(Overnight Music) #6 BACKGROUND SOUND - Stress & Pain Relief (Jason Newland)

Hello and welcome to jasonnewland.com. My name is Jason Newland. This is this is stress and pain relief. And this is the podcast stress and pain relief.

Now, please only listen when you can safely close your eyes. Now, this this is something that I've never done before. Okay, don't worry, I'm not going to start juggling babies or anything like that.

This is kind of the opposite to what I normally do. I try normally to make the background sound as quiet as possible. Hence buying the new microphone and trying to increase the quality.

Now today, I've gone the opposite. Although it's still good quality of my, you know, the right microphone. But I've opened the windows in order to invite background sound into my home.

Plus, Andre the ferret's in the background, so he might be making a bit of sound as well. So, you might be thinking, well, why are you telling us this? First of all, why? What's the point in that? Well, two reasons.

First of all, something that I learned a long time ago, when it comes to meditation, relaxation, it's a very similar kind of mindset, in the sense of there's the idea that we need it to be really quiet in order to concentrate with hypnosis, need it to be quiet so we can concentrate on the part of the body that maybe has got stress or some, you know, unpleasant physical feelings, such as pain.

Now, I learned from a personal perspective that I could meditate anywhere. I can pretty much fall asleep anywhere, in the sense of I can sleep during the day in the summer when people are mowing the lawn. Because it's a mindset.

It's almost, you know what, there's a safety. However weird it might sound, there's quite a safety aspect to there being sound. It means there's people about.

Not that it's unsafe if there's no sound. Obviously, that's for it to be fairly quiet at night. It's natural.

If there is somebody, you know, got a neighbor, maybe got the television on quite loud, or maybe they're having a party or something. Actually, there's some safety in that. There's a sort of safe human contact feeling.

And it's reality as well. Because there's always going to be sound in this place. Whatever I do, there's always sound, whether it's the central heating clicking, the television clicks when I turn it off for about 20 minutes every now and then.

There's always kind of a hum in this building. It's, you know, whether it's the computer, the laptop, maybe it's the internet hub, I don't know. The sound of the building, you know, there's sounds.

And if you get rid of all that, then you've got the sound of my breathing. I don't sound like a, you know, a hippopotamus running a marathon. You know, it's not like, you know, it's not that bad.

But I can hear the grumbling of my stomach sometimes. The fridge in the the kitchen, obviously, the fridge in the kitchen, the freezer, that's always humming comes on and off. I close the door, but it's still there, you know.

So from that angle, I realised that there's some safety and some sound. If you woke up, and you couldn't hear anything, you'd be completely freaked out, wouldn't you? It's like, wait a minute. You know, there's no sound at all.

And then it, you know, it's like, what's going on? So I had a similar thing the other day. My TV, I had it full blast, and I could hardly hear it. And I, because I've had some hearing issues in the past, and I started to think, Oh, no, what's going on? But it was just the TV.

It wasn't, it wasn't me at all. It was a TV. In fact, it wasn't.

What it was, is I still had it on the wireless headphones. And the headphones, I forgot to turn them off. So I was hearing the TV, but through the headphones, and it's blaring out.

So I can hear it. So yeah, that was a weird one. And you might be thinking, what can you get on with it, please, Jason, you're just waffling on now.

Well, this is important, because I realized that you don't need for it to be quiet, in order to benefit from relaxation, meditation, hypnosis, you know, letting go of stress, you don't need it to be quiet. So it's now spring outside for the first day of nice weather, so far this year. And there's a plane, there's some annoying man that flies his plane every single day over.

And yeah, for a long time, I got annoyed by it. Still call him the annoying man. But ultimately, it doesn't matter.

So it doesn't need to be completely quiet. Another thing I found out is years ago, I went into a hospital to help reduce the pain of somebody that had stomach cancer, and now having medical treatment. And I was in a very noisy ward, both the patients and the nurses, because nurses are not quiet in hospital.

The old joke is we taught to whisper in a helicopter, that kind of very loud, it's a very loud environment. And it didn't make any difference. Because he focused on my voice.

