Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Anger and chronic back pain

Since 1983, there is a muscle near my right scapula that gets sore when I work at a computer or do sitting meditation. Over the years, I have tried various stretches and yoga asanas to get relief, and over the past 15 months I have worked with two physical therapists to address it. The only thing that reliably relieves the pain is to lie down for at least 15 minutes. Massaging the spot by lying on an object like a tennis ball (I used to use a glass lemon juicer) also feels good and sometimes gives relief.

I wrote a few days ago that the pain went away after about 10 minutes of giving attention to feelings of anger and letting them move through my body as I act them out. Today I found that I can get a lot of relief by slowly moving my right arm in a punching motion, giving attention to the energy of anger and really watching the sensations in the sore muscle, letting them drive the subtleties of the motion. The motion can be very subtle and still give relief, if I pay close attention. Very cool!

1 comment:

  1. For at least the past year, this pain has visited me very seldom. Only when I put a lot of stress on my back, such as sitting on a meditation cushion for longer than an hour or two. Nice!

    ReplyDelete