My back is in spasm, now what?

My back is in spasm and I am distracted, thinking about the pain. I set this goal for myself to write and post a blog every day until my ovulation, but when my back spasmed this morning I thought, there’s no way I can sit down and write. So I am here to share what it is like to experience the pain of a spasm while watching the suffering of the mind. This is an experience of observing the body rather than getting lost in the mind with fear and overwhelm.

I was standing in my house texting a friend about her boyfriend’s sick dog. I put on my worried dog mama hat and got myself involved. I put my phone down after sending a text and walked away then turned back around as soon as I heard her reply. I walked over, picked up the phone, and SPASM! I had never been so aware of the cause of stress that led to a back spasm. Maybe the dog was not the only reason why, but the timing and feeling of stress in my body seemed to fit.

This is what I do when debilitating pain enters my body, I analyze the situation and calculate what I did, ate, said, or thought to cause this problem. This is not recommended but is a common response to pain. Then I did @The Work on my thoughts around this spasm and pain.

When I quieted my mind and asked myself who I am without all of the thoughts around this pain, I saw my ribs pulled by the muscles connecting to my spine. I felt tiny micro-movements in the muscles pulling against each other. I felt the strain on my intercostals as my ribs expanded to breathe, so I shortened my breath. That led to feeling fear as I breathed a shallow breath. It was not a fear of any projected thing, just the feeling of being afraid when I breathed to avoid the pain.

So I found that when I did not have the debilitating thoughts, I simply observed.

When the thoughts of overwhelm, fear, future, and past thinking are absent, I am in the experience of my body and I suffer less. I am in pain but without the mental suffering that leads me to exhaustion. I realize that I can actually focus very well. I thought that this pain would interfere with my ability to write a blog but in reality, it is my thinking about the pain that interferes with my creative flow.

Yesterday, I heard Jewel say on Joe Rogan’s podcast that people who are really creative end up worrying a lot when they don’t have a proper creative channel. How would I have processed this pain had I not set the goal to post a blog today? I don’t know but I can use my past experiences to guess.

When I go deeper into inquiry I notice the reason for all of the analytics around why this happened comes down to ‘what did I do wrong?’ And even further, ‘what did I do to deserve this punishment?’ So I am associating pain with punishment. I can continue deeper into this inquiry but this is where I have stopped for now. I can notice that my mind is calm and I am more interested in the lizard that is on top of my car than I am in my back. The lizard makes me smile and my back feels more relaxed.

When I stop thinking about the pain it becomes bearable. It no longer distracts me. In fact, it offers a subject for my blog and offers me something to focus on so as to not go into my habitual state of worry. When I relax my mind around the pain I remember that pain has always been a tool that I consciously used to focus my mind in meditation retreats. I became grateful for the pain for holding me in consciousness.

The experience of pain showed me my ability to move from resentment and difficulty breathing, to focus, concentration, joy, and ease in breathing. I do not know where the fear was coming from with the shallow breathing but when I let go of all my thoughts and beliefs, the shallow breathing transformed into a simple experience of shallow breathing.

So this is an opening to approaching chronic or acute pain. Noticing where the mind goes and catching it. Using the tools of inquiry through Byron Katie’s @The Work to ask myself if these thoughts are true, how do I react when I believe the thoughts, who I would be without the thoughts, and turning them around. I was resistant throughout the process, I could not disconnect the thoughts from the pain, it had happened so many times and I was sick of it. But I did not give up. I know my body well and I trust it. I knew there was a way out of this suffering and into the love that lies deep within. I surrendered to the experience and was set free. I am still in pain, but I am not suffering and that is a whole lot better!