And it helped. It really, really did help him. So you don't need it to be quiet in order to really reduce pain or stress, which is what this podcast is for.

The second thing that that's the two things that made me realize that I learned to meditate in a Buddhist center, which was in the town center, which is right in the middle of town. And every Friday, Thursday, Friday night, it'd be people drunk, shouting, dancing, singing, you know, and it almost didn't matter. And then there's a Buddhist technique, a meditation technique, where you actually encompass you include the background sound, including the background, people around you into your awareness.

So it's part of the meditation. It's a big part of the meditation. So you're no longer a single entity on your own, trying to sort of block out the whole world.

Which in a way seems like a really silly idea to do. 7 billion people, millions, you know, hundreds of people around you at any given time, maybe not in your immediate vicinity. But in the houses around you, all doing their own thing.

Maybe you've got 1000s of people on a housing estate where you live. There's always someone that's gonna especially now, it's going to want to mow their lawn, or stand outside the front door talking loudly. It's always going to happen.

And it's fine. Because you can incorporate that. But this recording isn't about incorporating the background sound into you.

This is about incorporating your feelings, your physical feelings of either tension, stress or pain, chronic pain into the outside sounds. Okay. So the actual techniques a lot quicker than the pre talk, or the pre mumble bumble that I've just done.

But I like to explain what I'm doing. Maybe maybe it's not for everyone. But I like to try and explain what I'm doing, to let you know that I'm not just making it up as I go along kind of, you know, just, well, here's a technique.

There you go. Here's the reason behind it. Because all the background sound all the background energy, and let's face it, everything's energy.

That's bigger than you. But you don't feel it's bigger than you. When you've got arthritis, for example, and you got really painful joints, or your stress levels are way too high.

How you're feeling physically, almost feels like it's the biggest thing in the world. And that's natural, by the way, I'm not judging at all. I both have had huge amounts of stress, and also a lot of physical pain.

I've got lower back, chronic lower back pain, which is quite debilitating, actually. And it's not improving as far as the condition. So I do know what it's like to have it also.

My shoulder is not so bad now, but I had a proper issues of my shoulder for a long time. I injured it and it was painful for many years. But now it's my lower back and it's a manageable situation.

So this is what I would use this for. Something that perhaps you can't do anything about. You know, you can't, you're taking medication, maybe taking painkillers, maybe taking antidepressants for the stress, for the anxiety, for the depression.

So you're doing what you can do. Because you always go to a doctor first. You always get professional help.

You don't rely on someone on YouTube or someone making a podcast for your health and safety. You know, this is an extra thing. It's an extra thing.

Always make sure you see your doctor or your medical practitioner first to find out the cause of the pain. If nothing else, because, you know, someone might come on there with a stomach pain and it might be appendicitis. Don't want to be taking away the pain from appendicitis.

It's there for a reason. The pain is there to save that person's life. You know, so they have the medical procedure.

So they go and see a doctor and get the appendix taken out and removed before, you know, while they can. And most people with stomach ache, it's not going to be appendicitis. And some people might say, yeah, that's like, that's a different kind of pain.

Not necessarily. Of course, it could be absolute agony. But it's not necessarily, you've got a grumbling appendix where it's not as painful as, well, you know, extreme.

So always check out the cause of pain. So this technique, for what it is, is something that you can use wherever you are, anytime, providing you're able to close your eyes. Okay, so of course you can't do it when you're driving or doing stuff like that.

If you're sitting on a bus, on a train, sitting at home, sitting in a garden, lying on a beach, you know, even if you're in a coffee place and you say to your friend, I just need to close my eyes for a couple of minutes. Don't disturb me. Don't talk, you know, just just don't talk to me for a couple of minutes.

You can close your eyes and do this. Because of course, you don't need it to be quiet. You incorporate everything, including your friend in this.

Saying that you can do it with your eyes open. But I wouldn't suggest doing it if you need your attention on what you're doing. Okay, so I'm going to close my eyes because I prefer doing stuff with my eyes closed, especially getting dressed, because I don't, you know, it's scary seeing myself in the mirror.

