How to Avoid Becoming a Pain to Your Self

When you think about a problem, too much thinking slowly becomes your problem.

This is no small thing.

It is illustrated every time a person tries NOT to imagine a purple cow. Try it now – don’t see a purple cow. To make that decision, you first have to see a purple cow, then you decide not to see - but it is already too late. You’ve already imagined the purple cow.

This happens with pain too.

Imagine that squatting down causes your knee to hurt…

Then you every time you begin a squat down, you’re looking to see if it hurts. Usually, you are moving slowly to the position where it hurts. And usually you will hurt, right where you expected it.

The irony is that the expectation of it hurting is a significant reason why it does hurt. Just like the purple cow, thinking of a pain causes you to reproduce the conditions that cause that pain – albeit unconsciously. You don’t intend to feel pain, but that’s what happens.

How do you get out of that?

First – understand why that happens. It is a result of negative thinking. 

Your brain doesn’t think in negatives, it thinks in positives. That’s why I need to have a positive purple cow – or a real pain – before I can start saying “No” to the image or feeling.

Alexander discovered that thinking is shaped by how you move. 

We understand this at a gross level – sitting too long in a slumped position deadens your sense of vitality – but a change in movement quality can have an instantaneous effect on mood, comfort and efficiency.

When you go into the deep squat that causes you pain – or anything that causes you discomfort – you need to think new, positive thoughts that begin posturally guiding your head and spine into expansion as you do what you want to do.

This postural thinking is the essence of a lesson at BodyChance. Whatever you bring as your problem, your teacher begins every time by giving you a set of meaningful instructions that you use to guide your movement as you – for example – do a deep squat.

Now your mind is occupied.

Your mind is no longer looking for the pain in your knee.

Remarkably, this works most times. By the time you are down into your deep squat, you realise that this time your pain did not happen.

Because you were not busy looking for it to happen.