(5 hours) #46 Spreading your focus - Stress & Pain Relief (Jason Newland) (16th November 2022)

Hello, welcome to jasonnewland.com. This is a relaxation and pain relief session. Please only listen when you can safely close your eyes. And only listen when you know the cause of your chronic pain.

When you've been diagnosed because it's just really important. Now the techniques that I use in these podcasts can be used for both chronic pain and stress relief. So that's what this podcast is.

The name of the podcast is stress and pain relief. Yeah, it kind of says it on the tin in a way. So I'd like you to close your eyes once you've got yourself comfortable.

Only listen when you're ready to relax deeply. So maybe, you know, put it on pause if you need to. Or maybe just stop it, get yourself comfortable with a chair that supports your body or lying down on your bed and then restarting the recording.

Allowing yourself some time where hopefully you won't be disturbed. Some time where you can, you know, have some special me time, as it were. Make sure you're in a safe space.

And, you know, even if you are disturbed, even if you have to stop the recording, it doesn't matter. Because there's still benefit to be had from five minutes of sitting with your eyes closed or lying down with your eyes closed, concentrating on my voice, noticing how you feel, moving away from your thoughts to your physical feelings or from your physical feelings in one part of your body to the physical feelings in the other parts of your body as well.

Because with chronic pain, it can often be a sense of or a case of giving more focus than you could say is fair, really.

Not fair on the other parts of your body. Imagine if you had 10 children and you gave all your attention to just one of them. The other nine children might, well, I'd say maybe one or two of them wouldn't care, but maybe at least seven of them would feel a bit, oh, what about me? So if you think of it like that, perhaps you can give a bit more attention to the other parts because you don't have to only care about the parts of your body that are causing you physical discomfort.

It seems to be a human way that we kind of focus on the parts of our body only when they're giving us physical discomfort or immense pleasure. To the rest of the time, we just ignore those parts of the body. Well, this is an opportunity to even things out a bit because when it comes to focus, when it comes to concentrating on a part of your body, of course, you can give all your attention.

Maybe you can't never give all of your attention because unless you're sitting in one of those tanks that take away stimuli, you're still going to be aware of other things. So it might seem like you're sitting there sometimes and all you're thinking about is that painful part of your body or the stress that you're feeling. That's not all you're focusing on.

That's not all you're noticing. It's just you might not consciously be aware of it. If your ears work, then you're going to hear background sounds.

If your eyes work okay, you're going to see stuff. Even when your eyes are closed, you can still see your eyelids, the insides of your eyelids. If it's light, if there's a light, bright light in the room, you can generally see the light.

You can maybe taste what you've had to eat. If you just had a bit of chocolate, strawberry chocolate, you still can taste that strawberry. If your dog's just farted, you can still smell the dog's fart.

Perhaps they do tend to linger a little while before they dissolve into the furniture. You've also got the other parts of your body. So you might be sitting in a chair and focusing on, let's say, your left arm or your right arm or your left knee.

That might be a problem place. Yet you've got the sensation of the chair underneath your body touching your buttocks, the backs of your legs maybe, your back if you're leaning backwards, maybe even the back of your head if your head is resting. Your arms may be resting on your legs or on the armrests of the chair.

So those feelings are being noticed but not noticed. They're there and you're unconsciously aware of it. You just might not be completely consciously aware of it.

But once you do become a bit more aware of those other parts of your body that have, you know, a little bit of stimulation, physical stimulation of being able to feel the chair against your body or the air against your skin, the feeling of the air entering your body when you breathe and, of course, leave in your body. The feeling of your mouth and your tongue and your lips.

Maybe being more aware of the background sounds.

Not just my voice. Unless, of course, you're wearing headphones or something like that. Then the only background sounds you probably get would be the ones that are happening here on my side.

There's always a train in the distance or a plane going by or people in the garden. It's hard to avoid that stuff. But I realized that it doesn't really matter.

I did a relaxation session with someone. It was 2006 and it was for chronic pain. It was a Saturday morning.

And I'll always remember this because probably about five minutes, ten minutes in and they're sitting in a chair opposite me. I'm talking to them. It was a lady.

I think it was a lady. And suddenly planes started to go over. Not just little planes, proper jets.

And I realized that they were on their way to an air show nearby. And this went on for about 20 minutes. Proper full, huge, to be honest, if I wasn't in the middle of what I was doing, I would have looked out the window at them.

Because some of these, they're just like, how do they get in the air? They're so big. Especially as some of them are quite old as well. So it's kind of strange, really.

How, it just amazes me. That's not really the subject of the, it's not the topic of conversation. But what surprised me is I was talking.

I had to talk a bit louder. I didn't know she could hear me. And at the end of it, because I think I was probably talking to her for about 40 minutes, at the end of it, she opened her eyes and she'd noticed that she felt different.

And that's a surprise. People are often surprised, nearly always it seems, surprised that they get a result. Even though some people traveled from other parts of the country to come and see me.

So I used to have this free pain relief service. And often the look of surprise on their face when they felt different. The part of their body that they'd come to almost accept that it would never change.

You know, that's going to be like that forever. Felt different. And some people even, like I said, they feel that they've never actually relaxed before.