Of course, you've got to open your eyes if you're getting dressed, you might slip over. I've been very anti-litigious today, whatever it is. Please don't sue me.

So this recording, as all the ones on this particular podcast is, and I share on other podcasts as well. It's both for stress and for chronic pain, because both of those conditions can be helped in exactly the same way. Exactly the same way.

Stress reduction and pain reduction is the same process. Because if you reduce your stress, you reduce the pain level. Always.

There's no way around it. It can even be to a point where you care less. You don't care as much about the physical feelings you have when you reduce your stress levels.

Does that make sense? Now, for some, if you don't, I mean, I've only made a few of these podcast episodes. For those that don't know my background, and I'm still waffling on. When I first learned hypnosis, my first thing, two things really, was how easy this can be used to help someone to relax.

But more important than that, because I didn't value, at the time, I didn't value relaxation. I was much younger, I was what, 27 at the time. Even though I'd had a lot of stress, I'd never done anything about it, really.

So I didn't really value it. But pain relief, having seen people with illnesses and diseases and stuff like that, I thought, yeah, this is something that can really help people. And that motivated me, that got me excited.

And that excitement has never really left. Although I haven't focused on pain relief for a long time, not really how I used to. But I used to do pain relief one on one, back, you know, years ago.

And I've made lots of pain relief recordings as well. So this is kind of, I'm getting back into it, in a sense of, this was my, this is a song, isn't it? My first love, chronic pain relief, and stress reduction, same process. And those two things really, pain relief, not so much from a personal perspective, for me, although I've got my lower back pain, stress reduction from a personal level is something that I've needed, because I've had a lot of illness with stress and anxiety in my life.

So now, combining the two, realizing that the same, exactly the same recordings can be used for both, is, I think, quite exciting, actually. And as you said, you can hear noise in the background. That hasn't taken anything away from the recording, has it? Me talking to you, it feels quite personal.

You know, I'm talking from the heart. I'm not reading off a script. I think you could probably realize that.

Because I could probably have said what I said in probably two and a half minutes, if it was on a script. I don't do scripts. I've studied this stuff, to the point where I can be creative with it.

And I can create new ideas, and new techniques, from what I've learned, from experience. And I've been doing it a long time. I've been making recordings like this, for various different things, since 2006.

So 15 years. Okay. So, and I've been a hypnotist since 2008.

1998, rather. So that's 24 years. Is it 24 years? So I've been around, okay.

I've been around for quite a while. Not bad, considering I'm only 21. Stone.

Anyway, here we're going to go. I want you to close your eyes. Now, chances are, you're going to feel more relaxed than you did before.

Maybe some people feel a bit frustrated, if they've not listened to me before, and thinking, well, we could just get on with it, please, mate. Just, I've been wanting you to, you know, I want you to relieve my stress now. Can you hurry up? You're just waffling on.

Well, the more you listen to me, the more you may appreciate that I am different from other people that do this. You get something different. It might not be necessarily better, but it's different.

And there's the human touch. There's the, you know, I'm not a robot, and you know, I'm not reading off a script. And I'm giving you, almost giving you my soul when I talk.

I'm telling you, talking from the heart. It's very romantic, isn't it? So, I would like you to close your eyes. Now, you've got the background sounds, your area, wherever you are.

There might not be much going on, but you've got background sounds here. Now, the microphone doesn't pick up as much of the background sounds as I can hear myself, but it will pick up some. So, it's not really a case of focusing on the background sounds on my end, unless you want to, but more generally, the background sounds that you can hear.

With your eyes closed, you realize it's just you, yeah? Your body, and no matter what size your body is, it's still tiny compared to the surrounding area. So, even if you're, you know, really, really large, I'm not particularly small, but if you're really large, it's still tiny compared to the surrounding area. It's still tiny compared to the building you're in.

So, everything else is bigger. Everything outside of the room is bigger than you. You know, it's a bigger area.

The energy, all the people, the dogs, you know, the different things are out there. The energy, the sounds, the temperatures, the brightness, all of those things are much bigger than you are. So, instead of going against all that stuff, and trying to push that away, and staying almost insular, staying as if you're like, just you on your own, against the world almost.

