely do, and part of the reason for that is because, I suppose making recordings, trying to cater for as many people as possible,

there's a lot of people with asthma, COPD, various lung issues, also anxiety, focusing on breathing exercises isn't always the best thing for people that have anxiety, and it can be a way to calm down anxiety, but when someone's not experiencing anxiety, sometimes go the opposite way, from my experience, so I don't really focus on breathing as part of the relaxation session, I do sometimes, but generally I don't, but what I notice is when we relax, the breathing naturally, slows down, it's much clearer, it's much more gentle, but it happens on its own,

there's no effort on my part, there's no trying to get it to happen, it just happens naturally, which makes me wonder what else is happening inside your body, when you relax, what other benefits are occurring with your heart, your lungs, your liver, kidneys, pancreas, all those different wonderful parts of our body, which we can't see, and we don't necessarily, although we gain the benefit from them working, like the liver, the kidneys, we don't, we can't kind of notice it, in the same way as we can when we breathe,

in the moment, I'm sure as hell notice it when they don't work properly, but as they do, I imagine relaxing, must be very healthy, for all of those internal organs, it's all, it's almost like you're just saying, thank you, let's take a, let's take a rest, let's take a break, you don't have to do much, just stick away, just relax, I don't need anything from you, thank you for all you do, I mean wow, the things that the parts of our body do for us is amazing,

it's more than any other human will ever do for you, you know, your, your heart, your lungs, your, your intestine organs, all that whole process, without sounding, trying to sound weird, even your anus, you know, the bowels, it does more for you than any other human would ever do for you in your lifetime, and it is so easy just to take it for granted, I know I do, although I did take, until I got constipated a few months ago, for the first time in my life really, then I realized, wow,

I've been taking this little part of my body very, very for granted, way more information than you really needed, I know, so I'd like you to do another body scan, starting at the top of your head again, just noticing how you feel different from before, starting at the top of your head, moving down to your forehead, your eyes, ears, nose, mouth, jaw, tongue, your neck, all parts of your neck, chest and stomach, shoulders, arms, hands, fingers, your spinal cord, all the way from the neck down to the bottom of your back,

and then the whole of your back, top, middle, and your lower back, just being aware, your buttocks, your groin area, your legs, feet and toes, something I've just noticed is the pleasant feeling in my right buttock at the top has disappeared, but my lower back on the left-hand side has reduced a lot, the feeling that I had, which was uncomfortable, to say the least.

Now, last time I looked at it, I focused on it a few minutes ago, I could feel the sensation, but I wasn't emotionally bothered about it, so there was no tension, no stress connected with that feeling, because I just didn't care, and it's not that I don't care about my body, well, not all the time anyway, it's just I wasn't worried about it, I wasn't thinking about how it felt yesterday, and I wasn't thinking about how it's gonna feel tomorrow, which straight away you take the past feelings you had and future expectations of that discomfort,

and you take two-thirds of the feeling away instantly, so you're left with just a third of that physical sensation, whether it be stress or pain, you have only a third left, it's almost sort of in your mind as if you're just cutting it into three pieces and chucking two away, and in that process a lot of the energy has gone, it kind of can't do anything anymore, it's just there, doesn't have much in the way of power, it's not connected to any source of power, has no control over anything,

it's just there, you know, it's not doing much, and on its own that third of that feeling isn't really worth your time or your attention, in fact it may not even be able to to receive or even get your attention, because it's shrunk down to only a third of the feeling of the sensation that it originally was, only a third, and it's just laying there, it's not doing anything, it can't do anything, and the only reason it's got your attention now is because that's what we're focusing on,

but if it wasn't for that it probably wouldn't be able to get your attention at all, because there's no emotional connection anymore, because when you get into that zone, that mental state of, I don't really care, it's just a feeling, it's just a feeling, and now it's only a third of the feeling of what it was, it's only a third of what it was, you can only feel 33 percent of what you could feel before, and I guess it can't use the amount of energy that it could use before,

because just as if you had a car, and you needed to fill it up, but you only filled it up, you only filled a third of the petrol up, one third, and you were aware of that, and you kept reminding yourself of that, you'd have to be very careful, you wouldn't be able to maybe do long distance journeys without filling up again, so if you were going to just manage with the third of what you normally put into your car, maybe you'd take it a little bit easier,

I guess in the same way as if you only had, if you had a budget, and you know you only had a third of the food that you normally have for the week, and you know at the beginning of the week you've only got a third, you've lost two thirds of your money maybe for that week, had other bills to pay or whatever, so you've got a budget, so you've only got a third of the food that you normally have to eat, you'd need to be careful,

you'd need to maybe eat a little bit less or be more creative with what you do eat, so that feeling that's now a third of what it was, there's not a lot it can do, it's just there, realizing that there's less energy available to it, and maybe it starts to realize that you don't need that feeling, because if you've removed two thirds of it, you've shown that you don't need it, that that feeling that you had connected to that part of your body before was unnecessary,

and once that part of your body realizes that there's only a third left, realize that you don't need it, it has no power over you, has no control over you anymore, can't even get your attention anymore, it realizes that maybe, maybe that feeling should just stay quiet and peaceful, maybe that part of your body starts to appreciate not having the other two thirds, maybe they were noisy neighbors, didn't like living with them, and now it's more peaceful, now it can just be left alone, peaceful and calm, so let's do another body scan,

noticing how different you feel, starting again with the top of your head, moving down to your forehead, your eyes, ears, nose, mouth, jaw, tongue, your neck, front sides and back of your neck, shoulders, your arms, your elbows, your wrists, your hands, the palms of your hands, the back of your hands, your fingers, the joints in your fingers, the knuckles, your fingernails, your chest, your collarbone, your ribs, your diaphragm, the whole stomach and abdomen region, moving down to your bellybutton and the area underneath your bellybutton that goes all the way down towards your groin,

and there's the spine, such an important part connecting your brain to your body, moving all the way down the middle of your back, into your hips, and there's your back, your upper back, that part connected to your back of your neck and also to your shoulders, underarms as well, same connection, you got that area from your underarms and all the way down the sides of your body, a part that sometimes can be ignored, yet we use it every day when we twist and turn, walk, sit, lie down,

always using the sides of our body, you know, and the muscles and everything like that, which is connected to our stomach and our chest and our back, the middle of your back and then the lower back, leading to your hips, leading to your buttocks as well, the feeling in the whole of your midsection, whole of your hips, the bones, your sitting bones, where your legs join into your hips, thighs, the muscles in your thighs, and your knees of course, your lower legs moving into your ankles, your heels, your feet,

the heels of your feet, the bottoms of your feet, the arches, bottoms of your toes, that padding area just below your toes that you use when you walk, the tops of your feet, the sides of your feet and of course, your toes as well, the top and the bottom of your toes, the sides of your toes, in between your toes, and your toenails, how much more relaxed do you feel now compared to how you did before, in the whole of your body, every part, just naturally letting go, letting go,

naturally letting go completely, and I'm going to count down lastly from 10 down to 1, when I get to 1, you can choose what to do next, you can finish the recording and enjoy the rest of your day feeling relaxed and calm, or if you choose, as we count down from 10 to 1, your mind starts to drift even further into a dreamlike state, and you just slowly can drift to sleep, becoming more tired with every number, you hear me say, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1