Until that moment, they thought they were relaxing. Realized that maybe they weren't relaxing in a way that was possible, because they really, really let go. Which is interesting, really.

And then this lady, she said, I said, how was it? And the first thing she did is, like everyone does in those situations, they start searching for that physical discomfort that they had half an hour ago. Like, where's it gone? When I say searching, I don't mean she wasn't looking under the chair or, you know, looking behind the curtains or in a handbag or anything. Like, where have you hidden it?

Nothing like that.

It's just like, oh. And I said to her, I was a little bit concerned that you'd be distracted by all the planes that went past. And she said, what planes? I had a little look to see whether or not she had hearing aids, because to not hear those planes, she must have had to, you know, turn the hearing aids off, because they were loud, like really soaring across the sky.

You know, if she was in a room talking to somebody, you would have to stop talking until the plane went past, because you wouldn't be able to hear them. And you'd have to, if she was watching Netflix, you'd have to press pause, unless you had headphones. But even with headphones, I imagine you'd still hear a bit of the roar.

It didn't bother her at all. Now, I'm sure she unconsciously heard it. I mean, you couldn't not.

Just didn't bother her. Didn't interest her, even to the point of remembering it. Quite often people forget the experience altogether, really.

They'll like, come out of it and say, oh, it's only, you ask them, how long do you think it's been? And they'll say, oh, five minutes, 10 minutes. And you tell them it's been 19 hours. And it's like, what? I said, not really, 40 minutes.

Still like, really? How can it have been 40 minutes? The time goes very quickly when you relax. And quite often people drift in and out of the normal state of being aware. And when that happens, the physical sensations in your body change.

Whether it's, as I said, chronic pain, or whether it's stress, tension, anxiety, all of those things that we have words for and labels for, change. The physical sensations change, and our minds slow down. This is just something that naturally happens.

And there's lots of theories about why you just feel more relaxed, and naturally, when you close your eyes, it's just a natural thing to happen, is to start feeling more relaxed. And ironically, a plane's about to go over in the distance. So I guess we don't need to know the reason behind everything and why we always, you know, why we feel a certain way.

And how come I felt so relaxed, even though there was just this boring man talking on this podcast? Why would that be relaxing? It's just boring. Just closing my eyes and sitting here, listening to him bumble on about planes and stuff like that. What's that all about? There's something though, that you give your mind permission to relax when you listen to me.

It's almost inherent, it's a part of the process. Your unconscious mind knows as soon as I start talking, that it's time to de-stress, that it's time to let go of some of those feelings that are no longer useful to you. It's time for those worries to be crumbled.

These things that we have in our mind that feel like actual objects, but all it is, is an idea, a thought. It's not concrete, but we tend to turn it into kind of a concrete type of thing, like a statue almost, made up of just feelings. The problem is, once you relax more, those feelings move away from that and it starts to just collapse and just crumble.

So, that big feeling connected to a certain part of your body or whatever, maybe an idea, it just starts to crumble and any negative feelings crumble and dissolve. Positive feelings grow, positive feelings start to move forward into the future, paving the way for you to feel happier and to build the future that you want for yourself. Relaxed and calm, yet energetic and positive, focusing on the whole of your body.

An analogy of that is, when you focus on just one part of your body, that's basically a table full of salt in a glass of water. If you taste that, don't because it's not nice, it's just all you're going to taste is the salt. When you focus on the whole of your body, moving between the different parts and just have an overall sense of your body, that's pouring a table full of salt into a swimming pool full of clear water.

Do you think you'd taste the salt? No, because it's spread out too thin. So, when you focus on more broad, the different parts of your body, it is like the salt in the swimming pool, it's just spread out so it's no longer even noticeable. And it's strange how you can really start to feel more relaxed without doing anything, without any relaxation technique, without telling yourself that your face is relaxed, your shoulders are relaxed, your stomach, your chest are relaxed, your arms, hands, fingers are relaxed, your back, your hips are relaxed, legs, feet and toes are relaxed.

You don't need to tell yourself that stuff. You can, and it helps, but you don't need to. Sometimes all you need is to just close your eyes and allow your body to relax naturally.

Just get an overall feeling of your body, the whole of your body, including your ears and your jaw, your fingertips, your knees, the temperature of the room, the feeling of the bed or the chair supported your body, maybe the feeling of the clothes on your body. If you're wearing headphones listening to this, you can feel the headphones on your ears. It changes things, it changes how you feel, changes how you feel.

So easily, so naturally, peacefully, not needing to do anything, not needing to say anything, not needing to remember anything. And as you notice your mind has slowed down, there's no longer that urgency, no longer things trying to grab your attention, maybe things that weren't even important to start with. The petty thoughts disappear, that alone can transform how you feel.

Notice in a much calmer mind slowing down, slowing down, and your body feels more relaxed with each breath you take. And that's another thing, even though you're not controlling your breathing, your breathing has become deeper naturally. Sending that oxygen through your blood into all the parts of your body, spreading that healing energy of comfort and relaxation.

As more of your brain is being used to relax you deeply, relaxing your brain, deep inside, deeply relaxed, and you will continue to relax even further. And when you do decide to open your eyes, you'll feel so relaxed, yet have energy, positive energy, to do whatever you choose. Feeling relaxed and feeling healthy.