You don't have a chance against the world, one person against the world, because everything's so much bigger. We need other people. Even if you have no contact with humans, you get food delivery, it's delivered by a human.

All that food was produced by a human. You know, humans are important, however annoying they may be sometimes. So, with your eyes closed, focus on your body.

Maybe focus on that part of your body that is the discomfort, the most, that has the most discomfort. And with most conditions, you'll notice that actually, the reality is, the majority of your body feels okay. Now, there are some conditions where you might say, well, actually, no, the whole body feels a certain way.

So, what we're going to start doing is starting to just allow that sound that's surrounding us, starting to notice it surrounding you. What I do to get in touch with it physically, is I move my arms around. I'm a bit like Kermit the Frog right now.

So, moving your arms around, you can feel the energy around your skin. Part of that energy is the sound, sound waves. And as we all know, sound waves are powerful, powerful things, which is why we have satellites, television, radio, things that you can't see, but you know they are there.

So, to try to ignore something that, first of all, you can't see it, we can't really explain it, but we know it's there, we know they exist. So, we might as well just allow them to be there, because they're there anyway. And when you start to realize that, you know what, you're not separate from that, you're not separate from that energy.

Your body makes sounds, my stomach's rumbling, my voice obviously is talking, so I'm making a sound there. It's an energy frequency, our bodies, everything's just an energy frequency. And when you realize that that sound is moving through you, anyway, those waves are going through your body, invisible, but moving through you, you can start to realize that actually this body of ours, this thing that we think of as being completely separate from anything else, it's our body, and it's different from everything else.

Well, it's not, it is our body, it is your body, but it's not really that different when you break it down to the energy levels. There are energy waves moving through your body, radio waves moving through your body. So, you start to realize that your body is actually a part, or rather part, as opposed to a part, but still a part, of the background sound.

It's not separate, because we use the word apart as if something's separated, but that word apart literally means part of. The background sound is part of us, and we are part of the background sound for somebody else. So, when you've got your television on, or your music on loud, you're the background sound for another person.

So, we're connected, and with your eyes closed, with that connection, the body doesn't seem so solid. It starts to, you start to realize that it's very flexible, almost as if the body stops being solid in this moment, as you incorporate the background sound into yourself. In fact, you can actually experiment with it.

You can hear a sound and just imagine it moving through you, and how it feels different. You've got the air that surrounds you. Imagine that just moving through your face, the air moving through your face, and just moving out the back of your head.

That alone is really relaxing. It's almost like that air's blown away and removed any of the tension that was in your head, and you can allow it to happen again. That coolness blown on your face, maybe just blowing and moving through your face, and out the sides of your head, out the back of your head, maybe at the top of your head.

Cleaning and clearing the stress, any kinds of physical physical discomforts that you used to have in your body can just start to change, start to change. As that background sound and energy, the energy around you moves through you, which means it's almost as if you're changing every second, which we are. We're always changing.

The way you feel is always changing. You've got cells of your body that are dying, and new ones that are growing all the time. Healing taking place constantly.

24 hours a day, your body is healing itself. So you're never the same person. You're always changing, always healing.

And as that background sound moves towards you, you can start to allow yourself to move with it, almost like a dance. Allow yourself to become part of that background energy that's around you. And there's freedom in that.

It's almost like your body no longer exists in this moment. And the freedom, the looseness, the right now on my back, it's not even there. It's almost like the air is just moving through the gap where my back was, and my back's now just floating around, part of the energy of the background sounds, just moving around, floating in, gently, peacefully, and safely.

Feeling so relaxed and calm. And enjoying that feeling of safely letting go of everything. At the same time, embracing the reality of sound in the background, the energy that surrounds you all the time.

And you can enjoy this feeling. You really can enjoy this feeling. And I'm going to bring this to the end.

I'll count down from five to one, and it will be the end of the recording. Of course, if you choose, you can just allow yourself to continue to listen to the background sounds and relax for as long as you choose. And even when the recording finishes, you can still keep those feelings of comfort in your body.

And every time you hear my voice, you can instantly feel twice as relaxed. Five, four, three, two, one.